No - not Flylady...smoking. Anyone who has known me for a while knows that I've been quitting smoking since I started. I started smoking because I wanted to make my boyfriend at the time mad. He smoked and wouldn't let me smoke...of course I found out later his double standards didn't only apply to smoking...but that's a whole different story not worth getting into now or ever.

So, I started smoking to make an ex-boyfriend mad and kept smoking for the next 12 or 13 years. Yes, I am an idiot. I quit once for a pretty long period of time...a little over a year actually. Then I slipped. I remember that first cigarette after I hadn't had one in a year tasted like crap. In fact the first pack after I quit for a year tasted like crap...every single cigarette in the pack made me want to puke...but I still smoked them. And right now I'm missing them. Argh.

I'm determined, though. I can't say I feel any better than I did a week ago when I was a smoker smoking about 1/2 a pack a day. I can't say that I'm in any better a mood knowing that I'm doing something that will "hopefully" increase and improve the time I have with my children. In fact I'm in a worse mood now than I have been in a long time. I've been crabby and irritable for the past 4 days - I officially "quit" Monday. It actually feels like I quit a month ago - but I miss it.

I haven't been doing as well as I would have liked to do. That's not say I haven't been doing okay - after all I haven't had a cigarette...and I haven't bought a pack...and I haven't even bitched so much it's made my husband go buy me cigarettes just so I'll stop (yeah - he did that once after I had quit for a week...so I blamed him for me starting again. I'm rotten, I know.) By not doing as well as I would have liked to I me not feeling as well as I would have liked to at this point. I really was hoping that I would not be so moody...but I'm moody as all get out.

This too shall pass - right?

It helps to remember the thought that made me want to quit again. I had this thought...actually it was like a dream before you are really asleep but almost asleep...of my husband having to tell my children that I wasn't coming home because I had to stay at the hospital...I had lung cancer. Now - I don't have lung cancer as far as I know...I could...it's possible. It's even possible that I will get lung cancer if I never have another cigarette in my life. I'm just doing what I can now...but man it isn't easy. My husband put it to me this way - which I don't think is entirely true but felt like it at the time...he said, "You can either live a long, miserable life wanting to smoke but not smoking or a short, happy life until you die from smoking." He's wrong...it'll get better. Like I said, though, it sure as hell feels that way right now!