Eh, I don't update nearly enough, but I really want to

I'm tired of the bad news showing up too. So I'll just quickly start off with this: My dad's brother did lose his battle with cancer as we expected, and we lost him in July. Granddad, my dad's dad, is needing surgery on his gall bladder, and no one is optimistic he'll survive the recovery. This has been an off year for us.

I am contemplating a job change. Doing work very similar to what I'm doing now, just minus the burden of long-term travel and it's in-house. The pay and location are way better. Plus I already know the team, and one of them is one of my best friends. David took me under his wing and mentored me when I showed up as an 18 year-old private at Fort Hood. He had only been in a year before me, but had his college degree. Sometimes he's more of a big brother to me than my own is, though I wouldn't trade my bro for anything; but David has been looking out for me and my career for a number of years. I've never asked him for help, but he's always been willing to help out anyway, and he's been great.

One of my greater fears might be emerging....and it's more or less a petty fear.
My kids aren't doing well with school. I wasn't the greatest student, I don't think, when I was younger. However, my brother taught me to read before I entered kindergarden, as well as to count to 99. So, dealing with a child in the first grade who has trouble reading has been frustrating to say the least. Having trouble with math I can understand....math sucks. But by first grade, I would have thought she'd be a little further along.

Her younger sister is having trouble with everything. She's about to enter kindergarden next year, and can't figure out the difference between numbers and letters. She just learned how to spell her name, but only because we went over it and over it in a sing-song way. She has Hannah Montana's music catalog down, but can't get her name right.

Sometimes I wonder if their issue is for lack of effort. They seemed so bright earlier, but I fear I'm doomed to have kids who will struggle in school. Unless they're taking after me. I was an average student until the 7th grade...then something clicked and I never had any problems with school until college.

My oldest finished a soccer tournament today. She scored another goal, and seems to have the talent to be a good soccer player the older she gets, but she doesn't seem to give her best all the time.

Alright....I feel bad for raggin' on my kids now, so I'll just post some pictures of them.

Bad news really blows

Man. This has really been a bad year. I got an email from my mom about two weeks ago, with a family update. My Uncle Clyde had died. Uncle Clyde was my grandmother's last remaining sibling, she lost her other brother, Uncle Lou, a long while ago. Uncle Clyde was great. Whenever I would visit my grandparents in Newton, he would drive an hour down from Marshall, just to see us. Or he would make it a point to call, just to talk for a bit. Great man who loved his family, all of it. It's a sad shame that no one made it to his funeral to pay their last respects. I'm 1100 miles away, and swamped at work, not a good excuse, but his own grandson thought it was more important to go to a gun show than to attend. There weren't enough relatives in attendance for pall bearers, so my cousin told me.

The same email told me that my Uncle Jim, grandma's oldest son, my dad's oldest brother, has now become paralyzed from the waist down due to his cancer. He won't last the year.

Also in the email, Grandad is getting worse (this same grandma's husband). He was in the hospital a while ago because he couldn't breathe. Spent about a week there, and is now back home, but tells my dad that he's ready for all this suffering to end. That's rough to hear.

I'm a little drunk tonight. Second time in two nights. Before this, I hadn't been drunk since 4th of July last year. The reason though, is not celebratory. Yesterday I got a call from my mom, telling me that a really good friend of mine was found dead in her bathtub, from an epileptic seizure.

Megan was an angel. We knew each other all through school, it was hard not to with a school so small, but when I was a tiny freshman in high school, Megan befriended me for some reason. She was a grade ahead of me, but she included me when groups of people would go out. For 3 years we were close.

She would always say to me, at the end of the day, "I love you, Brent"; to which I'd arrogantly reply, complete with cocky grin, "I know."

When she graduated, I finally replied with an "I love you too." She had become one of my best friends, but after she graduated, she moved away, and I didn't see her much after that. We'd chat every now and then, but after my graduation I left for the military, and lost touch with many of my old school friends.

Occasionally I'd see her during my visits home, and we'd hug and catch up on old times, but that was it. Still, the pain of losing an old friend somehow feels no different than if we had remained close up to now.

Goodbye, Megan.

yup. A new entry.

So i suck and should never have signed on to a blog. I disappoint my loyal fan each day I never update.

2007 has sucked this year.

It began sucking when my daughter fell at the table, slamming her tiny 5 year old chin down onto the tabletop, splitting it open. I can tolerate many things....seeing my kids bleed is not one of them, sad to say. Nevertheless, I stopped the bleeding and took her to the ER and sat with her while they put in 3 pretty blue stitches.

2 weeks later my wife slices her hand opening a can of potatoes. She should have gone to the ER for stitches, but was too stubborn. Well I wasn't having that...the next morning I showed her!

I decided that it was time for another round of kidney stones (my 3rd go around in my young 28 years). All 3 times I have had them, having them get stuck while moving through me has hurt waaaaaaaay more than actually pissing them out. This one was the mother-effing-armageddon-like-meteor of kidney stones! I was in so much pain when it began passing from my kidney to the bladder that I was bawling and puking at the same time, writhing around on the floor while my kids watched, terrified.

I should have called the ambulance and sent them to their rooms.

Instead, we drive them to my in-law's, drop them off, and my wife and I go on to the ER (all of these things happened on the weekend) and I wait, in knife-twisting-in-my-belly agony for 2 freaking hours before they got me into a room and drugged me up. After that I was fine...passed it about a week later.

My wife had her hand looked at, but still opted out of getting stitches. But hahahaha she got her tetanus shot the next day.

Not to be outdone, though, my wife plots her one-uppance. She targets her retaliation when I'm at my weakest. The family is nailed by a nasty bout of fluish cold. I'm aching from head to toe, sore throat, cough...terrible stuff. Juicing up with the vitamin C and multisimptom cold medicine....all of us are....well come to find out that my wife is hypersensitive to these medicines. Normally she only takes half dosages anyway, because any more and she feels......off. But we were in bad shape....so she takes normal dosages, and her body reacts as if she's overdosed.....so at 5 a.m. we're trucking to the ER once again! They flush her out and send her home 7 hours later.

Well by now my other kids are feeling left out. So at my oldest's first soccer practice, a couple of weeks later, my son decides to get run over by a hefty 8 year-old, fracturing his collarbone in the process. GOAL!

My middle kid better not even think of getting sick this year.

And so I leave you with this, your moment of Zen.