I'm sure I've mentioned it at one time or another. My favorite movie is The Stand. By a strange coincidence it's also one of my top 3 reads. I won't say I'm a huge Stephen King fan, but some of his writing just boggles my mind. The guy has an imagination that is strictly otherworldly.

I'm also sure that I've mentioned I read Kristy at This Train of Thought has been Derailed In a couple of posts she has mentioned the end of the world and being prepared to cope with it like this example here . So I guess this has been stuck in my head lately, because I had the most extraordinary dream last night. I don't usually remember a whole lot about my dreams. Little tidbits sorta like catching part of the preview of a movie. you know what the basis of the picture is, but couldn't really tell how the storyline is going to build or even if the actors are any good.

In my dream, the world had indeed come to a near end. I was not privy to the why of the devastation. I only know that I was a survivor. I also realized that this was not the me that lives every day as a safety guy. This was a me from some different dimension I guess. I didn't have a wife or kids, I was a little bit Mad Max and a little bit Waterworld. You know a rebel with no real direction.

The reason I know that I read too much of The Stand is because in my dream I was heading for a location that was told to me in my dreams. I didn't know why I was going there, but I met other people along the way that were headed there too. I guess I was also a little bit Stu Redman..lol (main The Stand character). So to make a long story short, I arrived at the location I was trying to reach, and it was a deserted military base. This base was deserted, and had been for some time.

I remember that I was dressed in military fatigues and was leadinig this group of people somewhere else. Although I couldn't say where we were headed. In fact I don't even know where we came to. I just know that the base was isolated in the forest, not in an underground bunker, and it wasn't built into a mountain. It sorta reminded me of Yosemite Valley. So we found weapons and a humvee and were headed out in convoy to wherever it was we were headed. The last thing I remember was we ran over a mine of some sort in the road that we were driving on. The humvee was flipped upside down and I lived through it. I guess I'm pretty selfish or self-centered, cause I don't remember if anybody else in the group survived. I woke up to my alarm clock at about that time.

I'm going to hope that I can get back to that one tonight. Cause I definitely feel a part 2 has to be in the works somewhere there. What a story this could be if I can keep writing down what my weird mind is creating. So I think tonight I'll go home and watch about an hour of The Stand and read about 3 chapters as well. THEN and only then will I try to sleep again.

Fingers are crossed for another chapter in the story..........

In a previous post I mentioned a hospital stay my little boy had when he was an infant. He was very suddenly sick, and I was at work. My wife called me and told me that something wasn't right. She was a bit in shock as to what was going on and it was evident in the tone of her voice. I immediately left work and we took Eap (nickname) to the doctor.

They were stumped and ran blood tests, hooked him up to the heart monitor and check every sign they could think of. No fever, just listless almost like a zombie. They tested him to see if he had been poisoned (that's not a pleasant thought when they are asking you if you could have poisoned your child). Nothing came back as a positive. So the doctor suggested that it could be something else that I don't even remember the name of anymore. He wanted a spinal tap done. My wife and I waited outside the room, since the doctor said it was much easier to do this without a parent there. We didn't know they had done it, because my son didn't cry. There was a negative result from that test too, so off we headed for the children's hospital.

At the hospital we were placed in a room and told that he couldn't be fed. They figured that this would make him testy and a little angry and then he would cry. I have to mention here that we have one of the finest pediatric hospitals in the nation here, and I was completely unimpressed with it. They treated us like we weren't even there most of the time. Most of the patients at that time came directly from Kaiser and we weren't Kaiser members so we were treated like outsiders. They provided care, but it almost seemed like a chore.

Three days of sheer hell ensued. We didn't get any answers and he didn't eat. No fussing, no complaining, no crying. Scary scary scary. We were just about at our wits end.

I've always believed I'm a man of faith. I am the first to admit that I don't practice it nearly as much as I should or could. I tend to question my faith a great deal too. That is the main reason that I am sure God is there. He has pushed me back in line more times than I can count. I do something stupid and for some reason or another something else comes along that allows me a chance to fix the mistake. Of course these times are when we seem to jump to our faith the most, we beg, plead and bargain for help. If he will fix this we will go to church till we die, we won't cuss, steal, cheat or drink. No more smoking or bad thoughts. Whatever it takes. Of course generally we forget that little promise as fast as the crisis passes. I was so overcome that I wasn't even thinking of promises to make, I was just begging for something to make my little boy better.

The third day as I was sitting in the room, my parents and in-laws were there. My dad told me to go sit outside and get some air. I took my nephew with me and we sat out in the courtyard where they have a little play area for the siblings of the children that are sick. As I was sitting there watching the other children play I struck up a conversation with a man who was sitting there watching his nephew also.

Turns out this guy had another nephew in the hospital with meningitis. The boy was 14 years old, and they just didn't know what was going to happen. This was all new to them and the parents were scared to death about it. I told this man that I had meningitis when I was in 7th grade but mine was bacterial so it probably wouldn't be the same. He was silent for a moment. He told me that his nephew did indeed have bacterial meningitis. The staff at the hospital told the family that they only had one other recorded case of this and that was from the 70's. Turns out I was the only other recorded case. He asked if I would consider talking to the parents and let them know my experience. I told him to hang on and ran back to my son's room. I explained to my wife and told her I had to go speak with these people. They needed to know that there is hope. That was the first spark of life I saw in her eyes in 3 days. She said I better get over there.

I spoke with his family for about 20 or 30 minutes. I told them my story and explained that it wasn't easy, but I did indeed beat it. I learned to walk again, got a tutor for my missed time at school and even went on to continue playing sports througout high school and even as an adult. You should have seen the way these people perked up when they realized that there is definitely a chance for this boy.

I felt much better as I left that room. My nephew came with me and even he was smiling as we walked back to my son's room. We started to get a little down as we got closer to the room. I heard a bunch of talking as we got to the door. Excited chatter that made me as nervous as could be. I immediately figured that something had happened and the doctors and nurses were in there to provide emergency care for my son.

Walking through the door the first thing I saw was my mom holding my little boy. He was screaming bloody murder. That was the most beautiful sound I've ever heard. I was told that as the nurse came in to check his vitals he just suddenly started screaming. My wife immediately picked him up and he screamed even louder. The doctor came in and check him to make sure that he wasn't screaming in pain. Turned out the only pain was the one in his stomach cause he hadn't eaten. They gave him a bottle shortly after I got there and we went home later that evening. Still not knowing what the ailment was.

It took me about 2 weeks to realize that my son came out of his "funk" about the time I got done speaking with that family. I have to wonder what the odds were that they would have found me if my son wasn't sick in the hospital. Probably pretty slim. Now you can call this a coincidence, it would seem like it. I think it was something a little bit more. I think I was meant to be there. I think that the family of that poor boy needed some hope and this was the way they got it, by realizing that somebody else had been through it, and that somebody walked away from it too.

Take from it what you want. I just know that those were the 3 worst days of my life, but they had a pretty happy ending. I never did find out if that boy completely recovered or not. I know that he didn't die from this. I think about that family everytime my son gets a sniffle or a fever. Now days I realize that my son suffered a whole lot, but it was for a good cause. I have told him this story and his only response was "Well I'm ok now, so I guess it was lucky that it happened."

Anybody who has read a few of my posts will know that I am a family oriented man. My family is ground zero for me. Everything else extends from that. It's how I was raised and what I experienced growing up.

I have known a few setbacks from illness and injury in my life. That's all they were though, just setbacks. I eventually recovered and moved on. Most of the time I was a little better for the experience. My poor mom and dad though, they suffered through all of my childhood mishaps and didn't miss a beat as far as I could tell.


What I didn't realize is that worry is the second thing you feel as a parent. First was love. I was there for my kids births and I was immediately in love with those little saggy wrinkled up faces. Hard to explain if you don't have kids. The second thing I felt was worry. What if..... What if they stop breathing at the hospital? What if they stop breathing at home. They are small and helpless and my wife and I are the only things standing in the way from all the bad things in the world.

My oldest son was plagued with ear infections and high fevers. For the first year of his life he had an ear infection a month and that was always accompanied with a fever over 103. He handled it like a champ though. He didn't complain a lot, he didn't whine about anything. He just sorta took it. I can remember him sitting in the bathtub running a fever of almost 104. We had pumped him full of ibuprofen and he was sitting there all flush and smiling eating a Popsicle telling me that he was feeling a little better. I knew he wasn't but he just wanted me to relax. Even at that age they know when you are wound up with worry.

My middle boy was not sick ever. But he can't stand up without getting a bump, bruise, cut, or burn. The kid is accident prone to no end, but resilient as can be. He has had stitches a few times, and he never fussed over the accident that cause them for more than a couple minutes. He has a high threshold for pain (like his dad).

The littlest of the clan has his share of normal kid sickness, but he was in the hospital for an unknown illness once. We found him in his crib as an infant just laying there listless and a small spot of dark liquid he had vomited. We didn't know what was going on and he was brought to the doctor and then the hospital. They never figured out what it was, but that kid went through a spinal tap and IV's without a peep. He was unresponsive for 3 days, and on the 4th he was completely back to normal. To this day they don't have an answer. i have a few thoughts on that and I'll share them in another post.

The point of all that is, the kids handled their respective illness and injury like it was business as usual. I on the other hand lost years and years of my life worrying over them. It's not a healthy kind of worry, because there isn't anything you can do for them. That doesn't mean I can stop worrying about them either.

I never gave much thought to it when I was having surgery or laid up in the hospital sick. I just knew that it wasn't my time yet. I knew that I was going to get better, but I had no way to comfort those that were worried about me. Fortunately for me, I was too busy being sick to think much on that part of it.

Now as a parent I get to be on that side of the fence more often. I am quite certain that I would rather be sick, because then I can be selfish and just worry about me.

My little one complained about a headache this morning. He doesn't usually cry wolf about being sick. I was immediately ready to let him stay home from school and got out the Tylenol and other assortment of medicines that I might be able to force down his throat to ensure that he stayed at least comfortable. Then I realized that I was over reacting. I got him talking and he forgot about his headache and was more than ready to get to school. I'm hopeful that it is just the remnants of the cold he is fighting off, but time will tell.

Being a parent is in the same moment the greatest and worse thing that has ever happened to me. I can't imagine my life without my boys, but do you think that they could just ease up on dad and stay healthy for maybe the next 40 years or so?

Just in case I've laid in a huge supply of bananas and oranges, but most importantly APPLES!! I don't know if that whole an apple a day thing is true, but I figure it's worth a shot. I've got apples, applesauce, apple jelly, apple crisps, and apple gogurt (yogurt in a tube is cool)!!! Yeah I'm just that bad..

My kids roll their eyes at me when I get on my "be healthy" kick. They take it with a grain of salt though. So for all you parents out there that are dealing with sick or injured youngsters. Take heart. We all know that one day they will have their own and then THEY get to put on the worry shirt.

Gotta wonder how I will handle being a grand parent.............

We've all heard them before, those tacky, tasteless, so bad they are funny jokes. I don't pay much attention to them anymore, because I'm convinced that I've heard just about all of them. They usually aren't that funny, and they border on offensive at times.

Regardless they are still just jokes right? They aren't meant to hurt some one's feelings. They are a sometimes misguided attempt to make us laugh. The same goes for giving somebody a hard time when they make a silly mistake. It's not intended (usually) to offend or demean. It's meant so that everybody can have a laugh, sometimes it's at our expense but hey that's just the way the game is played.

Now days you can't tell a tasteless joke, or make an offhand comment without somebody getting butt hurt. There is always some group or foundation being formed to eradicate the world of these "insensitive" remarks and gestures. The one that has just raised my cockles (I like that word) is a group that is trying to get the California legislature to remove all phrases of "Mentally Retarded" and "Retarded" from the wording in any of the laws or regulations on the books....Really??? Have we sunk so far that we are no offended by even the legitimate use of words?

I was listening to a program this evening and they spoke of a group that is working towards this end. They seem to believe it is demeaning towards people with legitimate mentally debilitating conditions. I am the first person to defend against taunting someone because they are different. I believe that is what makes this country great is our diversity, but are we really gonna spend millions and millions of dollars to appease some mom who thinks that the word retarded is going to hurt her child's feelings?

Do we stop using other words now for fear that somebody else could become offended? Is imbecile no longer allowed? Did the imbeciles of the world have a choice when their IQ was below 70 or whatever number is the indicator. Should we stop selling bread that is marked white because white people are offended by the term white bread? perhaps we will call it Caucasian loaf??? Hey don't you dare buy something called Cracker Jacks, cause that's RACIST!!!

I'm sick of people having thin skin. I hate the fact that I have to tread lightly whenever I have a conversation now, just because somebody will feint offense at the slightest hint of a word that could be misconstrued that way. Time to buck up people, we have far better things to do with our taxpayer dollars than change the books to remove and replace the verbiage of 40 year old laws.

When are we gonna wake up and try to work on the things that matter? When are we gonna realize that a word is not what is holding us back? Lately I've heard so much about how Martin Luther King would be so proud to see how far we've come. I'm thinking more and more than we are just trading our our advances with our defeats. We can elect a black man to the presidency, but we have to worry about somebody suing for 11 million dollars cause they spilled hot coffee on their lap.

A guy walks into a bar with a dog. He claims the dog can talk. "Give me a beer and I'll show you." The bartender slides a beer to him and the man asks the dog, "Fido, what is that above our heads?" The dog says, "Roof!" The irritated bartender says, "That's not talking, he sounds like any other dog." The man says, "OK, how about this - Fido, who was the best baseball player of all time?" The dog says, "Ruth!" The bartender throws the man and the dog out of the bar. Fido says to the man, "Ya think I shoulda said DiMaggio?"

I always did like that one......

I believe the saying goes Music can soothe the savage beast.... If not it's something similar to that, and besides I'm sure you guys have heard the term in one form or another. I have been reading in a bunch of posts lately things relating to music. I think it's one of the few things that all of us have in common. MOST people enjoy music of some form or another. While we might not like the same type, we like some type and that should hint a little bit at the fact that maybe we aren't all that damn different after all.

I'll share that I'm a former band geek. Ian brought up cliques and I guess I fit into a few of them. I was in band from 4th grade till the end of my freshman year of high school. I played the trumpet, flugelhorn, and french horn when called upon (which I really hated). I stepped away from marching band in 10th grade because that was a conflict for me with football. I was definitely a jock at heart. I loved sports as a kid. I played ball of one form or another throughout my childhood, and into adulthood. I have had many friends from different teams I've played on and some I still talk with to this day. That's for another post though...

I was decent in band. I played in drum and bugle corps also and that I kept up all through high school. that was sorta my secret and not many knew that I was doing that while still maintaining jock status :)

That's not really the music I'm talking about though...I knew I loved music from a fairly young age. My dad played in a band and I grew up on Joe Cocker, Foghat, Boston, Bad Company and The Stones. My taste were a little bit differnt than that growing up though...I'm pretty diverse, and listened to everything from Run DMC to Peter Frampton.

I came to find out that I could change my moods pretty quickly depending on what I listened to. If I wanted to work out, I listened to AC/DC or Boston, if I wanted to fall asleep maybe John Waite. People can say what they want, but nothing can put me in road rage quicker than The Offspring or Live...Something about the tempo that just makes me wanna GO GO GO!!!!

I discovered Country at the age of 19 and I have to say, that I wasn't all that impressed at first. Garth Brooks, and Randy Travis changed all that for me. My grandparents listened to that OLD country, I can't handle too much of that, but give me some good ol' Toby Keith now and I'm pretty happy. I also learned that Country Music can change my moods just as fast as pop and rock did. Wanna speed up a little bit, don't bother with a caffeine kick, just turn on some Brooks and Dunn. Need to get to sleep, try a little Tracy Byrd.

Regardless of what mood it puts you in, when you are listening to music, the world is just a little bit better. Things just seem to flow better for me at least. I've recently started listening to more and more classical music (getting old I know). It's so relaxing and I find that I can actually concentrate with it playing lightly in the background.

So put on that old cd you just found or download a few more songs on your Ipod, or do like I do and use the *gasp* radio. Anyway you like, just remember that music soothes the savage beast, and it does a pretty good job on the cranky blogger too...

A "friend" of mine read my post about my fishing excursions with my grandfather. He has also read a few of my other posts. I was told that I am living in the past. He told me that if I spend too much time remembering things gone by that I miss the things in front of me. Sounds pretty solid in some respects, except he's totally off base.

I don't live in the past. I visit it for guidance, direction, and sometimes for comfort and support. I believe that our experiences should help us to navigate the rest of our lives more successfully. I look back to some blunders from my younger years and I know better than to try that again. I remember some uplifting times, and I understand how to give that same feeling to someone else (pay it forward). I don't live in a past filled with butterflies and rainbows. I don't live in a past painted with gloom, doom and destruction either.

Maybe it's just me, but I think that we need that balance. Your experiences from the past will better equip you for dealing with today. I guess that it just struck me wrong, but I can't begin to fathom somebody who doesn't want to remember what they have been through, even if it's mostly bad. The fact that you know it, should help you avoid any more of it. If it's good, well dammit you can better understand how to get more of that too.

So to my "friend" who believes I'm living in the past. You sir are mistaken. I simply have decided to use all the tools in my toolbox. If you choose not to that is your choice. The fact that you can't or won't use your experience to better yourself leaves me feeling a bit sorry for you. I don't need the free psychological advice, and in fact I'm a bit offended that you are trying to treat me like I do. If I want some mental health advice I will ask Dayne at Coach your Mind ....He has given me far more insight than you have ever managed to offer. I will refrain from using names but you know who you are. If you want to advise me, make a blog and maybe I'll read it, otherwise post a comment and let's "discuss" it...Now stick that in your pipe and smoke it....