Phase Two-Week Seven

With less than three weeks to go in this phase of our experience, the nightly calls are still waking us up. I think there's been just one night without a middle of the night wake up call. About once a week Ron will get a call around 3am and they'll tell him he needs to come for a drug test in the morning. Nothing like a lot of notice. We're used to it.

I can't believe it's been seven weeks since I picked Ron up at Taft. In some ways it seems that 19 months never happened, in other ways it seems I just picked him up yesterday. We are now into a routine. We spend lots of time together, we play a lot of bridge, shop for food, then eat the food. We've kind of picked up where we left off 19 months ago.

The one thing that has changed is Ron's visible appreciation for all he has. He gets up each morning thankful for the life he has, his good health, good marriage, good family. He goes to sleep each night remembering where he has been and again feeling thankful that he is home.

Ron loves my smile. He says I don't smile enough, and he is working hard to make me smile alot everyday. I thought I did smile alot, but maybe not. He does so much every day to assure that I am happy. I guess I could say that he thinks more about me than he ever did before. This is a change I love.

Happiness. The simplest things make us happy. Having breakfast together, going to Costco, or eating a burger at Hodad's make us happy. I've been doing some research on the countries of the world where people are the happiest. The U.S. is NOT one of them, but I consider myself happy. I believe we make our own happiness. I think of our lives together and realize that our happiest times have been when we've had the least. Security makes me happy, and emotionally I feel very secure, thus very happy. As the Bob Marley song I like so much says, "Don't Worry, Be Happy, Everything's gonna be all right."

As we enter the final two weeks of home confinement and get ready for phase three, we both look forward to the end of the phone calls and the weekly schedules telling where Ron will be and when. The Halfway House is constantly checking up, but as I've said before, they're never going to find Ron in the wrong place at the wrong time. No way. He's always where he's supposed to be. Just 18 more days of extreme accountability.