Officially 7 Months To Go

Last night when the mail arrived I received one envelope from two of my dear friends. These are the same friends my family stayed with while they visited me a few weeks ago. They wrote me two letters and sent photographs of our respective families during the visit. They have children the same age as my daughter and son. In fact our families are a perfect match. In the grand scheme of my life, our friendship is relatively new; however, they are both like old very beloved friends. I loved receiving the photographs as I have not seen their children in over one year. They are beautiful and have grown so much in the past year. The smiles on each child’s face were indeed priceless. Our children were very happy to se one another and it showed in the photographs. The children did get along great during the visit and I am so grateful and blessed to have such wonderful friends. I have read countless accounts on how inmates look forward to receiving mail. I am so fortunate to have so many special people in my life who keep in touch with me through the mail. I do look forward to mail call each day and last night this was an extra special envelope. Thank you so much for making my day.

Today in the grade we went back out to the mountain community and pruned more trees. This does appear to be a big job and once again there were three crews working on the project. I stayed near the roadside instead of going on the steep hill. I stacked the cut brush and trees along the roadside while talking with one of my crew members. I will continue to say this everyday – these guys on my crew and at this camp are good people. We have made some mistakes but they are all good people. I am so grateful to have been given this opportunity to meet so many good people. Our backgrounds maybe different but for one reason (mostly addiction) or another we all ended up in the same place. I firmly believe this is not an accident or a coincidence, this is exactly how I intended it to be. In the spirit of THE POWER OF INTENTION and THE SECRET, I am here because I wanted to be here. Now, I know so much more about myself and my intentions. I will not return here because my intention is to have a beautiful life and in 7 months from today this beautiful life will include my family on a full-time basis. My family is a huge part of beautiful life and I know we will have many happy years together because this is my intention. I am making it and will continue to make it because of my recovery and my attitude. Gone are the days of “Woe is me” and “Pity my plight.” These have been replaced with I am so thankful for all the wonderful things in my life and I love my life. It gets better and better each day.

The day on the grade was over and it was back to camp. I did get a 20 minute nap on the bus as we returned. I was trying to stay away from writing about food, but today I have no choice because something very good happened. The dinner tonight consisted of spaghetti and a mat sauce. Usually I just take the spaghetti and forego the sauce. Well, it is good to have friends in high places because the other non-meat eater (I believe there are 3 of us – one for religious reasons and 2 of us because we are finicky eaters) who I have become friends with told me he arranged for a marinara sauce for the 3 of us. I was pleasantly surprised to hear this because I did not ask for anything special. In fact, I do my best to keep to myself, but it does appear this is not a well kept secret as most of my feloow inmates and the CO’s know my peculiar eating habits. The sauce was a vegetable marinara sauce complete with mushrooms, peppers, onions, and other assorted vegetables. The sauce was very good and this was the best meal I have had in prison. I am very simple when it comes to food and a very basic spaghetti dinner will suffice for me almost every night of the week. I thanked the cook who prepared the sauce and my friend for thinking of me. This was an excellent dinner. It is funny how I now appreciate so much more and life is so much better this way. It was another great day and in 7 months from today my life will continue to grow brighter.