Messing with the Layout

Hi! I've been messing with my layout a little, as it has looked to me like there's a LOT more space on my monitor than I use. Let me know if my changes make your viewing pleasure less of a pleasure.

Also, thanks for stopping by my little corner of insanity.

I've Never Been So Well Complimented

If you've never seen the Movie "Return to Me", and you like chick-flicks, you should watch it. It's about a man and a woman. The man is played by David Duchovny and near the beginning of the film his wife dies. The woman is played by Minnie Driver, and at the beginning of the film she's in need of a heart transplant.

You can see where that's going, eh?

This is also Carol O'Connor's last film, and he has a great line when he says to Minnie:

"It's the character that's the strongest that God gives the most challenges to. Now you can take that as a compliment."

If you read my post from yesterday, I'll tell you today that this sort of thing is what has been going on in my house for the last decade or more. With the kids, there have been three broken feet, Sever's disease, and a broken elbow in 2010 & 2011 (all three feet just this past fall); the list just continues. I think that I'd like to be less well complimented!

I do get every now and then the question that falls along the lines of 'how does your family get through it', and it's really pretty simple.

It is my understanding that we all have our cross to bear, and so many folks have their lives much worse than we have ours. We've never gone hungry, though there have been many times when we've gotten paid *just* in time for the mortgage. A childhood friend of mine died in his late 30's, leaving a young wife with three young children. There's a child who was in grade school with my daughter who already passed from cancer. There's a kid in our high school with progeria.

As I look about, and everyone *looks* fine, I realize that they have their burdens too, and I might not ever know of them, nor should I expect to, in my thinking. In my house, we're all still here, and able to enjoy each other. We have relative wealth, as there are so many without homes or food. We live in a time where medical technology is such that we can deal with the various incidents and ailments that have descended upon me and mine...there are resources, and there are many people who are willing to help.

Even as there are a myriad of dolts, idiots, and morons who seem hell bent on making easy things hard, there are also allies, friends, and sympathizers who are well bent on making hard things easier.

So, thanks to all the well-wishers who let me know that although I tend to think such, not EVERYone out there is a devolved, heart-shriveled, slack-jawed, slow-thinking, mean-spirited addlepate.

:)

Thanks to my children, who, in spite of their seemingly concerted effort to fray every last neuron that I've got, are actually very good people, and do typically try hard to do the right thing. So long as it doesn't interfere with their plans to do as little as possible.

Thanks to my lawyer, who's going to help me to dope slap a stupid-ass 19 year old kid and a handful of incompetent doctors. I know that he's doing what he's doing out of the kindness of his heart, and not for any expectation of recompense.

Thanks to my youngest brother, who stands out as a helpful hand whenever I need one, and always has...uncomplaining and unbegrudgingly. Over the years I've learned a lot from the wee bug.

Thanks to my boss, who has been as flexible as anyone can expect with the various shenanigans that have visited of late.

Thanks mostly to my wife, who has put me on more than one higher path, and drags me, kicking and screaming to be a better person.

Please Take a Moment to Vote!

At right, you'll see a little poll. I thought I'd play with that, and with my thoughts on sharing quotes that I've collected. Take a moment to vote on the category of quote that I should post on. You never know: it might just be fun!

Happy New Year!

15 People I'd like to Dope Slap with a Mail Armor Gauntlet

Matt Conlon published a really great, thought provoking post yesterday about listing 15 people you'd like to hang out with. Read it HERE.

I thought long and hard on this, but now's not the time for me to develop such a list. Over the last two years my wife and I have been put through a bit of a ringer:

1) 2010 started with me having a tangled up mass of veins removed from my chest...BEFORE they burst or turned all cancerous on me.

2) Shortly thereafter, the wife was hospitalized with a pretty severe asthma episode.

3) A month later, she needed surgery to repair a bad shoulder. DURING that surgery, when they intubated her, they lacerated her pharynx to within a couple of mm (yes: millimeters) of her carotid artery. She ended up in the ICU for something like 14 days, no food or drink for 10 days. Bad stuff.

4) I totaled my 1-year-old Tundra, after which *I* needed surgery to repair a bad shoulder. No issues with my surgery though...feeling *much* better. Got a replica of the Tundra too.

5) Less than a month after I returned to work, we were having a large party at our house. The truck delivering the tent hit first a telephone pole on the way into our driveway, and then, on the way out, our 26-foot camper as it sat parked next to our house.

6) 10 days later, we were rear-ended on the stop-and-go highway (we were stopped, and the car behind us played the 'go' role). The wife suffered a concussion, brain bleed, and brain contusion, but the quack farm where the ambulance took her didn't tell her that, even though the evidence of it was in the CAT scan they gave her.

7) She spent 6 months out of work (just recently returned there), but en-route needed to have surgery on a hand damaged in the accident, lots of rest, and neuro-testing. She actually had a migraine that caused her to appear to be having a stroke - the whole right side of her body stopped responding...scary that too.

8) She actually lost her position where she works (which was an enviable job and location) and is now going through having to find new work in the company, and is getting bounced around to less enviable locations, which she worked really hard to get out of some years ago...back to square 1, after a fashion.

SO, my list would look more like 15 people I'd love to dope slap with a mail armor gauntlet (in order of who pissed me off most):

1) The stupid-ass just-turned-19 kid who decided to NOT watch the road and put us through a damn torturous half year and cost my lovely wife a job that she has worked really hard to get and be successful at.

2) The moron cop who showed up at the hospital after that accident but NEVER FILLED OUT AN ACCIDENT REPORT, AND DIDN'T GO TALK TO THE KID WHO HIT US. These things made our work with insurance companies that much more troublesome.

3) The incompetent "doctors" who told the wife (who had a bleeding brain AND a bleeding disorder) to take advil (a blood thinner) and you'll be ok in a week or two INSTEAD of telling her "Our tests indicate that you might have a concussion and some other stuff going on...we're going to keep you and perform extra tests to be sure", which would have to have been followed-up with "You've got some nasty things here...we're going to admit you and you need to lay low for a week or two so you don'g get worse or wake up dead". Can you say 'malpractice'?

4) The jackass who hit our parked camper, and then had the nerve to ask me to help him out by NOT reporting the accident, as that would appear badly on his driving record. He first hit a telephone pole, and then a parked camper...I don't think that he should be driving at all!

5 - 9) Just about everyone involved in insurance claims, as they seem to TRY to give you bad and wrong information, which ends up making it really difficult to file papers in the right place at the right time.

10) Ryan Seacrest, for giving us Kardashians.

11) My idiot son for his $650 speeding ticket (last thing I said to him before getting this ticket: "Keep it under 70 MPH". "Ok, dad.")

12) My OTHER idiot son for 2 suspensions from school in the middle of this other crap.

13 & 14) The two complete miserable assholes who precipitated the second idiot son's suspensions

15) The oblivious moron in his big, white, Cadillac Escalade who ran a stop sign and damn near ran me over yesterday while I was crossing a street.

It's a dangerous business, going out your front door. ~J.R.R. Tolkien (Bilbo Baggins)