Exploring the Infinite Abyss

Holy cow, it's been a long time. One of the downsides to buying a house in the country is that good internet service just doesn't exist out here.

Things I've done since the last post:
Wife's preggers, family work, tree work, yard work, house work, car work, two jobs (but I'm in the process of getting a new one), took a Caribbean cruise (which I'm parly ashamed to admit), got a story idea, developed a sort of outline for it, and finally got an opening for it. I am not going to pretend to be a writer or that I want to be one, but I'm going to try it this once. It's about exploring the infinite abyss and being a light in the darkness similar to the way we can be a pocket of warmth in the cold.

I saw my brother for the first time in about 6 months last week. He left the Air Force and came home for a while last summer, but then he joined the Army. He's been in training since then. He got to come home for about a week and a half to visit and take care of some things before he left. His flight took off this morning for Germany, and we didn't get the chance to say goodbye. It's kind of cool that he's going, though, because we were stationed there with Dad as kids, and now he gets to go back. It'll also give me an excuse to go back. But at the same time, it sucks because we have been doing really well at healing the old wounds from childhood. We really didn't get along at all when we were younger, but for the last few years we've been slowly but surely improving our relationship as the chances permitted with his military life. We spent a couple of evenings this week going through our old toys (the ones that Mom couldn't bring herself to get rid of) to decide what to keep and what to let go of. We hadn't seen a lot of those toys in close to 20 years. I was amazed to find out some of the things I did and didn't remember. Until then I thought I had a relatively complete recollection of my childhood, the influences on my adulthood. Boy, was I wrong, especially in the sense that I've felt detached from my younger self. Recently, I've been thinking that my childhood hadn't had a lot of influence on who I've become. I thought that the person I am now had been shaped more by relatively recent events than what I was doing and receiving back then. Going through all of those boxes with Justin showed me just how much influence I did get from back then.

You have to watch out for those things you forget. Sometimes we're not lucky enough to have a good reminder such as a few boxes of old toys.