The other day I tried to start smoking again.

I quit three years ago, but after the day I had and the fact that my kids were acting like assholes I needed a cigarette.

I know kids are all precious and wonderful and all that crap, but yesterday mine were precious, wonderful assholes.

I love my assholes, but they made me want to smoke.

Wait.  That didn’t sound right.

So, I stopped at the gas station on the way home from karate, bought a pack of Marlboro Lights, and waited until I had a free five minutes to sneak outside, hide under my bedroom window, and light up that dark goodness.

Only it wasn’t good.

It was gross and stinky and made me feel like vomiting all over my dead azalea bush.

So, later that night I tried again.  I figured maybe it was just the first one and if I tried it again it would be better.

But, it wasn’t.  And I smelled even worse.

I hid the rest of the pack in my bottom drawer and decided I’d keep them safe just for emergencies.

Then I had the brilliant idea to have one again today.  New day, new perspective.  It couldn’t possibly taste that bad again, right!?

After coming close to vomiting in the trash can we keep in the garage for dirty diapers I knew I was doomed.

Doomed to a smokeless existence.

I’m not a smoker.  Anymore.

I took the rest of the pack, ripped them into pieces, and shoved them down with all the poopy diapers in the trash can.  I figured covering them in poop funk was a good bet.

I didn’t want to take any chances.

Then I cried.  I cried for my youth and the fact that when I was a smoker I was skinny.  I cried for the fact that coffee and wine tasted so much better with a cigarette or two.  I cried for the fact that my knee didn’t hurt and my writing was better and my boobs were perkier all when I was a smoker.

Okay, my boobs are still pretty awesome even without cigarettes, but the other stuff is true.

I cried for the fact that I’m 31.  I’m 31 and the mother of three.  I’m a wife and a homemaker, a PhD-er, a Girl Scout Leader, a sometime church-goer, and the occasional watcher of bad tv.  I’m a grownup and a tax payer and a coupon clipper and a mostly model citizen.

And, I do all those things without cigarettes.

And apparently I’ll continue to do all those things without my Marlboro Lights.

Shame.

Damn smokers.