I Failed You in So Many Ways…

Jason, you needed a friend. I wasn’t available. When you called out of the blue a few months ago, we talked for over an hour. I should have realized that it wasn’t a call for fun. It was a call for help. We talked about old times and you told me how much our friendship meant to you over the years. It felt really good to hear from you and know that I helped.

Only I didn’t help enough. I didn’t hear the hidden cry for help in the conversation. I didn’t know that you were still struggling. I didn’t know that you needed more than a conversation that day. You needed a shoulder to lean on, someone to help you.

I should have called more often. I should have called even once a year. I didn’t. I ran away. I ran from home as soon as I could find a way out of that town. I sensed danger very early in high school. I felt the cold grasp of drugs on my heart. I watched as friend after friend turned to more dangerous drugs when the old stuff didn’t do it anymore. I ran.

I could feel my weakness from the very beginning. I thought that someday, one of us would be dead because of it. Now, Jason, you are. We all gathered to say goodbye yesterday, to let you know that even though you were gone, you were still here. We told you to clean up all along. We begged you to clean up and stop using. Now, we can’t even tell you that we loved you all along.

I have failed in even the littlest way. I think that I have learned a lesson in all of this. I vow to spend more time with my friends. I vow to appreciate all the time that I have on this earth with all of you, to cherish you. Most importantly, I will let you all know how much you mean to me from now on.

Jason, I failed you in so many ways. But I will not let your passing be in vain.

Job Worries

So, I interviewed for the job with the State of Michigan, and I did talk to my employer about it. He was very understanding and encouraged me to apply for any job that would further my career. I was very relieved to get that off my chest.

The new problem is that the State of Michigan is currently in a budget crisis. There appears to be a governmental shutdown on the horizon. This means that all “non-essential services” would be shut down on October 1st and not resumed until a budget is passed and signed by the governor.

This means that if I am offered the job, there won’t be a job for sometime still. If they offer, what do I tell them? “I would love to accept, but I have to wait to see if you have any money to pay me.” How does that sound? Ugh.

They are supposed to make a decision and offer a job sometime in the next few work days, I believe. If there is nobody working in the DNR, who is going to make the decision and offer me my new job? This sucks.

I Know, I Know…

Per my usual, I have apparently given up blogging.  I haven’t really, it’s just that I have a busy job and 3 kids and a house that needs work…I don’t seem to find the time to write on here as much as I hoped I would.

That being said, I promise that I will post at least once in a while.  I am not sure who I am promising that to, since I have no readers.  Maybe I am making a pledge to myself that I will let it out once in a while to clear my head, to vent all my little frustrations.  We’ll see (and by “we”, I mean “Me” apparently).

See me later.

Joey? He’s Just Faaaabulous!

There is a fantastic article over at the Detroit Free Press website about former Lions quarterback Joey Harrington. I think many Lions fans have not forgiven Joey for his crap-tacular performance a few years back. Oh well, here’s to Jon Kitna-the only NFL quarterback to take every single snap for his team last season. I can’t think of another quarterback that has done that in recent history. I swear there is a clause in his contract that says he can’t be pulled from a game no matter how bad he is playing, or how many interceptions he throws, or how bad the team is losing.

Nomenclature? No Thanks!

There was a very heated discussion yesterday going on in the blogosphere. One that took place on a variety of sites, no doubt. The problem stemmed from a post at RadicalMama on teen pregnancy (one teen pregnancy in particular). The debate is not one that I would like to tackle here, or ever if possible. I find that arguing with somebody about a topic that loaded with emotion is not exactly a fruitful endeavor.

The issue at hand here is nomenclature, or simply put, words. Words were created centuries ago to convey a meaning, a thought, an emotion. The problem is that words have changed meaning over the past several hundred years, and so have people. Certain feelings, thoughts, and emotions can not be expressed by a single word, or even a whole page of them. Loaded topics are never going to be solved by two people who feel differently than one other using words that don’t really convey the point they are trying to make.

I am not going to use the topic discussed yesterday as my example, for that might destroy my blog and all that it stands for (mostly, for not being a blog!). Instead I will use a topic near and dear to me-one that I have studied intensely personally and professionally. The topic of timber harvesting.

People love to hate timber harvesting (and I use the term “harvest” literally-trees are an agricultural commodity like corn). Most have a knee-jerk reaction to the thought of trees being cut down because they envision a giant redwood (Sequoiadendron giganteum) being felled whilst an endangered owl goes splat! I can use a term like clear-cut in an everyday sentence and not flinch for I know the importance of the act. But, like abortion, clear-cut is a loaded term, filled with emotion (and, no, I am not comparing the two philosophically so don’t bother yelling at me). Both terms have a scientific basis and both refer to a specific act being done. That doesn’t stop people from attaching an emotion to a term based on sound scientific research and practice.

So, I guess the point I am trying to make, and have been trying to make for several years now is that we can never truly evolve as a species if we are to continue to place so much importance on things as trivial as words. Words are only tools that we use to communicate a feeling or a need or an emotion. If we didn’t continue to evolve other tool technology, we would still be using a rock tied to a stick as a hammer. Evolution is unavoidable and necessary. Why do we fight it when it comes down to the most important topic? If we can’t communicate effectively, we are doomed to repeat our past. It seems that we are already doing that on some level (look at the so-called “war” in Iraq). That situation, as much as any other, is loaded with emotion that can not be expressed by outdated words. It is time we stop attaching so much importance on something that can’t even do what it is meant to do. The Chevrolet Corvair failed as an automobile because it didn’t do what it was supposed to do-which is function as a safe vehicle of transport. If our words are going to continue to fail, why do we continue to throw them at each other like some kind of obsolete weapon?

Sometimes I wish I couldn’t remember too…

I was reading at StuntMother this morning, trying to help out with a pesky plant problem, when I stumbled across a very familiar pain. The pain of losing someone close to you when they don’t even know they are going away.

Alzheimer’s and dementia are possibly the worst way to lose someone. They both run rampant in my father’s family, and I know that someday, it will happen to my father as well. The thought of having to go through that again is unbearable. I watched as my grandmother, my grandfather, and my great-aunt progressed (or regressed, as it were) for several years. It is really hard to explain to a child why their grandparents no longer know them. Even as a teenager, it didn’t make much sense to me. But there they went.

This is all I can stand to say right now. I may have to revisit this topic again in the future, now that I realize how much it means to me. It’s strange how we can repress things to the point of not even recognizing them as important. Until this morning, I had not thought much about this issue in several years. I will probably not forget about it for a while now.

Here’s to you Dad. While you are still here.

Another One Bites the Dust!

I just learned of another case of a tree falling on and killing someone. This time it was at a garden party in Toronto. Apparently, even the wealthy aren’t immune to being squashed by large trees. Go figure!

Random Thoughts About Family Vacations

After a wonderful (almost) long weekend of cabin-camping with my entire immediate family, and then some, I am reminded of why we don’t do it more often. It’s not that we didn’t have a good time, because we did. It’s just that my wife and I really hate being on anybody else’s schedule. When we are on vacation, we make the rules (or lack thereof). When we are on vacation with 10 other people, the rules are made be random committees, or sometimes they appear out of nowhere (“Well, I heard that dinner is at 5, and so-and-so said this, and…). This can be very frustrating, especially when you are sharing a cabin with your parents, and your brother.

When you only have 3 days to cram a whole lot of visiting in with people you only see every few months, things can be hectic. Everybody wants to do something, and trying to fit it all in can make you crazy. Everybody else that was there was staying for a whole week, so they had plenty of time after we left to just relax and enjoy the beautiful scenery and the wonderful weather. Again, I am not complaining, just thinking out-loud about how to enjoy this better next year (and, yes, this trip happens every year for the last few years-this was just the first time we have been able to join them).

My wife and kids got to see all my favorite spots of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, while I stayed home and worked to fund their little jaunt through nature. Lucky little ungrateful snots. I merely joined them for the aforementioned 3-day trip to the lovely Curtis, MI.

The highlights of the trip? Getting to canoe the Two-Hearted River (Not the Big Two-Hearted, for that is just a fictional representation of some river in the U.P. Many think it was actually the Fox River, some say it was the Two-Hearted River, but it really doesn’t matter). Although 6 hours on the river without a shirt lead to second-degree burns on my back that are now peeling and generally feeling icky. Also, we got to see where the wildfire had swept through just recently. And we got to see planes from Minnesota’s DNR scoop water out of the lake we were camping on. Very cool!

So, what is the final culmination of my incoherent ramblings about family vacations? I don’t know. I just needed some time to babble incoherently. If you read this post, I am very sorry for your luck. Please see Marge on your way out the door. She will refund your entry fee and give you back the five minutes you wasted here today. Thank you and Come Again!

Ouch!

As I have stated before, I am a forester. Part of my job entails performing hazard tree evaluations to make sure trees don’t fall on people and kill them. Every week I get at least one Google Alert about a tree falling on some poor soul. This week, I have received alerts about 3 separate instances in which people have been either killed or seriously injured by a tree as they were camping, or simply driving by at the wrong time.

I have personally been involved with some of these types of cases involving serious injury and, more often, death. It takes some seriously bad luck to be the person near one of these huge trees when they decide they have had it with fighting gravity.

I am a Lazy Slob

This past week, the wife and kids have been on a camping trip in the lovely Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I was left with a list of things to accomplish whilst they frolicked in the woods (my favorite woods, BTW). I actually had high hopes for maximizing my time while they were away. WRONG!

I woke up last Saturday with the world in the palm of my hand, ready to take it all on, check things off my “Honey-Do” list. Fat chance. I did get some of my new picket fence painted that day. Then it was off to visit with family in another part of the state and not get home until dinner time the next day. The whole weekend was shot at that point. And then came Monday. Have you ever tried to be productive in the evenings after work? It rarely happens. I would come home, open a beer, start dinner, and eat while watching TV. Then what? Usually another beer and the realization that it is getting close to bed time and I haven’t accomplished shit. Ensue Monty Python themed scrambling with “Yakkity Sax” playing in the background while I tried to get laundry done, clean up the massive mess that my wife left the house in as she emptied every closet and storage bin in the house trying to locate every necessary piece of equipment for camping in the Michigan wilderness with 3 kids aged 6 and under. It looked like a tornado went through the main level or our house. I don’t even recall owning this much stuff, let alone finding enough storage space to keep it all hidden!

So, it’s now Friday. I am leaving to meet them in the U.P. tomorrow for a short stay at Manistique Lakes with my entire family. My wife hates staying with anybody while on vacation, so it should be fun. I have to admit, I don’t really like staying with other people either, so I can’t really fault her. Anyway, my list is about half done as of now, and I have about 8 hours to finish the rest. To make matters worse, I scheduled a small guys’-night-out for later this evening. I really am a lazy slob.