Progress Report: Climbing Out of the Trough?

Last night, my telephone rang and - quite uncharacteristically - I actually answered it (that my unit doesn't have call display (I case of buying a surplus phone and just presuming that any telephonic device without a rotary mechanism would of course display the number of incoming calls) is one of the reasons I seldom do answer it on those rare occasions it rings, but not, lately, the primary one).

It was my cousin Wendy, who now makes her home far to the south and west, and whom I have not seen for a couple of years, nor spoken to for almost as long. She is, nevertheless, one of my very favourite people in this world (well, in any world).

"Hello?" I said into the mouthpiece.

"Geoffo!" she answered. (Please note: she is the only person who is allowed to call me that; anyone else doing so risks a punch in the mouth.)

My first thought was that she might be coming east and was calling to let me know.

My second, was to remember that my journal has lurkers and that Wendy has sometimes been among them.

"I bet I know why you're calling," I said and she admitted it was so. We spoke for a couple of hours and, happily, I was able to give her the following update on my state of mind (which also meant that our conversation wasn't entirely about me, thank god).

I have even managed, without difficulty, two nights out of three without benefit of alcohol, a feat I don't think I have achieved in more than a year. (I had forgotten how nice it is to awaken with a head utterly clear.) And Tuesday's imbibation (I know, I know: that's not a real word; but I kind of like it) was conducted in the company of others.

In retrospect, though, I think Sunday's post was the culmination of my dawning self-awareness rather than its cause.

It might be that the process began on the Canada Dominion Day weekend, which I spent - in the company of people.

Or it might have been that morning, three or so weeks ago, when I literally flushed my stash; my first step towards making changes. My corpus has been without the questionable benefit of cannabis since then.

Whatever.

I am not yet typing up a storm, but my muscles are aching the way they ought to, I've been getting out of the apartment and I've even been returning phone-calls.

And I hope to hell that my next post is about something other than myself.