VINCE

It is such a beautiful day. Fortunately we spent a lot of it outside. For an hour we marched. We’re getting pretty good. We can do counter columns, rear march, left and right flanks and obliques. In 4 and 2/3 months we will get to show our moves at our graduation. Time moves so quickly.

After marching we spend about 3 hours sweeping the running rack and transporting leaves and pine needles from the woods to the compost piles. I didn’t even feel like I was working, it was so nice out. But as I write this I’m quite sore, and I have a huge blister on the palm of my hand.

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I’ve been lazy all day and I loved it. I won five games of cribbage. I’ve done a little bit of treatment work. I’m hoping that not doing anything physical today will help me in my running tomorrow morning. I’ll let you know in the next sentence.

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Nope. I only ran two miles. Still an improvement from ten months ago, but not where I want to be. I need to try harder, but it’s hard to try harder. And my legs hurt.

I got my Initial Treatment Plan (ITP) last Friday. I hate it because it’s spot on. As it turns out, I’m controlling, I just didn’t know how bad I was.

I use my body language and anger/sarcasm to control the people around me. For example, if somebody close by is doing something wrong, I try to look like I’m upset and I might even point them out to somebody else instead of talking to them about it.

Another example: If I’m having trouble with making my bed, I will exaggerate my frustrations to make it look like I’m having trouble so people will try to help, instead of me just asking for help. And sometimes when they offer assistance, I get annoyed and tell them off, which makes me look like an asshole. Ugh. Treatment is hard. I like it.

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Today I noticed that I quit biting my nails a week ago. I didn’t even do it on purpose, it just happened. I wish I hadn’t noticed it, I can’t stop looking at them now…I must change my focus.

Here’s a good one. The other day in our cognitive thinking class, where we are invited to ask questions about anything, someone asked why the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs didn’t kill all the people too. Then: dead silence. I was the first to laugh. He’s not a smart man, and every week he has mentioned that he “doesn’t believe in dinosaurs,” as if they were mythical creatures.

Maybe not such a cray thought considering our teacher says we’re all descendants of aliens—35-40-foot-tall aliens.

[ANNE: When I spoke with Vince on Sunday, he told me about this instructor, Tim Peebles. Vince is enthusiastic about the Thinking for Change class Peebles teaches. He said it’s all been developed by Hazelden Betty Ford, which is a well-respected chemical dependency treatment, publishing, and research center. But aliens? How can you lecture people about thinking rationally, then (as Vince described) spend the remainder of the class telling stories about the aliens you saw are Roswell? I believe there is life elsewhere in the universe, but until there are facts in front of me, I don’t claim to know what form they take.

I googled Tim Peebles and below are the Putinesque images that came up. Maybe they’re different incarnations of him?]