Been a while since I did a RT, hasn't it? No not a re-tweet.
Speaking of which, I have joined Twitter. Again. I won't leave this time, though I probably won't go on it every day. To this point, at least, I haven't. Just now and then. I find it a bit dull, but that's just me.
Anxiously awaiting vacation, starting next Friday after work, during which time we will be attending two KISS shows here in the maritimes, the first of which we're bringing my old buddy Darren to see his first KISS concert. And it'll be a doozy. From what I've seen, the most creative stage since the Hot in the Shade tour, which was just flat out awesome.
Glad to see my Red Sox are kings of the hill for the time being. But the drag of being a Sox fan is watching the team suck out loud after the all-star break. I'm hoping that won't happen for once.
Still going to the gym. At least twice a week. With the workouts I'm doing, that's all it calls for because it makes you fuggin' sore for awhile afterwards. No pain no gain. Good workouts. I feel the results, don't necessarily see them, but I'm likely my own worst critic.
The reports coming out of San Diego Comic Con about the RoboCop remake are good. Can't wait to see it. It's supposed to be a fresh take on Officer Alex Murphy's story, with the satire intact. But it's hard to remake a Paul Verhoeven movie (see: Total Recall).
Speaking of movies, one that I've taken to absolutely adore is "Moon", directed by Duncan Jones - David Bowie's kid. He did "Source Code" as a follow-up, which is also awesome. I've watched "Moon" probably ten times now after I got the blu-ray. It's hard to talk about without giving away the most major plot point, but suffice to say, after you've seen it you most likely will want to watch it again. I say Duncan Jones could well be the next Chris Nolan.
Also speaking of Nolan, looking forward to his next, "Interstellar", though it's only going to be out Christmas 2014. Quite the cast lineup he has for it too.
If there's one thing I'm tired of in movies, though, that'd have to be the whole alien invasion/end of the world angle. Enough already. "Moon", for the record, is alien-less, and actually shows hope for the future. That doesn't make it happy-go-lucky though.
Conspiracy theories. How many people like them? A lot. Too many. Unless you're whip smart and objective about the subject matter, though, I think clamming up is your best option lest you look like a loon. I enjoy the odd CT. But I don't know how a person can constantly live day to day suspicious of everyone and everything like that. Want to change the world? Hold the door open for someone. Offer a smile, especially when it's unexpected. Give a compliment. Thank God for what you have, and think about it. Empathize. That's how you change the world.
My wife makes the best wine around. Especially killer is her strawberry stuff. Drop in for a glass.
I will put it out there, that I'm not a real good guy I don't think. I've alienated a lot of people in the last few years. I've become somewhat of a hermit even. But life is a learning experience, and the more experience you get, the better at it you become. Hopefully. But it's to the point I almost fear people. Not people I don't know, but people I do know. I've disappointed so many that I'm afraid of who's next, so I just take the detour.
There are also those who've disappointed me though. People who say they care or are concerned, but then pull disappearing acts. I am so through with that. I am, regrettably, an over-sensitive guy and I can't change that, though I have hardened over the years. I guess the way I deal with it is disassociation. But I'm scared to death of letting anyone get too close anymore. If you're reading this and you're one of the ones feeling ignored, now you know, it's not ignorance. It's me. And these days it's a lot harder for me to believe you're genuine. That doesn't mean you aren't!
August 8 will be the anniversary of my mom's passing. It'll be 15 years. I have dreams about Mom just about every night. I am a momma's boy. Just because she's not with us anymore doesn't change that. All that is good about me is because of her.
One of Janice's colleagues passed away recently. The wife of another friend died suddenly too. Events like that leave you wondering, what does anything really even mean? Should they mean anything? You don't know how you're going to feel about someone's death until they're gone, no matter what you think you know. Then comes the regret: How you've thought about them, the things you've done and said, etc. Was it all worth it? Anyone's funeral could be a week from today.
I have to shake my head at the gun problems they have down south of us. Ultimately, it's none of our business though. Unless their guns cross our border and begin firing off, which actually often happens. But it's like Afghanistan or Syria. Outsiders can try to change how things are there, but the change has to come from within, if they want it enough.
Loblaws is taking over Shoppers Drug Mart. The wife and I have shares in SDM, not many, but they went up a lot after that takeover. Time will tell whether this is a good thing or not, but I just hope SDM isn't going to be run the way Loblaws runs its supermarkets around here. The frequent recalls on their products and reports of lacklustre customer service makes me uneasy about this turn of events.
I guess that's all there is to say for the time being. God bless and see you next post.
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Random Thoughts, July 20, 2013
Life is tough. If it wasn't, it would be so bucking foring. I make mistakes and often write about them here, but I tend to point the finger too much, in the past. Now I point it in the mirror, then ask myself, "so what do we do to bring balance to this?" This is how I want to translate my blogs now. I could have called one "Something's gotta give" I think, but Ragnar specifically has too much history.
Thursday, May 9, 2013
A speck in the light
I wasn't really sure whether to keep the blog thing going or not, but since on a day like this, a Thursday, I have so much free time on my hands, why not. I don't know what I'm going to say at this point in time but let's see where it takes us.
It's been since before Christmas that I've posted, that's quite a while. Well, Christmas was good. Very quiet, but good. We didn't have a lot to spend on each other for sure, but we had each other here and that was enough. The winter was long and hard. Quite a fair amount of snow and lots of cold temperatures, and the positive side of that is that it makes you appreciate spring and summer a lot more.
The year got off to a bit of a rough start. Our little guy Crocky the cat was profusely sick, throwing up all the time and losing a crazy amount of weight. After bringing him to the vet, we were referred to an animal hospital in Riverview where they kept him for a night hooked up on an I.V. to get his fluids back. Long story short, it fixed him up, $700 later. We were already broke, so we opted for a financing thing called PetCard, which we'll be paying on for the next couple of years. Bottom line is, we have our boy back and all is well again in the Cook household. It was interesting when we brought him home, because his brother Marbles kept a watchful eye over him the whole time. It was sweet and sad at the same time to see. We realized how engrained Crocky is to the household during that very short time when he was gone. Janice and me couldn't sleep, and we never talked. Not because we were mad or upset with each other, but because we missed our little guy and were so worried. You have to see Crocky snuggled up to Janice to actually understand the momma/son bond that they have, he gives her head-butt kisses and lays on her belly, and just totally soaks up the love she gives him. He loves laying on my lap to watch TV and does his 'Swiffer Kitty' routine, in which he lays on the floor and tosses and turns for our amusement, knowing the entertainer that he is. When we brought him to the hospital, once we left without him Janice broke down. I wanted to, but one of us needs to be strong. She had visions of him not coming home, I think. But it was a happy time when we picked him up the next morning and brought him into the house again.
Our little girl is doing just fine these days, doing well in school and excelling in her construction classes. She's a shining light in her class dominated by boys, showing a lot of them how it's really done, which is exactly how I expected it to be. She has aspirations at this point of getting into a sheet metal trade when she graduates, while doing the cosmetician thing at work in the meantime. She's been doing the Maritime Idol thing, which seems to have stalled, but I don't regard it with very much credibility anymore. She continues to sing and is showing a lot more interest in guitar now, which I'm real glad about. In this age of autotune and multi-singer 'bands', I'd sooner see her forge her own path. She has a friend named Sarah who also plays guitar, whom she met up with at Maritime Idol, and as it turns out Sarah's dad is a very old friend of mine I've known since I was about 5. Darren and I caught up on things a little bit, and it's amazing the things that can happen in life that shape your path. It's really good being in touch with him again.
Janice is doing pretty well, still struggling with constant pain but coping with it better than probably 99% of how others would. She has remnants of Bells Palsy that aren't all that obvious, but at least she got past that nuisance of a hurdle for the most part. We train together at the gym with a cardio/weights program pretty faithfully, and it's a good thing for us to be doing in spite of the soreness that ensues after each workout. She actually runs on a treadmill for 15 minutes before doing weights. Normally our sessions last up to two hours, but seem a lot shorter because we do it together. Sometimes we'll opt to do even more. We do the gym thing two or three times a week, so we make it worth it when we actually go. Janice is excelling at work, of course, getting recognition from the place it counts the most, Canada Post itself. There are times that it proves stressful, but she's tougher than anybody else, so she just comes home and vents a bit and she's alright. She does love her job.
As for me, it's steady as she goes. I still deal with this depression thing, something I've come to terms with that I will always have, but I learn as I go. The blessing about that is that I can help others by relating with them. I make no bones about the fact of what I'm dealing with, because the stigma is just bullshit. There's absolutely nothing to be gained by being ashamed of dealing with mental illness. I know people talk, people will say things no matter what. That isn't something I can control, but it is something I can make a choice of whether or not to care about, like everyone else like me. That's probably the biggest enemy facing us depressives. I know about the whole dial-a-mood labels that we get, and I actually understand it. Janice has to live with me every day, and if I have a bad day at work or something, she has to deal with my behaviour until I can get over it. There are flare-ups, and there always will be. I have a four inch 'burn' mark on my left arm healing right now that I incurred myself from scratching along with a small cut over my right eye. I'm not a danger to anyone else, but I can be to myself I guess. It's why I'm in treatment. Perhaps though, talk therapy is in order, because there are issues ongoing that I am not making any progress on, namely my fear of people in general and especially large gatherings. I haven't even seen any of my own siblings in over a year. I was keeping track of them on facebook, but decided to eliminate the account because of so much negativity, which doesn't exactly jibe with what I'm dealing with these days.
There was quite an episode that I dealt with recently that was a bit harrowing, in that I faced another round of intense nosebleeds. I have septum issues that led to a perforation in my bridge, so I have to clean that hole out from time to time. One night I wound up scraping a vein, I guess, and the blood came forth with a fury. So bad, in fact, that in the bathroom, where I was pinching my nose waiting for it to clot, that it began coming out of my mouth. It was vicious. After a half hour of nearly choking on my own blood, I relented and we went to the hospital, where they eventually got it to stop. It left me pretty dazed and out of it, for sure. They didn't cauterize it though, which left me puzzled, so after several nosebleeds after that (waking up with them, having them start out of the blue, etc.), I made an appointment with my family doc to have my nose burnt, which did the trick. That doesn't hurt, by the way. The worst of it might be that sensation you have when pop goes up your nose, that kind of burning feeling, which makes you sneeze your ass off, which I can certainly live with.
But all is not dark and dreary. I actually applied for disability benefits relating to my depression and got compensation dating back several years, which allowed us to do a lot of things around the house here that we wouldn't have otherwise gotten done, like replacing basement windows and the patio door; replacing carpet upstairs with fresh laminate flooring; getting plumbing taken care of, though not just yet, and getting our 3 year old never-used-yet dishwasher hooked up; getting a brand new barbecue for the summer; paying off some bills, and basically, just getting to the point where we're not living paycheck to paycheck anymore, at least for now. There's so much more we want to get done, like drywall, tearing up and re-paving the driveway, new siding and a new roof, etc. But all things in due time. We want the curbside appeal of the house to go up next, so that sometime in our 50's, we might be able to sell and get that bungalow we've always dreamed of. This house has gone through quite a drastic metamorphosis since we moved in.
So as you can see by the above paragraph, there's always light to temper the dark. Or as I heard in a song once in a line ripped straight from the Bible, 'darkness is just a speck in the light'. Before closing this out, I do want to give a shout-out to my longtime friend Tim, who's always been around and always keeps a watchful eye out for me, for God knows whatever reason, but I'm in debt to him for being there. Outside of my wife and daughter, he's the one person who's been true-blue and unfailing. I have to stop short of calling him a guardian angel, because of his and my history together, neither of us can get any kind of 'angelic' designation! But he is certainly a brother from another mother. If you're reading this, big fella, my thanks and gratitude to you for all you do.
And thanks for checking into my humble blog. God bless and see you again soon.
It's been since before Christmas that I've posted, that's quite a while. Well, Christmas was good. Very quiet, but good. We didn't have a lot to spend on each other for sure, but we had each other here and that was enough. The winter was long and hard. Quite a fair amount of snow and lots of cold temperatures, and the positive side of that is that it makes you appreciate spring and summer a lot more.
The year got off to a bit of a rough start. Our little guy Crocky the cat was profusely sick, throwing up all the time and losing a crazy amount of weight. After bringing him to the vet, we were referred to an animal hospital in Riverview where they kept him for a night hooked up on an I.V. to get his fluids back. Long story short, it fixed him up, $700 later. We were already broke, so we opted for a financing thing called PetCard, which we'll be paying on for the next couple of years. Bottom line is, we have our boy back and all is well again in the Cook household. It was interesting when we brought him home, because his brother Marbles kept a watchful eye over him the whole time. It was sweet and sad at the same time to see. We realized how engrained Crocky is to the household during that very short time when he was gone. Janice and me couldn't sleep, and we never talked. Not because we were mad or upset with each other, but because we missed our little guy and were so worried. You have to see Crocky snuggled up to Janice to actually understand the momma/son bond that they have, he gives her head-butt kisses and lays on her belly, and just totally soaks up the love she gives him. He loves laying on my lap to watch TV and does his 'Swiffer Kitty' routine, in which he lays on the floor and tosses and turns for our amusement, knowing the entertainer that he is. When we brought him to the hospital, once we left without him Janice broke down. I wanted to, but one of us needs to be strong. She had visions of him not coming home, I think. But it was a happy time when we picked him up the next morning and brought him into the house again.
Our little girl is doing just fine these days, doing well in school and excelling in her construction classes. She's a shining light in her class dominated by boys, showing a lot of them how it's really done, which is exactly how I expected it to be. She has aspirations at this point of getting into a sheet metal trade when she graduates, while doing the cosmetician thing at work in the meantime. She's been doing the Maritime Idol thing, which seems to have stalled, but I don't regard it with very much credibility anymore. She continues to sing and is showing a lot more interest in guitar now, which I'm real glad about. In this age of autotune and multi-singer 'bands', I'd sooner see her forge her own path. She has a friend named Sarah who also plays guitar, whom she met up with at Maritime Idol, and as it turns out Sarah's dad is a very old friend of mine I've known since I was about 5. Darren and I caught up on things a little bit, and it's amazing the things that can happen in life that shape your path. It's really good being in touch with him again.
Janice is doing pretty well, still struggling with constant pain but coping with it better than probably 99% of how others would. She has remnants of Bells Palsy that aren't all that obvious, but at least she got past that nuisance of a hurdle for the most part. We train together at the gym with a cardio/weights program pretty faithfully, and it's a good thing for us to be doing in spite of the soreness that ensues after each workout. She actually runs on a treadmill for 15 minutes before doing weights. Normally our sessions last up to two hours, but seem a lot shorter because we do it together. Sometimes we'll opt to do even more. We do the gym thing two or three times a week, so we make it worth it when we actually go. Janice is excelling at work, of course, getting recognition from the place it counts the most, Canada Post itself. There are times that it proves stressful, but she's tougher than anybody else, so she just comes home and vents a bit and she's alright. She does love her job.
As for me, it's steady as she goes. I still deal with this depression thing, something I've come to terms with that I will always have, but I learn as I go. The blessing about that is that I can help others by relating with them. I make no bones about the fact of what I'm dealing with, because the stigma is just bullshit. There's absolutely nothing to be gained by being ashamed of dealing with mental illness. I know people talk, people will say things no matter what. That isn't something I can control, but it is something I can make a choice of whether or not to care about, like everyone else like me. That's probably the biggest enemy facing us depressives. I know about the whole dial-a-mood labels that we get, and I actually understand it. Janice has to live with me every day, and if I have a bad day at work or something, she has to deal with my behaviour until I can get over it. There are flare-ups, and there always will be. I have a four inch 'burn' mark on my left arm healing right now that I incurred myself from scratching along with a small cut over my right eye. I'm not a danger to anyone else, but I can be to myself I guess. It's why I'm in treatment. Perhaps though, talk therapy is in order, because there are issues ongoing that I am not making any progress on, namely my fear of people in general and especially large gatherings. I haven't even seen any of my own siblings in over a year. I was keeping track of them on facebook, but decided to eliminate the account because of so much negativity, which doesn't exactly jibe with what I'm dealing with these days.
There was quite an episode that I dealt with recently that was a bit harrowing, in that I faced another round of intense nosebleeds. I have septum issues that led to a perforation in my bridge, so I have to clean that hole out from time to time. One night I wound up scraping a vein, I guess, and the blood came forth with a fury. So bad, in fact, that in the bathroom, where I was pinching my nose waiting for it to clot, that it began coming out of my mouth. It was vicious. After a half hour of nearly choking on my own blood, I relented and we went to the hospital, where they eventually got it to stop. It left me pretty dazed and out of it, for sure. They didn't cauterize it though, which left me puzzled, so after several nosebleeds after that (waking up with them, having them start out of the blue, etc.), I made an appointment with my family doc to have my nose burnt, which did the trick. That doesn't hurt, by the way. The worst of it might be that sensation you have when pop goes up your nose, that kind of burning feeling, which makes you sneeze your ass off, which I can certainly live with.
But all is not dark and dreary. I actually applied for disability benefits relating to my depression and got compensation dating back several years, which allowed us to do a lot of things around the house here that we wouldn't have otherwise gotten done, like replacing basement windows and the patio door; replacing carpet upstairs with fresh laminate flooring; getting plumbing taken care of, though not just yet, and getting our 3 year old never-used-yet dishwasher hooked up; getting a brand new barbecue for the summer; paying off some bills, and basically, just getting to the point where we're not living paycheck to paycheck anymore, at least for now. There's so much more we want to get done, like drywall, tearing up and re-paving the driveway, new siding and a new roof, etc. But all things in due time. We want the curbside appeal of the house to go up next, so that sometime in our 50's, we might be able to sell and get that bungalow we've always dreamed of. This house has gone through quite a drastic metamorphosis since we moved in.
So as you can see by the above paragraph, there's always light to temper the dark. Or as I heard in a song once in a line ripped straight from the Bible, 'darkness is just a speck in the light'. Before closing this out, I do want to give a shout-out to my longtime friend Tim, who's always been around and always keeps a watchful eye out for me, for God knows whatever reason, but I'm in debt to him for being there. Outside of my wife and daughter, he's the one person who's been true-blue and unfailing. I have to stop short of calling him a guardian angel, because of his and my history together, neither of us can get any kind of 'angelic' designation! But he is certainly a brother from another mother. If you're reading this, big fella, my thanks and gratitude to you for all you do.
And thanks for checking into my humble blog. God bless and see you again soon.
Life is tough. If it wasn't, it would be so bucking foring. I make mistakes and often write about them here, but I tend to point the finger too much, in the past. Now I point it in the mirror, then ask myself, "so what do we do to bring balance to this?" This is how I want to translate my blogs now. I could have called one "Something's gotta give" I think, but Ragnar specifically has too much history.
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Welcome Christmas, Bring Your Light!
It's Saturday morning here at my house at exactly 7:44. It was a rather cold, dry night, with our furnace making the house a little warm due to our experimenting leaving it up one extra degree, and my nose kind of fried to a crisp and my lips cracked up, so here I am wide awake while my sweet wife sleeps sitting propped up in bed beside me. She has to do that to help her with her breathing issues. That's a polite way of saying she snores.
It's been a little while since I've posted an update on how things have been going around here, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to do so since I can't immediately go back to sleep. I don't know how many people still check into this place to view my ramblings, but I thought I'd talk for awhile anyway.
My little girl Alexandra is doing very well in school this year. Her focus is on construction for the most part, and that's her home room class. It's one that's filled with all boys except for herself and two other girls. We had a parent-teacher meeting not long ago, and he told us that Alexandra is doing very well up to this point, one of the better students in the class. That's no surprise to us. As long as she shows interest, we know she will do very well. The only class she's struggling with a bit is political sciences, a class she chose herself. I do believe, though, that she'll pick up and come back to eventually achieve success. I have no worries. We don't really place pressure on her to do well, apart from picking on her to do her homework and study sometimes. We just always emphasize to her how important it is to do well in school to advance her chances of a brighter future. There's only one thing that truly stresses me out about her academic ambitions, that being her supposed desire to go to university or college in England. I don't believe at all that it's because of any schooling or anything educational that's offered there. We do our best to try to ground her vision and try to make her review her best options to further herself realistically, without her compromising her future goals or dreams. The fact is, though, when she graduates in a year and a half, the world belongs to her and she can do what she wants. We can only influence her as best we can as to what is not a good idea.
All this makes me reflect on when I was a kid her age and how I was with my own mom. Things were a bit similar. I grew up in a poor household... we pretty much live in a poor household. I had this feeling of invincibility, like most kids... like Alexandra does now. I saw myself with a career that would come to me no matter what I did at the time, without a plan or any kind of action. Alexandra seems to think that this England thing will magically materialize before her eyes, with no contingency plan. I defied my mother and her warnings about the future to come... Alexandra does the same with us, though she's equipping herself far better for her future than either Janice or me ever did. I felt like I had all the answers... Alexandra thinks she's got everything down too. All this considered, I sympathize with the stage she's at in her life, and I know how her mind works. We have to balance very carefully stressing the importance of her future while at the same time allowing her to be a kid while she still can be. The beauty and the curse of being a parent is that we get to watch our kids travel the roads that we've already been on, and try to warn them of the potholes, rough patches and dead ends ahead of them. But kids are cocky. They will drive those roads like they're driving Hummers when they're only modest Hyundai Accents; adequately endowed, but unprepared for the worst. Parenting is unique indeed. I find myself recalling what it was like when I was a teenager myself, trying to set myself back into that frame of mind, so I can readily prepare myself as to effectively influence my own little girl. It's a bit different in my case compared to many other kids, in that I was fatherless throughout my teen years, though my mother did an incredible job filling in that role as well. A lot of kids today are growing up with just one parent. I definitely feel for them. Indeed, it's quite heartbreaking thinking about it. Many single parent experiences are very positive though. I know my mother was the very best person for the task that she had in raising me. It wasn't easy!
One of my little girl's dreams is that of becoming a singer. She's participating in a thing called Maritime Idol, in which a bunch of kids from around the Maritimes are competing for that title. The format is a bit strange, though, with no real judges except for the very small live audience and the internet crowd. Some might say that having no judges spares the kids the potentially harsh criticisms that lie before them after each performance. My answer to that is, bullshit! The kids NEED the harsh criticisms if it's due to them. How are they to improve if they don't have the tools to do so, one of the main ones being the due criticism? Sometimes we do well and get accolades. Sometimes we trip up and get pasted about it and have to find the means to pick ourselves back up. Life is about triumphs and failures. Welcome to life on planet earth. So... we've attended two of these Maritime Idol things now, with Alexandra doing very well at the first one, and okay at the second one. There were other kids participating that absolutely did not belong on a stage at all, at least at this point. The potential for embarrassment is extreme for allowing some of these kids to continue week after week when they clearly don't have 'the stuff'. It can be a complete pleasure being onstage and performing. But when you're a kid, if you don't perform well, it can be hell once you step off the stage and face your peers. That's where the responsibility of judges comes in. Part of their job is to advise contestants how they can better themselves. These kids have none of that. This is where I'm conflicted. I am proud of Alexandra just for getting up on a stage and singing in front of a bunch of strangers and for the internet world to see, much less her Mom and Dad. Being a true-bred Cook, I also believe in honesty. If she comes off the stage and asks me how she did, I will tell her, truly and bluntly, with consideration for her soft heart, unlike an actual judge. Her first outing, she did surprisingly well, with me believing... albeit with bias... that she had the performance of the night among her other ten opponents. I told her that too, but also told her how she could improve the next week. She took it all in stride, but basically ignored most of my advice. So in the second week, she didn't do quite as well, although she over-challenged herself with her song selections, which I also warned her about. Other kids this week fared far worse though, and I feel badly for them, because I fear the judgment they receive will be from their peers in the hallways in school. That's the danger of no real judges. Kids can be cruel, and that's what worries me a bit with Alexandra facing her friends, and would-be friends. She did, however though, take our advice this time out, after some tears and disappointment, and picked two country songs for next week that are clearly within her abilities. I look forward to her actually having fun with these songs. But as parents, we already know she's going to do her best, and we already are proud of her. It doesn't matter if she advances or wins anything. She's already won in our eyes by stepping up.
What a year this has been for my wife. Janice has had struggle after struggle placed in front of her as the months progress toward the end of '12. From enduring a harsh bout with the flu, to her sister Debbie's passing, to her bout with Bell's Palsy, to her trying times as post office manager at work, to enduring trial after trial with her chronic arthritis and fibromyalgia, to putting up with me, even. She says she hasn't been quite the same since BP had struck this past summer. Though it's actually passed, it's left residual effects that left her face still numb and painful on one side. She had to stop her medication with Enbrel for the duration of BP, since Enbrel is an immune suppressant to aid in the treatment of her psoriatic arthritis. That led to her stiffening up and store, though she did combat these effects by stubbornly going to the gym regularly. Imagine doing an intense weight workout with heavy weights for a good solid two hours, then going home and going to bed, waking up the next morning. That stiff, sore feeling? Janice feels like that all of the time because of her arthritis, only worse. So I don't know quite how she maintains a positive outlook. She does say that her favorite times are when she comes home from work and gets to be with Alexandra and me, especially the days when neither of us work. When Janice and I first got together, we worked together. She was actually my boss. This enabled us to be together all the time, and we thrived on it. Where a lot of couples need that time apart, time apart for us is actually dreaded. We talk sometimes of how it would be if she only had a post office in a store where I was receiver too, so we'd be together at work again. People always say, "you guys wouldn't get along and your relationship would suffer." To which we say, no, we've been there already and that didn't happen. If something like mom and pop stores still thrived today, which they don't, I could envision us owning one. Only like the old days, I'd want her to be the boss! She's the smart one between us. She even makes a little more money than I do, at least marginally. Hell, I wish she made a lot more. I don't have this macho male pride thing going on, but I am very proud of my wife. She's a warrior. A beautiful warrior.
And then there's me. Ah, what a year it's been. It certainly saw a year of changes over what 2011 was. That year was a learning experience, to put it politely. On the one hand, you have the notion in your head of how people see you. Then you have the reality of how they see you reveal itself, and the shock sets in. I still recover from it day to day, really. It certainly isn't as bad as it was one year ago, but the shock waves sent through my system of the actions of one particular friend and some family during that time have led me to realize that I'm far, far more damaged from it than I even first believed. I have a doctor's appointment this coming week to try to address my mental and emotional issues, which unfortunately actually lead to physical issues as well. I have said before that I am alive today because my wife made sure of it. At no time in my life has that been as true as the past year and a half. Without her, I'm sure, positive that I would lose the will to live and wither away during times like this. Through the first part of the year, I took on the misguided notion that I could wean off of my meds and regain some of what I had before I went on them. While I'm on them, there's a sort of 'fog' in my head, though not actually hindering in any way, but it keeps me balanced, so to speak. However, if I am on them, I have a much better sense of reasoning and balance. Although even that's been challenged in the last little while. I remember my tae kwon do master telling me as I was learning my forms and techniques not to beat myself up over my lack of progress at times, that trying to move forward was all that mattered, because as long as you do that the rest will take care of itself. There are times that finding the will to move forward can be challenging for a man of my condition, though. However, I am aware of all of it, and I am taking steps to advance. As they say, knowing is half the battle. My wife is definitely an inspiration. As far as I'm concerned, she's been through far, far worse than me this year, although they say these things are relative. When you're faced with adversity, you find out what you're truly made of, and you really don't know until then what you really are made of. It often takes retrospect, looking back upon what you went through. "I got through that?"
It will be a very different Christmas for us here in a way. We will be happy, though. We have a roof over our heads, warmth on the cold winter nights, food and drink and especially, each other. In our little family of three (five if you count Crocky and Marbles, which really we should), we have never suffered any kind of crisis. Nothing that threatened to tear us apart or divide us. Some situations have arose where we perceived there was jealousy at our tightness, but none of it ever phased us. Nor will it. We love each other too much around here. The one thing that will make this Christmas slightly different is our financial situation. Money has seldom been as tight as it is these days. With winter being here and the oil furnace burning, we have to tighten our purse strings more than usual as we struggle to pay debts and bills. Just this past Thursday when Alexandra did her Maritime Idol thing, I couldn't even scrape together $7 to go until the very last minute, and we're over a week removed until the next payday, with absolutely no Christmas shopping done because the funds just don't exist. But this season, we will eat well, we will be warm, and we will have fun, because we have all the things that matter to us. We'll be like the Who's in Whoville after the Grinch took all the stuff. Still happy and still full of spirit and love.
And I will leave this blog on that positive note. If I don't get to address this blog again until after the season, have a great Christmas and a splendid New Year. And thank you so very much for visiting my humble blog.
Now fire up those colortinis and watch the pictures as they fly through the air.
Good day.
It's been a little while since I've posted an update on how things have been going around here, so I thought I'd take this opportunity to do so since I can't immediately go back to sleep. I don't know how many people still check into this place to view my ramblings, but I thought I'd talk for awhile anyway.
My little girl Alexandra is doing very well in school this year. Her focus is on construction for the most part, and that's her home room class. It's one that's filled with all boys except for herself and two other girls. We had a parent-teacher meeting not long ago, and he told us that Alexandra is doing very well up to this point, one of the better students in the class. That's no surprise to us. As long as she shows interest, we know she will do very well. The only class she's struggling with a bit is political sciences, a class she chose herself. I do believe, though, that she'll pick up and come back to eventually achieve success. I have no worries. We don't really place pressure on her to do well, apart from picking on her to do her homework and study sometimes. We just always emphasize to her how important it is to do well in school to advance her chances of a brighter future. There's only one thing that truly stresses me out about her academic ambitions, that being her supposed desire to go to university or college in England. I don't believe at all that it's because of any schooling or anything educational that's offered there. We do our best to try to ground her vision and try to make her review her best options to further herself realistically, without her compromising her future goals or dreams. The fact is, though, when she graduates in a year and a half, the world belongs to her and she can do what she wants. We can only influence her as best we can as to what is not a good idea.
All this makes me reflect on when I was a kid her age and how I was with my own mom. Things were a bit similar. I grew up in a poor household... we pretty much live in a poor household. I had this feeling of invincibility, like most kids... like Alexandra does now. I saw myself with a career that would come to me no matter what I did at the time, without a plan or any kind of action. Alexandra seems to think that this England thing will magically materialize before her eyes, with no contingency plan. I defied my mother and her warnings about the future to come... Alexandra does the same with us, though she's equipping herself far better for her future than either Janice or me ever did. I felt like I had all the answers... Alexandra thinks she's got everything down too. All this considered, I sympathize with the stage she's at in her life, and I know how her mind works. We have to balance very carefully stressing the importance of her future while at the same time allowing her to be a kid while she still can be. The beauty and the curse of being a parent is that we get to watch our kids travel the roads that we've already been on, and try to warn them of the potholes, rough patches and dead ends ahead of them. But kids are cocky. They will drive those roads like they're driving Hummers when they're only modest Hyundai Accents; adequately endowed, but unprepared for the worst. Parenting is unique indeed. I find myself recalling what it was like when I was a teenager myself, trying to set myself back into that frame of mind, so I can readily prepare myself as to effectively influence my own little girl. It's a bit different in my case compared to many other kids, in that I was fatherless throughout my teen years, though my mother did an incredible job filling in that role as well. A lot of kids today are growing up with just one parent. I definitely feel for them. Indeed, it's quite heartbreaking thinking about it. Many single parent experiences are very positive though. I know my mother was the very best person for the task that she had in raising me. It wasn't easy!
One of my little girl's dreams is that of becoming a singer. She's participating in a thing called Maritime Idol, in which a bunch of kids from around the Maritimes are competing for that title. The format is a bit strange, though, with no real judges except for the very small live audience and the internet crowd. Some might say that having no judges spares the kids the potentially harsh criticisms that lie before them after each performance. My answer to that is, bullshit! The kids NEED the harsh criticisms if it's due to them. How are they to improve if they don't have the tools to do so, one of the main ones being the due criticism? Sometimes we do well and get accolades. Sometimes we trip up and get pasted about it and have to find the means to pick ourselves back up. Life is about triumphs and failures. Welcome to life on planet earth. So... we've attended two of these Maritime Idol things now, with Alexandra doing very well at the first one, and okay at the second one. There were other kids participating that absolutely did not belong on a stage at all, at least at this point. The potential for embarrassment is extreme for allowing some of these kids to continue week after week when they clearly don't have 'the stuff'. It can be a complete pleasure being onstage and performing. But when you're a kid, if you don't perform well, it can be hell once you step off the stage and face your peers. That's where the responsibility of judges comes in. Part of their job is to advise contestants how they can better themselves. These kids have none of that. This is where I'm conflicted. I am proud of Alexandra just for getting up on a stage and singing in front of a bunch of strangers and for the internet world to see, much less her Mom and Dad. Being a true-bred Cook, I also believe in honesty. If she comes off the stage and asks me how she did, I will tell her, truly and bluntly, with consideration for her soft heart, unlike an actual judge. Her first outing, she did surprisingly well, with me believing... albeit with bias... that she had the performance of the night among her other ten opponents. I told her that too, but also told her how she could improve the next week. She took it all in stride, but basically ignored most of my advice. So in the second week, she didn't do quite as well, although she over-challenged herself with her song selections, which I also warned her about. Other kids this week fared far worse though, and I feel badly for them, because I fear the judgment they receive will be from their peers in the hallways in school. That's the danger of no real judges. Kids can be cruel, and that's what worries me a bit with Alexandra facing her friends, and would-be friends. She did, however though, take our advice this time out, after some tears and disappointment, and picked two country songs for next week that are clearly within her abilities. I look forward to her actually having fun with these songs. But as parents, we already know she's going to do her best, and we already are proud of her. It doesn't matter if she advances or wins anything. She's already won in our eyes by stepping up.
What a year this has been for my wife. Janice has had struggle after struggle placed in front of her as the months progress toward the end of '12. From enduring a harsh bout with the flu, to her sister Debbie's passing, to her bout with Bell's Palsy, to her trying times as post office manager at work, to enduring trial after trial with her chronic arthritis and fibromyalgia, to putting up with me, even. She says she hasn't been quite the same since BP had struck this past summer. Though it's actually passed, it's left residual effects that left her face still numb and painful on one side. She had to stop her medication with Enbrel for the duration of BP, since Enbrel is an immune suppressant to aid in the treatment of her psoriatic arthritis. That led to her stiffening up and store, though she did combat these effects by stubbornly going to the gym regularly. Imagine doing an intense weight workout with heavy weights for a good solid two hours, then going home and going to bed, waking up the next morning. That stiff, sore feeling? Janice feels like that all of the time because of her arthritis, only worse. So I don't know quite how she maintains a positive outlook. She does say that her favorite times are when she comes home from work and gets to be with Alexandra and me, especially the days when neither of us work. When Janice and I first got together, we worked together. She was actually my boss. This enabled us to be together all the time, and we thrived on it. Where a lot of couples need that time apart, time apart for us is actually dreaded. We talk sometimes of how it would be if she only had a post office in a store where I was receiver too, so we'd be together at work again. People always say, "you guys wouldn't get along and your relationship would suffer." To which we say, no, we've been there already and that didn't happen. If something like mom and pop stores still thrived today, which they don't, I could envision us owning one. Only like the old days, I'd want her to be the boss! She's the smart one between us. She even makes a little more money than I do, at least marginally. Hell, I wish she made a lot more. I don't have this macho male pride thing going on, but I am very proud of my wife. She's a warrior. A beautiful warrior.
And then there's me. Ah, what a year it's been. It certainly saw a year of changes over what 2011 was. That year was a learning experience, to put it politely. On the one hand, you have the notion in your head of how people see you. Then you have the reality of how they see you reveal itself, and the shock sets in. I still recover from it day to day, really. It certainly isn't as bad as it was one year ago, but the shock waves sent through my system of the actions of one particular friend and some family during that time have led me to realize that I'm far, far more damaged from it than I even first believed. I have a doctor's appointment this coming week to try to address my mental and emotional issues, which unfortunately actually lead to physical issues as well. I have said before that I am alive today because my wife made sure of it. At no time in my life has that been as true as the past year and a half. Without her, I'm sure, positive that I would lose the will to live and wither away during times like this. Through the first part of the year, I took on the misguided notion that I could wean off of my meds and regain some of what I had before I went on them. While I'm on them, there's a sort of 'fog' in my head, though not actually hindering in any way, but it keeps me balanced, so to speak. However, if I am on them, I have a much better sense of reasoning and balance. Although even that's been challenged in the last little while. I remember my tae kwon do master telling me as I was learning my forms and techniques not to beat myself up over my lack of progress at times, that trying to move forward was all that mattered, because as long as you do that the rest will take care of itself. There are times that finding the will to move forward can be challenging for a man of my condition, though. However, I am aware of all of it, and I am taking steps to advance. As they say, knowing is half the battle. My wife is definitely an inspiration. As far as I'm concerned, she's been through far, far worse than me this year, although they say these things are relative. When you're faced with adversity, you find out what you're truly made of, and you really don't know until then what you really are made of. It often takes retrospect, looking back upon what you went through. "I got through that?"
It will be a very different Christmas for us here in a way. We will be happy, though. We have a roof over our heads, warmth on the cold winter nights, food and drink and especially, each other. In our little family of three (five if you count Crocky and Marbles, which really we should), we have never suffered any kind of crisis. Nothing that threatened to tear us apart or divide us. Some situations have arose where we perceived there was jealousy at our tightness, but none of it ever phased us. Nor will it. We love each other too much around here. The one thing that will make this Christmas slightly different is our financial situation. Money has seldom been as tight as it is these days. With winter being here and the oil furnace burning, we have to tighten our purse strings more than usual as we struggle to pay debts and bills. Just this past Thursday when Alexandra did her Maritime Idol thing, I couldn't even scrape together $7 to go until the very last minute, and we're over a week removed until the next payday, with absolutely no Christmas shopping done because the funds just don't exist. But this season, we will eat well, we will be warm, and we will have fun, because we have all the things that matter to us. We'll be like the Who's in Whoville after the Grinch took all the stuff. Still happy and still full of spirit and love.
And I will leave this blog on that positive note. If I don't get to address this blog again until after the season, have a great Christmas and a splendid New Year. And thank you so very much for visiting my humble blog.
Now fire up those colortinis and watch the pictures as they fly through the air.
Good day.
Life is tough. If it wasn't, it would be so bucking foring. I make mistakes and often write about them here, but I tend to point the finger too much, in the past. Now I point it in the mirror, then ask myself, "so what do we do to bring balance to this?" This is how I want to translate my blogs now. I could have called one "Something's gotta give" I think, but Ragnar specifically has too much history.
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