"Hi Tanya!
I''m here to wish you the best of luck and offer any support I can give. You, too, Jane, and everyone else who is making the bravest change I could ever imagine in their personal lives! My quit date is Jan. 6, 2010.
I''ve laughingly told friends who''ve mentioned their desire to stop smoking that, Hey, it''s easy to do, I''ve done it around 25 times! It''s the *staying* quit that''s really hard to do, I''ve found. So now I''m looking forward to try number 26, (that may be an exaggeration, but not much of one, if it is!)
Well, this time, I''ve decided to try to better prepare myself. I can''t afford the medications until the early part of Dec. So that helped me decide to postpone the quit date ''till Jan. after they''ve had a chance to start numbing those little receptors in my brain that scream out for nicotine.
I''ve discovered the local YMCA is fairly inexpensive, so I''ve asked friends and family, who may have been planning a gift for me this holiday season, to pay for a month at the Y in my name! That ought to get me, um, about a month...if they all pitch in, hehehe. I plan to go there and do whatever I can to relieve the stress, get my mind off the smoke, avoid the weight gain I so easily fell into the last 25 times I tried to quit, and maybe make some new friends who don''t smoke.
I have a brand-new grandchild who was born prematurely. Although we don''t smoke in our house, I detest the idea of doing anything that might cause the little fellow to become sick. Like second-hand smoke residue on my clothes or hair. I don''t know if that stuff can, but it seems like if you can smell it, it is there in some form.
I think I''m going to be spending some time on here, because I really am going to need some support. I guess I''ve quit so many times before that my family are kind of immuned to it. (Oh yeah, mom''s quitting again, good time to go visit someone else.) I have a feeling they are not going to be the best support. I quit for 3 years once. The stuff stinks. I cannot explain why I ever picked them up again. How in the world I thought, "Wow, that cigarette smells good", I have no idea!
But hang in there, everyone! I''ll try to be nice as I imagine ripping the heads off innocent, (messy), cats or tossing beloved family members thru the front door onto their kiesters when they provoke me at the wrong times, (say, the next 6 months). I remember one occasion when I was trying to quit and in a very irritable mood with everyone, when my youngest daughter said to me, "For crying out loud! Why don''t you just have a cigarette and stop being so mean?"
Stunned, I replied, "I''m trying to quit so I''l live longer."
The older, more tactful daughter said, "Well, it''s not that we don''t want you to live a long time, it''s just that you don''t seem very happy about doing it!""
