One Bad Month

Well I would like to chalk up the month of June as being the worst one ever and start over with July. Bad things that happened last month:

• Alicia split her head open on dresser June2nd
• Alex went into the hospital on June 8th
• Bob died on June 9th
• Went to Bob's funeral and had the 2 years of therapy that it took to get over the suicide of my boyfriend completely knocked out of me by bitter gay man
• Took up smoking again after 7 years of quitting
• No boyfriend, yet one I had still fucking with me using mind games so I feel like I still have one but no benefits of having one present
• Money flow lowest ever
• All around bad weekend June 29/30
• Smoked final cigarette June 30 and almost burned my house down.

Would you like to hear about that last one in more detail? Well as you may or may not know, I went from a healthy eater and active jogger/walker to a sedentary smoking slob living off vending machine food for 2 months pretty much as soon as I became "single". I went from eating vegetables and fruits as 80% of my diet to not touching one for weeks. I was up to almost to 5 miles for jogging and was walking every chance I could get. Sure I had the occasional cigarette here and there, but I always regretted it and would go months in between. As soon as Alex got into the hospital and I stopped taking my happy pills, it all began to go downhill. Deceptively though. I had the BEST week moodwise of my LIFE from June 9th to the 17th. Nothing was bringing me down. Then the funeral and that asshole who had the nerve to act like I wasn't allowed at Kam's funeral because I had something to do with it even occuring! He undid so much of my newfound self esteem. I wish I had had the balls to tell him to go to Hell and fucking rot with Kam. Ok that's harsh but whatever.

ANYWAY as usual I digress. SO I have been smoking cigarettes, not a ton but every day at least one. I bought Camel Mellows which are pretty tasty but they are not lights so they are really stinky and strong. I have been disgusted with myself but unwilling to quit while I'm still ahead until Sunday morning. Saturday night I took my last Camel and went out on the front porch. I decided to call Jamie and talk to her while I smoked it. I thought to myself, "Ok Betsy this is your last one, smarten up and stop smoking because you are only hurting yourself." I don't want to be like those people that I see that are 40 years old, sitting there on a bench all hunched over with wrinkly saggy skin, yellow teeth, and wispy dry hair puffing on a butt trying to feel young again. So I smoked it, she wasn't home and I left a message, and then I put the butt out in the windowbox full of wet mulch. Wet. Mulch. It was about 10:oopm. The kids were asleep and I went upstairs and got ready for bed.

The next morning my son started pointing out the window saying, "Something happened to the windowbox!!" and I look out there and see that the left corner of the box was gone, strings of melted plastic hanging off everywhere, and a the wooden board that it was setting on was charred with hardened drips of plastic stuck to the railing. WHAT THE FUCK???I mean, obviously it was burned but how? It was wet!!! The cigarette butt was tiny and hardly had anything left to it when I had put it out. And I remember smashing it into the dirt pretty hard.

My neighbor came over a little while later and said that he had fallen asleep in his easychair in the living room, whose window faces my porch, and woke up at 12:30am and noticed flickering behind his shades. He looked out and said there were 3-4 foot flames coming out of the windowbox! He said there were even cars driving by and no one stopped to help! He grabbed some water and put the fire out. Another 10 or 15 minutes and I am sure my house would have caught fire. It was very windy that night. The scariest part is that my smoke detector in my living room is sitting on my kitchen counter, waiting to be put back up. I could have died and taken the kids with me if my neighbor hadn't seen that fire. I am never smoking again.

PS> Don't believe them when they say that they make cigarettes "self extinguishing" because that is obviously bullshit!