grant me the serenity ...

Ah, the holidays.  A chance to be with ones you love, and practise tolerance for the ones you don't.

Alas, both we and them are human, and we can only tolerate so much.  Especially when they say things like, "Why do you have to move all your cats when you go?  Can't you just get more there?"

... love and tolerance andréa ... keep it together ...

The only thing that got me through that one was the grace to give my mother a nice evening and not start an all out brawl.

How do you explain to someone what family is, if they don't have any concept of love?

Every day, I write my gratitude list to My Gratitude Buddy, the Sweet Ex and my MC Guru.

At the end of the gratitude list, we give forgiveness, which most of the time includes ourselves.

After last night, I've decided that the once in a while forgiving isn't going to work on this guy.  I'm going to have to do it every day to try to grant myself peace concerning him.  Every day, I will forgive this person, in hopes that I will let go of my anger towards him.

It's very hard, especially when they belittle your mother, but you know you have no option but to let her be in that relationship.

She wants to be there.

So, here I am, just on the cusp of learning what it is to 'pray' in my own way.

I won't call it 'pray', because it reminds me too much of my upbringing and makes me wanna toss my cookies.

I'd say it's more like talking to the angels that surrounded me the day of my Soul Activation.

So, I started with, "Please, do you think you could help him be a better person?"

Then it went to, "Please, do you think you could help my mom see that she deserves better?"

And then, it started getting really un-spiritual, "Do you think you could just kill him off?  The world would be a much better place and my mom would be free."

That's when the anger set in and I had to get out of bed and hang out with Papi watching television re-runs.

"I'm having anxiety."

"About the DR?"

"No, about Mr. Homophobia."

Seriously.  Papi stuffed a clonazepam down my yak pronto.  The 'talking' to my spirits caused me to roll out of bed and feel my migraine come back to haunt me.

This morning, I remembered that when I talk to the angels for anything, it should be strength for myself, so that I don't allow my anger to brew.

Anger only hurts me.

I also remembered a saying in that group of anonymous drunks that came into play: the only person I have control over is myself.

I need to be stronger and not allow people's crap to infiltrate my well being.

I suppose my lack of peace also came when I ate my allergy food.

There I was, snacking on ginger bread angels, snowmen, candy canes, then moved on to the shortbread and finally finished it all off with a great piece of apple pie.

That binge had my poor little brain inundated with the poison running through it once more, and Hurricane Andréa was in full swing.

Especially when someone said Papi and I looked alike in a recent photo.

I lost it!  I hate it when people say that, and now that's 3!!!!  How could we look alike?!  Papi's all handsome like, and I'm all femmed out!

But I calmed down after I did a poll and found more people don't see the resemblance than do.

I'm going with the majority.  I'm on their side.

Papi just says, "Well, if we look alike, then I guess we really dig what we look like."

I didn't get it at first, but after it made me chuckle when I realized it means we look in the mirror and we each say, "Damn, I'm hot!"

Then when we found each other we said, "Damn!  You look like me and I'm HOT!  Wanna fuck?"

I guess it's sorta funny now.

Certainly wasn't when I had the evil sugar and wheat pumping through my veins at high velocity!!

Anyway, I'm feeling much better now, and all I want to do is ask my angels for strength.

Strength to stay away from the sugar.  That's really all I need.

The rest will fall into place after that.

i release all anger