The 24-Hour Chip That Reminds Her She’s Only Got Today – Barbara C.

Well, I'm an alcoholic. My name is Barbara, and you're probably going to hear enough from me later on. So I just want to say thank you to Steve and Steve. We've sat together in a lot of Sunday night meetings both here and over at Dunsmore over the years, and it's just wonderful to come in here and see all my perfectly wonderful best friends. Thank you all. Thank you. I'd like to really thank Forrest for asking me to lead the meeting when I walked in, and so I thought we'd just spend the next 10 minutes taking his inventory. I'm good at taking other people's inventories, so. Oh gosh, a lot of you guys know my story, so if you want to go have a cup of coffee or go to the restroom while I tell it again, I will go ahead because it hasn't changed. I originally got to AA in 1975, and I did not understand that the drinking was a symptom of my disease. It really wasn't my problem. My problem was my thinking, not my drinking. So I didn't stick around very long. I did the first step and did a lot of 13-step work. but it was back in the 70s and you know everybody was pretty much doing 13th step work back then but i even though i was i was in kindergarten at the time i did earn my seat um the one story that i like to tell and i think there's one person in here probably hasn't even hasn't heard it is when i was on the maintenance system where i would only buy a pint and uh-huh yeah leave it to the element on the left um i would i would i would Only buy a buy a Pint and then when that was done i was done for the evening well that you know that never really works out all that well so um i was living over in Toluca lake area at the time and and there was a little place called dale's junior uh was a Little food market over there so i thought well i'll just go over and get another half pint and then i'll be okay for the evening so i went over dale's junior and i got my half pint i walked back out and my car wasn't there so I thought sure somebody had stolen my car so like the good little alcoholic that I am thing you do is you call the Burbank Police Department and you report your car stolen so I used the payphone and I called him and cop came over and he started taking the information about my car and yeah it's blue with a with a white top and we're going through all this and he goes well is it sort of like like this one. And I said, and I said God you found it! You guys are so good! And so I took my keys and I started to get in my car and he went whoa whoa time out! I really don't think it's a good idea if you drive anywhere. So you know do you have anybody else that can pick you up. And of course, I didn't have any friends. I was a practicing alcoholic. So I had to say no. So, so I had a bologna sandwich for breakfast at the Burbank jail. I did all sorts of crazy things like that. I got pissed off about something and I called President Nixon. Frickin' 3 o'clock in the morning, I'm shit-faced and I'm calling Tricky Dick to try to solve my problem. He didn't take my call, by the way, which gave me a whole nother resentment. I didn't drink because I really understood that I couldn't drink. So I didn'T drink for a couple of decades. But that wasn't really good because i still had all the resentments and all the other crap that goes with our disease in 1997 i i finally divorced my wife and i was out of my own and i thought you know it's really been long enough i'm sure i'm much better now i'm Much older I'm much wiser well I wasn't I was older but evidently I wasn t much wiser because I picked up pretty much right where I left off. And it took until 2000 until I hit a parked car and then went back down and thank God they didn t catch me when I hit the parked car, but I went home and went back down in the morning oh yeah i would have got the dui thing and the whole thing um but so i went back out in the morning we exchanged insurance and all that kind of stuff but of course they had called the police the at night so the police did come knocking on my door and said you know you really uh that's called hit and run because you didn't leave a note and so I said okay and and of course being the Burbank Police Department the car hit another car hit a wall so they charged me with three counts of hit and run and so when we were screwing around with all the the legal garbage that that went with that part of the plea agreement was that I would attend three meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous for six months and I didn't argue with that at all because for the previous three and a half years I had been trying to get my little butt back in the room only reason was it was the only thing where I could stop drinking I tried everything else everything that in the book you know I changed from vodka to brandy and brandy vodka and all the other stuff's that uh that Greg read tonight didn't work so so I went back in on my little court card and this time I actually started to listen and all the things that the people were saying over and over and over again that I thought was complete total bullshit because I was only in the first grade by then I got out of kindergarten it started to make a little bit of sense maybe I was a little wiser at that time I don't know it's a lot older so I started to do the other 11 steps and all of a sudden my life started to change and it started to get better and I stopped having these big terrible resentments like forests coming up and thanking the last-minute speaker and not thinking the last minute leader you know no I mean I really would have copped a big resentment over that what 12 years ago I mean never that would have been a really really big thing and now it's just I know Forrest is an asshole and we just move on to the you know no I love Forrest he knows it I was doing some thinking before my birthday last year which for me usually is a really really dangerous thing but in this case it wasn't because I was thinking of what I refer to as program byproducts there are things that we do in the program like we you know making our amends to try to clear up the president all that kind of stuff and that's that's really like doing the steps program stuff and there are thing that are happening in my life that that aren't programmed stuff and I call them program by-products I'll give you a couple of examples this Christmas I had to back up just a little bit I had just about lost both of my kids didn't my daughter still isn't talking to me but that'll either resolve itself or it won't it isn't up to me as long as I'm available for we'll see what happens but my son called me Christmas Eve and he He said, you know, Dad, we're going to go over to – he calls me Dad now. Isn't that cool? We're goingto go overto Aunt Susan's for Christmas dinner tomorrow, and I'm not welcome at Aunt Susan', which is fine. But he said, how about if I bring up a couple of steaks and we can barbecue them and wecan have our Christmas dinner together? Now, that's something I didn't try to do. It isn't something – it was just a program byproduct. And for me, it was huge. It was absolutely huge. Another thing is my ex-wife and I made a lot of VHS tapes of my kids. They're 26 and 23. So these tapes, when they were little, are starting to deteriorate and the color's starting to go and stuff like that. And before I left, I made copies of the originals because I never thought I'd ever see them again if I didn't. So I thought, well, I'll put them on DVDs. And I thought while I was doing this, it isn't really all that big a deal to take the DVD and shove it in the computer and make a copy for Mac's wife. And they were light scribe DVDs, which were on the other side. You can put it burns on the DVD what it is. So I had like the kids' names and then the dates that the VHS tapes covered. And so I had about 15 of these things. And when Kathy came up and dropped Christopher off for our Christmas dinner, I had him in a box and I took him out and I said, Merry Christmas. And she looked at me like I was from the planet Xenon or something. But she opened it up and she took out one of the DVDs and she read on it, it said Kristen and Christopher and the dates on it. And she just burst out into tears. Just start crying like a baby. And I said, what? And she goes, I thought these things were lost forever. There is no way with the resentments I had against that woman going through that seven-year divorce that I would have done that without this program and you people. And things like that are just happening in my life one after another after another. and uh for us thank you and i you know i really do like you guy really do so why don't we all uh take a coffee break and that's enough out of me thanks and my name is jeff and i'm still an alcoholic and it is my pleasure to introduce the speaker for this evening birthday barbara Well, I am an alcoholic. My name is Barbara. As my friend Treehouse always says, it's good to be sober and good to be in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. Frankly, I couldn't think of any place I'd rather be. And at 3 o'clock when Steve called he said, can you come down to Unity at 630? You know where it is. I said, well, we need a speaker. okay, why not? I was so enthusiastic. It's an honor to be called and feel, I'm going to close this to make you nervous but it is an honor to be asked to speak at any meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous whether there's two or twenty or two hundred, well I've never spoken that large a group and it's been a while so if I ramble and mumble just be patient. I'm an old lady and there's certain things that I always have to remember and a lovely gentleman by the name of Peter Webb who's passed on now, always used to talk about the things that we always had to remember. Our sobriety date, our sponsor, our home group, and the service we're giving to our home group. Well, my sobriery date is February 8th, 1988. My sponsor's Maria H. My home group is Sunrise at Dunsmore meets seven days a week at 6 a.m., yes, a.n. And I am the coffee maker on Thursday, and when they say you want to help clean up, my hand just goes up. Me and Rick D. We're just the two old geezers that clean up after the young kids there. Anybody under 50 is a young kid. But, you know, we've had, as a lot of us are aware of, this has been a tough week for people who live here in La Crescenta, and we have a lot if parents come to my meeting, and they're very upset. Some of their kids saw what happened Friday. And, you now, what I love about the unity of Alcoholics Anonymous, it doesn't matter what goes on, joyful or sorrowful or tragic, we stick together I mean are we our little group is so bonded over there that you know there's nothing that can happen that is going to break us up and we just hope nobody drinks over it that's about all we can really hope for but it has been hard and you know some of the parents I remember that Friday yes this happened Friday Saturday morning this lady I'd never seen before came in she was just bawling she got up to take a 90-day chip couldn't say her name sat down and then finally when what we do at our meeting we go around the room and share everybody shares and if you don't want to share you say your name and you pass you there's no pressure really and she finally told us you know that her daughter had seen what happened you know we began to realize the impact it was and I say I hope nobody drinks over this and they've all got our prayers but anyway my life is has been very simple not a lot of high drama. I'm a very ordinary garden variety alcoholic, but I haven't done all the things that a lot of you people did when I first came into the fellowship. I felt I didn't belong. You see, I've never been stopped by a cop, never been arrested, never had a court card, didn't drink in bars, didn'T dance on the piano trying to do whatever. I didn'T do all those glamorous or dramatic things that all these people told me about. I just was a very proper married lady, worked in a bank, had a husband. And we drank at home and we were very happy social drinkers for quite a long time. And I didn't know that it was gradually happening. You see, my mother was an alcoholic. My dad died when I was four. And I don't know when she ever started drinking. I don' t ever remember her not drinking. And I knew what a drunk woman was like, really drunk woman was like. Never, never, never. Well, we never say never. But I said, never. I said it will never be that. And I am not that kind of an alcoholic because I didn't drink the way my mother did. So they gave me the excuse that I couldn't possibly have a problem. But then I had this little health issue called migraines and it began to impact my life and when all these little prescription bottles says don't take these and drink alcohol, well I literally switched from scotch to wine. Like chapter three talks about all the switches we made. And so I just became a very happy little wieno. And it never occurred to me that the pills I was taking, washing them down with wine, could have killed me. Literally could have killed be. And now that I know, I look back and I still shake a little bit when I think about it. But my life was pretty simple. As I say, I have no kids. I have not siblings. And my parents are gone. And, you know, we just had a pretty simple life, my first husband and I did. And at the time, his parents were living and my mom and my stepdad. And we just had a really, really good life. And somehow my stepad kept my mother under control, which I guess was good because our relationship got a lot stronger when I was an adult rather than when i was a child but the uh i think the change i think came when my husband was diagnosed with cancer and that was in 1972 and he died two years later and at that point uh by the way i should mention his father was a minister so i had i had all the god stuff down and i really really believed in god i believed in all the things that the bible said in the ten commandments in the whole package. I mean, I still do today, but at that point when my husband died, it was like God broke the deal. After all, I was a good little girl. I had always gone to church. I'd married the right person. I never broke the marriage vows. I did everything right and how dare God do this to me? I mean I really meant it and I was in such a rage that things really started getting out of control, and I began to realize I could relax with a little more wine, and a little more wine. And there was a time before my husband died. There were a couple of times I worked in a bank. In the old days, Fridays, we had three hours off on Good Friday from 12 to 3. The bank was closed. We used to really go out and what we call partying. It'd be mild by what is called partying today. But a couple the times we came floating back in just really trying to hold it together, but mostly with the giggles. So that's about as dramatic. That's my drinking story. But the thing is that what brought me in here was the 13 years after my husband died. I remarried to his best friend, which is a good thing because it saved my life. But I really got heavily into the legal prescription drugs with a lot of, oh, I don't need to name it all. You don't have to know the pharmacology. The main thing is just mixing it with wine was not healthy so I began to gradually take more pills and less wine. Gradually, more and more pills and less and less wines. But every now and then, I never gave it up. I never really gave up the wine because I loved, my first husband and I had traveled all over California. We hit all the wineries when it was free for wine tasting and, man, we'd buy a bottle everywhere and kill it that night and have a good night's sleep and go on the next day and everything was just fine. It was so ordinary. I mean, just so simple and ordinary. And then when he died, things really, in my head, you know, things really got bad. I lost my faith. I lost me husband. Then I lost his father and my mother and his mother all in a four-year period and I said, wait a minute, God, you really can't do this to me and get away with it. don't challenge god by the way it doesn't work i'll tell you because it's very lonely and it's very frightening and as i say it took 13 years when uh i was working for a lady over here on foothill boulevard in an antique store and she and i used to have you know drinks together at her house and we just thought it was funny and giggling you know and i never really made thought much of it and she didn't know i was taking all these pills or she might she was an intelligent she still is an intelligent lady and she might have told me do you think this is good idea but I remember one morning I just woke up and I just I called her up and she was a day she was the she was off work and she's come on up to the house so we sat down and now I had noticed in working for her that she used to have all these people coming in her store she had an antique shop on Foothill Boulevard and it was being as a single owner place you know it was pretty loose as far as people coming and going and if business was slow a lot of friends would come in and have coffee and smoke well she had coffee and smoke but they just had coffee and more coffee I didn't know that she had joined Alcoholics Anonymous and I knew that something was different because she had one of those goofy red and blue bumper stickers in the store reality what a concept I did not understand that either but I do today so anyway I called her up and I said I think I have a problem I just can't do this anymore and she took me to my first AA meeting and that was probably the end of January in 88 and I remember going it was over at what we used to call the youth house I don't know what they called the center in La Cañada and it was a Monday night meeting uh and I do not know who's there it was just a group of people under bright light sitting at a table oh my god they were laughing and then they were talking and they they just they were loud and oh my God what's going on here you know and she asked me on the way home as she said well did you like the meeting I said yeah but what were they laughing at I'm so glad I found out what you guys laugh at because I love to laugh and I probably laughed louder than anybody with my home group just asking one second thought don't but no they're an absolutely amazing group of people but that really started me on my journey that was a Monday in the following Wednesday she took me to another meeting something called a step study did not know what that was I do today I think that was at St. George's the Wednesday night group I don't know if that groups those groups are still meeting but uh I remember uh I said well what do I do she says well just take this book and just follow along well what happens when they come to me and she says we'll just say your name and leaving me to say whatever was appropriate and I remember looking at that book and my nerd turned can I don't know what stuff we were on but I looked at it and I said my name is Barbara and I don' t know who or what I am and that was it that was when I knew my life had to change the following Monday she with a list that Diane gave me she checked me into Glendale Memorial Alpha unit and that was February 8th 1988 a Monday morning and I have to say honestly I look back. I haven't wanted to look back, I have had plenty of reason to look back and think about you know what maybe might be make me feel better but somehow things just started to change and even the migraines began to go away and I cannot explain that but that that summer I was I was getting a lot of migrains the first two years and I couldn't do what I used to do so I just kind of had to struggle with it and I remember lying in bed at home it was the summer of either 88 or 89, and she gave me the phone number of a lady who lived in Stockton or Sacramento area. She says, call this lady and talk to her. So I called her. And I'm crying, and the pain is really excruciating. So she's talking to me and talking to be and talking to me. And she said, do you believe in God? I said, yes. She said, are you a Christian? I asked, yes, and asked me further questions on religion. And i said, Yes, yes ,yes, yes and she said well just trust then. hung up the phone and the tears came did I have a white light experience I don't know, I had something happened, I felt a power unlike anything I'd ever felt in my entire life in Sunday school and all the good little things I did as a little girl and as a grown up I felt something and the tears ran into my ears I thought oh there's a song about tears in my ears some cowboy used to sing on the radio when I was a little girls and it seemed so silly and I remember laughing and then getting up and the headache was gone, the pain was gone. Now I had migraines after that but I always knew where to go and who to trust. Did they go away instantly? No, never again. I never had an experience even close to that but I am so glad that I had it and I want to welcome our newcomers. Yeah, there you are, Lewis. As they say, fasten your seatbelt. You're in for one heck of a ride if you stick with us, because if you're a drugger or an alcoholic and you can give it all up and turn your will and your life over to this program and these people and the steps and a higher power of your understanding, there's a life ahead of you you can't even imagine. Not in your wildest dreams could we, and I think everybody would pretty well agree with me. There's no way I could have known that number one, I'd live this long they see I should have taken better care of myself if I'd known I was going to live this long I'll be honest with you I'm coming on my 80th birthday this summer and people say I don't look at it and I can look in the mirror and say no, 70, yeah 80, no but I've got a lot of energy thank God and I have a family today they are all in Alcoholics Anonymous with the exception of two ladies that I know who are normies and I'm very, very worried about one of them right now. I just got the news today from her husband that she's had cancer for three years and it's come back and they've given her four to six months so by the time the year's over I will be losing my best friend and it is okay. It's not okay to lose her but it's okay for her to go through this because I can go through it with her and I am grateful that I can. But the family I have now I have got sisters and cousins and uncles and aunts and brothers and sisters and everything to whom I'm not biologically or related by marriage but they are there for me all the time and I have had two examples just in the last about two and a half years that showed me how Alcoholics Anonymous come to the rescue we come together when the chips are down whatever I had to go through knee surgery, and I should back up a little bit. As I say, I remarried to a wonderful man, and we've been married now 38 years, and that's a miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous, I'll tell you. But I trusted God on this one. But his health has been declining. Physically he's very strong, but he's losing his eyesight and he's loosing some of his hearing, so he hasn't been able to drive for five years, and that scared me. because i thought oh my god i'm going to be a caregiver oh woe is me oh woes me well that lasted five minutes you know i do what i have to do because i know that god will not give me more than i can handle when i trust him and and pay attention to what he tells me so as i say i've got this situation with my husband now so uh you know there's all this stuff kind of going on and uh i want to feel sorry for myself and then i visited my friend today and her husband afterwards to give me the diagnosis and I thought okay we know what we have to do we pray a little more and we do a little more for her but you know she she knows what she has to do and she's starting to she's very brother well-to-do woman and she is giving things away to her friends and today she gave me this now I'm didn't known as turquoise Barbara because I've been collecting it all my life and I said I gotta wear I got to wear this tonight as with along with several other pieces but uh you know it's uh it's hard i lost another friend uh 12 months ago that's been my friend since the 1950s we all work together in the same bank and there's just three of us left up here in the foothill area and one of them is one of pretty healthy as i am and so we we hang out together but we're both so worried about our friend you know and i i can do these things today with as much grace as i'm able to muster because I have been given such gifts. As I kind of get to the current now, I had to have knee surgery two years ago and having a husband who can't drive and who is half deaf, it's a little bit difficult to communicate with him because he won't answer the phone and he can't really see anybody at the door. And it's little hard. He can manage to find his way around the kitchen and open a can of chili and get it heated in addition to microwave that much he can manage and make a peanut butter sandwich. So he lives on that when I'm out of town or somewhere else. But when I got out of the hospital, my home group led by my angel named Pauline, she organized a group of men and women to bring a hot meal to our house every single night for two solid weeks until I could drive and could start getting on my feet and cooking. but I could barely hobble around with my walker and get something out of the freezer and toss it in the microwave which I still do that today for that matter I just said you guys I might be needing a little help that's all I could say they brought me a meeting in the hospital and they just picked me up and carried me for two solid weeks and kept us both alive and they know that there's nothing they can't ask me to do that if it's within my power, I will absolutely be there for them. The program taught me to do this, to care a little more for somebody else than for myself. And we learned that through our steps, especially through our fourth step when we can get from step four to step nine and make those amends and change our lives and hopefully our family and friends will accept those amens. But then last summer, I walk. I walk all the time. I'm amazed I'm standing still here. Oh, gosh, I've been standing for over 15 minutes. I can't believe that. I'm very fidgety and nervous, and I sit in my seat and I wiggle all the time. I guess that's my way of staying thin. I'm not that. But regardless. The thing is, I walk over here in CV Park. I've always had dogs all my life, and my last dog passed four years ago, five years ago. And I've bee feeling kind of blue and all, And so three years ago, this July, my first and best friend in this program, Pat Kay, called me. She says, Barbara, this lady passed away in the fellowship, and we had a cat, and I think you should come get it. I said, excuse me, a cat? I don't do cats. I'm allergic to cats. Well, I had just had a stray cat that had been with us for a while, for a couple months, but she was kind of wild, and she wouldn't stay in, and the coyotes got her. So, you know, I was feeling kind of blue. and so we take this cat home sight unseen oh my god I'm learning to love this Tom cat no front claws so he bites weighs 16 pounds and he had lovely short hair which grew to about 3 inches long in 3 months so I have to have him shaved twice a year I had no idea what was letting myself in but like I say this is my best friend of the program says this little kitty needs a home so i have a cat but i can't get over my love of dogs so the park gives me my dogs i every said every morning after the meeting at seven o'clock i'm across the street there at honolulu and dunsmore and i have met some of the most delightful people and they're big dogs they all the big dogs are down there early because they don't want to be around these little well there's one guy with three little pomeranians but i have I had this delightful pit bull named Ginger. I called him my dog. I said, but I'll let somebody else take him home and take care of him and pay their vet bills. But it gives me such a kick to be down in the park. And I am leading up to something really and truly, not just continuously babbling. But as I say, I get down there in the parks. So on Wednesday, the 8th of June last year, I'm walking across Honolulu Avenue and I don't know what happened but my left ankle went over and I went down like a sack of potatoes and I am laying there I can't move my legs I'm screaming bloody murder I'm in the middle of this four-lane road and I wouldn't wouldn't have been crossing if there'd been any traffic because that was one of the corners where there's not a signal but they're still you know legal crosswalk and I'm so square I always walk I won't I won't jaywalk I know what it says in the big book about jay walkers so I don't want to do that either but I am laying there screaming and this big car pulls up and this lovely woman who works for the county happened to get out and then one of the guys that I had been talking to after the meeting saw me fall so he races over there and by then you know it's all people people people fire you know seven firemen two cops I'm just surrounded they all think I'm drunk and though I'm it's over 23 years of alcoholics anonymous I'm not drunk I'm screaming this out I don't know what they thought that they had on their hands but anyway long story short they bundled seven I couldn't move so they couldn't put me on the gurney so five firemen my wonderful little fireman from station 28 which is a block from my house picked me up put me in the end in the bus and hauled me down to verdugo and ended up i had a broken pelvis oh god but at least my hip didn't break i thought my hip was broken and that terrified me because at my age my bones are thin i've gone through osteoporosis and i've had the medication and that's been that's ben you know stemmed now i'm healthier now thank god but that was so scary and uh i was there one night and the next night they shipped me off to a place called burbank rehab and i thought i was being sent out to the boondocks. I hardly ever go to Burbank. I stay up here all the time or go to Pasadena but I did get the greatest care but the same thing began to happen again because I had to be away from home for 16 days and that crew of wonderful friends are taking food to my husband at home so he has food and I got home and the food's in the refrigerator and in the freezer. We lived on it I think for a month after that But they just rallied around. Phone calls and flowers. The same lady, she came to get me when it was time to bring me home. She has six children, by the way, to show you how really generous she is. And she brought three of her kids over to the hospital and loaded up the flowers and the clothes and all this other stuff, tossed me in the van, just like she had done after the knee surgery too. She's the same one that took me home too. I'm going to get you. Okay, okay. I don't argue. But when my people say, I'm going to do something, I don't argue. They are my kids. As I say, they're my family. And they got me home and they were there just for another two weeks bringing stuff over and taking me to the doctor and all that stuff. Where else would I get or find people like that except in Alcoholics Anonymous? At least in my experience. I mean, I worked with wonderful people for 25 years for the same company, different offices but and except for the two girls here luck and yada I don't know any of them I donno so we just drifted up we just never really we never really contacted each other but and I've never belonged to a sorority or anything like that and or I did belong to a business women's group for a short time but that was just one of those things that the company wanted me to do and I but until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous I didn't know what friends we're really like real friends and to me you people are what the salt of the earth I think that's a wonderful old expression but your I don't know I can't really think of a description of the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous except maybe that word fellowship because all we have to do is ask and I I see this happen in my home group every day. Somebody has to move. OK, two or three guys show up with a truck or series of trucks. And the work that maybe the couple started doing at home that would take about half a day, they do in an hour. And they get them all moved. Somebody needs help with something, one thing and another. I had a little incident happen on the 22nd of December. That second windstorm that blew, not the Pasadena one, but the one that hit here and took the tree out? Well, I think the wind hit me after he knocked that tree out because I have a retaining wall of masonry brick and then a fence on top of that that my neighbor had put up because they had a swimming pool, the people behind me. And that whole thing just came down. 39 feet of that fence took it and the posts, they didn't have rebar in the days that wall was built, which is about 50 years ago. But that whole things came down, bricks well just I just got off I had a mess my whole yard was just full of bricks and wood and just pieces of pipe that were bent I mean that that pipe is you know it's probably two inch pipe anyway that they had that thing attached to and I I went through the meeting or I guess was the next day I went to the meeting I said I could use a little help cleaning up my yard I've got this problem all these bricks and my husband can't do I said if anybody has some time I had to fight him off literally a guy two guys came up and they had everything everything cleaned up stacked and all you know they took away all the broken ones they hauled it to the dump and everything just left all the bricks that were still permanent and you know God has a way of putting me and other people in the place we're supposed to be my neighbor is a masonry contractor across the street he was over there the next day estimating this and that and everything and that wall was completely rebuilt within a week and I thought well what am I going to do with the fence so by the way the house is empty it's in foreclosure and behind us so there was nobody to really talk to about replacing that fence which is technically theirs well it's mine now but better know it is I paid for it but when they were done with the wall the contractor says you really ought to replace this wall or this fence because if they're going to sell that house you know you'd probably want to have a little more privacy and i said okay he says look talk to my guys he just said talk to his workman the workman's sister works at lowe's so we got 10 off on the redwood and within a couple days the fence is up and it's like i feel all protected i felt so exposed with this i mean i'm not accustomed to disaster you know i've knew i've been to new New Orleans but long before Katrina and I you know I've never been any places where there's been a tsunami or a flood or a hurricane earthquakes yeah I've lived here since I was four years old I've been through a few earthquakes but never had any more than minor interior damage this is the first time that nature has really attacked me personally and I take it personally it's my fence in my wall ah I guess I made a really big deal out of it then don't we do that at Alcoholics Anonymous. But it's, you know, the whole thing is there's a lot of stuff that goes on in my life that gives me reason to drink and I have to make the decision every single day and in fact I have a 24 hour chip that I carry with me that my friend Rick D gave me one day when I was feeling sort of blue so I carry that around and it reminds me that I may be cleaning sober 24 continuous years, but I've only got today. Today's 24 hours is what counts. And I'll quit after just one quick thing. I spent most of last week over in Mesquite, Nevada. It's a little Nevada gambling town. And they have now for three years had something called the Branson Fest Out West. Well, I've never been to Branson. and i have no intention of flying to branson i have not i can't see going to eight shows in five days that's too much for me i like a show occasionally well they were having uh five shows in four days but this thing i went to and uh i went with my uh my friend that i used to work with plus two other ladies one of whom is my first and best friend in this program pat k and she likes to walk i mean she likes two walks she makes me look like a slow poke and we've always going to Yosemite together to the conference and walked all over that so she took off when I'm I don't I was doing something other she finds the AA meetings everywhere we go she found she found the downtown downtown Mesquite that's almost an oxymoron but as a pretty small town she finds the place seven days a week they have meetings at 9 a.m. noon and I think six in the evening she finds the noon meeting she's telling them that I have it's on the 8th of February by the way she's she's tell him that my hurt her friend is got having a an AA birthday they gave me gave her a coin to give to me a 24 year coin and on the condition that I pass it on of course they're all given to us that way but I just felt so honored to have something like that and And, you know, that a friend would do something as simple as that. I mean, she's going to her own meeting, you know, just on her own and to care enough to bring that back to me from this little, from this meeting there. And, yeah, we've gone to meetings together over in Catalina and a few other places. And it's, I don't know, my whole life today is Alcoholics Anonymous and the friends and the people and the service I've been honored to do. And I work at the Senior Center. I volunteer there and help their travel group, and right now I'm doing the escorting and the travel planning, which is exhausting, but I enjoy it. It is a labor of love, and I have a 96-year-old girlfriend who just inspires me so much. She's what I want to be when I grow up. And I get to deal with these people with their, oh, their little idiosyncrasies and peculiarities. But hey, I'm an alcoholic. I get to see people like that every day. We're just a little younger. But it's good. It's all good. And life today is so worthwhile. Go to Yosemite Conference every year. I've been doing that 16 years. And hear great speakers and wonderful fellowship up there. To be in Yosemitic Valley with 1,000 sober people is amazing. all the staff, everybody every hotel, every person that slinks hamburgers they all know why we're there and we don't have to protect our anonymity up there that's the cool part of it we allow Al-Anons and Alateens to come too so we make a pretty big fellowship up there I don't know I think it's time for me to probably sit down and to thank you for letting me share Somebody close the book. Okay, I'm Jeff. I'm an alcoholic. Thank you, Forrest. I really needed to do this tonight even though I didn't want to. Please help arrange the hall and clean up after the meeting. Be sure to dispose of all paper and trash leave the premises as we found them and let's thank barbara again for coming out and i haven't asked anybody to read a vision for you and i'm not going to stick it to anybody so um is there can i have a volunteer and a prayer of your choice Shiloh Alcoholic, a vision for you. Our book is meant to be suggestive only. We realize we know only a little. God will constantly disclose more to you and to us. Ask him in your morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still sick. The answers will come if your own house is in order, but obviously you cannot transmit something you haven't got. See to it that your relationship with him is right, and great events will come to pass for you and countless others. This is the great fact for us. Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. Admit your faults to him and to your fellows. Clear away the wreckage of your past. Give freely of what you find and join us. We shall be with you in the fellowship of this spirit, and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the road of happy destiny. May God bless you and keep you until then. And after a moment of silence for those that suffer in and out of these rooms, please join me in the Lord's Prayer. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Keep coming back. It works if you work it. And I just used hands.