Day 14 of Blogtober.

I worked my long 12.5 hour shift yesterday and it went extremely well and had some fun. One of my male clients was given clothes by his sobriety sponsor and I guess a lot of the shirts didn’t fit because he gained some weight while being inpatient. So he asked one of the much older, longer term residents who is a female if she wanted his flannel shirts and jackets. She was so surprised and elated and took them all and hopped and skipped to her room with the clothes. Mind you, this older client wears four layers of clothing for pants and shirts, not because she’s cold but because it’s cozy. Five minutes later we saw her wearing her normal four shirts with the new flannel on top, sweatpants, and her new black and blue converse without the laces (laces aren’t allowed for safety reasons). She had her hair in a ponytail in the front of her head and one pig tail to the side. Plus she wears gray mittens because her hands are “sensitive”.

It was endearing and cute to see. The rest of the day the lady client kept asking the male client if he wanted to go outside and pace the court yard together so they did and they both did their own thing but stuck together. The female isn’t one to talk much and I had no idea that any of the other clients thought of her as a friend, let alone liked her as a person. He didn’t do it as a sexually interested thing but as a friend thing and all the staff thought it was sweet.

Today is a special day because today is my mother’s sobriety birthday of five years. I guess my sister brought over a red bull spritzer this morning and was gone by the time I got up. My mom had two cards from her sponsor to open up and she read them to me which she totally didn’t have to do. One of the cards held her sponsor’s personal five year coin and so I asked my mom if I could hold it to give it good “juju”. It’s a thing in AA and I guess most sobriety programs that at a meeting, you pass around your sobriety coin of whatever length and hold it and pray over it or think good thoughts as well as hope and pray that your own sobriety journey will grow. Then you hug a lot.

Since my mom hasn’t been to an in person meeting since COVID-19 began, I asked if I could hold her coin. Yes, I know I’m not an AA-er, but I am in GA so it felt right. And I started crying and so did she and we hugged for a long time. It took a lot to get to this moment and I was happy she shared all that with me.

I proclaimed I would do a big grocery shopping and that’s what I did. My mom didn’t want to go so I told Diego about it being my mom’s birthday today and he said he would go halfsies on a nice bouquet of flowers. I think I spent $22 altogether on it so $11 a piece. Since Diego was working at the store and so was my best friend, we bought the bouquet from my friend. He wished my mom the best and to tell her congratulations and he is very proud and happy for her. Then Diego had to go back to work, so I had my friend hold them at self checkout so I could continue shopping. I mean, these flowers has like 25-30 flowers in it and it was so awesome. I knew my mom would love it.

$202 and change later, I went to the pharmacy for my mom and got her meds and went home. She was so shocked and happy that the three of us pitched in and bought her flowers. I even got her ice cream. When I returned home, we put groceries away and have many meals for the next couple of weeks.

I have not been productive with my school work today, but things will work out because I have Saturday-Monday off, even with all of my overtime for my trip later this month. Well shit. It’s actually in a week and a half! I am so stoked.

I talked to Diego this afternoon and he mentioned flash halloween tattoos from this particular local tattoo shop. I actually put in an inquiry with the shop about two of the flash designs and wanted to put them together into one tattoo. I think for one design, it was $100 which is dirt cheap but If I could get the two for $150 I would do it in a heart beat, but we shall see!

Good things are happening and I am excited and so grateful for all of the blessings in my life and the lives around me.

Much love to you and yours,

Dani