10 o'clock, just me and my coffee...

No one else is up, and that sort of weirds me out. Normally Mary Jo (mother-in-law) is up around 8-ish. There were plans to go into Springfield today and go shopping, but John (father-in-law) seems to have taken her car, which will piss her off to no end when she finds out, if she doesn't know already. She gets pissed off really easy. I feel very fortunate that so far, I have not garnered any of her anger. I'm trying very hard here. She might be in her bedroom, dead. Suffocated by the three dogs she sleeps with every night. They all smell very much like dog. I don't like dogs. I didn't before, I like them less now. Especially when these ones insist on peeing on everything and hover over you when you're trying to eat, looking for an opportunity to steal some food from your plate because they're used to being spoiled. Don't like dogs.

Everything else is slowly getting better. Family matters, at least those pertaning to my family have been resolved. It's nice to know that maybe the nasty talk about my mother behind my back is over. Maybe I am a pushover when it comes to her, letting her control more than she should, but dammit, she's done things for me that no one else would. She's never let me down once. She deserves my respect, and she deserves everyone else's too. I'm doing well with my not-smoking, though it's a battle when John is an avid smoker with no desire to quit at all. I'll admit, just last night I snuck up to him and got a smoke. I was bad. I know this. I don't care. This is my fight, or one of them... one of these days I'll look back and know that I'm finished for good. But whenever disaster strikes, a smoke seems to be the first thing I want to run for. So when my life is serene and perfect, I will have no more need for smokes. I predict this moment will come 20 seconds before I die.

I've noticed there seems to be a fair share of calamity going around the inner circle here... some of it I understand, some of it I don't. With that in mind, let me just offer my sypmathies, my understanding, and my shoulder or my ear if you need it. Silver lining, people.