One week to go. In fact 6 days and 7 hours and 28 minutes – but who’s counting?

So how did the past week go? Very good. I’m getting to the stage where the thought of getting a wee dram just doesn’t enter my head. When cooking I pour a glass of orange juice and soda water and sip on that. One of my favourite side dishes is mushrooms cooked in garlic, pepper and red wine. I would have that 3 or 4 days a week, now the red wine is just another ingredient. Pour and don’t salivate as I do so.

I didn’t have much temptation in the past week, and that certainly helped, but comes the Melbourne Cup closely followed by all those Christmas parties. For us they start in the first week of December. I have to admit I look forward to them. For me, Christmas is the best part of the year – I look forward to it. So what will I be doing? Having a glass or two socially with family and friends. One thing I won’t be doing is ‘making up for lost time’.

One of my views is that I can do more activities when I don’t have, what was, my usual 2/3 bottle plonk almost daily. That doesn’t mean that I wont be going out with my mates on special occasions and giving it a bit of a nudge, and getting up with universal statement ‘never again!’! But that will be the exception rather than the norm.

What I have found to help is meditation! Seriously! For the past year I have been meditating for about an hour a day – to a CD programme. I not touting the method, but I have had beneficial effects in many areas. Dry July and Sober October included.

I am also participating in a regular fitness regime – about 3 or 4 days per week. Mainly low impact stuff with some supervised heavy weights. There is no doubt that has helped too, for I feel a lot better for it.

Notwithstanding the above, I must say that I’m looking forward to being asked if I would like a wine and being able to say ‘just a lemon lime and tonic’ OR ‘ Yes I would love one’

If there are any comments on any of my blogs, I would love to read them

Slanthe – or Cheers