I’ve done little of this typing away from home thing. It used to feel so free and unencumbered but any time I’ve attempted these past months it is irritating and exacting. Sitting down here things seemed to go OK. The tablet turned on, the wifi connected, even the bluetooth keyboard connected. Bluetooth keyboards never connect on a first attempt.

But the joy and optimism were short-lived. I thought I had the Yahoo Mail client on the tablet but did not. No problem, right? Just use the web version via Vivaldi, the web browser that claimed to have synchronized all my logins and passwords and bookmarks.

Nope. Vivaldi thinks I’ve never logged in to ymail.com, even though i do so every day using that web browser. Vivaldi had synced up other things, seemingly everything as a matter of fact. But not only did it forget about ymail.com login/password, and not only did it make me go through the 2fa other device verification, but once all that shit passed muster ymail.com insisted I use the Android app instead.

I followed orders, attempted to download the app, the Play store failing me with some kind of “G29 inexcusable error”, kicking me back to the web version where i this time see in teeny-tiny print that i can still (thank you so much, yahoo) I can still access the web version.

Or can I? After maybe 30 seconds the web version barfs, saying “We can’t load this right now” or something like that. As a last gasp it says I can use the legacy version, or maybe it said lite version. i don’t care what it said I just want to send a fucking email. This took 15 fucking minutes, during which time I lost my inspiration for whatever the fuck I was going to say, probably nothing miraculous but you never know what could have been if the fucking internet had not gotten in the way.

…

Alright, caught my breath.

Wanted to talk about the stages of withdrawal, and my body returning to some kind of equilibrium after yelling at me, screaming at me to just stop drinking.

I quit about every three months, usually for a couple of weeks. I know, that’s not quitting, but we fool ourselves in so many ways what makes my canard any worse than how others lie to themselves?

In the past I worried about the sleep. Sleep is always an adventure those first nights of sobriety. Gone is the screaming of alcohol that drowns the noises and sounds of the rooms around me. Muted (through drunken ears) are the sounds of fucking from the couple upstairs, the sounds of fistfights outside, the sounds of creeping critters (more likely creaks in the building). I don’t hear those things, at least I don’t think I do, when my unconscious self has drowned in vodka and beer.

I hear all those things now. I hear the squalid, slinky phlegm of an active, restless mind, silenced and rested by booze but not by seltzer or ice water or the need to pee every hour or so having consumed oceanic quantities of both that night as a substitute for the far lesser quantity of liquid needed to satisfy me with the beer and vodka. Just like my hands my mouth needs to be doing something, in this case drinking something, that is most of what it can do when I am alone.

But sleep does not scare me any more. The adventure is heartier than without booze but I’ve grown into it, come to expect the haptic jerks and the booming voice (of myself) waking me from a dream.

Three times last night I woke up to myself screaming “WHO GOES THERE?. The dreams were of being robbed, or intruded upon as I slept, as I tried to submit my only vessel to a healthy night without drinking, all while considering the possibility that I’ve taken it too far already. I do not know that to be true but the way my body yells at me sometimes it can take a few days to put those thoughts away.

I don’t know where else I might have gone with this but long story short, because I have to go back home now, I sleep better now than I would have a year ago, because I’ve been through this ritual