Plastic

Anyone who's read much of my blog in recents weeks will know that I've quit smoking, and I continue to be off cigarettes. But that's not what I really wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about the things that make me want cigarettes, the situations that seem to trigger the cigarette urge.

I've mastered most of them. One of the hardest in the early days was the coffee trigger. I'd get a cup of coffee and sit down and the urge to smoke would swarm over me, because coffee and cigarettes are two of the main food groups or something. Another toughie was the red light urge, which happens when you're driving and you hit a red light and the next natural move is to light a cigarette, I guess to keep your hands busy. This one hasn't been too bad because I didn't drive for six weeks, and when I started driving again, I'd already defeated the physiological craving.

But there's one that I still haven't quite mastered. If I go out to my workshop and sit down at my workbench, within about five minutes I'm having a full-blown nicotine fit. Every time. It's the weirdest thing. I don't think it's a case of having old nicotine on my tools or bench. I don't smell smoke or old ash trays. I just sit there, fiddle with my latest model (or would-be model, in this case) and my hand sneaks up to my shirt pocket and fumbles for a cigarette that isn't there, and it does it over and over. Somehow sitting at my workbench and smoking have become very closely interwoven.

I hope this isn't a permanent condition, because I really do like building models, but if working on a model is going to make me long for a Marlboro 100, it might be time to find a different hobby.

Anyone up for petroglyphs?