The Brave Babes Battle Bus - Getting Ready For The Golden Sights Of Autumn In Search Of Sobriety.

[Mouseface]

Hello everyone, I'm Mouse :) and this is the Bus I've been on a while now!

It's filled with a variety of drinkers. Those that do, those that don't, and those who are desperate to STOP but hide it, or embrace it and get the help they NEED.

'Help' in whatever form works for them, your friend or you. Be it AA, a Local Community Alcohol Counselling Group, your GP, your family/friends, this thread or even a combination of all of the above!

You have to want to stop drinking more than wanting to breathe.

I know that right now, that may sound like a ridiculous goal.

They got sober, One Day At A Time then came here during the process to chat about it, discuss their feelings, but more than anything else, their experiences HELPED OTHERS TO BELIEVE that they too could get dry.

They might not get dry and stay dry, sometimes they'll be lying about their consumption, fooling themselves as well as others

BUT when the posters do get dry for good, come back and post to help others with their tricks of the trade or just to say 'I did it!!' my heart jumps for joy because that person, poster, Brave Babe has gone through hell and back, lived to tell the tale and now wants to share that with the rest of the Bus to see if one simple trick or technique will put them on the track to recovery, sobriety, to the life that they want to lead :)

There's two saying that have appeared to stick with us -

1. • The Vulnerable Need Our Support, Not Our Judgement
2. • Alcohol Fosters Inertia

We all have our own reasons for starting to drink 'too much', we all have an excuse don't we.... we all have a "but....."

Well, as I say to Nemo (who you will get to hear about ) - goats butt!

And for those of you who want to know a bit more -

HERE IS THE MOST RECENT THREAD

AND THIS IS WHERE IT ALL BEGAN, OVER FOUR YEARS AGO!!!

See you soon x

Good idea

Sounds like a plan...cordons off area of bvus with yellow tape and heaps up duvets, boxes of tissues and opal fruits lemsips.

Ice cream is good for sore throats cause it soothes the inflammation, right?

why on earth is the dog staring at me... Is he expecting to be taken out for a walk? Hard luck mate, I'm going nowhere.

A very late good evening to you all :)

DH is watching the Ryder Cup, recorded, so my will to live is hiding somewhere in the house! It's thinking of going to bed so I'll be heading after it soon....

I just wanted to say a huge 'thank you very much' to those who are thinking of us today when we were told that Charlie, Harry and George no had any heartbeats, and then of course tomorrow, when I had to go through horrific surgery to have them all removed, 9 whole years ago.

I have a feeling that we will be toasting those boys tomorrow, those three boys who could have been anything that they had wanted, even though still at school, I do believe that Nemo is a force of all three of them! :)

However, we have the wonderful gift of our beautiful, smart, and ever astounding teen girl and of course the boy himself, Nemo!

Thank you all for indulging my painful memories, and for caring enough to say so.

See you all tomorrow at some point! (we have a busy day!)

Well done to those who have had a dry Friday and Saturday, it really is amazing to wake sober.... I love it! :)

IsinDe - I hope that you have had or are still having a wonderful Birthday weekend my very dear friend.

Love to you all, the golf widow is taking herself off to Bedfordshire!

Night all xxx

Ack! So much for resolutions. Day 1 again with hangover and firm resolve today. I think it's because we're away on a holiday weekend. How do you manage when in "holiday mode"? I find it so hard to resist :(

Mouse Thinking of you a lot today. The year before we finally had our two beautiful twin boys, I had three miscarriages. The horrible stillness of scans where we previously saw heartbeats and then there was none will always haunt me.

Thank you for your lovely supportive messages ComingThroughTheWry and babyjane and others. As you can see, the problem with me is that a slip seems to send me into "drinking mode" for a few days, despite my best intentions.

I use www.drinkaware.co.uk so I can look back over the past week/fortnight/month and see my drink-days in context. I had a lovely field of "green" no-drink days, and now it's polluted with orange and red again. I am looking forward to pushing those off the screen again.

Thinking of you mouse and your beautiful boys and Mr mouse
MNing in bed with coffee and toast. A perfect start to the day

the family Mouse thinking of you, xx

the family Mouse thinking of you, xx

mouse thinking of you xxx

So dd2 woke at 6.30,half asleep I took dog out to garden and stood in a shite (barefoot), head still thumping and haven't slept a full night for months so my whole body feels like led, girls been fighting all morning, dh was pissed last night and talked the same shite I stood on and I am FAT... BUT I STILL WONT DRINK SO THERE saggy tits!!!!!!! (Wobbles off to search our SW books) xxxx

mouse thinking of you xxx

So dd2 woke at 6.30,half asleep I took dog out to garden and stood in a shite (barefoot), head still thumping and haven't slept a full night for months so my whole body feels like led, girls been fighting all morning, dh was pissed last night and talked the same shite I stood on and I am FAT... BUT I STILL WONT DRINK SO THERE saggy tits!!!!!!! (Wobbles off to search our SW books) xxxx

Just been for a good run round the loch. And the scales tell me I have gained two pounds. Bastard things!!!

Where is everyone today? Hope you are all having a lovely day

ma throw out the scales and just do what you enjoy! If you love running round the loch, go for it! Sod the stupid scales, they lie anyway...

I've just eaten 11 Jaffa cakes, but in my defence I'm poorly.

ma super well done on the run, does Argos count as a run, I've been running around the store all day for dd2's birthday tomorrow, can't believe she's gonna be 4, my baby is growing up too fast.

Anyway this sobriety business is great but instead of worrying about needing a future liver transplant it'll be a not so future gastric band the way I'm eating... I somehow imagined in my little daydream world being sober would mean I looked slim with lovely clothes and hair and skin shining with vitality, instead I'm overweight, tired due to sleep depravation and look like shit.

So sober October for me is also going to be healthy October, I'm going to take my measurements, draw up an excercise schedule and eat clean healthy foods and drink 2ltrs of water a day...

Hopefully my dream will become reality, well this one anyway. If anyone wants to join me, it's a great way to raise money for McMillan cancer charity as it's their brainchild (I'm just going to make my own donation when I've done it) and get us all well on our way to the LBD, dewy skin and swishy hair and we'll be living the dream at long last xxxxx

wry you have an echo glad its not just me, was all proud of managing sat night AF but hey tomorrow will be day one again.... his is like groundhog day

Evening, tis me, Mouse

Thank you for all of the kind words, I have had a really odd day...... I felt the boys near me in the early hours of this morning and I know that when I thought of them, saw them in my dreams that the two larger ones were looking out for the smaller little dude! :)

Ma - Joey (hello lovely!) is right, bin your scales and go off your clothes and whether or not you are pooping. Gross as it seems, if you are constipated, you'll weigh more. Water is the key I promise.

You can try every slimming pill on the market, every laxative, every diet and nothing will work forever unless you stick at it.

I've done them all as most of you will know after me bitching and moaning on here!

I'm now following the Slimmer Mouse Diet™ which is basically eating healthy fats, reducing or binning refined sugar so more high cocoa dark chocolate, reducing the bread if not gradually cutting it out totally, as you will get withdrawal from just suddenly stopping certain foods, the same as you do with drink and drugs, avoid adding salt to a meal, keep it basic, especially now it's getting chillier (says she after being sat in the garden in the 21c sunshine earlier!) buying cheaper cuts of fresh beef/lamb and pork, trimming the fat and slow cooking it with a shed load of veg and stock in.

Frozen veg is the next best thing to fresh if you're on a tighter budget.... I have a freezer full of mixed bags of all sorts!

BUT, more than anything, the best thing that you can ever do for your body is drink water. Not with tea, coffee, Stella or vodka in it, just good old fashioned Corporation Pop.

Seriously, we're all going to be feeling the dark nights affect us more than those who are tee-total simply because snuggling up with a hot chocolate, with a glugg splash of Bailey's/Tia Maria/Brandy etc in is just too lush to avoid.

So, the darker nights will be just as tough as the warm summer ones for the opposite reasons. To warm you, to comfort you as the dark clouds form above, the chill that hits as you leave work and all you want is a hot dinner with a glass of red to follow..... or two, three, four etc.

It's going to be tough but if you have the will to stop, if your will to stop is important as breathing, you'll kick it.

This Bus is thermal Babes, thermal!!

Night all xxx

Ok, Day 1 complete again. I've been feeling really emotionally raw all day today. The "hangover effect" I fear. I hope tomorrow is better.

babyjane I have been eating all around me since going AF - but I figure if I can get a solid month behind me without alcohol, I might be strong enough to tackle eating habits then! I think if I do actually keep off wine, etc. for a long enough time, then the weight will go. From shrinking liver alone, if nothing else!

Right, going to anaesthetise my emotions with some tv instead of alcohol!

Morning Lovelies,
Right well life has been a right old shit sandwich recently but it's about time I quit the self pity and began looking after myself again. Have been drinking,moderately. Bloody hell,wine is expensive!!!!!!!

Today I will not be drinking,I will be stuffing strawberry cheesecake ice cream down my neck and having an early night.
Day 1

Love to all x

Morning babes Day 3 here. Managed not to drink last night, despite having wine in the house - I've got a lurgy, and know that alcohol would make me feel terrible.

The sore throat's not that bad, but I do feel sorry for myself (self-pity whinge)

pssst!

wry!

Good work on the recon .

OK.

You've found the card hatch on the camera. I looked it up and it is that little door that says 'card - open'. You will be able to open this and see the card within.

Have a look at your computer. At the near end of the left-hand edge (so the left side of the main body of the laptop, where you find your USB ports etc) should be a little slot, c. 2.5cm long. This is your memory card reader.

If your computer has one of these, we're rolling. If it doesn't, you have a model without it and life gets a little more complicated

If you can plug the memory card straight into your computer, you do not need to download software. That's for if you use a USB cable to connect the camera to your computer. It's just another way of downloading pics, but to do it the two devices need to be able to 'talk' to each other: thus the software. The memory card is much simpler. It's just a generic digital storage device, a kind of electronic filing cabinet that you can physically put things into or remove things from. If you can plug it into your computer you can lift off the pictures as simply as copying and pasting any other file.

If you can let me know about your computer, I'll write you out a little step-by-step list of how to copy off the pics

The only potential hiccup that occurs to me is that the pictures may not be on the card. Cards have a big memory but a limited one, and if he takes an awful lot of pics (it sounds like he might, if he's got that many cameras?) then he may download them onto his on computer and wipe the card fairly regularly. If that's the case then the pics you want may be on his computer and not on the camera any more, which makes things very difficult I'm afraid I'm not a real-life hacker so couldn't help you break in or anything . . .

I suppose the only thing to do is take a look at the card and see what's there!

In other Phrase news I'm fine - not feeling so sick now which is OBVIOUSLY freaking me out rather than being appreciated but the baps are still wrecking so that's a good sign. Scan in a week (eeep!)

Big hello to all babes - sorry not to respond personally, but I've missed out on three days from bloody wallpapering and am too far behind!

Okay, I have one day successfully under my belt. A good night's sleep has put the horrible raw hangover-emotions in the past, and I'm starting a fresh Day 2 here.

guggenheim Good luck with Day 1! Wine really is ridiculously expensive, isn't it? Will you give yourself a treat with the money you would have spent in the future? I like extra motivation, but finding on the early days I can't think too far into the future, or I'll panic. Just not going to drink today.

aliasjoey Well done you not drinking when there's wine in the house. I find that particularly difficult to do. Especially if it's open!! Unfortunately I tend to be the same about chocolate too. If I know it's there, then it must be eaten!

Good luck to everyone today.

phrase I AM a real-life hacker - could I help? Oh no, wait, the court order said I wasn't allowed to do that anymore

Mouse

Wry those merkin crabs made me ! I'd need a pretty large merkin to cover my own thatch so maybe a whole consortium of little blue merkin crabs would do the trick. I'm fine, thanks for asking. I stuck to my lower carb food throughout September and have lost 7lbs. My drinking has crept back up, though, as usual. Had 13 days AF - some sort of record for both me and DP, I reckon, but last week went to pot with a bottle of celebratory prosecco on both Wednesday and Thursday, and another one last night as a friend bought it for me. Plus wine of both colours over the weekend. I do want to drink in moderation at weekends, so I'm back on the wagon during the week now, and aiming fruitlessly for moderation at the weekends.

Regarding the photos... ideally, your laptop would have a card reader slot on the side to put the card straight into - like this. If that's the case, you need to remove the card from the camera (by pushing it in to pop it out, if you see what I mean) and insert into your laptop card reader. If you don't have a slot like that on the laptop, but one of these, insert the card into it and plug it into a USB port. When your laptop asks what to do with the photos, tell it to open them in a folder. Find the pics you want, select them all (using Ctl and the shift key) and copy them (Ctl + c) and then paste them (Ctl + v) into your Documents (or Pictures) folder. Or select them, drag and drop into the right folder. Does that make any sense?

Babyjane when I was reading your post upthread about anxiety, I wondered whether you'd ever tried beta blockers? My GP prescribed them for me when my anxiety levels were very high earlier in the year and my ADs weren't doing the trick. I'm now weaning myself off the ADs and my GP said to use the Propranolol as and when I need it to deal with anxety. I do find them very helpful.

Right, am off to make a chorizo and gruyere crustless quiche for lunch.

Oh god look and I cross posted with Phrase who's said it all much more clearly than me.

Naughty Joey!