Survivor's Guide

5.17.07

Day 1,374

 

It’s Mother’s day again.  SHE got a new bike.  I got… cramps.  Daddy figures… if the kid is happy, mom is happy, right?  Especially walking up and down the block 89 times in 45 degree weather. 

 

But honey, isn’t exercise good for cramps?

 

No, darling.  Midol is good for cramps.  Which is how we came to be at the store that sells both Midol and bicycles in the first place.

 

I am a tortured soul. 

 

The child is surpassing me in intelligence, wit, and wile.  I think I will be in big, big trouble when she learns to read.  She already recognizes some words, and just the other day I realized she has somehow, in her spare time, learned to “point and click.” 

 

Sitting next to her I can see our reflections in the monitor screen, her eyes wide with delight as she points and clicks, clicks and drags, my eyes wide with shock and awe and... astonishment -  that I’m going to be fighting yet another human being for quality time with my computer.

 

Let’s see, where was I going with this?  Oh yeah, she’s smarter than me.

 

She’s going to preschool now, and they teach her things.  Really smart things like… smoking cigarettes is bad.

 

Let’s talk about all the places a person can no longer smoke.  Restaurants – that’s a done deal in Duluth and a lot of other places.  bars and clubs soon enough… we always thought cigarettes and alcohol go together.  Well, not for long the way things are going.  And let’s not forget Work -  ahhhh, yes, the smoke break at work.  Uh-huh.  Come July 1st that’s no longer an option.

 

In the house – well, that’s been a given for awhile now considering that a kid with nice shiny pristine lungs lives here.  The same child who has recently announced that there will longer be  smoking in the car.  It is bad for her and it makes her cough (it does not – she’s a total liar – that’s a fake cough if I ever heard one).  But even if it is a fake cough, of course cigarette smoke is bad for her – how can I even argue about it?

 

The work problem, hmm, I had planned to find a way around it.  Nicotine patches or gum or something would get me through an eight hour workday.  I certainly wasn’t going to quit because my employer thinks they can make me.  And when I realized that even smelling like cigarettes was prohibited (sniff patrol?), well, that was over the line, and I felt even more stubborn about the whole idea.

 

Then the other day my kid asked, “Mom, will you die from smoking?”

 

Dead silence.  Is there any way to answer that and not look like a complete idiot who doesn’t love her kid?

 

Oh fine.  We’ll see the doc, get prescriptions for Chantix (Dad, too, because I’m not doing this all by myself) and quit smoking, if only to get the child to shut up about it.  You can’t smoke a cigarette in peace ANYWHERE anymore, so we might as well just give up.  I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.

 

There’s a time to be a rebel, and a time to get with the program.  But don’t get me wrong, I’m not quitting because my employer says I should, or even because child says I have to.  I’m quitting because these days when I cough I wet myself.