So I just got back from AA. I've really enjoyed the last few meetings I've been to. I don't do anything. I sit in the back and listen, but it's nice to people watch.

Most everyone in the Richardson group are good people and I've notice since I've been going to the noon meetings that it seems to be mostly old-timers. Seems like most of the people at the noon meetings have been coming for years, a lot of them ten years or better. Sometimes this really baffles me. These old timers, even after being sober and living, more or less, the kind of lives they've wanted to live for years, still never run out of things to talk about! Never run out of stories to tell about when they used to drink and how this was hard or that was hard. They tell the stories like 'when they used to drink' was last week, and if you listen you'll come to find out that it was when I was in grade school. People never cease to amaze me. There's one guy that always begins what he's going to say with, "I've been blessed with this precious gift of sobriety since August 12th, 1988." My little sister was born in '86. It's amazing that he still has stories to tell, but ya know what, God bless him.

Anyway, the noon meetings, filled mostly with people that have come to grips with their disease, are WAY better then the evening meetings. The evening meetings are god damned depressing. Seems like people with problems have a harder time after the sun goes down. Factor in all the kids and people like myself, there by court order, that tend to show up more at night and they're just depressing. I just don't get that sense of therapeutic calm that I get from the noon meetings. Maybe it's me, who knows?

So there's this new woman that comes in now, Jill, I think her name is. Mid to late 40's, way too skinny, and simple, in that trailer-park trash kind of way. Anyway, it's been really funny to watch her entrance into the group because I really get the feeling that nobody likes her. Now, in all fairness to the group, I could be projecting, I don't like her. She annoys me. She's a walking pity party. In some ways I suppose we all are, especially the people in there, but when everyone else is feeling sorry for themselves I get the feeling that there's a quiet respect for their sorrow laced with recognition for their accomplishments and their desire to continue on the straight and narrow. With this one, not so much. She's been sober, she claims, for three days today, and maybe it's just me, but I don't really think that she wants to quit. I don't think, deep down, she wants her life to get better. I think she wants people to feel sorry for her. And like I said, I get the feeling that everyone else thinks that too. I could be projecting, but I've really done nothing since I've been coming to those meetings but sit in the back and read the people in there, so I don't think so.