They grow up so quickly............

My youngest son worries me, he lies easily, has a liking for marjuana and does not spend much time in my company.  It is odd how we pour 18 years into raising them and then we spend days rarely communicating or knowing what is going on in their lives.  I miss him, miss his youth, worry where his adulthood will take him.

I know I am powerless over him, but my desire is to protect him (his brother as well) from the path I choose looms daily.  Intellectually I know we all have our own paths and that they need to go where life takes them.  That I have raised them to the best of my ability, blah, blah, blah.  That does nothing to stop the banter in my head.

So today I realized that I enjoy food shopping, worse yet food shopping at multiple places.  I like to create recipes, make good food when I have time.

Today I made iced blueberry buttermilk bundt cake from a recipe in this month's Food Network Magazine.

I am also making a tortellini vegetable salad with brown butter, grilled lemon basil mahi mahi and grilled lemon shrimp.

I have an ok photo of the cake.  I will take more photos later and post.

I also went for a paddle in my kayak down the Danvers river today.  I love Summer and I love where I live.

Today at the meeting a woman spoke about the desire for more.  So we have found a way to put down the drink, what do we do with the excessive exercising or spending?

So today I tracked what I did well at and what needs some tweaking:

- trip to Target, stayed on track only buying what I came into the store for till I found a pillow on clearance (I did need one for the chair in the kitchen), adorable black & white dress w/skinny red belt (did not need) and a grey tank top (wanted, not a necessity).  So I bought all three and charged them to boot.  There enters the desire for more and more of what I can not afford come in.

- decided to go to Life Alive in Salem for lunch, had a health salad which I did not completely finish then took a walk down to a favorite bakery and bought a slice of lemon pound cake.  Came home and cut slice in half.  Desire for more was in check.

- took time to take a walk and read today - desire to take care of self in check

- Friday night dinner out with my husband, overate as usual and then had frozen yogurt as well.  Desire for more won.

I have learned not to beat myself up over the places I fail but I do want to hold myself accountable for my behavior.  I can not make changes if I refuse to see places where I choose to overindulge.

My goal is to get my credit card debt under control and that means by not adding to it and to keep my weight about 5 pounds less than I currently weigh.

Tomorrow I start again.

My desire to start blogging came from a series of posts I read over the past two days.  I have been following this blogger for I would gather 8 years and I adore reading about her life.  How she has made dreams become realities, simply put she has inspired me.  When I read the other day that she had relapsed on alcohol I could feel her shame rip through me.  I knew how she felt for I am an alcoholic who has been sober for the past 6 years.  The shame of my drinking escapades has diminished as time has past and I have worked on forgiving myself.  I believe alcoholism is a disease, I believe in many cases it is genetic and passed down in families, but not always. 

As a teenager and young woman I struggled with my self worth and although I do believe addiction runs through my family, I was emotionally put together with alcohol.  It solved so many emotional problems for me, until it started to create far more than it solved.

I have a desire for more!  More alcohol, more cookies, ice cream, emailing, Facebook, everything to excess and then some. 

My purpose of starting this blog is to track my journey of trying to turn my desire for something more into a positive equation in my life. 

I do not know what direction this blog will take, since I don't know where the desire for more will take me each day.  I am an alcoholic I am suppose to keep it in the day.

For now I leave you with this, if anyone is struggling with the shame associated with any addiction I can not recommend enough "The Gifts of Imperfection" by Brene Brown.  It eased my shame, my guilt, the pit in my stomach was not a daily occurrence.   

That book, AA meetings (not as many as I should) and a host of supportive people have helped me make some shifts in my life, but I want more.