Breathe fire. Just like a DRAGON.

I was just reading Voix de Michèle, and decided to add her to the links. She has a good list of blogging guidelines for writers, and she links to another rules list too. Maybe I'll cobble my own list together from both of them, and become a better blogger. I feel the self-improvement compulsion coming along again.

I was looking at scrapbooking stuff at the craft store this morning, during a break in my walk. I'm more the type who wishes they could be crafty, than actually are. (Wow. I thought about re-writing that last sentence but I just had to leave it as is.) I'd like to do stuff, but I don't. I was thinking if I pick up enough good or at least industrious habits, I can take back, maybe, one bad habit.

Like smoking. I have been thinking about smoking for the past two days. It started with the observation that the quotidian details of my day have changed very much since I quit. Two breaks and lunch at work, not standing outside, but having to find something to do, someone to chat with. Not standing out in the rain. Not stopping at the gas station every three days, or bumming from a co-worker who smokes menthols. A little more money in my pockets, in theory anyway. My hair and clothes and car don't smell like an ashtray.

The first time I got a cold (& eventually sinus infection) after quitting, I coughed my friggin lungs out, because, according to the nice doctor man, the cilia in my lungs are coming back. For a week, I would lay in bed at night, coughing for what felt like hours, sure I was getting asthma. Or tuberculosis. Or lung cancer. Late night hypochondria.

I hardly every go out on the balcony at my new apartment, because I don't need to in order to smoke. I still feel like I need something to do with my hands at restaurants and bars, but I have gone back to my pre-smoking (high school) habits of fidgeting, playing with menus, shredding food, lighting matches, reading every word of every flier, "specials" placard & sign on the wall.

What else sent me on this train of thought? I got a voicemail from a friend in Colorado, I thought about my trip there this spring, smoking, having a couple of beers and relaxing. The other friend who made the trip with me picked up 'social smoking' again after quitting years ago. The taste of Nat Sherman naturals, rich and complex, like strong coffee or a Guinness or deep deep red wine. Indulging myself by smoking too much, just like one might with booze or food or... something else.

One of my favorite reasons to smoke: a way to get away. To stand in the rain, get some silence, for a goddamn change. "Oh, I don't want to bother you with my smoke, I'll just step outside." I've taken to accompanying smokers outside once or twice (most memorably with J.J. at the Mall of America). But I was too tempted to smoke, even took a drag once.