Wow. I’m a sober slacker. In reality, it was a busy weekend.

A rainy sober Saturday, involving a trip to a car dealership to start the process of getting a new car, and then lots of shopping/return errands. We had a nice dinner in and then got the whole family to watch a movie together. By the way, it’s true that when you start looking for it, you see just how prevalent alcohol is in media. The characters in this movie met every type of emotion with some sort of alcoholic beverage. In fact, in the whole movie, there was only one part where a character drank water. Every other beverage that was shown on screen was booze.

A sunny sober Sunday. Long walk with the dog, followed by some seriously hard yard work. We’re making a new parking space on the side of the house. Digging is a bitch. Digging in rocky soil is a super bitch. I was actually happy to volunteer to be the parent who brought one of my kids to their Sunday afternoon sports game in a town 45 minutes away, because after all that hard yard work in the sun, you better bet I was a little sad I couldn’t follow it by some beers on the porch while we patted ourselves on the back for a productive day. Hard work followed by cocktails is a cornerstone of my marriage, and trying to figure out a new normal is tricky. I can’t lie, I miss it, and I’m a little worried about how our marriage will change if it’s gone forever. But then I made it through the sports game, finally got home, had a nice dinner prepared by my husband, and fell exhausted (and sober) into bed.

Monday was a busy day at work, a little more digging when I got home, a dinner to make, and before I knew it I was off to bed.

Here I am on Tuesday. Day 23. In many ways I feel like I’m doing damn well. But then other times when I start contemplating that this might be forever, I get kind of scared. I have heard other people say that the idea of sobriety scares the hell out of them. I always felt like sobriety was a huge bummer, but I never thought it was scary. Now that I think that forever is one of my possibilities, I do feel kind of scared. I guess it’s being scared of the unknown. I know what I would like to imagine life with alcohol would be like. I also know what life with alcohol would most likely actually end up being like. But I have no idea, really, what life with no alcohol would be like, because I’ve never tried it. I’ve given it up for short times for health gains and lowering my tolerance (or so I thought), but never with the idea that it might be forever.

But for now, I’m sober. For 100 days I want to be sober. I’ll worry about forever after that.