Hi wally,
Glad to hear that you had a good time with your granddaughter, but sorry to hear about the recent gambling.
On the + side, you are still here posting, and continuing to take positive steps to help get gamble free. Telling your mother is a nice step for adding accountability, and you can already see it helping with it being a motivation to not want to let her down despite the urges.
Soon after I first joined this forum, one of the most useful things I found was making a list of ways in which I could make myself more accountable, and barriers I could put in place to make it more difficult to gamble. I also try to regularly review the list to see what items are working well and if any new ones can be added.
Given that you have the day off work and your current motivation to stay gamble-free is strong, perhaps you could give something like that a go.
Some examples of things to consider
- Telling one or more other people about what you are going through
- Reducing or removing access to funds
- Providing someone else with visibility of money that you spend. There are a number of ways to do this one such as allowing someone else to see bank statements, keeping a spreadsheet tracking all spend and where it goes, etc.
- Getting excluded from any Casinos that are in your area.
These are just some examples, but hopefully, they might help with this. I look forward to following your list if you do decide to give this activity a go, and feel like sharing once you are ready.