t Parker waves back

Oh, and someone remind me to call Deena in the morning and confirm for Wednesday, please!

Okay, Cash, I'll do that. Hee.

Yum. Went to a friend's for dinner and had stuffed tilipia, parmesan risotto, a Greek salad and Bananas Foster for dessert.

It was REALLY good. I was looking at cereal for tonight.

I confess I don't understand smokers, or the allure of smoking, because I've tried to take up the habit, I really have (twice -- once in college, when everybody tries it, and once when I was in the Freak-Ass Church, b/c everyone smoked and my BF smelled like Reds so I might as well get used to it), but it only made me choke and feel like my lungs were collapsing and my alveoli were running for the hills.

So why smokers do it is beyond me. And I wish they wouldn't, partly b/c I want the smokers I love to stick around for a long time, and partly b/c it makes me choke and cough and sneeze. (Seriously -- I applaud the banning of smoking in public buildings, but then all the smokers congregate right outside the fucking door, so I still have to walk through a toxic cloud to get into the building, and then what's the point, because my lungs still just got whammied with secondhand smoke.)

Ahem.

I know I haven't posted i a long time so this feels like a delurk but,

re: smoking

My whole family (except healthy yoga massage therapist uncle) smokes or did smoke before death. When I was a kid I used to make up the notebooks detailing ways for my mom to quit, I never smoked until I was 21. people were smoking and I asked for one. I took to it immediately-- it was like the thing I had been missing all my life, I did not couggh or sputter or anything. It was like sweet sweet life and love and everythung I do not know if I was addicted to second hand smoke, or if, in my family, it is like alcoholism.

I sucessfully quit for 4 years, and know what it would take to do now... I have to think of myself as someone who does not smoke-- for whom that is not an option. But I swear that until I took that first puff, I never though I would smoke.

The main advantage to Utah is that so few people smoke. My lungs simply cannot cope. Fortunately, my friends who do smoke are very considerate and go elsewhere to endulge. I just wish it didn't permeate everything so much. I've changed seats on the bus because I simply can't sit behind a heavy smoker, the smell is so much in their clothes.

I can't bring myself to bug people about their smoking. At the same time, I have very few friends who smoke and most of them do it secretly. I think if it was someone close to me, I would feel differently. I've never smoked a cigarette myself - only a few cigars.

These days, I will go to a great amount of effort to avoid sitting by someone who smells of smoke. I can't stand the smell of a heavy smoker and I don't really enjoy being in smoky bars. I loved California with the smoke free bar. When I was younger, even if I came home drunk and really tired, I would always shower before going to bed because the smell kept me awake all night.

"Jesus loves me, he loves me a bunch.... 'cause he always puts Skippy in my lunch." -Peter, Family Guy, forgetting the words.

I'm not so fond of the nicotine smell, but I don't want to tar our fellow beloved (smoking) bitches or shame them. At all. I just want them to know that we belove them and worry and that particularly if they have cancer in their families it requires an extraordinary level of denial to continue smoking.

Obviously, I'm going to have to hit up one of our handy dandy actuaries to explain exactly how poor the odds are.