I’ll technically be the leading the class, but am quite sure I will get as much out of it as the students.

It will be 7:30 to 9:30 every Thursday night…a little chunk of time you can carve out to devote to the artist in you (we all have one…i promise, every single one of us have something to express).

Ready to sign-up? You can register online at: The Artist’s Way…a class in creativity using the principles founded by Julia Cameron.

As I type this, he is undergoing the third of many surgeries for his injuries. 70 percent of his body was/is covered in 3rd degree burns. At each stage of his hospital stay so far, the updates have been positive, but he is still in critical condition (he is a patient at the Wake Forest University Burn Unit ICU).

Please, please, please send as many prayers, well-wishes, and happy thoughts his way. As a family, we will take as many as we can get our hearts and hands on.

Some of you may know Norman; if you do, then you are aware of what an extraordinary man he is. If you visit the Hob Knobb Coffee Shop in Floyds Knobs, you have seen the mugs he has made. If you’ve been to a ceramics show or took a pottery class at Mount St. Francis then you have seen more of his work. If you never met him or know nothing about him, trust me, he is someone you would want as a friend.

You can check out his progress at: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/normansilva All notes of love and encouragement are welcome…just sign his guest book on the site.

Thanks for taking the time to read and a special thanks for you prayers.

(That line reads a lot funnier if you know how to pronounce my last name: GAY-ZEN-HOUSE.  Read it again…see, the alliteration really adds something, don’t you think?)

Anyway, my column this week got a bit more personal. Here it is in all its drunken glory. Hope you enjoy:

The Difference Between Me and a Criminal

According to fellow Tribune Opinions columnist and Executive Director of the Christian Formation Ministries, Richard Johnson, as many as 85 percent of prisoners are incarcerated for substance abuse related crimes. I know nothing of the criminal, political, or socio-economical landscape when it comes to our nation’s prisons, but I am intimately familiar with addiction.

The first time I got drunk was a weekend night with two of my closest friends; we were in junior-high. The three of us were home alone and sneaking swigs from bottles that we knew were off limits. Neither of my friends took more than a gulp. I didn’t stop drinking until I started walking funny.

Soon after my first buzzed feeling, I would fall madly and deeply in love with the drunken, light-headed, wooziness that happens after the first few drinks of the evening. The feeling felt comfortable to me, like a warm glove that fit perfectly over whatever parts I wanted covered.
After my first mini-binge, I cultivated an enduring relationship with alcohol. I drank heavily in high school and garnished my drinking with the flavor of cigarettes and marijuana. In college, my drinking moved from heavy to full-fledge binge drinking. I was a mess, but I was surrounded by other young adults who were just as much of a mess. (It’s harder to see that you are drinking like a fish when you’re in a fish bowl with hundreds of other fish that drink as much as you do.)

Three months after I graduated from college and still in love with alcohol, I fell in love with and married a Marine. Early on, my husband made it very clear that he had concerns about my drinking. He didn’t like how I never wanted to leave a bar and he would harp constantly on all the less than stellar decisions I made drunk (Oh, the irony of marrying a Marine and being the only alcoholic in the house).

After having my first child, my drinking slowed down considerably. I would still have my occasional nights when I drank too much, but it was not as regular and not as hardcore. And then there was my company Christmas party when I drank so much that I fell into a table and brought all my co-workers drinks colliding down. Everybody at the party laughed it up; but, that next morning, the cringe-worthiness of the situation was too much. I was horrified. I had flaunted my worst habit to the very people I wanted to respect me — my colleagues, my boss, their spouses.

Following that somewhat harmless, but soul-devastating event, I decided to try on sobriety for a brief amount of time. Beginning that Christmas Eve, I was going to hang up my drinking hat for three months, just to see how it felt, like test-driving a car. I made myself no promises; I refrained from AA; I told very few people about my plans. I was just dipping my toe in the water.

I didn’t sprint back to the bottle at the end of my three-month sobriety run. Instead, I tiptoed back toward a somewhat shallower version of my old habits. There were no Keith Richards-inspired binges, but a glass of wine with dinner still turned into a bottle of wine by the end of the night and a fierce hangover the following morning.

In those three months, I discovered that my quality of life was much better sober. I woke up earlier; I exercised more; I wrote more often. It didn’t take a fully-trained, completely-certified therapist to point out the obvious, but I enlisted one anyway. With my therapist’s help, I planned and worked toward a date that very year when I would stop drinking for good, or for as long as I could. It’s been two and a half years now and I haven’t had a drink yet (but, am not so arrogant as to say I never will).

Looking back, I remember the panic I felt when I considered not drinking. How would I have fun without drinking? Who would I be if I couldn’t drink? What would people think of me? What if friends didn’t want to hang out with me? I had thought it myself many times about other people, who wants to be around someone who doesn’t drink?

What I’ve learned since is that the things I do for fun now are more meaningful to me and offer more fulfilling experiences than I ever had after four vodka tonics. The person I am as a nondrinker is more happy, more stable, and more fulfilled. I no longer worry about who I will be if I’m not drinking-since I stopped I have a much deeper understanding of myself and who I want to be.

I was fortunate that my addiction didn’t land me in prison. I am not naïve; I know that the only difference between me and many criminals is a loving spouse who supported me, an aunt who knew before I did, and an amazing therapist who was able to pull and push me to the other side of my addiction.

I was fortunate; my heart goes out to those who are less so.

After I tucked that thought away in my journal and left it on my nightstand, I was quickly reminded of it this week while driving to work.

Part of my route is down Spring Street in the Irish Hill district of Louisville just before I turn onto Payne Street. If you’re unfamiliar with the area, I wouldn’t suggest it for sight seeing. If you know what I’m talking about, then you’ve seen the newly painted walls of the underpass that are below I64…it’s a brightly colored landscape with large Pink-Floyd-concert-like Pigs. Some are walking around, some are flying. Either way, they all are shouting at me now everyday when I whiz by, “Get healthy, you pig!” (Yes, my inner voice can be as cruel as Janice Dickinson sometimes.)

And speaking of signs, the Papa Johns on Shelbyville Road, (or is it Frankfort? It’s right there around the nexus of Frankfort/Lexington/Shelbyville Road where I always assume St. Matthews begins) has a sign out front that reads:

LARGE — John’s Favorite

I presume by “John” they mean John Schnatter…the guy who’s raking it in by selling all these large pizzas. And the reason the large is his favorite? Not because he likes the way it taste, but most likely because his bottomline is going to have a lot more dough if he’s sells more Larges. Seriously, I wonder if John would even eat the Papa John’s pizza from the location that delivers to our neck of the Southern Indiana woods. I doubt he’d make it past ordering from the lackluster-customer service supplied by the teenagers that run the shop.

I’m not trying to beat up on them—their teenagers, I get it. But please, favorite? I’m guessing John’s favorite pizza is the one he gets to eat when he takes his private plane over to Italy and reserves a tiny bistro for him and his twenty closest friends as they vacation with Clooney and drink $3,000 bottles of wine with their meat lovers.

I waited all last night for our NA-FC School system to shut it down, but they waited until 5:30 a.m. this morning to tell us. Which was fine with me. I love knowing that I can go back to sleep for at least another two hours.

I worked from home in my pajamas.

I made breakfast and lunch for my kiddos.

I took a longer than usual lunch and watched Julie and Julia with my daughter. (Meryl Streep is my daughter’s fav right now…only she calls her Donna since that was her name in Mamma Mia. My daughter’s five.)

I worked some more.

I got my daughter suited up to play in the snow when my husband got home and was ready to play in the snow too. (Less than 15 minutes later, my daugther was back inside with me. “It’s way too cold to play out there,” says she. She looks like her daddy, but is her mommy’s daughter. Did I mention Meryl Streep is her favorite actress right now?).

My husband said that if it’s another snow day tomorrow, he’ll stay home with the kiddos so I can go into the office. Whatever.

If any more people sign-up, the Louisville Mayoratorial ballot will soon be looking like Tiger Woods’ phone records…way too many to count.

Being that I live in Indiana, it will be a fun race to watch from afar. Plus, I kind of have a connection to one of the candidates…Tyler Allen. His 8664.org partner is my boss.

Speaking of 8664…guess who came up with that clever non-profit name.  Yep, a Southern Indiana-ner…ME. See I’m blog-punchy and creative too. Who would have guessed it!?

baby did a bad bad thing (a la chris isaak)

or

gone daddy gone (a la violent femmes)

or

we don’t live here no more (a la john denver)

no matter how you sing it, i’ve been a bit absent from my blogging duties; but, no more. starting now…with the new year….(a most perfect time to start)…i will blog like it’s my job (kinda cause it is).

so if you check it and you notice that it’s been days and days since i posted, then send me a comment and tell me to get to it. (but be nice about it, i internalize everything and can be an emotional eater…)

You’d think I’d be well rested and full of verve, but my verve is on low. The holidays have sucked every ounce of verve I had saved up. Baking, wrapping, opening, cleaning, making a mess, and then cleaning again, and baking some more can take it out of you.

I still don’t mind–even with my shortage of verve–I LOVE this time of year minus the cold weather.  I love my wreath, I love my tree with the handmade tree skirt and angel on top (both made by my grandmother), I love cooking dinner for loads of people, and drinking coffee at night because I it’s not a big deal if I stay up a little later. I have plenty of new books to read.

This weekend, we’ll be dismantling all the decorations I love so much. It will be disheartening for an hour or two, but I’ll bake some chocolate chip cookies to cheer us all up. And then sit down to write my new year’s resolution list which will include eating less chocolate chip cookies.

right now, i’m considering what my new year’s resolution list will look like…here’s a sneak peak:

1. blog more
2. work on my novel more
3. start writing my column earlier in the week
4. exercise more (boring but mandatory)
5. eat less stuff that makes me feel frumpy (again, boring but mandatory)
6. change my hair style…maybe my color
7. drink less coffee, but see more of the people i like having a coffee with
8. stop obsessively checking email, start sending personal, handwritten letters instead
9. buy some monogrammed stationary (or is it stationery? i can never remember that one)
10. go to the dentist (UGH…this is a major bummer of a resolution to end on, but this is my pre-list list, so it’s okay for now)

here’s hoping your list treats you well

See…here it is.

I’ve been a bit too relaxed about my blogging duties and haven’t been keeping up with the view (which is my view…not whoopi, joy, sherrie, and elizabeth’s). so, to get back in the swing of it, i sketched up a few posts here recently and wanted to add one to fill the space in between my biggest gap.

thanks for not noticing.