RAIN OR SHINE

For more than 20 years, this was

my view of the Florida SUNRISE--

Thank God, for SOBRIETY today!

A FEW WORDS

Florida's summertime showers

Happen daily, with regular hours
Usually in afternoons, two 'til five.
Gladly help everything to stay alive.

Thus, I perceive almost every morning
As Glorious renewal, a fresh new day,
God's Beauty on Great Display
Noticeably absent: my former forlorning.

Reflecting in sudden breaks of light--
Rising sun, left-over dampness from night...
And with exquisite smells, odors of Creation.
There begins my elation--my summation.

Every morning a lighted pathway....
Each dark night, a map to the stars!

--steveroni

(NOTE: The last 2 lines I picked off 

someone's blog, but cannot remember 

whose.  If it's yours, let me know please.)

Picture: Sunrise in a Bottle 3 by wbskinner.png @ Deviant Art

PERSISTENCE? OR INSANITY!

The claims in this post are mine. 

IN NO WAY do I suggest that

anyone should try this without 

the approval of a doctor.

A post like this one I really enjoy writing because it validates my desire, and reinforces my will to follow through on a weight loss plan--my own. Today, Thursday is day 2 of fasting--no food. It is the only way I have been successful in dropping 30 pounds in 30 days.

Seven years ago I weighed 260 pounds (118 kg) and a doctor urged me to drop some weight. In seven weeks (49 days) I lost 57 pounds (26 kg). And I felt better than ever before--at age 70. The methodology here was "Do not eat--anything, not even one bite of solid food.."

A product at that time, sold only by doctors was/is named MEDIFAST. Now it is available on-line.  I liked the shakes so much...naturally only the flavorful Dutch Chocolate, but from day one I limited myself to five shakes per day.  At 110 calories each, I consumed for those 7 weeks 550 calories every day, no more--no less.

Copious amounts of water is essential to the process of quick weight loss. I mean LOTS of water!

OK, now, today:  I weighed myself last night and I came in at 235 pounds. It did not accumulate from beer guzzling! It IS Dulce de leche and HERSHEY BARS.  So I have added quite a bit of heaviness, and some of it will not fit into my trousers...or shirts. Handwriting on the wall says, "OK Steve, time to DO-IT. Get busy"  And so today is my second day of fasting. I will let you know from time to time how it is working. My goal: 30 pounds in 30 days. And it will be done!

We're driving to the International Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous June 27, the event is July 1-4. And I refuse to buy pants and shirts just to look sporty in front of--or behind--50,000 Peeps. Besides, with 30 fewer pounds to carry around, I will HAVE to feel better.

I hope this was not too boring. Well, I became a little bored also, writing this. But I stayed sober!

BAR TENDER?

Old Joke:  Termite sat on the bar stool 

and asked in a loud voice

"Is the bar TENDER here?"

PREFACE

Many years ago (45), when I moved to Naples, FL, there was no symphony orchestra in which to play my violin.  Naples  was--and is--a tourist area, a winter-home type city/county.
 
The primary businesses were churches and liquor store-bar-combinations.  Since my main occupation was, well...ummmm--DRINKING, I got a job as bartender. (What else?)

Nine years later, forced by ill health, the law, and Peeps, I capitulated to a Higher Power--God--to help me stop drinking. I stopped and stayed stopped until this day...

I was so enthusiastic about a fellowship--Alcoholic Anonymous--and its program of action, which did for me what I had tried to do on literally hundreds of occasions during the previous 20 plus years.  That is stop drinking.

STORY 1974

I had been working in a place named WITCH'S BREW in Naples, for three years.  Three years (to the very DAY!) I was fired, for the first time in my life. I was given an adequate severance, unheard of in "bartender" circles, and told to get out and never come back.
Also the owner told me I was the best bartender he ever had working for him.  Go figure.

Well, about 30 years later--still not drinking--I "figured it out".  I was SO wanting to let the whole world know that I had stopped drinking (who CARED OR CARES???) ...and specifically my bar-fly friends. I found myself, while stirring a dry martini for one customer, explaining to these folks, many inebriated, all about how to save their lives.  Also I explained in detail night after night, how their families were suffering, and how they could also have a better future, by not getting drunk every night.

All the guy (or gal) had to do was switch to coca cola, and everything would work out. Well, everything worked out.  I went home, it was 3 AM Thanksgiving morning 1974, and I got to tell my family we had to tighten our belts, that I was unemployed.

How STEWPID I felt!  And fearful, because the word would get out not to hire this non-drinking evangelist (me) anywhere in this county.  Well, I did walk into one place a few weeks later, a new restaurant in town, brand new everything--kitchen, lounge, tables, and my boss rode a big Motor Scooter!  These are "my Peeps", Peeps!  It was then that I took the risk to tell the assistant manager and the GM, that I was a recovering alcoholic.

Don't you know, they both laughed, and told me they too, were recovering alcoholics in the AA Program, and had just arrived in Naples from Akron Ohio, the birthplace of AA.  Well, we got along famously, and had an AA meeting every night right there on the job!  I got to continue working the bar, making drinks, playing the violin, and all lived.....I was going to write "happily ever after" but that is not the way it happened.  The rest of the story deserves a posting of its own.  The bottom line--for me here--was that (again) God did for me what I could NOT do for myself. Got me a job in an occupation I knew, and WOW! the money was Goood!

You know, I often ask God to change me, and He does!  But he keeps wanting to change things which I DO NOT WANT changed! Oh, well....

Lots of yard work to do.  Now that it is summer it is ongoing in this tropical paradise.

Blessings for all of you, Peeps.  Please SMILE today at someone who is probably not expecting it, OK?


Lagniappe:  Two weeks ago, i met a man named Bob (real name) who remembered those days of which I just wrote, all these 36 years later...and he was sitting in the meeting room--for the first time!!!  Believe THAT! (OK, God! What next?)
 --steveroni

DEVIANT ART: Zelda__Link___The_Last_Guest_by_Dayu

ONE EVENING'S MEMORY

THE CAPTAIN'S CABIN
LOUNGE

It was a busy night
Back in '65

Classy bar, seated 70 Peeps

One man took drink orders
One man made the drinks
One man played the violin
One man cleaned off 12 tables
One man was bartender.
One man washed the glassware
One man told the jokes
One man lit EVERYone's cigarette

The reason I know this, you see...
That one man was...me!

Rushing around
Running around
To DO all those jobs.
Room noisy loud
Hearing the sound
Of the Ship's Bells
And twice I yelled
At piano player: "Mom!
I think I'm having a heart attack!
It's not just a pain in my back!"

She stared vaguely at me--
Said in her vague manner, "Oh?"
She kept playing the ivory.
I kept working the room.
I slept without waking
All next day....

One year after that
I experienced my first
Complete physical exam.

Doctor looked at EKG
Doctor looked at me
And incredulously
Checking, said he,

"When did you have these
Two heart attacks? And
How bad were they, Steve?
And why did you not leave?"

I was age 33.
Since then, it is
Now 44 years later.
Never since have I
Experienced that much pain.

And I had "yet" eight more years of Pure Pride and Ego, personal chaos, self-destructive tendencies, hatred, and overriding HUGE fear of all things which could not be measured in PROOF (as in 190 Proof!). My drinking increased, mental acuity decreased, and finally in 1974 I hit my metaphorical  bottom. And got sober. And stayed sober.

When I die one day
I'll sigh and say
I was given these extra years.
Have I wasted them with fears?
Is all that is left--the tears?
Maybe I'll just sigh and say
Have I done any good today?

PEACE TODAY, PEEPS!

HERMIT STORY: THE BEGINNING

THE HERMIT

 

 

1956

 I watched with intensity a Television show (documentary) in which David Brinkley explored the life of a hermit. He chartered a boat to carry him out in the SW Florida waters, to visit Rob Roy Ozmer, the "Hermit of the Ten Thousand Islands". I watched intently as Brinkley disembarked, and the hermit Rob Roy walked to meet him.

That day I had made up my mind that in order to be free, one must be a hermit. I talked about it to everyone, constantly, year after year, and daily. And so the thought lingered, then became implanted in my brain, to stay there until.....

1964

The time was now for me to go to visit Rob Roy. It was a more-than-cold December. From my home in Cincinnati, I took a week vacation (holiday, for you European Peeps!)
and flew to Miami Florida. As the plane circled low over the city's fringes, I looked down and my heart REALLY sunk--there was snow everywhere...you must know how I felt, well, like excrement. I had written David Brinkley at NBC(?) and he responded, urging me to take Bacardi Dark out to the hermitage (near Coon Key Island). But he'd written nothing about snow in South Florida. The "snow" I saw was nothing more than all the rooftops painted white, the color which deflects the daily sun heat (Sigh!)

In a bar (naturally!) in Everglades City I found an out-of-work crabber who would, for $15, run me out to the island and back for a visit. Well, it is easy to get lost in the Ten Thousand Islands (actually well over 12,000), and I felt "God" was with me, as, laden with no more than the rum, we arrived at Rob's island, waving the bottles in the air. And obviously, that was our 'ticket' for an audience with the hermit.

More and more, I could see myself living in this fashion, free as the birds..even free as the mosquitoes which were bird food!  Rob Roy Ozmer was as congenial a host as a genteel plantation manager in Georgia, FAR exceeding my expectations. Several memories:

1.  He told about a man he'd seen the summer before, attacked by hordes of mosquitoes entering into every
(that's EVERY!) orifice in his body. The man jumped into the Gulf of Mexico, and died of suffocation. (My "deadly mosquito" story.)

2.  I could hear bubbling from my seat on the dirt floor, which provoked the question to  Rob Roy. He was making carrot liquor in five-gallon vats placed strategically around his houseboat home, the old boat no longer fit to float.

3.  Rob Roy's younger wife lived in Everglades City--population about 247 at the time--he was age 65--and once a month he putt-putted (a small boat) into town, collected his Social Security check, bought supplies, said hello to "her", and back again home, before the mosquito population took over the Everglades.

4.  We spent the whole day drinking, eating bird of some genre (I did not ask!), and discussing the outside world as if it were a billion space-miles distant...as it was!

5.  I left  drunk, full stomach, and happy for a "day-in-life-of-Steve". Days of heavy drinking--for me--did not ALWAYS end in catastrophe...just almost always! We got out just before the invading insects came out from their hiding places of flora and fauna. Somehow, I still have the feeling that maybe WE were the invaders...

2010....TODAY!

Peeps, I DID shorten this story as much as possible, keeping some of the salient points. There follows ONE punch-line-story, which I simply MUST tell you--don't go away NOW.....

This post was mainly about an obsession culminating with a day in the year 1964. 

NOW is the year 2010. About 4 days ago, I was sitting outside our Alcoholics Anonymous meeting place, the 24-Hour Club in Naples, FL. Next to me was a girl, and we began to chat. I told her of my planned blog post (THIS one!), since she had mentioned that some 50-odd years ago she was BORN in Everglades City (the smallest of villages I have EVER encountered to this day.) When I mentioned Rob Roy Ozmer, she hit me on the arm, saying "You will not believe this but his WIFE was my grade-school TEACHER!"

Melly and I (not real name), both staying sober after hellish lives, by chance are sitting side-by-side, in the cold, drinking coffee FORTY-SIX YEARS after my encounter with the husband of her teacher. You tell ME what are the chances of this--almost spiritual--happening.  

Sorry about the length of this post, but I felt some might find it interesting, the beginning of an obsession which lasted for years after. Once or twice a year still, I get a strong urge to hunker down alone somewhere even if only on the open road, on my motor scooter. But to actually live the life of a hermit...never, NEVER again! I love Peeps TOO much! We all know many who live like hermits, though surrounded by hundreds of Peeps. I can be that kind of hermit any time I drift from my program, my way of life, Alcoholics Anonymous. Isolation is for me an attribute long ago removed.

I truly LOVE you, my Peeps
I really NEED all of you, my Peeps
I stay SOBER with you, my Peeps
I want to be HAPPY with you, Peeps
I want to live without ANXIETY--like you, Peeps
At least for TODAY--and maybe tomorrow?

Still Climbing the Trails

I SEE FRIENDS SHAKIN' HANDS

SAYIN' HOW D'YA DO

THEY"RE JUS' SAYIN'

I....LOVE....YOU!
 

 Someone posted awhile back this picture, and I've kept it, thinking to use it one day. I have been SO busy with music preparations rehearsals, and shows, that I'm behind in all phases of blogging.

A blogging-phone-friend told me this morning, "Find a picture you love, and write a few lines, or you will get out of the habit, Steve. We will miss you and you will miss us."

A wakeup call I cannot ignore since it carried with it love, ya know what I mean? "NO, Steve, we DON'T know what you mean!"  

Well, I feel sometimes when one speaks to another with love in their heart, it is the Holy Spirit leading, because therein IS love--and love IS therein. So much for that, heaven is waiting!

Yes it is God's final gift to me, actually it was given from the beginning. I spurned it. Then I was given (really) COUNTLESS opportunities to regain the Gift. But now, instead of it just being handed to me, I find there is this ladder to climb. There may be some broken rungs hiding themselves along the way.  If I am wary, I'll avoid them or be able to hang on.

If I try to spread Tenderness, Peace, Forgiveness, Freedom (from fear, from unnecessary anxiety), Joy, Happiness, Gratitude, and an Abiding Love for God, for Mankind, for Nature, and for those "special" Peeps in my life--if I continually work toward that goal, I might get one more step up that ladder, one step closer to heaven. That's one step away from the "other place". 

If I don't take that first drink, it is a GUARANTEE that I will not become drunk.  If I continue to get to my 7 AM meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, I'll probably not take that first drink. And I just MIGHT become someone who peeps LIKE to be with, like to enjoy, who even can 
L O V E...

I welcome you Peeps to STAY SOBER today
You are welcomed to the world of PEACE today
And I welcome you ALL to love--and BE loved, today and after!

Off now to play TWO shows!

Please stay with me if I cannot post or comment every day...I   N E E D you!

WE DO STAY SOBER!

UNCLE SAM WANTS YOU

This is a true happening of one year ago. Following is my blog from July 25, 2008 (It is in my archives on sidebar) This is a slightly edited version. Please read the UPDATE at the end, for the good news we all love to hear. steveroni

Friday, July 25, 2008

POLLY'S COOKIES...and "K"....

I spoke at the AA "cookie" meeting last night for about 20 minutes here in Naples, Florida......and--the cookies were DELICIOUS.

And the "cookie girl" (An anonymous sweetheart named Polly H!) gave me a little doggie bag, for home use. Which brings me to the SECOND part of this blog. At home was my sober (23 years) wife, Prayer Girl, in the living room, speaking in low tones to a girl who God had dropped into our laps--well, our HOUSE--for a one-niter.

I'll call her "K". She is from a northern city, age seventeen, passing through Naples, an admitted "person with a drinking problem" and a real darling, intelligent girl with a magnetic personality. And she is a drunk! Also neither PG nor I had ever met her before. How she arrived at our door, clean and pretty, with bag in hand, is a mystery only God knows whereof. Well, we know a few specifics, but the enigma was for certain a working of God.

And so, as you might have guessed by now...the three of us enjoyed non-stop, wonderful, nearly all-night conversations learning of each other--eating Polly's (Ummmm!) cookies, with an amount of ice cream thrown into the mix.

"K" agreed to join my early-morning schedule, and so PG brought her to my 7 AM meeting. God was with us this morning. K was surrounded by a gaggle of girls (I had alerted some of them beforehand and at the 6 AM meeting!) and she told us that she enjoyed her first AA meeting...But...YOU know.

"K" smiled often as only the newcomer--and the old-timer--can do (hiding all the BS which is lurking behind the facade) and I noticed her attentiveness and "saw" her listening to each one who shared on this, our "Step-Day" (Third Step! How wonderful is THAT?).

It has GOT to be impressive to a serious, first-day someone, who gets a little silver chip, for first-week, etc., and then witnesses sixty-five people at 7 AM on a Friday morning, laughing at themselves one moment, talking next of their life-and-death disease, and then laughing out loud...and then, oh my! Talking about God...and Prayer and Meditation! A bunch of CRAZIES?

"K" found understanding, love, and PEACE in that room this morning, and as I write this about our experiences the past twenty-four hours, it's all I can do...to not cry with happiness. I love you ALL.

Posted by Steve E. at 2:51 PM Friday July 25, 2008
0 comments:

JULY 26, 2009 SUNDAY

UPDATE: "K", our niece from Virginia, had her last drink five days after that 7 AM meeting in Naples FL, one year ago yesterday. Her One-Year Anniversary will be July 30, 2009. She now is age 18, attends a drug-and-alcohol-free Christopher Newport University. I have just talked to her on the phone. ("K" is SUCH a sweet, spiritual girl.) She has the same sponsor she started with, they spent yesterday at the beach. Please Pray for "K" that her journey will be traveled with God at her side. Thank you!

As we live this Sunday, stay sober, and be happy!
Peace and Love is for you all, Bloggers!
Steve E

MADE A LIST...

A COMPLETELY INCOMPLETE LIST

As I read this morning a short Email from a blogger who lives in South Africa, I began to think of that 'other world', the one I know not. The world which is 'real' poor. Sure, most of us are not rich, and we have a small percentage of the truly impoverished. My 'want' comes not from "do I have enough for today". It is more like, "will I have enough for tomorrow?" Fear of the future during these troubles times. Wondering, "How will we make it next year?"

That spells to me a lack of faith, of trust, of willingness to let God take care of tomorrow, if I do my part today. This brings me again to the table of Gratefulness, to the realization that I owe my very life to Alcoholics Anonymous. That is the place God brought me 34 years ago, a shaking, sweating, mentally deranged and physically ill 'mess of pottage'.

So I have lived long enough to continue writing a completely incomplete list of my blessings:

A computer on which to write this list

Visit Syd on TSR chat tonight...Later: TSR would not let me in.

My ignorance--when will I learn?

Electricity to power our home appliances

Water, running at a turn of the faucet

Some of it HOT

A great king-sized bed to sleep on

With sheets and a 517 yr-old pillow

Well, it LOOKS like 517 years old

Mega grocery warehouses

Chili for dinner

Chocolate chip cookies from Anna

A.A. groups and meetings in Naples (all day)

Ethereal thickly-fogged beauty of pre-dawn

Chocolate chip cookies at A.A. (7 AM this morning)

Awesome church music with a children's choir at mass

Suzuki Bergman "executive" 650cc (scooter)

Gallon of gasoline is $2

$8.00 will take me 200 miles to visit my daughter

Shoes and socks on my feet

NOT second-hand

Busy retirement

Able to work, long past retirement date (play violin)

A terrific sponsor (I should call him?)

I DID! And it made me happy--and him, too!

The Second Road--TSR--(IF I can ever get on -grin)

Patience: Try to logon TSR again tomorrow!

Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Grateful that a blogger let me know how obnoxious it is to "-grin" all the time! Thank you. I'll TRY!

And now, I shall pray for willingness to grow along spiritual lines, as I sign off on this day, and wish all of us to stay sober today, be at peace, LOVE...and BE loved (God IS "Love"!).

Sincerely,
Steve E.