Most of my family is dead, and the rest want nothing to do with me. Somehow my grand-daughter Shelby and my son Riley have held in there, and quite frankly are the only reason I'm still alive.
I'm not looking for any fucking sympathy here, because I don't deserve it, and I'm a fortunate old fool that I still have some left. Otherwise I would have exploded into the Other Side a while ago.
I want to stay alive now, so I can watch Trump and his heroes repair this Country, which I love and respect. I need to stay around at least 4-8 years to watch that happen, and hopefully more.
I want to come face to face with the Aliens that destroyed my older brothers life when we were kids, and ask them why.
I want to watch Shelby succeed with her dream, and build a dynasty. I want to watch Riley's daughters grow up to be amazing women, in a Country that has it together powerfully, honestly and transparently. I want to watch them all build their own dynasties.
My longest friend Sherry who I've known since 1971, when we worked together in San Leandro, CA, and lived together several times over many decades, follows this blog. She will occasionally send me long emails with suggestions on how to fix my life.
Her most recent one suggested, once again, that I attend AA, maybe meet a potential roommate, and help each other stay sober. Great advice Skoge, but I need to figure out another way.
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I've lived my long life, unafraid. As a result I've taken many chances that put it at risk, and fortunately I'm still here almost eighty years later.
I'm proud of that fact, and I feel empathy for those who are afraid to go for it. You only have one shot at this experience and if you let fear get in the way, you will lose.
So I sit here now, still unafraid, but running out of options and reasons to proceed.
We need to live our final days for ourselves, not because our demise will cause our loved one's grief.
We all die and hopefully we reconnect on the other side, but who knows, it's called life. We can't force ourselves to keep going because our death will cause pain to others.
We have to finish it on our own terms, unafraid, or end up like this.
Or this.
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I'm sitting in the Cave today, thinking of my first trip to Roatan Honduras. I was living alone in Tennessee at the time, had some money and decided to take my first Cruise.
I picked up a good deal on a 7-Day Caribbean run, drove to the Nashville airport, parked my truck there and flew to Florida.
It was a great cruise, fun adventures, and it bottomed out down in Roatan before returning home.
As I got off the boat I was approached by a flurry of cab drivers, so I picked one out and jumped in. He smiled, spoke English, and asked what I wanted to do.
I told him first I wanted to get high, then drive around to meet people. We stopped at his house where he got me stoned, then we drove to his brothers house, where I went inside and bought some more. Then we cruised around and hung out until I had to get back to the ship.
Here's a few shots from that day.
The cab driver and I sat at the end of this pier and got stoned one last time, before he drove me back to the ship. I left the rest of the baggie with him...
My son Riley is forty years younger than me. I held him in my arms when he was born at SF General in the City, before his mother did.
He's become a top Auto Body Technician in the Seattle area, landed a good woman, and has two beautiful young girls.
Tomorrow is his birthday, and I just want to send a loving shout out to my boy, Dad.
I've been seeing these things embedded in the sidewalks around this Pensacola neighborhood, and I don't know their purpose.
Actually I don't care about much anymore, just curious.
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We humans fuckup a lot. We live as fully as we can, knowing that we only have one shot at this, and fuckups happen.
Our current position is based on how serious those fuckups were, and how the world around us deals with them. If we're lucky we don't fuckup so bad that it ruins our lives, or ruins others.
Every great person in our human history has handled their fuckups well and succeeded. Every down and out person we see on the street, or those doing life in prison, have not. The rest of us are living in the middle of fuckup land, hoping it doesn't happen again, but knowing that it will.
I fucked up a thousand times as I approach eighty. Sometimes the people around me ceased to be around me, because of it. Then I just keep moving forward until the next one.
I look at myself honestly in the mirror and know I'm a good person. I've tried to live a decent honest life, without hate, or hurtfulness, but sometimes I fuckup.
As Pensacola, FL unfolds around me daily, I think about the fuckups that landed me here. There were a bunch and somehow, thanks to my limited family, I'm still on my feet.
And I'm not fucking up as bad lately. My last big fuckup was getting dead drunk at the end of my local bar a while back. Poor me, I'd lost my truck, my mobility and my pride, so I fucked up and drank.
I didn't get stupid, I saw a video of me leaving the bar and all I could do was hold my old head down and stumble out the door, with a friends help.
A lot was lost with that fuckup, and now I just have to deal with it.
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It's Pearl Harbor day, again. My dad was stationed on a ship there when the Japs struck. He and I never got to spend much time together, but I remember him telling me about scraping burned bodies off the deck that day, eighty three years ago, five years before I was born.
I don't remember if he ever met my Japanese wife Marci, or even how he felt about them. Now it doesn't matter. Maybe I'll see his spirit again, and I can ask.
This house is empty, again. Poor old Molly's unfixable incontinence became a real issue, and they're now moving to a place with a fenced back yard and a German Shepard to hang out with, until she dies.
I have no idea what's going to happen next, once again.
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I decided to clean up my crowded desktop and move a bunch of new folders full of photos over to my small hard drive. I've done this before across several desktops, and I have thousands of photos on that little drive.
Here's just a few that I ran across before adding more:
Me playing in the Grand Teton snow.
Me hunkered down in winter alone at the Idaho cabin.
Me as a pot grower down in Carmel Valley in the Seventies.
My dad and mom, right after World War II.
My moms mother and father.
My younger sister, older brother, and me.
My daughter, sister, brothers son, my Japanese wife, and me.
Me and Riley.
Me and Riley.
Amy getting her newspaper tit sucked. (reporters for the Teton Valley News).
Watching my grandfather paint a sign.
It's been a good day. Ordered the new vitamins online at Walgreens I need for tremors, had a great breakfast at the Cup, walked up to Walgreens, cleaned up my desktop, and then posted this.
My new roommate is moving on. His wonderful dog Molly, who I have become very fond of, can't control her bowels. He's found a place with a fenced backyard for her, which is what she needs.
I tried to step up and volunteer to walk her, but the general consensus is that I can't handle her if she gets aggressive with another dog. She's staying home with me tomorrow so I will enjoy her while I can, and then they will be gone.
But walking her around the neighborhood is out of the equation, so I will just give her some love, which she enjoys, let her shit where she wants, and wait for the next possible roommate to enter the scene.
Hey, I'm grateful for a roof over my head, other than that I control nothing.
There was a 7.0 earthquake off the Northern California coast today. That's a big one and they're on Tsunami watch now. I know that area, worked and traveled a lot up there.
I lived in the Bay Area for many years, and I experienced a bunch of big quakes. I spent three years working on two computer systems for Interocean Steamship, on the tenth floor of the California building in downtown San Francisco, and we had some good ones.
Those old brick buildings would rock back and forth real hard, fortunately they never came down. One time I was in the computer room and saved a big piece of expensive IBM hardware from crashing into the wall.
The irony is that there is more tech in a cell phone now, than a thousand of those boxes then. We had a one megabyte hard drive the size of a refrigerator that costs fifty grand...
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