Last weekend my husband and I went to Brantford to see his family. It had been my husband’s mothers birthday earlier in the week and the family was getting together to celebrate her birthday by having lunch together in a local restaurant.

We drove from Toronto and met everyone at the restaurant. Unfortunately the meal wasn’t all that great, I don’t really think anyone except my father in law and one of my brother in laws really liked their food. After we finished eating we went back to my in laws for birthday cake and to spend some time talking.

I was talking with my mother in law when I realized that everyone was starting to congratulate my husband and I. I didn’t realize why they were praising use at first, but they it finally sunk in that they were saying how happy they were that we’d quit smoking and they were happy that we’d been so successful.

You know, up until that point I’d actually forgotten that I’d quit smoking. Aside from Christmas this was the biggest, and to be honest really this was a bigger family gathering we’d been to since we both quit smoking in October. We haven’t really been to many large gatherings or parties since we quit, probably because we’ve been avoiding social occasions that might make us want to smoke, but I think we’re probably over that hump now.

I still get the occasional urge to smoke, but it’s usually when I’m at home doing something that I used to do with a smoke. I never get the urge to smoke when I’m out of the house. I worried about smelling other peoples cigarettes but that actually turns me off. Now that my migraine auras are worse and I’ve developed a “smell aura” that makes me hypersensitive to smell I pretty much can’t stand to walk outside stores where everyone is smoking. Sometimes when I take the dog outside late at night one of the first things I’ll smell when I walk outside the door is someone smoking a cigarette and I’ll look around and I’ll see a neighbor a block away standing on their porch having a smoke or maybe my neighbor who loves to smoke macanudo cigars – yes that’s how sensitive my nose is these days.

Anyway, as I was saying, it was nice to have people telling us that they were proud of our accomplishment. I quit smoking on October 12th so I guess I’m closing in on 5 months without cigarettes. That is pretty good now that I think of it. I think I feel a little bit better health wise and we’ve certainly saved ourselves quite a bit of money that literally would have been up in smoke.