when suddenly, and without any warning,

it started to snow.

Snow!

I’m not freaking kidding. And not just a little snow, either. The forecast was for a little rain.  A 40% chance of rain. And we got snow.

It was the earliest snowfall ever recorded here, beating the previous record by two days and 1/2 an inch, and while it has melted off the streets now, my lawn is still holding on to a tattered blanket of the stuff.  Now, of course, it didn’t actually start to snow until three full minutes after I got on my scooter to go home from work. I was smart enough to wear a rubber jacket to work, but I didn’t put the mask on my helmet and I don’t own a pair of gloves, so by the time I got home from work my face was completely red, my hands completely frozen, and I was soaking wet from the waist down.

I thought I still had time. Not just time to get home from work yesterday, but time before it got really cold. Time before I had to buy a car. Time to figure out how I’m going to do that. And I’m nowhere near ready. I can’t imagine how I’m going to be able to afford a car payment, and there will have to be a car payment because I definitely don’t have the cash to even buy a dispose-a-mobile, let alone pay for insurance. I might be able to swing it if I sold the scooter, but it’s not exactly the time of year to be doing that.

Continuing to work at the closet place is holding me back, too. My hours have been cut to only 18 - 20 a week. And while I did make a commission for the sale of a $2000 closet, my boss managed to f%*k the order up and it was canceled, which meant that the commission I was paid came back out of the paycheck I got yesterday, reducing my already pitiful income by 30%, sending me even further down the toilet.

My probation officer told me that I have to find full time work immediately; on the days I’m not at Creating Space that I need to be lookingn for work - a daunting task for me under the best circumstances - but Micron, the largest private employer in the state, announced this week that they’re laying of 1,700 employees, and most of those cuts will be right here in Boise.

I’m discouraged. My pride tells me that I should be so much further along than this by now. I forget that this time last year I was getting a job at McDonald’s. I neatly avoid being grateful that I’m sober in favor of kicking my ass for what isn’t working right yet. I went and saw my AA/DA sponsor yesterday and he had some suggestions about how to navigate my current circumstance, and who I should talk to, so I’ll do that. And because my boss at the closet place just called to let me know that someone called in sick, I’ll go in for 2 hours to cover lunch for her. I really don’t want to. I’d as soon strangle her right now, and there are other things that I need to be doing, but I also need the stupid $20. I need gloves.

I’m reminding myself right now of the scene in Grey Gardens where mother and daughter Beale are in their room listening to Dr. Norman Vincent Peale on the radio, and Dr. Paele is saying, “Think. Really think. Try. Really try. Believe. Really believe.”

I’m also reminding myself that one of the first directions in the Big Book is, “Do not be discouraged.” And that later on it says, “It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worth while. But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feeling we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again.”

(Let’s try to exersize some willingness to grow, shall we, Chris?)