Can you see through the smoke? Hack..Cough

Ok, it's late and I'm still awake because I drank way too much coffee today in anticipation of two weeks on a detox program, with limited caffeine. Well, I'm already down to a cup every other day or so, so what's the difference there?

Anyway... I've discovered that two of my dear blogger friends are smokers, which really chapps my behind in general and makes me want to jump on that soap box and ride baby!!!

As many of you know, or do now anyway, both my parents died from smoking related issues. Ok, my dad was a house-painter for 40 years and inhaled way more than his share of toxic chemicals too, but the cigarettes didn't help at all. He died in 2004 after fighting lung cancer that turned into brain cancer after radiation "treatment", but that's another story.

Mom worked in casino's, inhaling everybody elses's smoke too. She had a lung transplant in 1994 and died in 2002 from complications due to the rejection of the lung. She lived a lot longer after the transplant than she would have without it, but frankly and honestly it was an experiment that went badly, and had she known ahead of time what she was facing with pills and side effects, I imagine she would have opted to pass away with her own blackened and shriveled lung in her chest.

I was born a smoker, and started lighting my own when I was 14, one day I realized my smoking was giving my daughter health problems and started taking it outside, then one night I was freezing my BUTT off standing outside in a blizzard so I could smoke, and I decided that's IT!! I'M DONE!!! I HATE THESE FREAKING things, and I've never smoked since then, and that's been 14 years ago. My daughter and her useless man smoke, but not in their rented house, and not in their cars when their daughter is in it... Fay is allergic to smoke and gets pretty violent reactions every time (recent ear infection case-in-point).

Ok, so there you have it. I hate smoking, I hate how addictive it is, how BAD smokers clothes and breath smells. I wish smokers knew how bad their clothes and breath smells. I wish I could get just one of the people I care about to STOP. Big Tobacco doesn't care about you, they don't want you to quit, they want you to smoke!!! How, then, do you think that they keep raking in all that cashola?? Every time one of you says I can quit anytime, THEY put another addictive drug in those things so you CAN'T quit without physical and psychological pain!

So, smokers, realize you are addicted, put them down, and stop. If I could, you can. I love you and want you to be around to see your granchildren grow, and have them not smell you before you enter the room, not avoid kissing you because your breath smells so bad. Hope you don't have to be on oxygen. Did I tell you when my daughter was 2 years old she learned how to turn on my mom's oxygen tank? Just in case there was an emergency and mom was too distressed to turn it on herself and Amanda was the only one around? Did I also tell you my mom was still smoking then? She only stopped when her doctor told her if you don't quit you will be dropped from the transplant program. For a while it was necessary for my dad (and those of us that still smoked around her) to put water in the ashtrays and drown the butts so mom wouldn't sneak them and smoke them when no one was around. She went on that gum so she'd keep getting nicotine, so at least her breath only smelled mildly awful, but at least she didn't continue smoking. She got someone else's lung who had never smoked. Wonder why they don't transplant a smokers lung? Gee, ya think??