A hard habit to break

The group Chicago, best known for their 1970's Jazz-Rock music, is one of my favorite bands. Their song, A Hard Habit to Break, however, is not one of my favorite tunes. My dislike of said tune is mostly due to it being mawkish -- and the lack of the band's epic Jazz vibrations in the ballad doesn't help -- but today as I type, I really don't like the song because it so aptly applies to my battle with tobacco.

As you may or may notknow (it depends on how often you read my windy ramblings) I "quit" smoking cigarettes about three weeks ago. The quit in quotation marks is because while I am still trying to stop smoking the nasty little buggers, truth is I have puffed a few packs in the past three weeks.

It all started with my trip to California in which I hung-out with my brother and father. They are both smokers and like me, were both on the wagon as far as smoking goes. My old man is currently chewing tobacco while my brother is trying to curb smokes with an E-cig. All three of us did fairly well not smoking for our week together, but, unfortunately, smoking is a family tradition and try as we might, we did breakdown and have some of the disgusting "nails in the coffin."

After reading my initial "I'm a quitter" column," a friend of mine stopped by the office to offer some words of encouragement as well as a memento to remind me to stay on target.

He told me about the struggles he and his wife had while trying to quit smoking and encouraged me to see this task through. He also gave me a small red dinosaur and told me that anytime I thought about having a cigarette that I need to look at Dino and remember that if I smoke he will sick a real dinosaur -- kept in his garage -- on me.

I am looking at Dino Red right now and he does not look happy. He knows that I really want a cigarette and he is none too pleased.

My buddy told me that until I have decided that I really want to quit, it won't happen.

That is so true.

While I want to stop buying them and I want to stop filling my body with poison, I really, really want to smoke one.

The last bit of advice my buddy offered was to wear a rubber band on my wrist and snap my wrist each time I get the urge.

Rest assured, my wrist is a giant welt as of 11:36 a.m. Monday morning.

But, I am still on target.