I’m very appreciative of loyal reader David, who was able to find my lost post I wrote about yesterday. He cut and pasted it from his news aggregator and emailed it to me. It’s at the bottom of this post after the jump.
I believe there are two types of texters in this world. One is the type that will send you many short texts, one right after the other. The other will type one long text. I belong in the latter category.
I was pleasantly surprised to hear Trevor Reed, the former Marine recently freed from Russia, is back at home. When his parents were trying to get a meeting with President Biden during his visit to DFW, I thought the local news was setting things up to make Biden look cold hearted by not meeting with them. However, he did make time to call and talk to them and later met with them at the White House. I thought all of that was a bit of grandstanding and never thought it would amount to anything. But the world needs more optimists like Reed’s parents and fewer pessimists like me.
As I was walking BoyGeeding home from school, the bell for DaughterGeeding’s class rang. She darted out the door, and I heard her say something not very pleasant to one of her peers. She had no idea I was there, but her friends did, and they went, “Ohhhhh.” I didn’t do anything to embarrass her, but it was one of those moments I would have looked forward to sharing and discussing with her mother.
Thankfully, I’m not in debt. But with as little money as I have and the amount house prices and property tax have gone up, I truly wonder if I’ll be fortunate to own a home again. There is so much DIY stuff I miss doing. And, I miss the tiny upgrades I made around GeedingManor, like making a smart house and programming routines for certain items to do certain things throughout the day. But Bono once sang, “A house doesn’t make a home.” So, I should just focus on the latter.
Today, the ex and I will meet with DaughterGeeding’s pediatrician. It’s the first time we’ll meet with a third-party post divorce. It would not surprise me one bit if her mother or sister showed up.
I do what I can not to ask about my ex, but the kids like to tell me what’s going on in her life. This weekend she’ll be traveling to Colorado. Last weekend, she was in Orlando at Universal Studios and the Magic Kingdom. I guess you can do those things after selling your house and not having to pay any legal fees because your mother footed the bill.
One of my new mentors told me something that I’ve been chewing on for days. We have a lot in common other than age, personality wise and with our divorces. He said he learned that most, if not all, of his divorce problems could have been solved by surrendering to acceptance.
You do not know how good it feels to be blogging again. It’s a brief return to normalcy, stress relieving, and makes me feel I have a purpose and can make a little difference in someone’s life.
I feel very fortunate to be living in this era. My parents still owned a black-and-white television when I was born, and I got to see the birth of the personal computer, HDTV, and the internet. I remember in college one of my friends being in awe someone in the dorm had just bought a computer with a one-gig hard drive. I thought about that when I read this story.
Researchers in Japan have developed a new method for making 5-cm (2-in) wafers of diamond that could be used for quantum memory. The ultra-high purity of the diamond allows it to store a stagger
ing amount of data – the equivalent of one billion Blu-Ray discs. Diamond is one of the most promising materials for practical quantum computing systems, including memory.
That story also made me think of something my best friend Jimi told me. Most teens and young adults have no idea the origin or the story of the save icon.
I have no idea what happened to yesterday’s post. Last night I wanted to review something I wrote, and it wasn’t there. It was in response to something LiberallyLean wrote, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t come across as condescending. And if I did, I wanted to reach out and be respectful. Today, I wanted to add to that flow of thought, but I can’t find a trace of that post anywhere. It’s as if it never existed. Nothing is even in the Drafts folder. Weird. It would be too much work to replicate it, and I wouldn’t do justice even if I tried. Heck, I even linked to a bunch of sources. I used the above image of LBJ and Ike on the golf course for that post, and it was already uploaded, so I know I at least worked on the post and it wasn’t a dream.
I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before. I miss my kids like crazy when they aren’t with me. Yet, when we first get together, I get this weird anxiety around them. It’s hard to describe, but it feels like they are about to get snatched from me and I just start to miss them like crazy, even though they are right in front of me and we just got together. I hope my counselor can help me out with this, I should feel calm and peace when I first see my children, not any form of anxiety.
Our stupid divorce decree states when one of us moves, we have to send the other party a letter by certified mail informing them of the new address. It’s a bit of overkill, but I get it. My ex moved and sent me such a thing, and despite me always being home when the postal worker drops by and requesting for it to be redelivered, the certified mail was never delivered. So, the ex did the reasonable thing and sent me a message through our court ordered messaging app stating she tried to send me a certified letter of an address change, that it got returned, and she provided me with the updated address. I replied stating how I requested for it to be redelivered and it never was, and that there was no need for her to follow through delivering the letter since she provided me updated address through the court ordered messaging app. The following week, when I saw her at our daughter’s softball game, she brought up the certified mail being returned and asked what I wanted her to do with the letter. I told her I stand by my earlier statement, that there’s no need to follow through delivering the certified letter since I have her updated address. I thought this would be the end of it. But yesterday afternoon, after our daughter’s softball game, she chased me down with the letter in her hand and said she knows even though I said I didn’t want the letter; she wanted to give it to me. That made me feel very uncomfortable, like she was up to something, and felt the need to protect myself. So, I just put my hands in my pockets and politely but directly told her I didn’t want it and walked away. And she thought I didn’t let things go. Sheesh.
I am glad to hear longtime and loyal reader John is recovering well from his little trip to the ER.
I went to the bagel store yesterday. Instead of getting it to go, this time I ate it there. It didn’t bother me I didn’t get to speak to BagelGirl much, but I struck up a great conversation with a retired teacher who was altering a dress. She decided to do it at the bagel store because it was brighter in the store than her house, and she just wanted to be social. Because of her, I learned a lot about the history of Lewisville, and all of it was rather interesting. She asked, “So, what is it that you do?” I told her I’m just rebuilding my life after a very tough divorce, discovering new things about myself. I wish I could adequately describe the look of compassion on her face. She asked a few questions, and I provided some brief answers, and it was nice to see how a stranger can suddenly become interested in your life.
Speaking of rebuilding, other than Thanksgiving dinner for the kids, yesterday was the first time since my ex abandoned me and took thekids, I actually cooked dinner. I’ve done nothing but eat out (or not eat, due to stress) and warm stuff up. My definition of cooking means taking raw ingredients and applying heat, as opposed to popping a frozen lasagna into the oven. Granted, it was just spaghetti, but I’m working on focusing on small wins.
I ran across this macabre statement yesterday but it made me laugh. As far as I know, it’s not true, “Bob Barker died yesterday. He was crossing the street and was hit…BY A BRAND NEW CAR!”
Here’s an interesting lawsuit. It’s between two mermaid performers. One of them is a spell-casting witch married to a cop who allegedly abuses his authority. Of course, this is in Florida.
Santo Linarte López, a migrant from Nicaragua, told the New York Times that although he doesn’t understand why Abbott paid for him to travel north, he was grateful since it got him closer to his final destination: North Carolina. “Imagine, how much would it cost to get from here to all the way over there,” López said, adding he only had $45 left of the $1,500 he had raised for his trip to the U.S.
I knew Carol Burnett look at Lucille Ball as a mentor, so I was sad when I read the following.
In a sad coincidence, Ball died, at age 77, on April 26, 1989 — Burnett’s birthday. “She would always send me flowers on my birthday,” Burnett said. “That afternoon, I got flowers from her that said, ‘Happy Birthday, kid.’”
For what it’s worth, my dad’s sister died on his birthday. He took it pretty hard. The day after my mom died, a package from her family in Vietnam arrived. That hit me pretty hard.
I wasn’t aware of this assassination attempt on Prince Charles. Granted, blanks were used. But I find it more surprising that the shooter became a lawyer (barrister) after serving his time. Chuck wasn’t phased at all.
I can not emphasize enough how much wide receiver gloves have advanced in technology that it makes catching a ball much easier than years past. Check them out the next time you are in a sporting goods store. Here’s an example. This guy wouldn’t be making those catches in the Eighties. https://twitter.com/NFL/status/1518995716810547200?t=hg0leeKWAqcoAj5s0Ykmwg&s=09
Posted inPersonal|Comments Off on Bag of Randomness for Thursday, April 28, 2022
Yes, I take the GPS estimated time of arrival as a personal challenge.
I forgot to mention, when I met my friends for scholarship weekend, I did what I could to avoid talking about the divorce or my ex the entire time. I didn’t want to be a downer and wanted the focus on all of us having fun and being able to escape our everyday problems for an evening.
I forwarded this to a friend who sells his plasma to make extra money; however, there’s no Dallas location – If you are a healthy adult 18 to 50 years old, you may be eligible to earn up to $1,500 a month in compensation to donate your poop (compensation may vary by city and is subject to change).
In the midst of DeSantis’ feud with the Disney Company, Fort Bend County Judge JP George, the chief executive officer of Fort Bend County, Texas, wrote a letter inviting the company to relocate to his area and avoid “authoritarian, anti-business, and culture war attacks from extremists in Florida.”
The omission of one particular ingredient is glaringly obvious: cream. Because there are no dairy products used in Oreo cookies, the FDA does not allow Nabisco to call their filling cream. The easy get-around? They spell it “creme”.
Traffic accidents dropped 82% after the city shrank the roadway from three to two lanes in each direction on this nightmarish stretch of Jefferson, which cuts through a variety of residential neighborhoods just west of the thoroughfare’s main commercial district.
The Harrisburg, Pa., native and former Penn State star got to drop the puck ahead of Sunday’s tilt between the AHL’s Hershey Bears and Syracuse Crunch. While he indeed dropped the puck, there was one problem – no player from either team was at center ice yet. It wasn’t until after his initial drop that the 2021 NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year was told how the ceremony actually works. Once players from the Bears and Crunch skated over, Parsons got a second chance to do a traditional puck drop before walking back through the tunnel. The Bears apologized for not fully explaining how the puck drop is supposed to work.
Scholarship selection weekend was great. Now that I’m a divorced man, I have a greater appreciation for these extraordinary long friendships. While I still haven’t had a belly laugh in over two years, I had one, maybe two, really good laughs. Slowly, I’m coming back together.
Regarding the scholarship trustees, four are childhood friends from Mineral Wells. Throughout high school and college, I was always the heaviest. Now, I’m the lightest and only one under 200 lbs. I never thought that day would happen.
When you are a full-time dad, you feel responsible for your children’s safety 24/7. When you get divorced, and while you always remain a dad at all times, you are no longer responsible for their safety 24/7, just your court-agreed possession time. So, when the kids do something like fly out of state for a long weekend, it’s a weird kinda feeling. You also want them to have nothing but joy, but you feel bummed you aren’t making lasting memories with them.
My closest peer in a divorce-recovery texted me a photo I sent him one year ago over the weekend. It was of me and my kids on the roof of GeedingManor watching the sunset. In the original text from a year ago, he was checking in on me, because at that time, I was only allowed to see my children nine hours a week. It was interesting looking at my eyes in that photo. They belonged to a broken man, longing for his marriage, already missing his kids, sitting on the roof of the home he doesn’t want to sell, not having any idea of when will the healing process can begin because so much was still ahead of him in terms of the divorce. Rebuilding could only start once the divorce is over, and I still had to finish the court mandated parallel parenting class, get the results of my psych exam, mediation, selling and moving out of the house, the actual divorce, and a hundred of other unplanned and unwelcome things are finished. Otherwise, if you start the rebuilding process too early, everything you worked on may come crashing down and you have to start all over, and I didn’t want to start all over again. While I’m not where I want to be, I have made progress since that photo. It’s a mixture of the simple passage of time, counseling, medication, prayer, and a handful of other things. I just wonder what the percentages of each are . It’s hard to measure that kind of progress. That person in the photo does not know how much stronger he is than he imagined.
One thing I wonder is if I’ll ever be able to trust anyone unequivocally again. The last time I thought I could be myself, be transparent with my thoughts and fears, confide my stress and depression, and share all my medical information, that woman left me at my lowest point and continues to work to alienate our children from me. I fear I so desire to love again, I’m going to sacrifice some things I shouldn’t have the first time. If I question integrity, I need to go with my gut and not my heart. So, if your bride doesn’t even glance at you as she walks down the aisle, run. She’s not there for you, she’s there for the show.
One thing that bothers me is the person who makes a big deal out of when they are included in the photo, even if they aren’t the main subject. My brother was like that, I feel robbed of many family photos. You miss looking at that stuff when you lose your family. Those folks don’t understand how a small act of humility on their part makes such a difference in someone else’s life. When that person does it, the rest of your time with that person feels like you are walking on eggshells and just can’t act yourself.
I knew Nocona Boots were made (at one time) in Nocona, Texas. But I didn’t know there was a connection with the Justin Boots company. This is from the founder of Nacona Boots, Enid Justin:
Her father was the famed boot-maker Herman Joseph Justin, who cobbled his first pair of boots while working in a Texas barber shop. A student of the boot-making craft herself, Enid opened the Nocona Boot Company in 1925 after her brothers, John, Sr., Avis, and Earl, decided to move her father’s business to Fort Worth, Texas.
The Batman Starring Adam West.. Coming Soon! – The guys who put this together did a great job. You’ll really appreciate it if you’ve seen the new movie or at least the trailer. They actually put together a behind-the-scenes featurette if you want to know how they pulled off the great CGI.
Posted inPersonal|Comments Off on Bag of Randomness for Monday, April 25, 2022
That story also made me think of something my best friend Jimi told me. Most teens and young adults have no idea the origin or the story of the save icon.
