That's Me! That's Me! episode # 18 with Monica K.

**Julia J.** (0:23)
Hi, everybody, welcome to That's Me, That's Me. I'm Julia J.

**Monica K.** (0:26)
And I'm Monica K.

**Julia J.** (0:28)
Each week, we invite a guest to come on our show to share their experience of what brought them back to their second meeting, and the moment they began to relate and say to themselves, that's me, that's me. Welcome back.

**Monica K.** (0:43)
Hello, Julia. We've been laughing our asses off already.

**Julia J.** (0:47)
Monica and I had our, this was the first time we've ever had like a serious laughing jag, as my dad would say, before the podcast started. And we had to like pull ourselves together, take off our like layers of clothes because we're sweating because we're laughing so hard. So forgive us for the many giggles, I'm assuming.

**Monica K.** (1:07)
Or join in.

**Julia J.** (1:11)
Okay, so how was your week?

**Monica K.** (1:13)
Oh, I know I'm wiping tears, laughing tears. A really good week.
God, we're all a little flummoxed. Our plan is flip-flopping a little bit today. So we're just rebooting and taking a deep breath. And going forward, my week was great. Oh, thank God, I got out in the woods this weekend, and we went down to Berea and did a beautiful hike in the mountains for about five hours. Really tough climb, and it felt great. I just, you know, it was one of those, I just needed a, I felt like I needed a mental, physical reboot. Like I just had this weirdly, I talked about it last week, this really, I'm trying not to beat myself up about it, just a really odd energy, like low, super low energy last week after some things that had been happening in responsibilities. So it just felt great to like have nothing to do but walk in the woods and meet new people or not, or just walk. So that was great. And then I did this, you know, I spent some time yesterday.
I always forget, you know, it's so much fun to go down to Central Office and visit and hang out and look at the literature. And I have this, I made the same goal for 2025, but never did it. So I have this new kind of soft commitment to read every AA pamphlet.

**Julia J.** (2:30)
Oh.

**Monica K.** (2:31)
Yeah. And if you don't know, they're all numbered, because we do the inventory once a year, you have to count them all.
So they're all numbered. So I just bought the first four, and I'm just going to start doing some, you know, back to basic reading.

**Julia J.** (2:44)
Wow. That's impressive.

**Monica K.** (2:45)
Yeah. I mean, their pamphlets are short, you know, what they look like.

**Julia J.** (2:49)
That's a big commitment.

**Monica K.** (2:50)
Yeah. But you know, just start picking them away, picking them off, and I don't know, just, you know, just a lovely week. What about you? What have you been doing?

**Julia J.** (3:00)
I also had a good reset weekend. I have a really close friend that not in the program, but lived and we worked together here in Cincinnati for about eight years, and she moved to last July to Philadelphia, where she was from, and spent the weekend. She came just solo. She has a husband and son that are back in Philly, but she came down to see me, and we stayed in a hotel. We had like a girls weekend, so I like slept in the hotel room with her. It was so fun. Yeah, and we did all sorts of, we just like hung out and laughed, and I don't know, it was really good. It was really good.

**Monica K.** (3:40)
In here in Cincinnati, she came here.

**Julia J.** (3:42)
Yeah, she came here and visited.

**Monica K.** (3:42)
What do you do with, what do you show people when they come to town? Like, what'd you guys, did you do anything?

**Julia J.** (3:46)
Well, because she lived here for so long, it was like doing a little bit of a, like, you know, we ate at like her favorite restaurant.

**Monica K.** (3:52)
This is your life, so and so.

**Julia J.** (3:54)
And we didn't actually eat at the restaurant. We, the Saturday night, we carried out at 5 p.m. and ate dinner in bed and went, fell asleep at 11 Like, it was awesome. It was a great sleepover. I love it. Yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, for, I don't know, I feel like as a mom, that's like a dream is being able to kind of tap out for, you know, 24 or 48 hours. Though I get phone calls constantly, but that's okay. They love me and they miss me.