Burn, Philip Morris! Burn!

Sorry for the long absence, but I grew up in a polygamist sect and I had this little court thing to attend. You’re right, incredibly insensitive of me. Especially when the truth is that I’m just lazy.

So, much has transpired since my last pseudo-post before the big end-of-summer holiday. For one, I spent Labor Day weekend at the beach. That’s right, the beach! And I know what you’re thinking, what kind of fool goes to the beach on Labor Day weekend? Isn’t it just full of all those amateur vacationers trying to squeeze a few moments of desperate fun/relaxation out of the last bits of summertime? Isn’t it crowded and noisy and just entirely unpleasant?

Hah! I say. First of all I say this because my last vacation was almost two years ago: I traveled to Iowa to spend a week with my son over his spring break. In March. In Iowa. Iowa. Let me recap: I traveled from Virginia, where the average temperature nears sixty degrees in March, to Iowa, where it is known to snow well into April. The weather did not disappoint that year, and while the folks back here in ol’ Virginny were enjoying days spent reading under early-blooming dogwoods, I was enduring a full-on blizzard, a term which, by the way, was first used by an Iowa newspaper to describe and Iowa snowstorm sometime in the nineteenth century. That was my last vacation.

The friends with whom I spent this summer, seeing how much I’d been working lately, insisted I come along with them for their weekend at the beach, and though at first I balked – I really should have been moving in to my new apartment, not to mention I missed out on a Friday night shift at the restaurant and my son was flying back on Labor Day – they convinced me that a free (did I mention they were paying for everything?) weekend at the beach was deserved by me.

So I went. And for three wonderful nights I got my own room in their suite, complete with surfside balcony and privileges on their oceanfront balcony. We played in the ocean with their kids, we flew kites, we ate at all their favorite restaurants (including one really plush one overlooking the sound), we took afternoon naps with the balcony doors open, and I sat in the hot tub and took a sunrise stroll along the near-deserted beach. That’s right, I said deserted. See, we skipped the commercial, big-resort, boardwalk baloney of Virginia Beach and instead headed to the Outer Banks. And I have to say, for Labor Day weekend, it was under-crowded.

Of course, all of that joy and wonderfulness came to a too abrupt end, and I had to be back in the RIC Monday evening to pick the kid up at the airport and then rush off to my evening shift at the restaurant. Of course, I didn’t realize I would have to go through the gate to pick up the unaccompanied minor, and I had a purse full of lighters. Now I know that last statement makes me sound a bit sketchy, but allow me to explain. I lose things. All kinds of things. Especially the kinds of things that can be stuffed into pants pockets and apron pockets and purse pockets and you get the idea. So I am constantly leaving the 7-Eleven in the morning with my nicotine, only to discover that I’ve left my lighter on the windowsill at home or the pants I wore last night. Consequently, I end up owning at any given time between five and ten lighters.

And since the friends I was staying with have two adorable little girls, impressionable little girls, I had to be very careful not to leave any such dangerous flame-producing tools lying around, and all of them (the Bics, not the girls) ended up in the bag I was carrying all weekend at the beach and then to the airport, where I had to go through the stupid security checkpoint to pick up the kid, and where I had to pause to throw out six cigarette lighters from the bottom of said bag. The scary thing is, when I got to work later and was digging through the bag for a pen, I found a lighter I had missed. A lighter the Transportation Security Administration workers and their high-tech bag x-raying machine had also missed.

So, as payback for enjoying myself for a few days, last week was incredibly busy with work and moving in to the new place and work and registering the kid for school and shopping for furniture at thrift stores (okay, that was fun) and turning on utilities and more work. Then Sunday I came down with a cold, which turned out not to be a cold, but the bronchitis and all I have to say to that is, “Screw the bronchitis!” Okay, in an email to a friend earlier, I used the F-bomb, but I’m practicing restraint. I’m trying anyway.

And the worst part of it is, and you all knew this was coming, I have to give up smoking.

Fuck giving up smoking!

I said I was trying.

Stupid pulmonary inflammations!

So I spent much of this week, sitting in my half-furnished, half-moved into, entirely unpacked apartment, staring at undecorated walls and the kid’s sour mug, and praying for the Philip Morris plant on the south side of town to catch fire and send tobacco smoke spewing into the air and for a freak wind to blow it north west over my apartment. Not that I would be able to inhale anyway with all the hacking and wheezing I was doing. But a TSA bypassing girl like me can dream.

All the Kool kids are doing it

I didn’t start smoking until I got to graduate school. Okay, that’s not true. I smoked while I was at Basic Training. And yes, I was in the military for eight years. I smoked at Basic because smokers sometimes got a three minute patio break while non-smokers had to stand in formation. I quickly took up the habit. But it only lasted those six weeks and then I gave it up. Easy as that.

My parents household was for the most part smoke-free. Mostly because any members of my extended family who lit up in the house were quickly chased out by the cloud of Lysol my father let loose in the room. But most of my mother’s family did smoke, including my grandfather who, upon being diagnosed with emphysema, switched from Camel no-filters to Kool Milds.

I always found it to be a disgusting habit. Elementary school health classes had filled my mind with images of diseased lungs and voice boxes inserted into people’s tracheae. Plus, any time I entered a smoky room, my eyes would burn and start to water and I’d have a sneezing fit. So in high school, when many of my friends picked up the habit, I passed. And even though I smoked for those six weeks at training, I found it nothing to stop. I maybe had one here or there, at a bar after way too many drinks, but I always woke up feeling extra hung over and vowed never to do that again.

Then came graduate school.

Here’s how it happened. Back when I was in the military, and I worked for the human resource officer, I found out that all the really good stuff, all the really important decisions, were made on the back loading dock where the smokers hung out. Remember that episode of Friends where Rachel takes up smoking because her boss is becoming all chummy with another co-worker on smoke breaks? It was exactly like that. Lucky for me then, I was already in with the smokers, and they found me charming enough to allow me to hang out while they smoked, and I never had to take a puff.

When I got to grad school, I found the situation was pretty much the same. No important decisions were being made, but all the best discussions about writing, all the funniest stories, all the invitations to the coolest parties were occurring on smoke breaks. And I was missing out. The thing was, they were cool enough to let me tag along, but since we were all working in different parts of the building, doing different things, I never knew when they would be going outside unless I happened to be in the vicinity at the time.

Until one weekend, when at the bar across the street, we all got to drinking and I eventually bummed a cigarette. And then a few more. The next Monday, when everyone went out to smoke, somebody came to get me.

I was officially cool.

And apparently, emotionally, still in junior high.

So how did I get from the occasional drunk-smoke and cigarette break to full-blown pack a day addict? It could be that over the next couple of years, with my son (at the time) still living with his father, I had a lot more time to spend at the bar, where I sat, with my laptop, writing and drinking and smoking until my friends showed up and I would drink and smoke some more. It could be that in the years following my (in)completion of grad school, I struggled financially and emotionally, and cigarettes, despite their expense, were my only comfort, the only thing over which I had any control. Or it could be that smoking is a very slow, relatively painless, deliberate act of suicide on my part.

All I know is that the thought of giving it up now fills me with dread. Not because of the withdrawal period that I know comes with quitting (they have drugs for that now - wonderful drugs). And not because I think that I will substitute food for nicotine and ruin my body-by-Hostess physique.

The truth is, and I am not afraid to say it, I love to smoke.

That's right. I love smoking. I love the way a cigarette feels in my hand. I love how the smoke calms me down when I'm stressed (this may be purely psychological). I love that I always have a built in break time. I don't love that I always have to carry mints and body spray and the unconscionable amount of money I spend on fabric refresher, but I find these things a small price to pay for something so dependably wonderful.

Haters, feel free to comment by clicking the link below.

I have to go light up.