The weekender

Hello little beauties

Day 40 today!

It's a beautiful Sunday evening here, as I sit in bed writing to you all. It was a tough weekend though. I had moments of almost panic as the reality of what I'm doing set it. No floating away on a glass of wine, no joining in the few beers or the white wine. Just sobriety all the time. Every day. In some ways that sounds great to me but in others so scary.

We had a big charity jumble sale on our road on Saturday, which was great fun and we raised loads of money. (loadsamooonnnnneeyyy). I bought a few raffle tickets for something I really wanted to win and was unreasonably dissapointed when I didn't. Like a bleedin teenager I was, in a right strop. Usually I wouldn't have cared as I'd have probably have had a glass of wine by that point. It was hard after as there was wine and beer for all of us workers, out on the green in the lovely weather. I had a coke instead and the moment passed. There was plenty of alcohol but hardly any of it was drank, I'd have gone through a good bit of it in olden days.

Then today we were invited to a bbq in our friends. I really didn't want to go and almost cancelled at the last minute but I sort of made a pack with myself to go to everything I'm asked to, if you don't well that's when it starts to get really boring. When we walked in I saw the cocktail glasses with strawberries and mint in them and nearly turned around and left! Still, I persevered and had some classy elderflower and grape drink (from Tesco, really nice). I was in a right grump for the first hour but then I started to relax and actually (shock, horror) enjoyed myself. It did help that (yet again) people drank very little. Not sure how much of pissed folk I could have handled. I'm really lucky that I was the biggest drinker of most of my friends!

I find it's not the actual not drinking alcohol that I find hard it's the reconditioning of my brain to not allowing myself to have it and also to get used to socialising without it. I would have used any excuse to get the wine out. And I definitely would have had at least a bottle yesterday and there's no way I'd be able to write anything at this stage today. Still I guess I'm missing it. I am very much still up and down and still tired. But a bit more energy in the last week, I think. To be honest it changes from hour to hour really!

I also feel that sometimes I make too big a deal of giving up wine (this blog, reading sober books, blogs etc). I think sober mummy talked about it once. I think I may be at the stage where people are just getting used to my not drinking (if they even care) and there's no bells and whistles anymore. The novelty is wearing off and it's becoming more of a normality. And i'm not sure how I feel about that!

Anyway, I hope you all keep reading. My blog isn't as insightful and as maybe intelligent as other ones out there (needy alco) but I hope it's of help to my small band of readers (I have three followers now! Three!). I know it's great for me to be able to document this journey.

Lots and lots of fancy non alcoholic elderflower and grape juice to ya'll. And thank you all for being there.

xxxxMtts