People just like me.

How, how did I never find this blog? Or this yahoo group? Of course there are middle-class, functioning, suburban mothers (and fathers) struggling with this disease just like me. Of course they're gonna blog about it 'cause that's what some middle-class, functioning, suburban mothers (and fathers) do. I mean, I practically started the trend. Years ago, I published a popular essay in Brain, Child called On the Rocks: Mothers who Drink, (how's that for "center of the universe/alcoholic thinking?") in which I ponder the boredom and stress of staying home with my kids and note that I only make it through each day with the medicinal wonder of nightly cocktails, then my drinking buddy went and joined AA. It took me something like eight more years of pondering before I took my seat at the table where I so clearly belonged.

Anyway, these blogs are terrific for women/men/parents pondering the tough questions about when enough is enough and whether or not one wants to be a member of THAT group. I didn't want to be a member of that group! No way! I was a loner and an individual and a free thinker! Nobody was going to tell me how to live and--God forbid--to pray. It was only after a couple years of sobriety that I realized I had been beholden, devoted, even genuflecting (if you consider crawling to bed a form of genuflecting) to my own god of addiction--the Beast--for years. I thought I was in control but he was running the show and he was an asshole. (I say "he," but my beast is gender neutral. He looks a bit like an ugly doll but furrier.)

Second interview at the little electronics distributor today. Fingers and toes crossed even though I feel a bit like I'm slumming or, at the least, settling. Talk about getting "right sized."