Actually I do and yet I don’t… a strange feeling to be sure. I can be craving one and lean over to kiss my wife while she is smoking and all but gag. I most likely would end up coughing over it far longer than it would be worth.

I am going to need a twelve step program to get off the gum though, not nicorette gum, the regular sugar free gum that I started chewing to ease the transition.

I am still using the lozenges, at 2 mg, as I think stopping them now would probably sabotage the whole ordeal. But Once I am sure I can do without them, they will disappear too. Hey I quit smoking, how hard can lozenges be? The gum though… I am finding some of the new flavors are really, really good! That’s what I get for taking up old habits I didn’t have before.

Just one more piece of Extra Watermelon flavored before bed….

Tom

I made it through the dental fiasco unscathed. I was very leery of that one, but the jaw didn’t lock so I skated past without the imagined panic mode. I am very glad I did not have to face that down.

I wrote a restaurant review, of all things. I haven’t been publishing much since my return to the land of the employed, hopefully that will change. AC still has indexing issues apparently, so here is the link:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2374154/the_boat_yard_a_review_of_the_panama.html

Tiger, our oldest cat, has disappeared. She seemed healthy and happy at the time with no sign of illness. She was here one day and gone the next. She will be missed.

The weather is cooling finally, here in the land of eternal heat. A very welcome change. It isn’t quite cold enough to turn on the heater yet, but it is coming! (I excite easily)

I suppose that is enough info for one day….

Tom

I had to have him pull a tooth. Anything involving my lower jaw means an oral surgeon… I cannot get a dentist to put me under for a root canal. I cannot get an Oral surgeon to do a root canal, so I end up having them pulled.

It is far more pleasant, in my opinion, to go to an oral surgeon than to see the dentist. I am a big baby when it comes to a dentists chair… that really isn’t fair since I have been drilled on live so many times that I lost count.

I was up for a whopping 45 minutes the first time. Ate a bowl of soup and returned to the land of the dreamers until 10:00P.M. when I got up and again had soup and roamed the cyber world for a couple of hours before returning to sleep.

One  thing that had me worried was that last time I had a tooth pulled like this my jaw was frozen shut for a month. Having stopped smoking a month ago (I like the sound of that.) I was afraid I would slip not being able to use the gum or lozenges. I am very happy to say that my jaw is working fine even though I am not supposed to chew gum for 24 hours. I haven’t had any gum for nearly 24 hours now with no drastic symptoms… fine deal!

Maybe I can see myself as done smoking soon, that was a big hurdle for me. I really did not want to start smoking because I had a tooth pulled.

Tom

The withdrawals are easing up on me though I am still using Nicorette gum at 2mg.  I hardly use the gum much and normally chew no more than two or three pieces a day.

Urges to smoke are getting farther and farther apart, with a great deal less intensity, Finally!

 I still have moments where a cigarette really sounds like the thing I need most in life, but about that time someone around me lights one… talk about a fantasy kill. One whiff and that urge is pretty much belly up.

I hope the urges do eventually go away, but I won’t hold my breathe waiting, anymore than I will give into one.

Even better news, my brother has quit as well! I think that was the last hold out in the family.

As much as I hate to wish bad luck on anyone… I hope the tobacco companies all close their doors soon. They really do not serve a useful purpose when meeting a sales goal means losing customers due to the product. Their time is past.

Tom

Last night I was writing away when I stood up from the computer and started looking for my smokes, I was on a mission! I started laughing when I realized what I was doing.

I keep reaching into my shirt pocket on a regular basis as well. I still would have one lit before I knew I had a lighter out… let the gagging begin, yuck.

Strangely enough people who smoke around me does not seem to overtly bother me. It no longer smells like a cigarette, merely like something burning.

After sixteen days I am beginning to feel like I have it beaten, or at least that I am winning this war with an old habit.

Tom

I have come to the conclusion that Nicorette gum is truly nasty, that is a good thing though as I won’t have to kill another addiction once smoking is truly history.

I can’t get in to see the dentist till Tuesday, bummer! Few things let you know you are alive like giving up smoking and eating at the same time.

I am happy that the job is not interfering with the weekend, this week, for a change… Quitting is tough enough dealing with a forty hour week, and the extra rest is most welcome.

That’s about it for now,

Tom

I truly wish I felt good about that, but maybe when the feeling that I would walk a heck of a lot farther than a mile for a Camel wears off….

I had this insanely naive idea in my head that the cravings and withdrawals would fade after eight days… nope. They get farther apart, and far more malevolent.

Maybe I can look back on this event as the Heckle and Jekyll trauma, one where I can be a mild mannered human one minute and a fire breathing reject from a Sci-fi novel the next.

I can only be humbled by the fact that I did wake up this morning, a fact that lets me know my lovely wife has not decided to end the travesty that is my existence at the moment, she has seen fit to ignore her urges to put that heavy iron skillet to good use while I lay in fitful slumber no doubt chasing a cigarette fairy around the forest with a lit match….

Your long suffering, nicotine depraved, missing village idiot,

Tom

I decided to work on one of my ideas for a novel, one that I had done some writing on, and background for.

That was several weeks ago and I still cannot find what I did with the first chapter or so… it is gone. I know the old comp crashed, but we had thought it all saved. It wasn’t anywhere to be found.

I started re-writing it. I’m about a thousand words in and rethinking the whole thing. I took an entirely new direction to start with from the old one. Hopefully it will work out.

Accentuate Services started a new contest for the month, “First Love” is the theme. I found out about it this morning and am 2200 words into it so far in the first draft.

The story flowed as if alive, but I reached a snag and as yet have not decided how to proceed.

Work has gotten interesting as well. We took over a motel that the a/c contractor really, really made a mess out of. I am the poor dumb fool who has to redo everything and make it work.

The actual duct work is too small in places, completely wrong in others, and not even close to reality or the blueprints through out.

I even found an area where they did not connect the metal duct on one side, it missed by nearly two inches, and taped it together.

There are things so far from the local and national codes that the inspectors made us tear it out and start over. some are in gross violation, some are just stupid mistakes that only a person who knew nothing of the trade would make….

Life is interesting I guess. At least I was given two days off this weekend.

Tom

Jo and I went out last night, yes we splurged, a walk on the beach (until lightning threatened us …), and a trip inside a local tourist trap that sells just about everything tourist related… complete with aquariums to gawk at, and even a stuffed alligator. Jo ended up with a very cool wooden wind chime.

We are deep into our hot, humid, icky, sweaty, monsoon season; I keep telling myself it only lasts a little longer, it should cool off any month now… I am totally ready for fall!

With two whole days off, I have even managed to write a new article for AC; a piece on Econfina creek, a haven for cooling off when I thought air conditioning was the only way to go. Either the Internet or this computer had problems yesterday, causing the pictures that went with that article to refuse to cooperate. We shall see what an e-mail to admin does to aid in that area of aggravation.

Tom

 I turned fifty two yesterday, a feat I never saw coming… having seen most of my childhood friends pass from this world before me. I never expected to be one of those left to attend their funerals.

Life is seldom fair, and for those of us still attending, we know enough to expect change and not always of the good kind. I used to envy those few who had their lives all planned out, at least until I came to the realization that it was just another form of entrapment… what if I spent ten years of my life to become something I hated? Instead I spent twenty stuck in something I had not created….

Have all my choices been god ones? No. Bad ones? No. They were merely choices, some made in haste, some made carefully. Some were spurred on by a whim, some by years of planning. Some turned out alright, some like a disaster, patiently waiting for me to turn my back….

Sadly life is finite, while the list of choices is infinite, as is the possibility of mistakes, misinformation, and down right horrible errors.

If I could have foreseen the future, followed every possible path I might take, would it have mattered? could I have avoided all the potholes of life? Probably not.

If I could change the past, would I? Or like the fiction works in print would I merely make it worse? Sounds like a plot for a movie or three, if only it hadn’t been done so many times before….

I find that I am not cut out to be a non-fictional writer, one constrained to chasing stories of mundane events. I only hope my imagination is up to creating the places and events my conscious mind would rather be, a fictional world of happy endings, one where the bad guy never gets ahead for very long and seldom manages to ruin the world or the people occupying it in the end… maybe.

The real test for a writer is to see if they can persuade others to join in the journey, and make enough money to survive the process! Maybe I can force enough time aside to write in between work and the comatose state of off work. Life just keeps happening, things get in the way, and writing time is scarce. Becoming an author is not an easy thing, not by a long shot, so only time will tell if I can make the transition.

Tom