Archive for the ‘Journal’ Category
If you ever move to Maine one of your favorite words will soon become the word SUCK. All forms of the word apply to so many things here you’re forced into learning how to use it properly. Follow along and learn just how versatile the word can be.
This SUCKY Maine winter continues but unfortunately for me I seem to be caught in a bad SUCK cycle right now. Did you ever have times where things start going wrong and just SUCK. They say that bad things come in threes but I’m no longer a believer in that old wives tale. For me 2014 has started on an ominous note where bad things came in groups or CLUSTER SUCKS.
My favorite computer on which I do all of my writing and photography has decided to start SUCKING. It contains my life as it currently exists which goes to show how bad my life SUCKS as well. As sad as that sounds this computer never has issues because I’ve protected it from viruses, mal-ware, and anything else I could think of. It’s been as reliable as any I’ve ever owned. Then I made the mistake of permitting an update to install from good old SUCKY Apple ITunes. Now I SUCK for being that stupid. From that point on my computer’s registry was damaged causing lots of SUCKY error messages that I’ve been unsuccessful in fixing. I’ve read everything and tried everything with no luck. I just wanted to scream but had no one to scream at. That SUCKS!
My next adventure began soon after the SUCKING computer nightmare. I was awakened two nights ago and my bedroom felt like the inside of a freezer. Someone who shall remain nameless and whose responsibility has always been keeping the house supplied with heating oil, dropped the ball. No heating oil during a cold week in Maine in the middle of Winter is the definition of SUCKING. Fortunately we have an oil delivery company that was able to respond within 24 hours and refilled the tank. For a change they didn’t SUCK. You’d think that our problems had been solved but not quite. When things begin to SUCK it then comes contagious.
It seems when a oil tank goes empty the new oil causes a vapor lock in the feeder line and won’t permit any to flow properly until the line has been cleared. That I’ve come to find out just SUCKS. In past years when this problem occurred it required an emergency service call that lasted only fifteen minutes and cost $150.00. That not only SUCKS but it’s also borderline extortion. The better-half and I immediately decided that we’d try to correct the problem ourselves this time around. After calling on informational resources from SEMI-SUCKY friends and a few SUCKY YouTube videos, an hour and three hundred SUCKY curse words later we had our heat back on. Good news, right? Not hardly. That’s an hour of my life I can’t afford to lose and that SUCKS.
Two hours later on this calm Maine winter night with no wind gusts, no ice storms, no sleet or any other related weather issues we lost all of our electric power in the house for some unknown but SUCKY reason. Since we live in an area where cell phones have difficulty receiving a signal we were stuck sitting in the dark and bitching to one another. That made for a really SUCKY few minutes of conversation, for sure. It was a double SUCKING kick in the ass because we have a whole-house generator that should have kicked on immediately. Guess what? It didn’t freaking work and that SUCKED.
We’re now back and operational but who needs the constant stress of SUCKY crap like this? Now every time the wind blows I’ll be holding my breath waiting for the power to fail with no operating generator. That will definitely SUCK once again when that repair bill arrives. If this is any indication of how the remainder of 2014 is going to be, we are screwed.
2014 SUCKS THE BIG ONE SO FAR
Well we’re in day three of the Coffee Trivia marathon. I’ve explained in detail all of my past addictions, MY history with coffee over the years and finally today I’ll address my current coffee situation.
“I never drink coffee at lunch. I find it keeps me awake for the afternoon.” ~Ronald Reagan
I’m in the throes of a weight-loss program which while needed is nonetheless annoying and difficult. The diet I’ve been restricted to is not easy and leaves me very few food items that are fulfilling and satisfying. I kid people when I tell them my diet consists of radishes, pudding, cashews, cereal, water, and above all coffee. Coffee is and remains my one luxury item and regardless of what any Doctor tells me it will be the last thing I ever give up.
That being said, I’d like introduce you to my two new best friends. My weight-loss program would never be as successful as it’s been without these devices.
They allow me the luxury of a large number of options in preparing my coffee and it’s helped me work through this ungodly diet. As you can also see the variety of coffee’s available is incredible and I’m really enjoying tasting as many different types and styles as I can find.
So now I’ll continue my seemingly endless list of coffee trivia. I hope you’ve learned a little about coffee and it’s tremendous effect on the world’s economy as well as the huge number of employees it supports worldwide. It appears I’m not the only coffee addict on this planet. I’m just one of many millions who loves the bean. Enjoy.
“Still One of the Best”
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65 countries in the world grow coffee. They are all along the equator, within the tropics.
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After they are roasted, and when the coffee beans begin to cool, they release about 700 chemical substances that make up the vaporizing aromas.
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Beethoven who was a coffee lover, was so particular about his coffee that he always counted 60 beans each cup when he prepared his brew.
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Before roasting, some green coffee beans are stored for years, and experts believe that certain beans improve with age, when stored properly.
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Before the first French cafe in the late 1700’s, coffee was sold by street vendors in Europe, in the Arab fashion. The Arabs were the forerunners of the sidewalk espresso carts of today.
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Brazil accounts for almost 1/3 of the world’s coffee production, producing over 3-1/3 billion pounds of coffee each year.
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In 1675 Charles II, King of England issued a proclamation banning Coffee Houses. He said that they were places where people met to plot against him.
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30% of coffee drinkers in US added a sweetener of some kind to their coffee, compared with 57% in UK.
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October 1st is official “Coffee Day” in Japan.
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Scientists have discovered more than 800 different aromatic compounds in coffee.
“The more complicated the order, the bigger the asshole. If you walk into a Starbucks and order a ‘decaf grandee, half soy, half low-fat, iced vanilla, double-shot, gingerbread cappuccino, extra dry, light ice, with one Sweet-n’-Low and one NutraSweet,’ ooooh, you’re a huge asshole.” ~ George Carlin
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Black coffee with no sugar contains no calories.
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Coffee represents 75% of all the caffeine consumed in the United States.
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Coffee sacks are usually made of hemp and weigh approximately 132 pounds when they are full of green coffee beans. It takes over 600,000 beans to fill a coffee sack.
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Coffee trees are evergreen and grow to heights above 15 feet but are normally pruned to around 8 feet in order to facilitate harvesting.
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Coffee trees are self-pollinating.
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Coffee trees produce highly aromatic, short-lived flowers producing a scent between jasmine and orange. These blossoms produce cranberry-sized coffee cherries. It takes four to five years to yield a commercial harvest.
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75% of the world’s coffee comes from the Coffea Arabica plant.
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Drinking a single cup of coffee that has been brewing for 20 minutes provides the body with 300 phytochemicals which act as antioxidants and stay in the body for up to a month.
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In days gone by, Turkish bridegroom had to promise that they would always provide their new wives with coffee.
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Worldwide, more 1400 millions cups of coffee are drunk every day.
This will be the final installment of the Coffee Trivia postings. I have to admit that I’ve collected enough information for a few more but I don’t want to overdue it. Possibly in the near future I’ll put together additional ones but I’ll let enough time pass so as not to bore everyone.
MORE TO COME EVENTUALLY
“That’s something that annoys the hell out of me- I mean if somebody says the coffee’s all ready and it isn’t” ― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Yesterday in Coffee Trivia I I had quite a lot to say about my previous addictions as well as my fondness for coffee. Today you’ll receive more useless coffee information that I’m required to supply because of my addiction. All addictions have a downside and besides tasting wonderful so does coffee. It gives me that extra energy burst and ability to talk for long periods of time without taking a breath. Lucky you, your here for the lecture.
My love affair with coffee didn’t start at an early age like you might think. I wasn’t permitted to drink all that much coffee as a kid because my father felt it might effect my ability to play sports. Once I left for college his control over my beverage intake was finally at an end. I found coffee to be that best friend I’d been missing. The love affair began in earnest at that time and I’ve never looked back, not once. At the time I lived with five other guys in an apartment and there wasn’t a minute of the day that the coffee pot wasn’t full, steaming hot, and available for drinking. We never kept track but I can almost bet we drank more coffee than alcohol during those years and that’s saying something.
I eventually left school and enlisted in the army since the draft board was hot on my heels. For the next three years both in the United States and overseas I drank enough coffee to float a battleship. There’s nothing like Army coffee, it can almost eat the enamel right off your teeth. I won’t even begin to try and explain how the Korean’s made their coffee, it was indescribable. I also learned how to make instant coffee from C-ration packets and it sucked so bad I was forced to cut my coffee consumption in the field by 10%. For me that was a major concession.
Skipping ahead a few years and all of a sudden I’m a police officer working in a profession that is known for coffee and donuts. I was never too concerned with the donuts but I thrived on the coffee for seven years. I carried a thermos of hot coffee in the car with me and I’d stop when necessary to refill during my shift. Night shifts were another story altogether. My partner and I were never without a steaming hot coffee in the car or during our lunch stops at restaurants.
So you can see how my addiction to coffee has been the one consistent thing in my life for decades. All of my other addictions were just distractions but my love of coffee remains constant and still does. So let’s get this show on the road. I thought I knew a lot about coffee but I really had no clue. Some of these facts are humorous and some aren’t but they’re all interesting. I’ve found so much information on coffee I may be forced to increase the number of Coffee Trivia postings to four or five.
- Flavored coffees are created after the roasting process by applying flavored oils specially created to use on coffee beans.
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Frederick the great had his coffee made with champagne and a bit of mustard.
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Hard Bean means the coffee was grown at an altitude above 5000 feet.
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Hawaii is the only state of the United States in which coffee is commercially grown. Hawaii features an annual Kona Festival, coffee picking contest. Each year the winner becomes a state celebrity. In Hawaii coffee is harvested between November and April.
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The Nicaraguan Margogpipe is the largest of all coffee beans.
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It takes 40 coffee beans to make an espresso.
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One coffee tree yields less than half a kilo of coffee per year.
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A coffee tree lives for between 60 and 70 years.
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By 1850, the manual coffee grinder found its way to most upper middle class kitchens of the U.S.
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Coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world (oil is the first.)
“It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait in line behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity.” ― Dave Barry
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Brazil produces around 40% of the world’s coffee supply.
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A Belgian named George Washington invented instant coffee in 1906.
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Coffee has been used as a beverage for over 700 years.
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Coffee as a medicine reached its highest and lowest point in the 1600’s in England. Wild medical contraptions to administer a mixture of coffee and an assortment of heated butter, honey, and oil, became treatments for the sick. Soon tea replaced coffee as the national beverage.
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Coffee beans are similar to grapes that produce wine in that they are affected by the temperature, soil conditions, altitude, rainfall, drainage and degree of ripeness when picked.
“There are three intolerable things in life – cold coffee, lukewarm champagne, and overexcited women…” ― Orson Welles
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Brewed espresso has 2.5% fat, while filtered coffee contains 0.6% fat.
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Johan Sebastian Bach wrote an opera about a woman who was addicted to coffee.
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There is a way to brew coffee with marijuana in it and it is described as producing a “dreamy” kind of coffee buzz.
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More than 20 million people worldwide, work in the coffee industry.
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There are two species of coffee plant: Arabica and Robusta.
MORE TO COME
“Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and as sweet as love.” Turkish Proverb
Let’s talk about coffee. It’s the only major addiction I have left and I cherish it. When I stopped smoking twenty-eight years ago it was coffee that helped me through all those terrible days without nicotine. That and Tootsie Pops of course. I don’t know for sure how many Tootsie Pops are in a pound but I gained thirty-five pounds eating them over the course of five months. Coffee helped to keep me going until I was free of the damn nicotine and then the Tootsie Pops. Unfortunately by the time that was all over I was also addicted to the coffee as well. I replaced one killer addiction with a much milder version and was happy as hell about it.
My second major addiction was alcohol. I never drank enough to join that infamous club of alcoholics but I drank my share. Now at this stage of my life I’ve given up up drinking almost completely. Coffee again has been there to help replace the stimulation I received from alcohol with a much milder version.
My third big addiction was eating. Not the food itself but the eating of the food. I’ve been a nervous eater for most of my life and once my metabolism slowed it became a problem. With each passing year it became more of an issue but I waged a good battle to maintain my weight. My good buddy “Coffee” again came to my rescue and for that I’m grateful.
I decided to take a closer look at coffee and to learn as much as I could in the context of this blog.. Today will be Coffee Trivia Day. I’m celebrating my last great addiction that has made it possible for me to defeat three others. Here is a list of twenty trivia tidbits, the first of three Coffee Trivia planned postings.
“A 41-inch bust and a lot of perseverance will get you more than a cup of coffee – a lot more.” ~Jayne Mansfield
- Until the 18th century coffee was almost always boiled.
- Until the late 1800’s, people roasted their coffee at home. Popcorn poppers and stove-top frying pans were favored.
- When a coffee seed is planted, it takes five years to yield consumable fruit.
- William Penn purchased a pound of coffee in New York in 1683 for $4.68.
- Hawaii is the only state that commercially grows coffee.
- In the ancient Arab culture there was only one way a woman could legally divorce: If her husband didn’t provide enough coffee.
- 52% of Americans drink coffee.
- A acre of coffee trees can produce up to 10,000 pounds of coffee cherries. That amounts to approximately 2000 pounds of beans after hulling or milling.
- A scientific report form the University of California found that the steam rising from a cup of coffee contains the same amounts of antioxidants as three oranges. The antioxidants are heterocyclic compounds which prevents cancer and heart disease.
- Adding sugar to coffee is believed to have started in 1715, in the court of King Louis XIV, the French monarch.
- Advertisements for coffee in London in 1657 claimed that the beverage was a cure for scurvy, gout and other ills.
“Decaffeinated coffee is the devil’s blend.” ~Author Unknown
- Espresso Coffee has just one third of the caffeine content of ordinary coffee.
- Coffee beans are really berries. Each berry contains two beans (pips).
- An expert in preparing Turkish coffee is known as a “kahveci”.
- Irish coffee was actually invented to warm up cold American plane passengers leaving from Ireland.
- And lastly, Teddy Roosevelt is and was the greatest American coffee drinker, consuming a gallon a day. But you probably shouldn’t attempt to do that.
- An Arabica coffee tree can produce up to 12 pounds of coffee a year, depending on soil and climate.
- Australians consume 60% more coffee than tea, a six-fold increase since 1940.
- Caffeine is on the International Olympic Committee list of prohibited substances. Athletes who test positive for more than 12 micrograms of caffeine per milliliter of urine may be banned from the Olympic Games. This level may be reached after drinking about 5 cups of coffee.
- Citrus has been added to coffee for several hundred years.
“Coffee, the finest organic suspension ever devised.” ~Star Trek: Voyager
MORE TO COME
I thought today I’d show you a few photographs I took during my travels yesterday. Even though it’s winter and freezing cold with snow piled just about everywhere, I needed to get away from the house for a few hours. I reverted to my old habits, took my camera, and began my search for some old cemeteries.
“A cold and wintery resting place.”
One of the things I like best about living in New England is the number of ancient cemeteries that are scattered throughout almost every community. It seems that every large family back in the 1600’s that owned property maintained a private cemetery for their family members. Almost all of them have survived but most are difficult to visit since they’re away from public roads and on private property.
“This shows how old the cemetery really is. These folks were buried here before those trees existed.”
I became quite the cemetery visitor when I lived in southern Massachusetts back in the 1980s. My ex-wife and I owned a small gift shop and as part of that business I painted landscapes of local cemeteries and sold them in the shop. For a time I could be found creeping around the older of the cemeteries with a supply of T-shirts to stretch over tombstones to do gravestone rubbings. A great many people thought the idea of owning a T-shirt with their family name on it was edgy and cool. They sold like hot cakes. On one occasion I was visited by the local police in a cemetery where they questioned me as to my activities. Fortunately I was able to explain things to them and avoided arrest. Within a week I had supplied one of those officers with his own personalized shirt and was never bothered again.
“The day was too bright and made the names difficult to capture.”
I just love cemeteries, the older the better. It’s a quiet and serene place to spend a hour relaxing and reading old epithets. Yesterday I found a few within a short drive from my home that were accessible and not covered in snow.
“I tweaked this photo with software but still couldn’t get the names readable.”
I can’t wait for the return of Spring and Summer weather so I can search out a few more of the isolated graveyards and add their photo’s to my collection.
There was a time time in my life when I was the ultimate night person. I slept all day and worked and played all night. After work I’d visit a variety of clubs and bars returning home in the wee hours of the morning. It was a great time in my life because everyone knows the best shit happens after dark in the middle of the night.
I worked those hours for more than five years. My job required visits to massage parlors (not officially as a patron), strip joints (not officially as a paying customer), and even the occasional brothel (again, not as a paying customer). I became educated very quickly to the unbelievable quantity of nightlife activities, how to enjoy them, and even more important, how to survive them.
The more things change the more they remain the same. All these years later I’m discovering a whole new word of nightlife here in Maine that I’ve been totally unaware of. We live in what could be called a rural area. Our home is adjacent to a small river and a large forest of pines. We live far enough out that without assistance from technology (range extender) we can’t receive cell phone signals and are not registering on most GPS devices. It’s like living in Never-Never Land. That being said, we love it. We thought that “wildlife” in this area was mostly confined to the Portland metro area and was low key and had a minimum of crime to deal with. How little we really knew.
Last night we had an unusual snow fall. It snowed for no more than twenty minutes and then stopped completely. There was just enough snow to cover everything in a pristine white sheet. We went to bed after the snow fall stopped and remarked to each other about how white and smooth the back yard seemed with the new snow cover. There wasn’t a mark of any kind on that snow.
We awoke this morning and walked to the window and were shocked at what we saw. It appears that our backyard is the night club for most of the “wildlife” in this area. These pictures will give you some idea of the night time traffic taking place in our back yard.
We live our lives giving little or no thought to the “life” swirling around us every day and night. I saw tracks of coyotes, deer, chipmunks, squirrels, one lonely turkey, a big fat skunk, and a trail left by that sneaky cat belonging to our neighbors. I’m not surprised too often but this was amazing. I guess that one day warming trend we were blessed with brought everyone out to celebrate.
I think I may have to pay a little more attention to what’s going on around me. With a good lens and a small night light I might just be able to get some really interesting photographs.
I’m sitting here this morning trying to decide whether leaving this warm bed is the smartest thing to do. The weather remains problematic as always and I’m not in the mood to deal with it today. It’s been in the deep freeze here for two weeks and it isn’t expected to warm up anytime soon. The only thing I know for sure is that I can’t spend the next two months in this bed as much as I’d like to.
I’ve been trying to be as careful as possible with all of the snow and ice we’ve been having. Now that my broken leg is almost healed I’m deathly afraid of slipping or falling and ending up back in the hospital. I’m walking very softly these days.
The better-half stumbled out of bed early today for another shopping safari with her daughter. It was unplanned but she responded immediately to the telephone call, rolled out of bed and hit the ground running. Nothing is more important than spending a little quality time with her grandson and shopping at the same time. If she’s lucky she may be completely awake by the time they arrive to pick her up but she’s like a zombie right now.
I began a small construction project this week which has been on hold because of this cold weather. I plan on removing a large window in our living room and I need at least three hours of warmer weather to do it. It shouldn’t take too long to remove the window, replace the missing studs and insulation and then close up the hole. I can finish the rest from the inside of the house in just a few hours of drywalling and painting. I must be out of my mind doing this in February. Why I didn’t I do it in September is beyond me. I’ll just sit around for another week or two waiting for a few hours of temperatures above the freezing mark. Hurry up and wait.
I have a quiet day planned for today but it never seems to work out that way. I need to spend at least forty five minutes on the dreaded treadmill before I do anything else. It’s been a huge help in rehabilitating my leg. It still amazes me how much a limb can deteriorate in such a short period of time. Another week should have my injured leg back to it’s normal size. Rebuilding lost muscle tissue is difficult and time consuming but must be done as quickly as possible.
Since the better-half has four days off I thought I’d surprise her with a night on the town. I have a few ideas of places to visit with the Great Lost Bear heading the list. It’s the best place in the Portland area where she can feed her ever increasing addiction to smoking hot chicken wings. They specialize in XXX wings that are hot enough to set your hair on fire. The second possibility is The Strike Zone located in Old Orchard Beach and their specialty is deep fried everything. It’s a typically small sports bar where deep fried foods are the rule of the day. My weight loss program will be at serious risk if we go there but OMG the food is delicious.
It’s time to get motivated and moving. I love Winter.
It’s a terrible thing to be bored. It’s doubly terrible when you’re in Maine and it’s Winter. It feels like being up in the air on the “Vomit Comet” flying very high, then diving straight down, and then pulling back up again to what is supposed to be normal. That weightlessness between dives in my mind is the ultimate boredom. You’re just floating around in a pointless manner, accomplishing nothing, and feeling even worse.
Maybe if you were like me and had a fifty year love affair with adrenaline, the ultimate aphrodisiac, it would help you to understand a little. Hang gliding, sky diving, bungee jumping, and smashing down doors to apprehend criminals or mental patients can in no way be considered boring. Defying death or serious injury was never the point for me. The point was experiencing the dangers and not giving a shit what happened. Putting your entire existence into the hands of fate and doing so with no regrets. Most people never get to that point and don’t really want to, unless they can feel the adrenaline rush without committing to the danger.
So you have your regular run-of-the-mill boredom and then there’s the adrenaline-free boredom which is even worse. I’m drifting through life living vicariously through my own past experiences to help keep my head above water. Unfortunately once you reach a certain age with all of the physical limitations that come with it, your choices become strictly limited. Writing a blog, painting a picture, sculpting, sketching, remodeling a home or even walking in the woods are a just a stupid laundry list of poor substitutes.
I actually attempted for a while to live vicariously through others but OMG what a mistake. Many of the people in my sphere of influence, not all of course, put me into a deathlike comma. They’re lives have taken boredom to new heights and they don’t know the difference since they have nothing to compare it to. I may sound a little harsh in my criticisms but so what.
So I’ll start another day writing this blog, walking a couple of miles on my treadmill, reading a book, watching some TV, petting my cat, and then walking outside and screaming at the top of my effing lungs. Now don’t you feel a hundred percent better about your life? You should.
Here are a few boring things from my list of thousands.
- Celebrity Worship
- Baseball (Except for Little League)
- Soccer (I don’t consider it a real sport.)
- Politics and Politicians (Pundits and Talk Shows too)
- Sermons (Religious or Otherwise)
- Musicals
- Shopping War Stories
- Vampires
- Werewolves
- “Wives of” (From any City. State, Country, or Planet)
- Sports
- Country Music
- Waiting Rooms
- Commercials of Any Kind
- Soap Operas
Well the weekend has passed without much of interest to talk about. I have to tell you though that taking Sundays off from my life is something I recommend highly for anyone to try. No exercising, no blogging and no dieting. As always I remind you that Sunday as a day of rest for me is not a religious leftover from my childhood. It just happens to fit into my strangely scheduled current lifestyle.
We had another eight inches of snow through the night which meant I was to spend at least a half hour with my favorite motorized friend, the snowblower. The snow was wet and heavy and a real pain in the ass to deal with. I did it quickly so my better-half could access the outside world and then I returned to my day-off. I snapped a few pictures around the house of this storm because the snow was sticking to everything and made for some interesting photos.
The weather has warmed a little which brings out the visiting birds in large numbers. We feed them regularly but in frigid weather they become scarce. Since we live in a forested area we have three or four generations of woodpeckers that stay with us all winter. We place suet out for them because they’re the most successful in pecking it apart when it’s frozen.
They’ve been flying in and out in shifts so often they’re averaging one suet container a week. It apparently keeps them healthy and makes living through the winter months a little easier.
I then decided to leave the warm bosom of my house to explore the neighboring area for a few photo’s of the snow scenes. Here are three that should give you a better idea about what Maine is like in winter.
It’s now Monday morning and I’m back on the treadmill for a mile or two of good heath and exhaustion. The better-half’s loving the new slimmer me but I think it’s just her way of motivating me a little more. Either way it’s a win/win.
You know, there is a time in your life when you’re forced to deal with getting older. It’s a little difficult because mentally we all still feel like we’re in our twenties. As in growing up there’s a process that you must experience and when growing down (aging) you must again go through a somewhat similar but more depressing process, like it or not. I think it’s just a way for us to slowly over time confront and accept the reality of our mortality.
It really began to bother me a few years ago when I received an email from a former high school class president requesting I attend my 45th high school reunion. I read the email and never seriously thought about attending. You see, I hated high school and really had no desire to see any of my former classmates. I had two close friends during those years and both have passed away. The first died just months after graduation in a nasty car accident and the second died about twelve years ago during liver transplant surgery. Any old girlfriends with their accompanying sexual adventures have long since been forgotten.
I was given a webpage to visit created by my old classmates that had updated information on just about everyone in the class. I took a look around the site and the only thing that caught my eye was the death list. It was a huge shock to see that almost forty percent of my graduating class had passed away. It was surprising but not totally unexpected. I adjusted over time to the shock and began to deal with the reality of it. I never attended any of my class reunions that were held over the years because I preferred to remember my classmates as they were and not be slapped in the face with the new reality of what they are now. Too damn depressing.
Time goes on and age continues to creep up on you. You can see and feel the physical changes as they occur and you adjust. Aches and pains continue to worsen and again you adjust. You spend a great deal of your life adjusting to changes that you knew were coming but really didn’t take all that seriously. It’s a slow and never-ending shadow in the back of your mind that you try to ignore but can’t. Every time you have a quiet moment it pops up to let you know the process is continuing.
You’re probably wandering what prompted this depressing monologue so let me explain. Yesterday I was given some news that at first didn’t shock or surprise me but later kept coming back to haunt me. My ex-wife of many years had remarried shortly after our divorce and had given birth to a son. We’d been divorced a couple of years but she still made the effort to meet with me because she wanted to introduce me to the boy. She and I had tried for years to have children but could not. We met for just a few brief minutes and I held the little guy in my arms for just an instant. Before I knew it they were gone and I never saw either of them again. That little baby boy now 31 years old had just died from a lethal drug overdose.
Life as always goes on but it was just another reminder of how quickly and easily life can be taken from us. Sorry about the depressing post but I needed to tell someone about it. No one is exempt from this aging process and I’ve done my part to remind all of you of that fact. Live your life to the fullest every blessed day. It could end tomorrow.
everyuselessthing.com 