Saturday night as I was laying down to go to bed, a large POP and CRACK occurred in my back. I’ve been dealing with this bulged disk for over a year now. Was this a good sign or a bad one?
So far, the news is positive. The nerve pain I have been having has almost disappeared. I still have some slight issues, but nowhere near what I was having.
This means I can actually stand without my leg going numb completely. I still have some numbness, but nowhere near the levels that I had previously.
I plan on getting a hold of the spinal specialist I saw previously to have another CT scan done to see if there are indeed any changes. If so, I definitely won’t have to have any surgery. Something I was genuinely worried about.
Steve, Kelly & I at the Runciple Spoon
I felt so good that I was able to go out and see a couple of friends, one of which was in town from Milwaukee for the LOTUS festival. I had planned on seeing them during the festival, but my back had been hurting so much I barely moved the entire weekend.
Almost two weeks ago I received a call from my uncle in Michigan. It was bad news. My aunt Marty was in the hospital and it didn’t look like she would recover.
Marty flippin’ my dad the bird, circa late 80’s.
I told him that I would be there the next day. After clearing things with my new job, I hit the road. A journey I hadn’t made in eight years. Shortly behind me was my girlfriend. She stayed behind as we were not sure if Amelia wanted to come.
My favorite sign from their house.
My aunt and uncle moved to Michigan in 1995 from Greenfield, where they had the largest house I had ever stayed in. Their employer had been bought out and they were offered jobs in Detroit, or they could find new jobs and stay. They decided to go.
My dad’s trusty Blazer with my uncle showing off his new house.
She worked in the branches eventually becoming an Associate Vice President of the bank before her retirement. Always firey, always full of attitude. I know why my uncle fell in love with her.
She has a son, who was on Jeopardy at one point. In all these years, I’ve yet to meet him however.
I arrived; and my uncle and I immediately went to the hospital. It was bad. I was suddenly confronted with the reason why I missed out on several family members passing. After going through what happened with my grandfather, I could no longer go to such situations. I had to, my uncle suddenly had no other family. He needed someone to be there for him; and I was going to make sure he wasn’t alone.
Sadly, my aunt didn’t make it. Her condition only eroded until she passed away on 9/11/2022 at 5:30pm.
Her attitude, her voice and her humor formed the basis of why I love women the way I do. Her ferocity towards all things are why I love women who refuse to apologize for being their honest selves. I had no other symbols of female power as close to me as she was in my family.
I will forever miss you Marty. You made this little boy love women just like you.
For many of my generation, that word will forever be tied to a scene from the sitcom Friends.
I am speaking about a different kind of pivot here though. I recently pivoted my career.
Since 2008, I have worked at Indiana University in one way, shape, form as a IT support provider. For the last seven and a half years I have been the Senior Technology Support Technician for the IU School of Medicine-Bloomington.
I will forever be appreciative of that role, not just for what it provided but what it gave in return. The connections to people I can only call heroes, and the ability to afford to live in this world on my own; something many today cannot do.
Over time however, the role and the place became less friendly to a person such as myself. I was given more and more responsibility, yet when asked about an increase in my salary I was given an angry meeting with my director stating “I would never receive another pay raise.”
While the bad times had calmed down, other events happening around me told me that the environment I was in was much like the dinosaurs. The person I literally looked up to, the person I eventually was able to become professionally quit. He professed publicly on social media that he had been bullied and couldn’t stand it anymore. He then moved to New Orleans.
I was also in a position where any increases in salary were questionable at best. A change in my title would be required. So I was stuck. Do I sit and take what is given? Or do I find a new challenge that will let me expand my skills and potentially my paycheck? Employment has always been a hard subject for me, especially attaining it.
I was in luck however, as a friend told me about a job that was opening up. I reached out to the person that held the position, who gave me a great deal of information of the duties involved. I applied, and interviewed. It took a while, but I was the choice of those in the hiring committee.
It’s a large change for me, as the position is a salaried role versus the hourly lifestyle I have lived all my life. I will be receiving my first full paycheck from the position at the end of this week.
The official title is Business and Database Systems Analyst for The University Graduate School. There is no roadmap or solid tasks for the position. Each day is a learning opportunity. Many have told me that it takes about 8 months before they really know what they are doing.
In the meantime, I am also offering limited support to my old job which has thrown the vast majority of my workload onto the Nursing IT Pro, which I tried my best to keep from happening.
I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the place and the people that provided me a family when I felt as if I had none. The place that provided me opportunity at the exact time when I could have become homeless.
Now it is on to new goals, new challenges in my professional world.
My eldest princess turned 23 last week. She has decided to live a very private life, so I take whatever opportunity I can get with her. A few days before her birthday I found out that Taylor Tomlinson was going to play the Comedy Attic that weekend.
This screamed PERFECT to me. As she speaks about her hangups with anxiety, depression and even bipolar disorder in her routine. About what life is like for the 20 something crowd. There was one problem though, and that was the fact that all of her shows were sold out.
I almost got tickets for her show the night of my daughter’s birthday, but it was too late. I would have showed up late, I didn’t want that. I woke up Saturday in complete and utter pain. I just wasted the day away, figuring out what I was going to do. My little girl deserved to know her dad loves her, she deserved to know that she is my princess, and she will always deserve everything I can give her – even if she doesn’t want it.
Luck would be on my side, as I was able to score tickets to her last show of the weekend. I then had another issue, my daughter is much like her father at that age. Sleeping is hard, waking up is even harder. I wasn’t going to waste the tickets – but I was definitely worried that we weren’t going to make it in time.
She killed it, and I loved the time with my Taylor who I’ve taken to see 2 famous other Taylors now. This should be a thing that I do, and I know she appreciates it.
If you follow this blog, you may wonder why it’s been so long since there have been any new posts made. There are several reasons, but primarily because my entire household has been dealing with COVID for the last three months.
At first it was the youngest of the household, Kira. She had been sick for a while but none of us suspected COVID. Then the following day, I began to have post nasal drip and a sore throat. I tested positive on a home test, and proceeded to be in a state of semi conciousness for several days. As soon as I felt safe enough to drive I scheduled a PCR test at CVS. It confirmed what we all knew.
This silly variant would not let go of my body. For a period of 3 weeks I would travel to the same CVS to get the same PCR test every few days. I did not want to be a cause of spread, even though the FDA recommendations as well as IU’s were to quarantine for 5 days, and you were free to return to activities if you had no fever for 24 hours.
Then, our Queen was hit with it. Already dealing with sickness and pains that had kept her in bed for months; she was to stay there some more. She however, decided to seek treatment where I and her daughter did not. She received the anti-viral mediciation Paxlovid.
Our Queen is special you see. If there is a side effect, she usually receives it. If it can be an allergen, she probably has an allergy to it. This makes any situation with health related issues difficult at best.
Thankfully she took it in stride for the most part, she was unable to take her medication for anxiety and had a weird taste in her mouth due to the Paxlovid.
We are all for the most part better now. Kira seemed to pickup another cold of sorts, and Lyndsey and I continue to carry on with our various back and other issues due to the case of getting old.
