I’ve been to jail. I’m not proud of it, but I don’t hide the fact. I’m very open about it because it reminds me of where I’ve been, and where I don’t want to revisit. I’m not referring to jail as much as I am being a drunk. I’m an alcoholic. I’ve suffered because of it, and I’ve caused suffering because of it. Jail is just evidence of my problem, an unfortunate symptom of my condition. I prefer not to relapse. I work hard every day not to. Like most bad character traits, it takes work and persistence to stay sober. The simple act of not drinking is not so easy some days. It can be done. The people around me that love me help a lot. They give me an anchor. They steady me when I need it, but it’s up to me. I either want to be sober, or I don’t.
You can either learn from your mistakes, or live with them. I went to jail three times within eight years. I spent over ninety days in jail. I went through six months of outpatient therapy. Somewhere along the way I learned a few simple lessons.
I can’t drink without drinking controlling my life. Some people can. I can’t.
It’s up to me to change my life, or not. Nobody else.
If I decided not to change my life, I could expect the people I love to move on with their life and leave me to deal with the results of my own decisions.
One good decision can change your life.
All good things to learn. So, my life changed, and continues to change for the better. My life isn’t perfect. No one’s is. The point is this: if you’re doing things wrong, then do things differently. Someone once said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Truer wisdom I’ve never read. Our lives can change for the better if we’d just take a different path. Quit doing things the way we know will lead us to destruction. Relationships with toxic people, jobs we hate, habits that control us, hatred and bitterness that we hold onto that sour our outlook on life;
they’re all things we can change. We don’t have to keep doing the same old things, making the same old mistakes, and suffering the same old consequences. True insanity is continuing to live with our mistakes, and never taking steps in a different direction. If you walk in a circle, you’ll always end up in the same place.
Every day is a new opportunity. It may be a chance to turn away from a bad habit. It may be a new job. It may be to meet the person you’ll spend the rest of your life with. It might be a chance to do something you’ve always wanted to do. At every turn of life, we’re all presented with choices. When you find yourself ending up in the same place, over and over, get off the track. Stop taking only left hand turns. Take a right. It’s life. Not a Nascar race. You don’t have to keep circling the track, racing to win or crash. The opportunities are endless.
We just finished watching a movie called “Unsane”. It was about a young lady who had inadvertently (read “entrapped”) committed herself to a private mental health facility. She signed “standard boilerplate paperwork” after a counseling session with an intake counselor. She’d been the victim of a stalker for two years previously, and had moved across country to get away from him. She found a new job and a new life. Then she’d started seeing her stalker everywhere. That’s why she went to the facility in the first place. She was just trying to get some help. In the counselling session, she’d admitted to having suicidal thoughts in her past. They were very specific thoughts about how she’d kill herself. That was how the stress of being stalked made her think, and it’d been years before. The counsellor faked her into signing the “regular paperwork” and BAM she was in for a 24 hour voluntary committal for observation. The plot thickened, of course, when she found that her stalker was working there. I’ll not ruin the movie for you (everything I’ve already told you is in the trailer and dvd description) but I can tell you that it was a decent movie. The acting was great, and the camera work reminded me of a refreshing indie film. Rent it, if you get the chance and have a couple of hours to kill.
I’m self-consciously drawn to movies, or stories, that include mental health issues. If you know my story, or part of it, you won’t be surprised. For a long time, I avoided movies such as these. The memories were too fresh, too real, and too painful to be pushed up to the forefront of my mind. I was afraid of all the things my mind would dig up if pushed to it. I’ve had a lot of experience dealing with mental health issues. I’m not sure anyone would ever make a movie of the aspects of it I’ve dealt with, however. Most good movies on the subject are, rightfully so, from the viewpoint of the person suffering from the illness. I’ve seen several of my loved ones deal with various mental problems over the past twenty-five years. The part I played was not the “locked up against my will/why doesn’t anyone help me” role, but the ” son-in-law/husband/father that just wants to do anything to help my loved one not hurt themselves and be ok” role. It doesn’t have that sexy, academy award-winning character that the previous character study tends to elicit.
When my mother in law changed from her lithium to another medication, she had a few episodes that required hospitalization. My wife, Sam, did the research and found out what we had to do to get her some help. That first time required us to drive her a few hours away to the state capitol, where the state mental hospital was, and have her committed. It was a suck ass trip. Shirley (known to the kids as MawMaw) was bipolar. I don’t know the entire history, but she’d successfully been treated with lithium for years before doctors, in their infinite wisdom, took her off of it, and replaced it with something else. The reason for the change was that lithium can substantially damage the kidneys when used over a long period of time. All I knew for sure was that Shirley wasn’t acting like Shirley any more. Her actions and moods were “erratic”. That’s a generic term for unpredictable. If that sounds vague, I’m sorry. If you haven’t experienced mental illness in any way in your life, you won’t understand. If you have, you get it.
My mother in law was a very independent woman. She had a fantastic “inner child”, mixed with a brazen honesty that you couldn’t not love. She’d irritate the hell out of me sometimes, but I always loved her. She was a great woman. When she was herself, that is. When she wasn’t, it got….interesting. Unbalanced, unpredictable and erratic behavior can start out slow, or fast. You might just catch a strange statement here and there, or the person may just do something dramatically out of character that throws up warning signs. Bipolar people have highs, and then crashes. During the highs, their activity, speech, attitude goes a million miles an hour. To someone who doesn’t know them, it may just seem that they’re super motivated individuals. They come up with fantastic ideas and push, pull and drag them, and you, till they’re in tatters. They’ll run you ragged, keep you, and themselves, up for days on end, and generally drive you to exhaustion. When they level out, they nearly always crash-hard. Depression sets in, they sleep for days, and can become suicidal. All people are different. This description is strictly my own personal observation.
I remember the night we took Shirley to the hospital. It was January 17th, 1991, the beginning of the air offensive, Desert Storm, against Iraq. I’m a big military history buff, so that stuck in my mind. Plus, while we waited at the hospital waiting room, the television showed lots of reporting on the war. I guess you can say that’s when my own little war with mental illness began, too. It really was (is?) a war, too. Small skirmishes, ambushes, full-blown battles and nuclear options included. People died.
Sam was the most intelligent, imaginative, and creative person I’d ever met. It didn’t stop her from succumbing to bipolar illness. Mental illness can affect anyone. No one is immune. She was an honor graduate, had a full scholarship to college, and had a mind that was always moving forward. I watched her give birth to our four children, home school them, and be an awesome mom, never suspecting that she would become a victim of mental illness. Slowly, it crept up upon her, day by day, manic high and depression alike. It was like “invasion of the pod people”, with me playing the unsuspecting husband while a completely alien personality overtook her. Small comments, minor indiscretions, and moodiness gave way eventually to major mood swings, deep depressions and outlandish manic highs that left me, and everyone else, reeling. The sneaky disease crept into our life and took it completely over. It was like being on a roller coaster with absolutely no safety bar. You could go flying off the rails any second, no matter what you did to try to stop it. Throw in the minor detail that you’re trying to raise four children in this atmosphere, and you understand what true fear is. We battled bipolar illness for ten years. I made plenty of mistakes. We didn’t do everything right, and I began a spiral into alcoholism to make things more complicated. A decade of psychological tornados culminated with Sam’s death. In so many ways, we lost that battle.
My own father was susceptible to mental illness. Bad mood swings, flashes of anger, and narcissistic tendencies were not uncommon growing up with him. Wayne Stone was a great provider, an incredible dad, and the man everybody liked. It wasn’t obvious that he would have benefited greatly from antidepressants in his early years. In the last ten years of his life, unbeknownst to me, he’d begun taking them. My mother attested to the difference in his behavior and how much better he was able to cope emotionally. My father was the strongest man I’ve ever known, but it didn’t stop mental illness from making his life less than what it could’ve been.
My daughter, Candice has struggled with many issues over her lifetime. Growing up in our house could be stressful, to say the least. Having a parent with mental illness cast a pall over her life. Another parent with a drinking problem added fuel to the flame. She found drugs, especially weed, as a comfort zone to escape into. It got worse when we moved to Tennessee. Her life has spun almost continuously out of control. Children of mentally ill parents have a heavy fear of falling to the same demon. Through all of my daughter’s problems and indiscretions, there is the question of whether or not her greatest fear is being realized. Time will tell.
There are times in my life when I was ready to quit, to give up on life. The normal pressures of providing for a family are hard enough. When you’re dealing with the constant stress of a loved one’s mental disorder, stress can overwhelm you. I broke down. I gave up many times, and it only hurt my life, never helped. I quit. I gave up on myself and those that loved me. I drank to forget my problems, in the beginning. Then I drank because I preferred it to being sober. Then I drank because I found I couldn’t stop. It took three DUIs and over ninety days, total, in jail to take me to a six month, twelve step based program. It saved my marriage. It saved my family. It saved my life. One could argue that alcoholism is a mental illness. Others believe it is merely a choice: drink or don’t drink. I believe both are true, simultaneously. My diagnosis may not be clinical, but the evidence of my symptoms pointed directly at the truth of the disease. It doesn’t take away my responsibility for my horrible choices, however. We all must bear our own burdens.
Mental illness is slowly coming out of the shadows. I’m not sure if it’s because more people are being diagnosed with a wide variety of mental diseases, or that there are so many pharmaceutical companies pumping out pills for them that sell like hotcakes. Maybe a lot of both. The spotlight that is now shedding light upon mental illness is slowly turning what used to be a social stigma into something more of an acceptable illness. People don’t have to hide what’s going on inside. They can get help without becoming a pariah to their friends and family. Likewise, family members are less likely to make excuses for their loved ones symptoms and behavior. We’re still a long way from it becoming just another medical condition, but the world is changing.
A final word to that family member that is dealing with mental illness from the outside. Seek help for your loved one, and for yourself. Don’t hide erratic behavior with excuses. Open up to doctors, social workers and therapists. All the way. Don’t let fear, shame and the stigma of the disease make you freeze in the road like a opposum in the headlights. Don’t let yourself be overwhelmed with sole responsibility. Reach out to family and professionals and make use of all the resources that you can get your hands on. A simple pill won’t solve the problem. Medications can be amazing and effective, but they can’t take the place of a loving support system that will do anything to get their loved one to a place where life is better. I cannot promise that it won’t be hard. I cannot promise that all will end well. I can promise that there is hope. You have a wide array of options, medications, treatments and assistance today. Use ALL of them. Most of all, and I can’t emphasize this enough. Never. Give. Up. Thank you, dear reader, for your time.
It wouldn’t be blogging if I didn’t write about what’s going on with my pets. Recently, two of our three dogs came down with a very bad case of Montezuma’s Revenge. They stayed home while we cruised to Mexico, so I find that sadly ironic. It started a week after we’d returned from our trip, thankfully. That would’ve totally been a bummer coming off of vacation. It hasn’t been much fun for any of us, especially the dogs. it began Monday when we woke up for work. Laura Gail, luckily, gets up first and makes the discovery in the living room. I wasn’t the “Dr. Livingston, I presume?” kind of discovery. It was more along the lines of the scene in the movie “Ted” when they discover what the hooker had left. “There’s a SHIT in the living room!” was much more her attitude and response. I was happy that she’d been the one to find it, and even happier that she’d not stepped in it. I was much less happy with the realization that I would have to clean it up. It seems, after six years of marraige, that I have become the cleaner of bodily fluids of all makes and models. I suppose the fact that I regularly clean urine and feces up at work (working at a nursing home as a housekeeping supervisor and being a certified nurses aide has its perks) has forced upon me the responsibility of all hands-on clean ups of this variety at home. Now, don’t I feel special.
We have three dogs. Jack, a Beagle who is about 10 years old, but with the libido of much younger dog. My son, Mike, is the proud owner of Abbey, Jack’s daughter from a previous relationship. It was a tough break up, so I’ll save that story for later. Then we have Jill, a Pitt/Boxer mix who found it in her heart to rescue us a week before we lost our crotchety old MinPin (Pudge) to old age.
We suspected Abbey to be the culprit, at first. She’s normally skittish when things are shredded or soiled biologicaly. She shyed away nervously when we put the whole clan outside to clean up the several small ponds of visceral waste. Abbey is somewhat of a connoisser of all things. She’ll eat rocks. Not even tasty rocks. Or even just small rocks. She kind of reminds me of my son, Tim, at an early age. Discovery necessitates immediate olfactory trials, followed usually by depositing straight down the ole gullet. So she was the natural suspect. Since there were no other symptoms, such as lack of appetite, throwing up, etc, we figured we’d keep an eye on her and let it go. Tuesday morning there was more of the same, and even more when I returned home after work. My nose, and the mop, got quite the work out. We began to Sherlock Holmes what could this be. Same food as always. All three dogs eat the same Old Roy dog food. They’d all had the same “beggin strips” snack on Monday. Mike had given them a new toy on Monday also. Jill shredded it and Abbey managed to get a few licks in, but Laura Gail had taken it away from them and thrown it away. We’d give it one more day for the gushing to end before we took Abbey to the vet.
Wednesday morning we awoke to a clean floor, praise be to the God above who has kindly smiled up on us! We were sure as shootin that we’d mad it over the hump and were healthy rock eaters once more. No, dear reader, we had not. Wednesday afternoon, when I (Supreme Shit Sanitizing Poobah) returned from work I found myself quickly turned into a movie star. Specifically, I morphed into Bob Saget’s character “Walter” on the classic “Dumb and Dumberer” when he opened the bathroom door to the less than obviously melted chocolate smeared all over the room. “There’s SHIT everywhere!” my brain and mouth exclaimed. And it was. Living room. Check. Dining room. Check. Kitchen. Check. Dribbles, and puddles and plops, oh my! All three dogs embarassingly exited stage right while I rolled up my sleeves (euphemistically speaking, I was wearing short sleeves already. It’s ninety degrees outside in August here in Tennessee) and got to work. I papered up what I could, sprayed down the various liquid and semi solid spots of smelly slush with a vinegar/bleach mixture, and then back to the good old mop. I made sure to text the wife to “take the long way home” because I didn’t want her to show up and see, and smell, yon grotestque site. I barely finished before Laura Gail got home. We had to figure out what to do next.
The quantity of “issue” was such that we figured it just HAD to be Jill. Plus, the fact that when Laura Gail arrived home the poor thing was quivering and slightly unbalanced. We figured Abbey had just been falsely accused on account of her guilty looks. It didn’t help that she got twitchy as a crackhead when we questioned her about it under interrogation. It was an honest mistake. Some folks end up in Guantanimo Bay for less suspicious behavior. Jill was the culprit. Vet time.
In times past, if you needed to take your pet to a vet outside of regular office hours, you’d be shit outta luck. (pun, yes. so sue me.) Here in modern times, there are actually pet emergency clinics. We loaded up our baby, 68 plus pounds of sickly infantile canine, and headed off to the ER. They were great at Jackson Pet Emergency Clinic. They got us in quickly, were kind and very professional. They recommended an x-ray to check out her tummy (gut is the clinical term for a dogs stomach, I understand) and we were told she’d need a slight sedative. The vet tech Jill took a liking to immediately. The doctor, who was a kindly, older man, she had an equally immediate dislike towards. He spoke softly and tried to put his hand out for an introductory smell. Jill simply gave him a low, quick, slightly muffled growl. Nope, said Jill. To his credit, the doc didn’t take it personally. Laura Gail and I held her gently on the examination table while he looked her over and send a probe up her rectum for a sample. How’d she know? Instincts, I suppose. Well, the sedation and x-ray would take about an hour, so the tech suggested we go get some dinner, or run errands versus waiting in the waiting room. Since we’d not had dinner, we opted to head for the steak house in the interim. We felt slightly guilty leaving her, especially going to eat while her tummy was so messed up, but we forced ourselves. Upon our return, it was good news. No blockage. The film showed “foreign object” of an “unspecified nature”, meaning it could be a piece of toy, or it could just be undigested food. They gave us anti-diarreah meds and antibiotics and sent us kindly on our way with a promise to follow up if things didn’t get better. Jill was happy to leave.
When we returned home, I set up the large kennel cage in the living room. I put puppy pads under it and padded the interior enough to make Cleopatra herself proud to lay upon it. Jack even strolled inside and dozed for a bit. When I playfully closed the door, he freaked out a bit and made several circles before I released him. We got Jills meds into her without much trouble and she lay on the reclyner and snoozed in a anesthesia-assisted nap before I finally put her into the kennel. Done deal. Now, at least if she has a tummy attack it’ll be confined to that small space. Not so, dear reader, not so at all. Thursday morning began, much as had the rest of the week, with The Cleaning of the Shits. How had I ever managed to get through mornings without it? Even with Jill in the kennel, there were my favorite poop-prizes scattered liberally about the house. We were wrong. It was both of them. Abbey AND Jill were ill. So we dosed Abbey with the same meds they’d given us for the one dog, and gave up on putting anyone in the kennel. Jill still liked it though. I think she thought of it as her own little luxury suite.
I went to work Thursday with the full understanding that I’d be cleaning up more poop when I arrived home that afternoon. It was ok. My babies were getting medicated. They would heal soon, so I was ok with doing that for them. I gripe about them, scold them for getting me out of my chair sometimes, and pick on them in general, but I honestly don’t know what I’d do without those overgrown pups. I’d do anything for them. Even clean up diarreah. That’s one of the rules of love. “Love is….cleaning up my diarreah” doesn’t make a good T-shirt, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less true. When I arrived home, however, I found none. There was a little urine in the kennel, and some “up chuck” that seemed to soley consist of undigested dog food. I dodged a bullet. Thankfully.
I decided to run to Dollar General and pick up some softer texture dog food, just in case our old standby, Old Roy, had somehow been the cause. Jack and Abbey loved it. Jill wouldn’t touch it. When Laura Gail got home, she cooked them rice with chicken broth. They all loved it. They’d all had to wait twenty four hours to eat, and they were starved and thirsty. Jack wasn’t sick, but he fasted with them, sympathetically but not by choice. They’re all doing better today, and Abbey and Jill took their meds like troopers. Jill’s had a couple of up chuck moments tonight, but I’m pretty sure she’s over the worste and am confident she and Abbey will make a full recovery. Thank God.
When your a dog “parent” and your dog is sick, it’s a lot like being a regular parent. You hurt with them, try to take care of them and make their pain go away. You baby talk them and give them meds, take them to the doctor, and worry and pray for them. They’ve worked their way into your heart, and you love them. Laura Gail and I both immediately did what needed to be done for them because that’s what you do when you love someone. I whine about cleaning the same way I used to whine about changing diapers. It’s a nasty job, but it’s gotta get done. Laura Gail got them to take their meds with the skill of a good vet tech and fixed them a home cooked meal when their tummys couldn’t take the regular stuff. Not only that, but the bill incurred at the vet, while not as high as “human” er prices, was fairly steep. Laura Gail use the bulk of a well-deserved bonus to cover it without a second thought. We love our dogs. The sad difference between them and our children is that knowledge on the fringe of our minds that we will, most likely, out live our pets. Every time they fall ill, we wonder if we’ll lose them. Even little things like when we call them to the door to come inside and they don’t come to us immediately (we call Jack “five minute Jack. He always waits five minutes after we shut the door to come a-scratchin). We have a flash of “God, I hope they didn’t run into the street and get hit by a car”. We worry that they’ll get hurt, get sick, do something stupid and be in pain because of it. Oh. Wait. That’s exactly how we feel with our ACTUAL children. No mistake, I’ll not put a human life above my pet’s life. Don’t let that fool you, though. Abbey, Jack and Jill are my babies. They touch my heart every day, and I love em. I don’t ever want to test that “human life versus dog life” theory.
So this was my “pet blog”. If you made it to the end, I thank you for listening/reading. I hope I didn’t bore you. And a small apology is in order to my Laura Gail. I snapped at her tonight after cleaning up the last up chuck from Jill. You didn’t deserve that, Tink. I’m sorry. You’re a wonderful woman and I love you very much. Plus, I hope I don’t wake you up when I slip into bed after writing this, cause I know how much you hate it when I mess up your sleep schedule. Good night, dear reader.
Well, here I am at fifty three. Fifty three. Man, that just doesn’t sound right. How does time get by us so fast? I don’t mean to lament on the obvious, but really, how did I get this old without achieving all those goals I had at twenty one? Time waits for no one. I know this. I work at a nursing home. I see evidence of it every day. I’ve learned that old people are just people like you and I. They’re pretty bewildered at where they’ve ended up, too. They have desires, demands, and dreams just like the rest of us. We all have the same dilemma: a finite amount of time.
Time is the great leveler. Pay attention to this, my younger friends. None of us have the same amount. As a matter of fact, none of us knows exactly how much time we actually do have. Sounds elementary, my dear Watson. It is. Yet we go through our days and nights with little, or no, thought on the things we want to accomplish, other than the occasional daydream or “I wish…” . Time is fleeting. Time is also relative. Four years seems to be a lifetime when an eighteen year old looks at their educational requirements. It is but the blink of an eye in the retrospective vision of a fifty three year old examining his life. Today. Today is reality. Today is the only time that truly exists. It took me so long to learn this. It took me even longer to act upon it. Evidence of that is in the words you read today.
I started blogging last night. I set up my WordPress account (the freebie, of course) and began to chronicle family stuff. I’ve always desired to write about family history, and to have a venue to post family information, events and history. I’ve also always been lazy about doing it. Just as I’ve been very lazy about writing anything else, in general. Sloth is not one of the seven deadly sins for no reason. Sloth comes in many forms. They all kill. Procrastination breeds regret. Regret breeds remorse. Remorse suffocates you in a depressive pillow, slowly sucking the life from your soul. Overly dramatic? Maybe. Maybe not.
Regret is not generally my thing. I’ve made plenty of mistakes, plenty of bad decisions that are mine to own. I am of the mind that who we are in life is a result of our decisions, be they good or bad. The good ones we tend to take credit for, to celebrate. The bad ones we have a tendency to want to forget. The problem with that is that if we forget them, sweep them under the rug to be forgotten, we don’t learn from them. We regret them. Regret, in and of itself, teaches us nothing. Don’t let your bad decisions scare you away from letting them teach you something about yourself. If you screw up, learn from it. At least make different mistakes, and don’t keep making the same ones over and over. That’s why you should always remember your bad decisions. Not for regret’s sake, but to make yourself a better person. I find myself looking back upon my life today with only one true regret. I’ve mourned it, lamented it, and my soul has dimmed somewhat because of it. All of my life I’ve dreamed of being a writer. I’ve started writing everything from novels to short stories, nearly all unfinished, especially the novels. All those words give me the feeling that, I suppose, of an aborted child that never had life. I look back and see the evidence of my sloth, the debris of my creative life, and the wonder seeps in. I wonder: what would my life be like if I’d just write? Would I be any good at it? Would I be able to put into print what my imagination sees? Would I be able to touch anyone with those words? Procrastination. Regret. Remorse. Suffocation of my soul.
No. No more. I won’t allow myself to regret the past thirty or forty years of procrastination, of being a sloth of a man. I’ll act. Win, lose or draw. Follow my progress here, I dare you. Keep me grounded, dear reader. That’s why I began this blog, in all reality. I see the end game in sight. Fifty three isn’t middle age, unless I’m going to live until I’m one hundred and six years old. I sincerely don’t want to live that long. I have no death wish, by any means, but I’ve seen how most one hundred year old people live, and it’s no party I want to attend. I am using this blog to chronicle my family, yes. It’s the act of writing. A novel is my goal, my dream. This blog is the first step. A building block in the foundation of a dream. It’s important to me that I not be slothful any longer, and that I find out if my dream can become a reality. Today. Because there really isn’t anything but today.
This was a great year for vacations. We had the pleasure of going on a second cruise to Mexico, via Carnival Fantasy, from August 11th to August 16th. We visited Costa Maya and Cozumel and enjoyed ourselves tremendously. “We” included myself, my beautiful wife, Laura Gail, and our sons, Cody and Micheal. Much thanks to my son, Micheal, for initiating the trip, and for being our gracious benefactor. I can’t say enough about Mike. There’s not a kinder, more generous, soul on the planet. He’s a hard working and intelligent manager. He gives freely of his time and resources. He’s been a rock for his family for a long time, and I love him dearly. Thank you, son, for all you are.
If you’ve never been on a cruise, I highly recommend going. It’s a blast. The ocean is beautiful and serene. The ship has all you need and want in entertainment and interaction. The excursions are absolutely fantastic. If you’re afraid of the “big water”, don’t be. It’s an experience you won’t soon forget. The sunrises, and sunsets, are incredible sights. The stars at night, from the middle of the ocean, are so bright and beautiful. It’s incredibly romantic.
When I was a boy, we had some pretty good vacations. They were usually camping, skiing, fishing, swimming and generally outdoorsy stuff. They were great. We’d been to Six Flags, Liberty Land, and many trips to see relatives in Oklahoma, Missouri, and Michigan. Mom and Dad (known today as Nanny and Pop) always made sure we had fun. Big families don’t always have big budgets for vacations, however. My kids can recall some pretty awesome camping trips and visits to the grandparents and aunts/uncles/cousins, but the budgets for those were always less than lavish. We do our best with what we have. I can honestly say that our family had fun on our outings. My desire to take them on big trips to Disneyworld or (my personal favorite) Washington, DC, never materialized.
I’m so grateful to Mike for the many trips he’s financed and experienced with us. Disneyworld, Penn State (Chris’s graduation), Six Flags, and now three cruises under our belts. I hope to someday hand him tickets to some long-awaited fantasy destination for him to enjoy. Until then, I’m thankful that he thinks enough of his family to spend such quality time with us. I’ll make a point of taking him fishing again soon, before the season ends.
This is by no means an all inclusive post. I will expound upon our trip in detail tomorrow. Remember, I’m new to all of this and it’ll take time for me to get my rhythm. Till tomorrow. Bon Voyage!
Hi Guys! This is an introduction to the Stone Family. Most of you readers will probably BE Stones, at least at first, so I just want to welcome you. My goal here is to provide us all with a venue to share our history, our current life experiences, and our future goals with each other, and the world. A little scary, huh? Well, fear not! Our family is a rich and diverse bunch of characters with a lot to share. Think of this format as a time capsule for future generations. They’ll be able to read these stories from their ancestors and know that they are more than just anecdotes. They are from a long line of awesome people who have seen, and experienced a lot of life. I promise that I will post my stories regularly, and that I’ll be honest with you, and myself. I invite all of you to do the same.
Rolling Stones 