Finally a Departure

After four full days of boxing and moving the contents of our house into several different storage areas we finally departed for our cross country adventure. We spent the night at an exceptionally (above and beyond) dear friend's house. I slept on the couch and my wife slept in a bed while my daughter and her friend slept nearby on the floor in a sleeping bag. My sleep was very sound for the first three hours because I was beat but after sleeping only three hours my mind didn't want to stay asleep. My mind was focusing on finishing the move and getting on the road. I laid there for a few hours but decided it was best to get another early start.

Our dear friends were up at an early hour as they usually are so I didn't wake anyone in fact they were being extremely polite as I laid on the couch. I did get up, got dressed spoke with our great friends briefly and headed over to the house for what I hoped would be the final time. I went through all the closets and threw out so many hangars I needed three very large garbage bags. I tried to arrange everything in an organized manner to see what still needed to go to storage and what we were taking on our trip.

I did the best I could but I had to wait for my wife to come back over because I didn't want to do anything wrong (God knows I have done enough wrong so I am thinking discretion is the best part of valor). I went back over our friends house to pick up my wife so we could finish packing the house. I loaded up the mini-van for the 20th time with a load of miscellaneous items which needed to be stored in our friend's garage. After doing this I had a few errands to run and when I returned I swept out the garage and made sure everything had been accounted for and nothing was left behind.

My wife stayed behind and organized what was left much better than I did. However; my wife wanted to bring a few too many items with us on our trip so we had a friend (yes, the same exceptionally dear friend we stayed with last night) take a few more items to their garage. For those of you keeping score at home we have two storage facilities filled with our "stuff" and three dear friend's garages filled with our "stuff". Also; please keep in mind we sold, donated and threw out many other items that didn't make it to storage. To say we had a great deal of "stuff" would be understatement.

I finally packed or rather "stuffed" the mini-van with our suitcases and other "necessities" for our cross country journey. I did leave room for the children to sit and even my wife had a small amount of leg space. We finally got on the road at 2:40 pm Pacific Time and made a non-stop trip to our great friends' house in Las Vegas. We made excellent time because there was no one on the road and we didn't make one "potty" stop. We arrived at our friends' home at 6:15 pm and the trip really did go fast.

I know this is the first very short leg of a very long trip but it has certainly started out very well. The children behaved; they watched two movies and even my son did lose his attention span until we were well into the third hour of the trip. All in all a very good start.

I need to back track for a second. As we were departing; my daughter said good-bye to her very good friend and seeing the reaction on my daughter's friend's face made my heart go down a few feet. My daughter's friend was genuinely sad to see my daughter leave and this made me feel terrible because this is all my fault. There I have said it and I am sure it won't be the last time but I won't dwell on it.

I know there is a grand plan for me and my family but seeing such a sad face on such a young lady really made me take a pause. I don't know how many times I will apologize but those are empty words. I am relying on actions not my words. I must stay in the now not the past and not the future the now. The now is the most important aspect of my life and thank God I have found a Program in the Gamblers Anonymous Program that keeps me focused on the now. It is so important that I enjoy all the "nows" because if I don't there won't be any "later."

Finally here are two more stories but this time they are centered around "recovery". Yes, there is a recovery to this horrible baffling insidious addiction and I thank God every day I have found it. The first story is about a recovery program solely for compulsive/pathological gamblers. The second story is focused on the one of the horrible consequences of compulsive gambling which is suicide. This is not the answer because no matter how bad things are due to gambling they will always get better in recovery. The will always get worse if me as the compulsive gambler continues to gamble but as I have seen in the past almost 16 months life does get much better.