Jossy The Cow

Jocelyn's Christmas program was tonight. Her role was that of a cow that kept the baby Jesus warm at the manger. Lucky for me, Jocelyn is not one of those pain in the arse method actors like Val Kilmer or Russell Crowe, so I didn't have to take her to a barn every night so she could study and become a cow in her head. All I had to do was buy a cow costume at Spirit Halloween store the day after Halloween for 50% off. Not so lucky for me was that Jocelyn has grown at least two inches since Halloween so the costume was kind of snug on her. She still looked adorable though.

The best part of any Pre-K Christmas program is the singing...or the post-toddler caterwaul that passes for singing. You have your wallflowers that barely move their lips, mortified to be on stage...then there are the kids that really sink their teeth into every word and perform with all the vim and vigor they can muster. These kids lean hard into every wish in 'We Wish You A Merry Christmas'. Jossy falls somewhere in between. She smiled and waved to us from the stage and then went about her business of baby Jesus warming and carol singing. My girl is a pro.

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Pineapple Express

Nothing takes me out of the Christmas spirit faster than mild temperatures and pouring rain. We've had plenty of both lately, so I'm in a serious bah humbug kind of mood...

Hopefully, I'll be able to get back into the swing of things. My annual Christmas CDs have been created and are ready for delivery, so that's good...other good things would be Maddy dominating her gymnastics competition the other night. She really focused in on each event, taking first in bars and beam and second in floor and vault. What was not so good was the music that accompanied the girls as they performed....I think I heard Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas' 100 times that night if I heard it once. Ugh.

And now to completely switch gears - Here's some words of advice for the ball gaggin' d-bag working the Pillow Pets kiosk at the Super Mall: If you hate kids as much as you do it is probably a bad idea to sell one of the more popular Christmas gifts with said kids...so, why don't you go hock cell phones with the pink shirted idiots at the T-Mobile booth or DirecTV at the kiosk down the way...sell anything that doesn't involve interacting with kids because I honestly thought you were going to deck the Asian girl that hugged the lady bug Pillow Pet. Got it? Good.

WoW....That's Lame

More than one person I know took this week off from work so they could sit at home, gorge on Hot Pockets and 5 Hour Energy drinks, and play World of Warcraft. Now, I have nothing against WoW, nothing at all, I used to play it myself before family and work took precedence in my life. Would I play it again if I did have the time? I don't know...WoW is a massive, massive time suck that requires lots of time spent in front of the computer grinding away to earn experience, gold, gear, etc. I don't think I have the time or energy to sit in front of my PC for hours on end and hack away to basically get nothing accomplished except alienating my kids and Better Half....completely unlike spending hours at a time on Facebook or reviving this blog.

Top 5 Christmas Songs

Every year for the past oh, five years or so, I create a CD of Christmas music for the folks I work with. The first couple of years I solicited my coworkers for their favorite Christmas songs and this, of course, lead to me completely hating the CDs I was burning...this is because most people have wretched taste when it comes to Christmas music. Too many people claimed that Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas' was their favorite song, and that is just WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! Therefore, three Christmas seasons ago I decided to just give people CDs of Christmas songs I thought they should like. This worked out because:

A - I had a much better time creating the CDs because I was able to avoid listening to absolute shite selections from Mannheim Steamroller and the aforementioned Mariah Carey.

B - I wasn't tempted to fling the CDs in utter disdain into the faces of the recipients...that just isn't Christmas like, now is it?

C - I have impeccable taste and this not only makes me an internet and teen sensation, but also a fine creator of Christmas CDs.

So, now you are wondering just what are my favorite Christmas songs...I know I'd be losing sleep if I were on the other end of this fascinating blog post. I won't trouble you with the complete Christmas 2010 play list and will winnow this down to my top five. This list may look familiar to the nine readers of my last blog, it hasn't changed much...and number 1 may require its own post altogether. We'll just see how this works out...

5. 'Do You Hear What I Hear?' - Vince Gill: Ya know, Vince Gill is kind of a tool...and a home wrecker as well (see: Grant, Amy), but he has an amazing voice and something great always happens when he picks up a guitar. I adore his version of this song...it's sweet and pure and his voice fits the arrangement perfectly. He has complete and total respect for the sentiment and meaning of the lyrics...which is a complete 180 from the total disrespect he had for his and Amy Grant's wedding vows to their previous spouses. Zing!

4. 'Baby, It's Cold Outside' -Tom Jones & Cerys: This is probably the only Christmas song where the female character is slipped a mickey or a roofie in her drink. In fact, all of the words attributed to the male character read as if they were cribbed from the Date Rape Playbook...and it just wouldn't be Christmas without Tom Jones forcing himself on someone. Oh, I kid...a little. With that said, this is a fantastic version of this song. Tom Jones is in full blown swingin' Sixties mode, the horns are blaring in the background, and Cerys's smokey growl of a voice has just enough playful kitten in it to make the listener understand how a good girl wound up in Tom's bachelor lair.

3. 'Christmas Wrapping' - The Waitresses: I remember first hearing this song in my craptacular bedroom in my house up on Mile Hill Road in Port Orchard. I loved it the moment that rollicking bass line kicked in and Patty Donahue's voice laid over the top of it like marmalade on wheat toast. What I especially dug about it was the way the song told a story that met up with a happy and ironic conclusion at an all night grocery store. Forgetting the cranberries had never been so fortuitous. It took me forever to find the EP this song was on, in fact, I was in my early 20's before I tracked it down. Before that I was at the mercy of radio stations and a horrible cassette recording I made the same winter I heard this song.

2. 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' - Band Aid: I could probably write 2,000 words about why I love this song, and that excludes the whiskey fueled episode at a company Christmas party in 1998. You know, the one I reenacted the video and sang this entire song while white-knuckling a fifth of Jack Daniels like Jimmy Page in '73 before Led Zeppelin took the stage at Madison Square Garden. Ah, good times. Anyhoo, to boil it down to it's essence, this is just a great song that completely holds up over time. While the artists behind this read like a who's who of 80's pop stars in the 'Where Are They Now?' file, the song and the heartfelt conviction behind it can still be heard today. Every time I hear this song I feel like digging through the boxes of magazines in my garage for my collection of Smash Hits. 'Do They Know It's Christmas' is the greatest contemporary Christmas song ever recorded.

1. 'The Little Drummer Boy' - Lou Rawls: Okay, I think I can plow through this without getting too emotional about it. There was a stretch of time after my father and mother divorced where me, my brother, and mom were poor....we are talking Dickensesque poor. We weren't quite beggers, but I tell ya, it was close. My father cut a deal with my mom - he would shell out the bare minimum in child support for two kids ($34 a month for each of us) in exchange for paying for my mom to fly to Texas with me and my brother. She either took the deal or she would be stuck in Michigan with no family or friends to lean on after the divorce was final. My mom agreed to the deal because she literally had no one in Michigan that would help her out and she wasn't all that great when it came to speaking the King's English. Michigan didn't really have a thriving Hispanic community in the early 70's. So, one day I went from living in a house with my mom, dad, and brother to living in a rank welfare hotel downtown El Paso. And it was rank. We had to share the only bathroom with four other families and there was nothing but a hot plate to cook on...not that we had much food. Everyday my mom would wake us up and take me and my brother to the welfare daycare while she tried to find work. My breakfast for the next 13 months was a bowl of oatmeal mush. Lunch was always one graham cracker and a steamed hot dog with no bun. Every other day we were given a dixie cup of Kool Aid, otherwise it was powdered milk from a pitcher that may have been cobbled together from petri dishes. I don't know if 4 year old kids can be depressed, but I seriously hated my life. I missed my father and didn't understand why we had to leave our house and most of our clothes and all of our toys behind. On top of that, we were living in a welfare hotel with parolees and other miscreants.

By the time Christmas rolled around I was about as close to suicidal as a 4 year old could get and I just felt worse the closer we got to Christmas Day as there was not much to look forward to. We were broke and my mom did not even have enough money to buy my brother (he was two at the time) proper diapers. Mom had to get real creative to stretch what little money we had when it came to a lot of stuff. Suffice it to say, I wasn't much in the Christmas mood. I just wanted my family back together and to go back home. (Sidenote: Back in the early to mid-70's a bunch of studies were released that stated divorce didn't hit kids as hard as it did adults. I'd like to find those super geniuses and punch them in the throat. Divorce effed me up in all kinds of ways and that event had an obvious impact on my entire life. In fact, every person I knew growing up with divorced parents were scarred emotionally.)

Then on Christmas Eve something spectacular happened. All of the kids at the daycare were shuffled over to the church next door where we were served a proper lunch of turkey, mashed potatoes, and chocolate milk. Chocolate milk!!! It tasted like pure unconditional love after weeks of the powdered milk we usually received. We also received a sliver of pumpkin pie for dessert...it was like the loaves and the fishes, it was a minor miracle to have real food. After lunch the nuns rolled out a projector and we watched 'The Little Drummer Boy'. Now, I don't know if the church purposely chose the story of a poor boy to show to a bunch of tatty welfare kids, but it worked out pretty well. The tale really stayed with me, and so did the song...especially the line about being a poor boy too and having no gifts for baby Jesus...so he played his drum for Him. I was the happiest I had been in months....and then it got even better. Santa showed up, and he had gifts! One by one our names were read off and were escorted up to Santa by one of the nuns. When it was my turn I was nervous and excited and happy and giddy...I was handed a wrapped present that I carefully carried back to my seat. I studied the wrapping paper, which was only red tissue paper, but it was the most beautiful paper I had ever seen in my life...I peeled it away to the boxed toy it concealed...a Fisher Price Little People School Bus. It was magnificent. I cradled the bus in my arms the rest of the day and all the way home. My brother received a bunch of plastic dinosaurs, which probably wasn't the best gift for a 2 year old, but still....when we got back to our sh*tty hotel room with one bed and a malfunctioning hot plate, I played with my school bus for hours while my brother chewed on his plastic dinosaurs. That bus was and always will be the greatest Christmas present I have ever received.

I relive that day every time I hear 'The Little Drummer Boy'. That was the day that I learned that there are kind people out there, strangers that took the time to make a very sad little boy happy....and I have to be honest, there are times when I look around at all that I have today, when I look at my daughters and my heart literally aches from all of the love I feel for them that I wonder if maybe, just maybe, that Christmas Eve 36 years ago made all of this possible. I would like to think so.

My daughters don't know this story yet, my middle girl is the same age I was when it happened...my youngest the same age as my brother. Sometime soon, before Christmas this year, I am going to play 'The Little Drummer Boy' and tell my oldest daughter why that song means so much to me...and I am going to thank the kind and thoughtful souls that shined some light into my life that day.

I am also going to thank my mom for working and sacrificing so much to make sure we escaped the prison that is the welfare system. She could have given up, but she wanted us to have more. So she worked horrible jobs and saved enough money to get us to California where there was more opportunity and where she met my step dad...and things worked out pretty well for all of us...except for those dinosaurs my brother got, he chewed the tails off of all of them.

Merry Christmas to all 7 of my readers...if you are still around!

Kredit Kard Denied!

Kim Kardashian has no discernible talent outside of getting nailed by famous black guys, yet, she will make somewhere between 30-40 million dollars this year. She also has 5 million followers on Twitter. If it were up to me those 5 million individuals would be sterilized and sent to live on an island so they don't spread their idiocy contagion on the rest of us.

Anyhoo, MasterCard has partnered with Kim Kardashian to launch a pre-paid credit card, er, excuse me...kard...targeted at young girls. That's right, MasterCard wants your tween and teen daughters to learn about responsible credit use from a 'celebrity' that shot to fame because she was pounded out like a veal cutlet on camera by Brandy's brother. Never mind the fact that Kim was once sued for unauthorized use of a credit card not that long ago, racking up 120k in purchases on a single card. That's kind of insane.

I know one thing - my girls won't ever own a product endorsed by any of the Kardashians, and that includes the one built like an ogre that swats at planes from skyscrapers for fun. I implore all of you to do the same...

Extra Value Mishap

I had a really stupid lunch yesterday. I forgot all my cash at my desk and had to scrounge around the rolling landfill I call a car for enough change to order off of the Jack In The Box dollar menu. I love the two JITB tacos for 99 cents, but then I'm usually drunk off my ever lovin' arse when I normally eat them. I can't remember the last time I ate a JITB taco sober, let alone during daylight hours. Some things are definitely better drunk...like JITB tacos, church, and trips to Costco.

Reboot

I really should just call this the fail blog, mainly because I fail at blogging. Yes, it's been a while, but I've suffered from two things: Writer's block and the infernal unspoken obligation to post something on Facebook...

Yeah, Facebook...there are a lot of great things about FB, the first being that, unlike MySpace (which was a virtual playground for the feeble), FB appeals to...what, exactly? A more mature audience? Maybe. All I know is that I thought MySpace was useless and pointless, a loud and obnoxious time suck that appealed to the crass and thoughtless. Yes, those are gross stereotypes, but there was nothing redeeming about MySpace. I understand that Facebook has its own annoying pieces of annoyance (Farmville, Mafia Wars, et al), but it is still possible to communicate en masse on FB and not come across like a mental deficient....

Anyhoo, so FB...it eats into what I have set aside as blog time, so I need to find a balance between the two...so, take this as a warning shot that I am trying to get this thing off the ground...again....we'll see.

Working For The Weekend

Well now - the weather over the weekend is something a fella could get used to...

Had an interesting day Saturday. Started off with a quick trip to Lowe's for some top soil, a pre-fab fiberglass water feature, and some lawn food. Now, before you go rippin' on the water feature I have to tell ya that price was everything when it came to that particular purchase. See, back in 2005 The Better Half and I had some contractor types come out and give us some quotes on putting in our lawn (a job I wound up doing myself with the help of a Bobcat, 135 yards of top soil, and a couple of friends) and installing a water feature. The cheapest water feature quote we got came out to $7,000.00 so that was a no go. Fast forward 5 years - Lowe's had a very nice fiberglass rock pond/waterfall feature for $199.00 including the pump. Now, up close and laid out to bare the thing is very fake looking...that's where the top soil came in. What I did was use the top soil to bury parts of the water feature to make it more natural looking. I also planted quite a few shrubs and flowers around it, so from 5 yards out or so the water feature looks pretty darn good...and the total cost with tax and top soil came out to be $232.00....

The rest of Saturday afternoon was spent in quite despair. Due to the craptacular rain storms and mild temps, red thread FUNGUS has infected a good portion of the grass. Red thread makes lawns look more beaten down and worn out than Whitney Houston, therefore, it has to go. However, because I have kids that love to run around barefoot, I don't use hardcore chemicals on the lawn (aside from spraying the yard with 'Cutter' every 6 weeks to keep mosquitoes away...I'm sure the water feature will help with that...), that means fungicide is out of the question. So, I scoured the intertubes for natural lawn food and found this offering from Scotts. I have never used this particular fertilizer so I don't have past experience to go on. The brand I used to use is no longer carried by the big box stores or McClendon's in Sumner, so I had to change it up. Here's hoping the nitrogen is released fast enough to assist the grass in smothering the fungus, but not so fast it burns the lawn...

Saturday night was spent at the homestead of some new friends of ours. Actually, they are the parent's of Maddy's best friend from school, but we had never met them. I wound up chaperoning Maddy's zoo trip with her friend's dad (names being withheld because...uh...I'm not sure...I just don't feel comfortable giving their names without asking permission) and we hit it off pretty well. After a couple of awkward voice mail exchanges we were able to arrange a play date for Maddy's friend to come over...then another play date was arranged for Maddy and Jossy to go their house (Maddy's friend has a sister three months younger than Joss Joss). From there we got the invite for the whole family to head over for dinner. That was Saturday night and a fine time was had. It's nice to have 'neighborhood' friends that are our age and have similar likes/dislikes, back stories and life experiences.

That's pretty much all I have for now. Sorry for the boring tone of this, it's late, I have to be up 7 hours to start a new day....must get some sleep or I'll be psychotically tired in the morning...

One Bag Short...

It never fails - I buy multiple bags of mulch, aka beauty bark, thinking I have more than enough to put down a decent layer...yet I am always one sack short of ideal mulch coverage. It's annoying, this. Especially annoying since the weather has been turning my flower gardens into bogs. The French drains have been unable to keep up with the deluge of rain, so parts of the yard are also swamped. Here's hoping this weekend's projected temps of 75+ degrees dries up the marshland that is my backyard...the sunflowers and petunias would really appreciate that....

Once More...With Feeling?

Good criminey, I'm going to give blogging another shot here. Got a little sidetracked with the new job and life...plus, I also felt as if I had lost 'my voice', whatever the eff that means. Basically, I was wiped out after so many changes over the last 6 months, changes my faithful 9 readers should be aware of.

Anyhoo, I'm back. For now.

So, what have I been doing? Well, I've been watching a lot of movies and completely ignoring the Stuff Reduction Project, a project that has been ongoing for what, three years? No stuff has been reduced, in fact, I have more goddamn stuff now than when I started. Example - I got rid of a lot of crap from the garage, crapola I didn't need or want and would never use. For about a week the garage floor was pretty much clear...and then I bought a bike trailer so I could exercise and tow two kids behind me...but I have three kids, so I went and bought a Weeride bike trailer to hook to The Better Half's bike so we could all ride. Guess what? Both trailers take up a lot of room, especially the Weeride because it doesn't fold up all that well. Therefore, the garage floor is a mess again, it's lousy with bike trailers and plastic bins full of shite we hauled back from Montana earlier this year....

Yeah, so movies. Really dug 'Crazy Heart and 'Whip It' while 'The Messenger' was just okay. 'Funny People' would have been better if it had been, oh, funny...but it was borderline excruciating. Why does Judd Apatow have to pollute his films with d*ck and arse jokes from start to finish? The premise of 'Funny People' was decent, but the writing was horrendous. Although I kind of hated 'The Hangover' the first time I saw it, that film grew on me now that it has been on HBO in heavy rotation...I don't think 'Funny People' is going to grow on me, it was just awful.

What else has been going on, you ask? I've been spending lots of time with the girls, engaging in some serious Playmobil and Calico Critter time. Playmobil stuff used to belong in the realm of 'rich kid' toys when I was young since it was all imported and European and all that jazz. The prices don't seem all that outrageous now that I have a job, and the Playmobil toys are sturdier than the ankles on a Russian babooshka. If I had to do it all over again, I would have stayed away from the Calico Critters...they are too small and a lot of the accessories are made of cardboard, cardboard that has to be folded just so. My hands are not what would consider dainty, so folding tiny pizza boxes for the Calico Critters Pizza Parlour was maddening...to see said pizza boxes mangled within ten minutes of play was heartbreaking.

The girls, especially Maddy, have been more involved with lawn work. Maddy joined 'garden club' at school and has applied what's she has learned to our garden. We planted sunflowers, tomatoes, cucumbers (that I'm pretty sure the torrential rain wiped out), and various peppers. All three are good 'helpers', although Baby Katelyn is better at stomping on stuff than actually pulling weeds and what have ya...but I like having them out there. I was telling the Better Half that someday I won't have three little faces smiling at me from the kitchen window as I go by with the mower...and that made her a little sad. My little girls are growing up too fast...

That's all I have for now...come back for more tomorrow!

Session Over

Why do so many websites place their logout links/buttons in counter-intuitive locations on their pages? Yeah, I'm looking at you AT&T with your horrible white and creamsicle orange color scheme...tucking the logout button in the hinterlands of your page makes online bill pay that much more cumbersome. The Comcast signout button is located in the top middle left portion of their bill pay website, which is really tough to find at first...and why do I have to enter my login and password on two separate pages? And why is the account information that is displayed so wildly inaccurate? About the only bill pay site that is remotely close to being user friendly is the Puget Sound Energy page...but they seem to have outsourced that to a vendor...still, the entire PSE website experience is intuitive, which is somewhat shocking since they are a utility company.

I'm off to bed to think of more petty grievances to conjure up....

What's Old Is New Again

So, I started a new job today and I am feeling pretty darn good about it. The last 3 1/2 years of my professional life have been excruciating, to say the least. I took 10 steps backwards in pay and twice as many career wise when I accepted the job...the only thing that made the gig tolerable were the people I worked with. Otherwise, it was a depressing slog into work each and every day...a slog into a job I accepted because my unemployment benefits were set to expire. You see, back in the days when I was laid off from a job we didn't have the fancy emergency extensions you kids get today. It was 6 months and then you were off the dole! Yes, well....

Anyhoo, I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders with the new job...everything feels new and possible again. It's funny how being somewhat recruited for a position will invigorate the psyche and self-esteem. The commute is going to be tough some days, but I chose to live where I do because I love the neighborhood and house...I can't see myself moving just for a better commute. Having attended a new school every year until the 8th grade was rough, I don't want to do that to my kids.

Maybe now that I have regained a bit of a hop to my step I'll post more regularly...no promises....

One More Time...With Feeling

This blog isn’t dead…no, really…it isn’t. I’ll tell you what is dead though and that is every single creative impulse in my head, crushed under the weight of dealing with issues and situations I have little control over.

The passing of The Better Half’s father has put our household into a tailspin. He left behind a twisted trail of financial obligations and investments that we are struggling to unwind. The dining room table, our garage, and my office all contain stacks of plastic bins of financial documents that make little or no sense. Some of the paperwork dates back to the mid-70’s, and that stack was unceremoniously dumped into the recycling bin. Paperwork from the 80’s we have to be more careful with as there may be ‘live’ information contained within, and that’s why we are struggling to work our way through his financial dealings.

TBH’s dad was not someone that would be called ‘organized’. I’ve written before about the condition of his house, a house that would be, um, right at home on an episode of ‘Hoarders’. The man kept everything from newspapers to nuts and bolts and everything in between. I found three very badly preserved deer heads in his back shed, one of which still had what once was a brain inside the skull. Let’s just say I quit poking around the shed after that unfortunate discovery.

Digging through the piles of paperwork we found account statements from the early 90’s mingled with financial documents from 2009, stuffed into empty cowboy boot boxes and desk drawers. His actual filing cabinet was crammed full of even more paperwork and receipts for food purchases he made three decades ago. It was surreal, his entire life boiling down to cancelled check stubs and receipts from Lucky’s Drug Store.

Because our time in Montana was limited, we had to pack as much of that mess up and bring it home to sort through. That’s where my troubles begin. It is physically, mentally, and spiritually impossible to live your life when someone else’s is occupying so much time and space. The Better Half has even more of a burden to bear because she is the one responsible for his affairs. We literally cannot take a step in the garage, office, or dining room without having to be mindful of the pile of papers on the floor…and it is piles and bins and folders of paperwork.

Sadly, we haven’t really been able to get much done when it comes to sorting and organizing all of the flotsam and jetsam left behind. We still have three young daughters that need us to care for and spend time with them, so at this moment we are living our life around what remains of his life, tiptoeing around reminders of bills he left to be paid…placing dinner plates on top of bank account statements dating back to Clinton’s second term. It is unhealthy and it is unfair to not only TBH and myself, but also our kids.

I’m tempted to just go home and raking all of the paperwork into the recycle bin and saying, ‘F*ck it, we can’t live like this anymore’, but I can’t do that. For every three documents that get tossed there is one piece of paper that holds a vital piece of information that must either be saved or requires action on TBH’s part.

We have no plan of attack with this nightmare because it has consumed every aspect of our lives. Work isn’t even a refuge as I spend lunch and breaks talking to attorneys, contractors, and real estate agents. TBH is doing the same, but she is also fending off vultures looking to pick through the carcass of the estate.

The Better Half’s dad was stubborn and independent, two traits that served him well in life…up to a point. As his health failed him he was unable and unwilling to step aside and allow TBH access to his finances. Near the end he allowed her some access, but not nearly enough so that the transition after his passing was smooth. Then there is the issue of the house. Over the summer we travelled out to see him with the understanding that we would be cleaning up and ridding the house of junk. That was a disaster and absolutely nothing was accomplished. He fought us over every damn thing you could imagine. TBH tried tossing out freezer burned shrimp that expired in 2004, a move that resulted in an epic screaming match that resulted in TBH hurtling shrimp across the kitchen.

I doubt that TBH’s dad meant for us to go through all that we are. Perhaps he would have changed his ways and prepared better if he could see the stress that TBH, her sister, and both families are living with. All I know is that I am not going to leave my daughter’s in the same predicament, mainly by spending my last years blowing every last dime of my Social Security and retirement funds at the Snoqualmie Casino. Well, no..but TBH and I have plans to speak to an estate planner….we’ll get to that just as soon as we get done cleaning up.

Stayin' Alive

I am desperately trying to not let blogging slip by the wayside, but recent events have not been conducive to writing. We are still dealing with a lot of 'issues' in Montana settling the estate of The Better Half's father...and that entails cleaning up the house and the years and years of clutter that accumulated. In fact, we just got back last night from a quick trip over the weekend that included a memorial service and picking up the urn from the funeral home. It was an emotional trip, to say the least...

I'll try and post more soon....

Still Here

Apologies for the lack of posting - the passing of The Better Half's father has me (and the rest of the family) dealing with quite a bit these days. If there is one thing that the past couple of weeks has taught me, it is this:

Have an advance directive in place that tells doctors and loved ones your wishes

Have all of your finances in order

Create a will/trust that is iron clad and not subject to interpretation

Make sure all relevant paperwork concerning bills, bank accounts, etc are easy to find

Tie up all loose ends not covered by the above

I'll post more later when things calm down a little. Besides the death of TBH's dad there is always work...work with the hour long queue times and ever changing government guidelines to wade through...very bad times, very bad indeed....