If Only I Were a Billionaire

Yesterday evening as I was driving from In-N-Out Burger, I spotted this man on the side of the road holding up a tattered sign that read


"I'm a Vietnam veteran and I'm homeless..."

I couldn't make out the rest of the sign because of the angle he was positioned and the speed I was driving. As I drove past him I made eye contact with him and mouthed "Sorry" to let him know that I acknowledged him and that I wanted to help.

After sitting at the light for, God knows how long, I looked back at him in my rearview. He was old and scruffy, his clothes were worn, and it was getting fairly late out and I felt worse than what I had felt originally when first I drove past him. I looked in my wallet and discovered the $3.00 I was going to use at McDonalds to buy apple pies and a drink. I figured he need the money more than I, and I said to myself as I took the money out of my wallet, "I'm sowing a seed." He's in a worse situation than I and I figured that I'd just use my credit card instead.

After analyzing the road behind me and the amount of time it took before the light changed, I decided to put my car in Reverse and drove back to him. As I gave him the money, I bravely said to him, "This is all I have." He was very appreciative. Right at that moment I was getting teary eyed because I wanted to give him more.

There's no reason for anyone to suffer in this country, especially when there are so many resources available. And the fact that he's a veteran made my pity for him even worse.

As I drove to McDonald's holding back my tears, I said out loud to myself, "If I'm ever in a situation where I could help someone, I would."

If only I were a billionaire.

So Many Words!

OMG! Where do I start?

Ok so. My last post was definitely over a month ago. I was getting everyone up to speed on my whereabouts until...dun dun dun...my ever so reliable pink flamingo Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop decided to play a nasty trick on me and I've been forever exiled from my own island of peace not too long after I posted that post. Needless to say, the boyfriend and I set out to Best Buy two weeks after that horrendous event and purchased the New iPad thinking that would solve all of our temporary computer woes. We were wrong. Our tablet didn't give us nearly as much satisfaction as a real computer does, so two weeks after living in ruins (which would set us at yesterday) Amare and I set out to Best Buy, the media store of great possibilities once again, to exchange what we both called a disappointment. Now we're both proud parents of an HP Pavilion g series laptop. I can tell that this is going to be the beginning of a beautiful relationship!

Estranged blogger no more. I'm baaaaack again, y'all! :)

Oh, Look! Krissy's Back on Blogger

Thanks for putting up with my three month absents, Readers. I don't know how y'all held out for me for so long. Truth be told, I'd log on every so often just to see if anyone stopped following me and to see, just see, if I had any comments. I did! My comments were generated from my last post of 2011 about Brian Banks of my Missing Person Report post. His cousin got in touch with me via email to tell me that the family of their beloved Victor Brian Banks had been laid to rest. We communicated a little over a month ago. May Brian's soul rest in peace. He's gone but never forgotten.

On a lighter note, as bad as I wanted to post, I just couldn't bring myself to. I had a lot going on with me losing my job due to my drinking on the job on November 13th, to that drink on the job being my last alcoholic beverage, to me finding employment with a different restaurant three days later, to me and Kenny going our separate ways on November 21st, to me finding a second job before the month was over to me meeting and falling in love with my current love Amare on December 4th, to us talking 24/7, to me applying and being approved for an apartment in January, to me and Amare moving in with each other on January 30th and spending every freaking moment together. We've been together three months and things between us are just as good now as they were when we first met.

One would think that I'd want to share every second of what I'd been going through on a regular basis. But for some odd reason my words wouldn't flow out of me as easily as they had in the past. I was at a stand still with my writing all across the boards (i.e my hand written blogs in my notebook, Facebook statuses, journal entries, speaking to others) and me wanting to share information. I withdrew myself from my surroundings and primarily focused on, well, myself. My emotions were at a tug-of-war with everything that had been going on and I inadvertently got lost in my thoughts and emotions. Fortunately enough, I gave myself time to cost day to day without forcing words out allowing myself to bottle up EVERYTHING until the end result; projectile word explosion! Such as this.

So now that we're all up to speed, let's get to blogging, Bloggers!

Sober

Disclaimer: Originally typed Saturday, January 1, 2012  and posted on Tuesday March 13, 2012

If you're expecting to read a blog post about how crazy I partied on New Years' Eve and how hungover I was this morning, then you've stumbled upon the wrong blogger. Sober is a post about how I overcame what I categorize as acute alcoholism. Something I've dealt with in 2011.

They say that individuals that work in the restaurant industry are either alcoholics or drug users. My response to those that make that claim, "You're absolutely correct." And I unexpectantly fell into the alcohol category once I started working for Outback Steakhouse in March of last year. I was also working at a grocery store coincidentally. The amount of alcohol that was on the grocery store shelves and in the bar was too widely accessible to me. And since I already had a taste for alcohol I took full advantage of the situation.

At the grocery store I had a discounted price on my favorite brand of wine. It was the same situation at the restaurant. Depending on the time of the month, there were $2.00 glasses of moscato, and if you know me like I think you do, you know I love my moscato. My coworkers at the restaurant weren't much help though. After their shifts they'd go sit at the bar to eat a nice steak dinner accompanied by a cold 22 oz glass of beer, glasses of wine, or cocktails. And you know what they say, right? Monkey see monkey do. And "do" I did. Sometimes after the restaurant closed, I tagged along with my coworkers to the nearest bar to finish off my buzz.

I remember this one time, this was early in my employment with the restaurant, I was at the bar ordering food to drown out my long day of work. I remember I ordered a 10oz ribeye wood fired grilled cooked to medium with two sides of broccoli. I ordered a cocktail to wash it all down. I'm fuzzy on the details on what I was drinking. After my food was brought out and I was well beyond ready to dig in, I was invited to go up to Native New Yorker's that was up the street to hang out and drink with my co-workers. Since I wanted to feel included and make friends with every damn body that worked there, I strung myself along. I only intended to order one drink. My one drink turned into two; two drinks turned into three; three drinks turned into a $30+ tab. That night after we were all done drinking, I sat in my car for two hours trying to sober up for my 20 minute drive home. The only thing I had beside me was my to go box of my meal and a to go cup filled with that cocktail I can't remember. I ate the contents of the box to soak up the alcohol. I didn't get home until after 3AM that day. I could've easily turned down the invite and made it home by 9PM.

I have dozens of drinking stories from 2011. Several of them included me telling myself, "I need to stop. I'm spending too much money on alcohol," and other stories of me telling myself, "Hey! It's only $5.00 for a bottle. Why not?" I knew I had a problem when I drank an entire 75 ml oz bottle of white zinfandel and moscato in the same day. I drank from 11AM until 11PM. I remember browning out, blacking out, there wasn't any passing out but I do remember drinking again. That was during the last time I visited Michigan in September. But even going through that, I didn't stop. I continued until I got myself fired from the restaurant in November. For what? Drinking on the job. That was the day I finally realized I had taken it too far. I was an addict. At the time, I was still with Kenny. I spoke to him two days after the incident and told him exactly what I'd done. The next day he sent me a "We need to talk," text. When I spoke to him he told me it was nothing. What he really meant was that we need to talk more often. I fed into him. And overnight, our relationship was dissolved. He cut all communication with me and by Monday the following week I gave up getting in touch with him and sent him a last inbox on Facebook telling him that I was moving on.

During the nine months we were together Kenny never once told me to slow it down. He knew I had alcoholic tendencies. He knew I loved the sweet smooth taste of moscato, but he never once told me to cool it down. There were times I'd go to him and say, "I think I have a problem." His response would always be, "No you don't." People like that should never be in my life. I told my mom that I think I might have a problem. She told me as long as I'm not drinking everyday I'd be fine. My response to her was, "I only drink to get drunk," and then the next thing I knew she was handing me a bottle of moscato she just purchased from Rite Aid (while I was visiting her).

Alcoholism runs in my family unfortunately. Unfortunately enough for myself I think I inherited that ugly addictive personality. But, fortunately enough for myself, I stopped the addiction dead in its tracks after I hit bottom with losing my job in November. I've learned my limits when it comes to alcohol the hard way. But nonetheless, I've learned my limits of alcohol.

121 days sober and still counting.