A new anti-smoking law everyone could be happy with

The province is proposing taking $250 from parents caught smoking while in a car with children.

But why stop there?

McGuinty should deputize a force of anti-smoking rangers, charged with writing tickets for a whole new set of infractions.

$100 for buying a pack of cigarettes then repeatedly smacking it against the palm of your hand. I never really understood this. I mean, why do it? To better pack the tobacco in each cigarette? Whatever the hell for?

$200 for anyone caught smoking those long, thin, all-white cigarettes. This isn't the 1920s and there are no more speakeasies.

$300 for anyone caught smoking while wearing lululemon yoga gear. That's just stupid.

$400 for anyone who offers 25 cents to buy a cigarette from a stranger. Trying to pass yourself off as a thoughtful mooch, all the while knowing the smoker you're harassing couldn't possibly be cheap enough to accept your quarter. It's a transparent, offensive and supremely annoying little ploy.

$500 for not holding a cigarette properly. You cannot grip with perfectly straight index and middle fingers. This is a sign that you are a dorky, tentative and uptight smoker, and that you should stop immediately.

$600 for exposing your dog to second-hand smoke. You may wonder why a steeper fine for a smoking crime against dogs than for a violation against children. Dogs are generally cuter than kids, and their lives are shorter.

$700 for being able to smoke only on weekends without craving cigarettes on weekdays. It's not fair, and you should pay.

$800 for being that smoker who tries to sabotage another's quit attempt. I actually had a co-worker say to me, "Relapse is part of recovery, you know." I wanted to garrote him right there in the newsroom.

$900 for not inhaling.

$950 for being in a running club. (If I were Premier McGuinty, I would try to sneak this law in to the proposed legislation, even though it's not related to the war on smoking. I think all running clubs should be disbanded. They are polluting good, quiet neighbourhoods with garish colours, absurd attire and silly, breathless, grunt-filled banter.)

$1,000 for employing an individual who heroically tries to quit smoking, and who blogs about the ordeal in his free time, but not paying him extra.

A new obsession

Weeding is all I can think about.

It consumes me.

And though I have a postage stamp-size backyard, somehow it has become home to enough weeds to keep me occupied for weeks.

It looks like one of those yards you see on those drug police shows, you know how just before a raid the camera pans the dilapidated house, the rusted Chevy on blocks, the engine hanging from a tree branch, to show the profusion of waist-high weeds nearly swallowing the rickety porch from view.

I should put an old tire out back so that water can collect, stagnate and become a West Nile factory. (There are some neighbours I don't like.)

Every evening, after work, I head out back with little gardening gloves to cut down the unruly vegetation.

I mindlessly and furiously attack a section of weeds, using one of those three-pronged hand tool thingies to loosen the dirt, then I plunge my hand down, grab hold of the root and rip from the earth. I usually end up taking off the gloves so that I can more precisely and quickly uproot the weeds.

It's so incredibly satisfying, like scratching an itch, or nose picking.

I've filled up many of those tall brown paper bags with weeds and other garden refuse.

I can't get the dirt out from under my fingernails, so each morning, when I come into work, I look as if I've been panhandling.

Hey, it's something to do that's not smoking.

And the winner is ...

Not me.

Remember that Canadian Cancer Society contest I told you about, where you could win a Toyota Prius if you stayed quit for the month of March?

Well, call me egotistical, but I thought that for my undeniable and far-reaching positive impact on the struggling quitters community, the Society would maybe fix the draw in my favour.

I thought it was a fair deal, even if it required a little behind-the-scenes fiddling.

Alas, the hybrid vehicle went to a woman living in Copper Cliff. Which, I suppose, is not a bad thing - that is, an environmentally friendly car given to someone living in a place that is also home to a huge nickel refinery.

Seven others won $3,000 Future Shop gift cards.

Woulda been nice.

"Winning the Toyota Prius hybrid is a wonderful bonus, but my new smoke-free life is the real prize," the winner is reported to have told the Cancer Society.

This smoke-free life doesn't feel like a prize. What I see in the mirror, the result of two months-plus eating and swilling garbage, doesn't look like any kind of victory.

Winning a car that I could have re-sold for tens of thousands - that would have felt real nice.

The run

Cue the music.

Another One Bites The Dust.

My legs stretched and limber.

I adjust my headphones, make sure they're snugly in place.

A nice, cool night for a jog.

I have one of those microscopically small iPods. I ordered it online Feb. 14, Day One of my quit. I had it inscribed with the date.

Feeling good, and looking good if I don't say so my own damn self, not like some fool run-clubber, I ease into it and trot down my hilly street.

The beat prods me on, keeps me at a respectable pace.

Ain't no sound but the sound of his feet,
Machine guns ready to go
Are you ready, are you ready for this
Are you hanging on the edge of your seat
Out of the doorway the bullets rip
To the sound of the beat

I arranged the playlist so that increasingly energetic songs follow, to get me through the awkward first phase of the jog.

Two residential blocks later, which is like a span of 30 homes, my eyes cloud with tears.

My side balls up. It feels like someone is staple-gunning my midsection.

The first song of my playlist is not even halfway done, and I am a sputtering mess.

I try to launch some spit onto the street, to clear my drying and closing throat.

Without the wind to do it properly, most of the spit ends up on my jogging pants.

The headphones dislodge, and I fumble with the wires while trying not to break stride.

For pride, I push it maybe five more blocks, until I feel like I am on the verge of multiple organ failure.

By the time I come to a gasping halt, I am midway through song two of my 20-song playlist.

Two months and ... when can I stop counting?

My two-month anniversary passed almost unnoticed, save a generous comment from an attentive reader.

That's fine with me.

I never started this blog for fame. I simply needed a place to vent.

What I am reflecting on now, two months in, is how grateful I am for quitting cold turkey.

Though gracelessly done, though I have become decidedly snarkier, fatter and more self-centred, at least I wasn't delaying the inevitable.

If I had taken a prescription drug or nicotine gum, where would I be now?

Probably only half as far along the road, with a nicotine addiction still staking a significant claim on my mind and body. I would now have to claw my way through some of the frustrations and pains that quitting cold allowed me to confront much earlier.

I am by no means near the finish line, but the path has been largely cleared.

As long as I don't fall.

I found this poem online, after I Googled "two months smoke free":

It's been one heck of a journey,
really it is no joke;
traveling this road
two months without a smoke.

It's taken me to places
where I'd surely never been,
many of which I hope
to never see again.

I started on a slippery road
with fear and trembling in my sack,
but once around the corner
I knew there was no turning back.

I climbed the highest mountain
got almost to its peak,
then along came obstacles
that turned my outlook bleak.

I found myself in valleys
where I sank so very low,
but thankfully came the angels
who lifted me in tow.

When I started on my journey
I knew not what I'd find,
in my search for freedom
and a little peace of mind.

The way seems smoother now,
the bumps not as rough;
perhaps I've just learned
that I had to get tough.

So I'll just keep on going
as long as need be,
'til the journey's end
finds me comfortable and free.

Mary L.

The long view

I just returned from Louisiana, where I went for a funeral.

I constantly craved a cigarette during the trip.

But never more than yesterday, when a bankrupt airline, some arrogant staff at two airports and a gang of evil baggage handlers conspired to make it one of the most exhausting, teeth-gnashing travel days of my life.

It took two cars and two planes, traveling in four states and two countries, to get me home. The trip included one cancelled flight and one clumsy dash -- bags bouncing off my shoulders and face -- to the customer service desk in Atlanta to get on another flight. I was running past old people who were also hustling to customer service. I got one of only four seats available on the next flight out. The people I ran past had to stay the night in Atlanta because I beat them to a seat. (Hey, don't judge me. Surviving airlines and airports is a bloodsport.)

When I finally landed in Buffalo last night, my bag was missing. I drove home and went to bed at 2 a.m., 20 hours after I had started my journey home.

Since I had no toiletries -- they are in the still-missing bag -- I had to go to work this morning with a riot of bed-matted hair and rank breath.

This past five days -- bookended with unpleasant travel and a funeral in the middle -- were the biggest threat to my attempt to quit. But I did not cave.

That's because I had a good dose of perspective. I got it shortly after arriving in Louisiana and having a brief talk with my wife's grandfather.

He had heard I had quit smoking and said he smoked once, too. Sometime in his 20s. More than 60 years ago. He couldn't remember why he started.

He quit after a few years. Doesn't recall why. Then years later he took up smoking a pipe. At the time he was a minister starting out at his first church. It must been a stressful time. But nothing so serious that he could recall now. It was a fool thing to do, he suggested, going out in his car to the drug store and buying his first pipe. But he shrugged off the hazy recollection with a brief smile and an upward flick of the eyebrows.

He quit the pipe, about 20 years ago, after a heart attack. He didn't linger on those details either.

With many children and grandchildren from out of town staying at his house, this man, nearly 90 years young, had only enough time to pull out these dusty relics of memory for a moment and chuckle.

Close the smoking rooms

The smoking rooms at the Atlanta airport should be shuttered, fumigated with Febreze and turned into fruit smoothie stands.

I was flying to Louisiana through Atlanta yesterday, on my way to a funeral.

A recipe for smoking if I ever heard one.

As I have already complained about earlier in this blog, I do not fly well.

So I have a one-connection flight to contend with, not to mention a death in my wife's family.

So I get off the first flight, and head to my connecting gate, at B23.

Then, from somewhere on my right side, I hear the hiss of the sliding door, the roar of the fan from inside the room.

Sallow travellers walking in and out, their faces wrinkled.

The smoking room. Fast becoming extinct in airports around North America.

Like a moth to light, I move closer, wondering if I could have just one cigarette.

With one flight down and one more to go, my nerves were frayed. Just one to take the edge off. I wouldn't buy a pack. I could just bum one off one of the good folks in the smoking room.

I walked up to the precipice then backed away, and moved closer to my gate, probably muttering to myself.

I walked back.

And forth.

And back.

I must have walked past the smoking room eight times, mulling what I should do.

Somehow I talked myself out of walking in that room.

The non-smoker: A vision of poor health

I have unmasked an impostor.

An indolent degenerate.

A hypocrite who preaches about health and good living but in fact is a vision of flabby, artery-clogging excess.

I am looking at him now.

Jowly.

The eyes, hangdog and rheumy with trans fats.

I never should have shaved.

Here I am - the electric hair trimmer in my right hand, my beard clippings collected in the sink below - looking at myself in the bathroom mirror.

I had not shaved once since I quit smoking Feb. 14.

Until just moments ago, I looked like some survivalist from the Oregon rain forest, or a junkyard manager with an IQ of 62.

But the multi-coloured beard - brown near the sideburns, reddish around the mouth and a little silver on the chin - had its appeal.

It was sort of like a playoff beard.

Each day, as my battle against cigarettes continued to rage, my face grew bushier. As if I had the grizzled look to prove I was in the trenches.

But I would prefer trench foot to the flabby face I now see in the mirror.

All the fast food, the beer, the incessant snacking, all the things I stuffed in my mouth to take my mind of cigarettes, ended up in my jowl area.

I would consider liposuction but I hear that is more dangerous than smoking.

lose-lose

I wish I'd never read the lung cancer story in this morning's Star.

Titled Lung cancer trigger discovered, it said ...

"After sifting through the DNA of more than 60,000 people, the scientists pinpointed a cluster of genetic variations on the human genome that can boost a person's chance of getting the disease by as much as 80 per cent. And it seems the genetic variants may make smokers – as well as those who have already kicked the habit – more susceptible than others to the cancer."

So, I may have a genetic variation that will deliver me lung cancer even though I already quit? I could be going through all of this deprivation for nothing?

Or, looked at another way, I may not have the variation and be less likely to develop cancer than someone who never smoked but has the variation. Could that be right?

I want a doctor to develop a test to find these gene thingamujigs. I would pay well for such a test. If I test negative, I would probably start smoking again.

Congratulations?

I had signed up for the Canadian Cancer Society's Driven to Quit challenge.

I had hoped that in exchange for staying smoke-free for the month of March I would be the lucky winner of a new Toyota Prius.

But what I got yesterday was something else entirely.

Among the usual clatter and clutter filling up my inbox, came this from the Cancer Society:

"Congratulations on your hard work to quit smoking," the email started, and then ...

"Now you face the challenge of staying smoke-free for life."

What the ...?

Is this a freaking taunt?

This is what I get for making it through a month smoke-free? A sadistic reminder of a boring, smoke-free, craving-filled life stretching indefinitely ahead?

I know the Cancer Society's challenge is a great thing that hopefully has convinced many Ontarians to try giving up smoking. But the last thing I needed yesterday was to celebrate reaching a milestone by being told I'm actually decades short of the real milestone.

The email continued with a quiz designed to help me identify "potential trouble spots."

Including:

1) I’ve thrown away all my cigarettes, lighters and ashtrays.
Yes.
3) I am avoiding places where people smoke a lot (bars, parties, smoking sections.)
I have barely been out at all, instead holing up with a six-pack of beer each night and my loyal dog, watching TV - Medium Monday night, Law & Order Tuesday and Wednesday, CSI Thursday, Family Guy whenever it's on.
4) I can handle stress without smoking.
So far, but any more emails like the one I got yesterday, and ...
5) I’ve changed my morning routine to reduce the temptation to smoke.
Sort of. I have replaced one addiction with another. Every morning, I got to my favourite coffee shop and pick up a large light roast and something called a caramel tortoise bar that is probably adding an inch to my waist each week.
6) I’ve asked my family and friends not to smoke around me.
No. I simply do not visit my family and friends any more. They all smoke.
8) I’ve replaced smoking with some other activity (taking walks, exercise, hobbies, etc.)
Yes. Whining, Harumphing. Road rage. Drinking beer. Gaining weight.

Life could be worse.

I could be in one of those running clubs.

Just an hour ago, as I was walking the dog, a trio of run clubbers galloped by - a man flanked by two women.

And, I swear, the man, wearing headphones, sunglasses, tights and a windbreaker that traveled down to mid-thigh, said to one of the women ...

"It's a great restaurant. You can buy a nice cab, the kind you can't find at the LCBO ..."

And the woman, grunting and huffing as she shuffled on by, gasped: "Oh yeah, and I bet it tastes like butter."

What is wrong with people?