Suck it up!

I've been mulling over in my head what I'm going to spill on Ragnar for the newest post.  No point in prevaricating about the bush...

I have some pretty amazing people in my life, that I know.  I get to interact with them from time to time.  Some are just online, some I've known for years and keep in touch with online, others of course are family and former co-workers.  Sometimes, you can look around and watch someone pull the curtains back on their lives and allow you to peek in, and see an entirely different world.  I think that's a gift.  When anything is revealed to you, those are jewels, of various values, that they entrust to you.  Something I pride myself on is my trustworthiness.  If you confide in me, you can be pretty damned sure I won't use what you told me against you in any way, shape or form.

There was a tragedy in Moncton recently, when a crazed gunman one Wednesday evening shot dead three of our city's cops, and wounded two others.  This caused Moncton to ground to a screeching halt for the following day and a half, with police issuing lockdowns and businesses closing until they caught the gunman, who'd evaded capture until the wee hours of the following Friday morning.  It shook Monctonians and Canadians alike to the very core, not unlike the terrorist bombing that happened in Boston a few years ago.  Police from all over the country descended on our humble city with armored vehicles, helicopters, and fancy equipment in an effort to speed up the process of rooting out the killer. Those cops were very young and in the prime of their lives, with families.  It was painfully sad to watch the state funeral they were granted.

One of my friends from way back in my mid teens was a cop.  She retired very recently, just before these crazy events took place, thank God.  She stopped by to see us here at the house to catch up on things.  This woman is a real life superhero; someone who charged toward danger while others fled from it.  She talked about those days days when it felt like martial law in the city for a very short bit, which led to her telling us stories about her countless other adventures as a cop.  She's a role model for women everywhere.  Tell her she can't do something and she'll do it, just to show you you're wrong.  She talked with humorous intonation and detailed verbal imagery about some of her travels during her career, and I for one was just spellbound.  I've always loved tough, smart women, and she's as tough and smart as they come.  Not to mention honest, driven, forward and uncompromising.

Then at work, an old friend came shopping and saw me as I was doing my duties.  What a great thing is was to see this guy:  my very first boss when I got a job at a corner store up the street from where I lived.  I wound up working for him again a few years later for several more years, and I tell you, he is bar none the best boss I have ever worked for.  He's the standard to which all bosses are measured, for me, and for a whole lot of others who have ever worked for him.  He's gone from running a corner store, to a restaurant, to co-owning and managing a big time distribution outfit on a global scale.  Despite his level of success, he still talks to me and treats me as he always has.  He was like a big brother/father figure to a lot of his employees.  I can look to him and say he's the smartest man I've ever personally known, and maybe even the most generous.  Generous of his time, patience, and wisdom, among everything else.  His daughter is also a policewoman in the city, and was involved in things the day all the commotion began.  I also used to work with her at the store he ran, back in our teens.  She's another heroic role model.

I communicate regularly with a friend of mine whom I've known as a friend of my wife's, who used to work with her long ago.  We got to know each other better as the years have gone on, ironically the most in the last couple of years, where she's been away, since she's moved out west, then recently moved back to the Island.  She's quite a brilliant little spitfire, having authored three books, always working on more, and always looking for ways to change things for the best.  When I think of the phrase "go-getter", she springs to mind.  She encourages me to write, because she thinks I'm good at it.  A compliment of the highest order coming from an author of three books and counting!  It's interesting seeing her trajectory take its path, because she's always pushing to make it happen, and there's that anticipation of what's going to come next.

My daughter just graduated from high school last week, from the time I write this.  She was looking sparklingly beautiful in her grad gown as she accepted her diploma.  She was rather screwed out of her french immersion certification, that a few other students got (many others never got it either that you would think would have), and she got a $1,600 bursary that went unannounced on her getting her diploma because of some weird issues about the organizers not knowing it soon enough.  Whatever, she still rocked high school, is fluently french, and is starting at a renowned college for esthetics this week.  The future is tremendously bright for her.  To say we are proud parents would be a tragic understatement.

Then there's my wife, who was also a former co-worker at that same fateful store back when we were teens, also working for the same guy.  She wound up actually managing that store, then managing another one shortly after that.  After toiling away at other jobs, looking to find her niche, she's now an accomplished post office outlet manager with great success.  Nobody does what she does better than her, and her comrades would tell you exactly the same thing.  With pride.  Add to that, that she is a second degree black belt in taekwondo along with our daughter, and actually taught classes, even though she has debilitating arthritic ailments that requires intravenous medication that runs up to north of thirty grand a year.  I'm positive there's no one that does what she does.  She handles a lot of crap at her work, asserting herself appropriately and with conviction when things aren't always going right.  She's gotten awards from pretty much every business she's been involved with, including the post office.

Both of our families are chock full of siblings with success stories too, ranging from post office workers, to CN workers, sign shop owners, real estate agency, bookkeeping, you name it.  Everyone with careers they can be proud of and assured of their futures and families futures with.

Then there's me.

I had my humble beginnings, working in that corner store for a long time.  Seven years to be exact.  Seven years on the overnight shift.  Got robbed a couple of times, had to toughen up and throw guys out of the store that were... significantly larger than me.  One time actually physically lifting a guy up off his feet and throwing him out.  I chased a Mt. A football player through the parking lot when he stole a handful of skin books, and caught him and took them back.  Pretty impressive, eh?  No?  No, I don't think so either.

I was promoted to assistant manager of that store at one point, fairly early on.  But, as things would tend to recur, I dropped the ball, mis-arranged my priorities, and my future wife usurped that title from me.  She deserved it, I did not, just to be crystal clear.  I did wind up leaving the store to search for a more meaningful career other than working night shifts at a corner store, though, and found salvation via getting hired at a newly opened tissue plant here in Moncton.  Big bucks!  The starting wages were jaw dropping for a guy like me.  The future indeed looked bright.  Until I broke my foot on the job, couldn't find my path back to the promised land, and got laid off as the dubious accident #1 at that plant.  They politely told me not to re-apply there again.  Yay, me.

Then I dropped into a funk for quite a few years after that.  I took a computer college course, which sunk me $5,000 in debt with nothing, absolutely nothing, to show for it, as I got no jobs related to said education.  But I did get a gig with my old boss driving for his restaurant, which wasn't exactly lucrative, but I enjoyed it for a good 11 years.  I wanted to get away from it, though, seeing if I could do better cash-wide.  And I did, moderately, working for a drug store chain.  Three of them, actually, as I settled at the one I'm at now for the last nearly four years.  I'm a receiver.  An okay job, but I'm not management, and certainly not getting wages that would suggest I'm even close.

I've been playing drums for a long time, since I was 13 when my brother Greg got me a little drumset for Christmas.  I taught myself how to play, and wound up in a few bands, playing cover songs, but not very many gigs.  I got a three man group together with a friend, and we released a CD, which I've heard virtually no praise for outside of friends (certainly not family), and after one for-charity gig at Moncton's university, ceased to exist.  Since then I've done nothing for gigs.  No interest from any outfit that might've needed a drummer, though I haven't really put myself out there.  Conclusion:  I'm really not that good.

So now... when I talk to my friends who are police officers, business owners, aspiring lawyers, managers, authors, etc... and they tell me their stories.... then they ask me what I'm up to and what's happening in my life?  Forget it.  How in the hell do I follow up so many success stories with what has become known as the failure which is my life.  I don't, so I really don't offer anything.  "So how have you been?  What's going on?  What have you been up to?"

"Ah, you know, livin' the dream."  And I leave it at that.  I will not dissolve your amazing stories with my absolute lack of one.  A day in my life is getting up in the morning, going to my adequate but perhaps meaningless job, and putting my day in, though working quite hard, so I can come home and be at my house with my wife and daughter, which is the highlight of my day.  If that's all I can thrill you with for stories, then I think I'll just keep it to myself.  Your life is far, far more interesting.  And I'm not being sarcastic.  I'm being starkly honest.

A lot of this kind of thinking has come upon me in the last year plus.  I did something to my knee at the gym that popped something, making walking a lot more difficult than it used to, though I'm not some kind of cripple or anything.  My wife even goes through worse than this every day.  But I've gotten x-rays, an MRI, and various doctors and therapists to look at this damned knee, and they all say that, other than some arthritis, there's really nothing wrong.  So suck it up, boy.  On those Tuesdays and Fridays at work when the job is most physical and I can barely drive home to work at the end of those shifts because of that knee, to those days at the gym where I have to cut my workout short because I can barely stand, I guess it's just in my head and I'm some kind of bloody hypochondriac.  It's time I changed my mindset, I guess.

With all my depressive issues, I've asked to see a shrink.  Two months ago.  I haven't even gotten a referral yet.  Christ, it's a good thing I'm not suicidal, right?  I'm starting to sound like Rodney Dangerfield now.  Just take more meds and hope for the best in the meantime.  What?  Self loathing?  Resulting sometimes in injury?  Well, at least you're not dead!  It's all in your head anyway.  Suck it up, boy.

I at least better see an ENT about those wicked nosebleeds, the last 2 of which might've killed me.  For real.  I'm not kidding, or exagerrating.  Ask my wife, who saw blood spewing from my nose and mouth at the same time so badly I was choking on it.  Okie dokie, referral on the way.  Two months later, no word.  Thank God, no nosebleeds since then, but I never know, because I wake up with those.  There was one time years ago when I woke up in a pool of blood in bed because I didn't wake up.  Bah.... all in my head!  Suck it up, boy.

You might think this is about self pity, a woe-is-me type of trip.  Maybe it is!  But I acknowledge that I've made this bed that I sleep in.  So be it.  But I will do anything I can to make somebody else happy, at least.  In fact, it's my life's mission.  To make my wife happy, my daughter happy and successful, and any friends I have feel loved.  Because I love each and every one of them.  I even want to do what I can for a stranger to turn their day around.  I do that at work a lot, or I should say, try to.

But make no mistake... I can be one hell of an asshole.  I know that.  I nearly broke up my entire family once.  There's peace there, now that I'm not there to fuck it all up, at least.  I don't think I do enough around the house.  I'm certainly no handyman.  I never took the time to learn in my life.  Again, hello, that's cuzza me!  What can I say.

But anyway, life is good.  I'm alive, have house, family, job, food on the table, some friends, and I thank God for it all every day.  No, really.  I know a lot of people just say that.

I guess that's enough misery for one day, eh?  Sorry for this blog.  But it's been just... hanging there.

Now it isn't.

The Parallel Universes of Ragnar: The Purse

If you haven't seen it yet, here's the very first shot of mine at fictional writing in the form of a short story called....

The Purse

It was written from inspiration from a song from one of my favorite bands, with a link to that song at the bottom of the story.

Probably will do more of these.  It's a start, so don't expect Shakespeare or anything!

Feedback is welcome.

What's up, doc?

What I'm thinking is I might create another blog space to write about what's been going on with me specifically.  I've kind of found that the topics I've been exploring here are a bit redundant, and maybe self-focused... or maybe that was the point?  I forget.  By the way, I'm getting old.  At least I remember that.

But for those few of you who follow what's up on my blog here in the efforts of getting an update on the fabulous wellgoodgravy boy, I'll give you the gist of it while I figure out what I'm going to do with all that.

I know I talk about the depression thing a lot here, which is why I think a blog specifically dedicated to that might start up sooner than later, so this might be the last time you see me discuss it here.  I have had to deal with it more over the past few months or so than I have in a while.  There are many very large unresolved issues that will always remain that way, so I have to find a way of coping with the reality of them more than actually exterminating them.  'Them' being situational things.  I don't think anyone who's not depressed or has never been depressed can relate, or is qualified enough to give any kind of advice, not that I'm seeking it, although I have reached out very recently.

Alarmed that I might be sinking further out of reach than I expected to, I sought help from my doctor.  About 20 years ago, I began drug therapy in the form of Zoloft, which if you ever read up here, you've probably been told ad-nauseum a bajillion times.  It literally saved my life, that in combination with having a steel-nerved wife and daughter.  Long story short, since I've told it too many times already and I'm paranoid about that now, I think maybe I need more help in advancing my own wellness.

When I talked to my doc, he says we can either increase the dosage of my meds, or I can see a specialist, probably a shrink.  I opted to enlist an actual person over more meds.  The trouble there is, the waiting list to see one is probably at least a year.  So yeah, all that stuff you hear in the media these days about mental health being so important, that people should have access to it before it's too late in some cases?  It can't be that important.  I hear a whole lot about 'women's health issues' and money being thrown at it, which I completely condone!  I mean, women have to put up with the likes of ME a lot of the time, right?  But in the meantime, I have to take up residence on the back burner in hopes that things don't get too bad over the next year or whatever.  So, I have to be mindful of my own mindset.  Yeah, that's easy for those of us with mental health issues. <sarcasm>

All this isn't to say that I'm tough to get along with.  I talked with Janice recently about my openness with women, which has crashed and burned over the last couple of years.  While at the gym the other day, I made kind of a discovery, though.  While I was on the tortur.....errrr, stair climber, a woman got on the one next to me and began using it.  She struck up a conversation with me, asking me if I thought her pace was okay, and advice on how to use it.  I happily obliged, and gave her encouragement and told her not to worry as she's getting underway onto her fitness goals, saying we all have to start somewhere, and all of us here have.  She was quite happy to hear my words, it seemed.  I told Janice about this conversation, and discovered the revelation that I'm not so much scared of women, as much as I give what I receive, whether that's good or bad, who knows.  I won't be rude if someone's rude to me, though.  But, if a woman's closed off to me, then nope, if you don't serve the ball then I don't have one to volley back.

Anyway, that provided some relief, because I always figured I was actually an asshole that didn't know how to not be one.  I'm that hard on myself.  But, the whole return-the-volley theory makes a lot more sense to me.  My door might be closed, but it's not locked.

The thing there is, that though my door is closed, if it's completely ignored too, I will wind up locking it.  i.e. : When my daughter performed at a lounge here in town for a singing contest a few weeks ago, after the thing was over, lots of people mixed and mingled with each other, but I couldn't seem to find a way to blend in.  I'd speak a few words to people to be met with stone faces.  So I scurried out to the car and waited for my wife and daughter to come out and we could leave.  There's that, then.  I often feel like a weed among the healthy blades of grass.

I've come to realize how important that actual physical activity is to the mind, though.  If you're at a place like a gym, especially the one I go to where there's people there of all shapes, sizes and ages, you realize you're amongst those who have a similar goal.  As my old taekwondo Master  used to tell me, getting through the doors is the hardest exercise of all.  Making the habit to go is the next goal after piercing those doors.

That's not to say that I can't participate in any social events at all.  I'd never go to a work-related one, because I don't even feel like I fit in amongst my co-workers, but I can go to a movie or concert or whatever.  I had a ball with my buddy/brother Tim at a Honeymoon Suite show not long ago that he took me to.  I brought my wife to see Styx, and a few days ago, Bryan Adams.  I was all excited to see Honeymoon Suite again with Haywire and... cough... Glass Tiger too, until I found out the tickets were 90 freakin' dollars and each band played upwards of two hours.  No thanks.  My back vetoed that idea, knowing it would be a floor show, and standing even for an hour at church is a challenge to me.

Speaking of church, I don't do readings anymore there, either.  I still go, though.  But again, if I'm in a situation if I don't feel wanted and/or needed, I will effectively remove myself.  That saddened me a bit.  I did readings for many years.

While I was at the doc's, I had to address an ear issue that I have since I'd gotten a sinus infection, and was seen by a doctor on-call to get antibiotics.  She'd checked my ears and said, "um... you should make an appointment with your physician to get this taken care of."  So I did.  After he'd looked in my ears, "yup, that's quite an earfull you've got there."  Enter the syringe:  if you can picture one of those steel cake decorators, it squirts water into your ear and flushes it out.  He had to send in a veritable typhoon to wash this big greasy bastard of a waxball out of my ear canal.  The fifth time was the charm, though it couldn't be washed out.  He had to get the tweezers to pluck it out.  "THOOOM!"  "There, got it!"  Holy, I can actually hear!  You don't realize how deaf you are until you've had something like that taken out of your friggin' head.  He showed me the thing and I couldn't believe the size of it.  "That's not a record, but... that's pretty close!"  <-- a="" and="" as="" aural="" aybe="" birthday="" candles="" could="" couple="" doctor.="" e="" enamoured="" even="" excised="" for="" good="" he="" home="" i="" impressed="" intruder="" it="" janice="" make="" my="" nbsp="" of="" off.="" ou="" out="" p="" probably="" quite="" ring="" should="" show="" so="" t="" take="" that="" the="" thing.="" though.="" thought="" to="" toilet.="" was="" wasn="" wax="" with="" words="">
Anyway, as an aside, I also asked the doc to look at this spot on my nose, a sore kind of, that always peeled and wouldn't seem to heal.  I've had this at least a year or two now.  As it turned out, it's some kind of pre-cancerous sore, likely sun-related, that wasn't about to pose any threat to me at all, but gave me some heavy duty ointment to treat it with to heal it.  I'm glad I decided to get that looked at.  It might've been a bit more difficult to take care of if I'd just left it alone.  I would encourage anyone that might have something like that on their own bodies to get it looked at.  Better safe than sorry.

Janice is doing good, although her gut issues have been challenging her, as well as very frequent headaches.  It isn't blood pressure related, that's for sure.  She goes to the gym and gives it her all, and her b/p was perfect as of last night.  Her gut issues, though... she certainly needs to have that addressed.  She's had tests done and not much progress in spite of it.  She's seeing a doc, actually a couple, soon to discuss more action on the issue.  I've said it before, I'll say it again, nobody is tougher than she is.  No one I know, at least.

Then there's Alexandra, getting ready to graduate from school in a few weeks.  She'll jump right back into college for the summer for cosmetics, and then take it from there.  A bit of a tough time yesterday, though, when she went to the doctor where they needed a biopsy for some kind of issue with her tongue.  We thought they'd just swab it.  As it turns out, it required freezing, needles, and a sort of hole puncher to get what they wanted.  I mean, bloody hell, man!  Really??  Is science not advanced enough to get a sample by easier means than that??  Anyway, we're awaiting results on that.  It's benign, whatever it is, but it's a nuisance.

That's going to be about it for now at the Station.  We'll see where I go from here for blogs.

Fire up the colortinis and watch the pictures fly through the air.

Good day.