Birthday

Today is my birthday, I am 34 years old. I don’t really know where the last ten or so years have gone, they are very much a blur. I know much of my early through mid twenties was spent in a haze of drinking my way through nights and spending my days working for peanuts. Mid to late twenties was getting myself together and going back to school, getting my heart broke, starting a job that has become my career (at least currently), moving out of my codependent mothers apartment, and just being me without someone there trying to tell me how to think and feel. Late twenties to early thirties was becoming more established in my career, reconnecting with old friends, losing old friends, getting my heart broke again, and then finding the woman and girls who would become my wife, daughters, and the loves of my life. I gained 20lbs, lost my dad, gained ten more pounds, and then got married.

My life has been easier than many other peoples in this world, but I know people that tell me I had to grow up way to fast and that I had it hard. All I know is that the preceding 34 years made me who I am as I sit here, killing time at work, writing this, and wanting to go home to my family. All in all, the 30’s have probably been the best part of my life so far.

Maybe it just gets better from here?

She was wating for me…..

My dad died last June, the weekend right after fathers day to be exact. He had a major aneurism a couple of days before Fathers Day, as he walked in to The Roadhouse in Kramer Junction. His Chrysler 300C was sitting beside the diner for a couple of days before my fiancée and I drove her up here. After he died she sat up here for a few months, and then was moved back down to my dads house, where it sat. My siblings and I all agreed (even the ones that do not get along), that the car belong to my brother T. T bought the car for my dad about three years before, and before my dad died he probably put close to 3,000.00 in to the car.

When my brother bought the car for my dad it had a little over 74,000 miles on it. As it sits now, it has over 247,000 miles on it, and still runs pretty strong. Mostly highway and interstate miles. The car had been in really good shape, but as my dads health became worse, his cognitive abilities lessened, the miles grew, and the car became a bit battered and bruised, inside and out. Hence, the 3,000.00 that was put in to it. Water pump, radiator, hoses, alternator, oil pressure sensor, windshield, etc.

My brother T let the car sit, he didn’t want to deal with it at first. I think later he just wanted to let the car “retire.” However, as I am getting married on Friday he agreed to let me have the car for my fiancée. She needs something other than my 21 year old, falling apart Explorer, even if it is only for a couple years until we can afford a decent car for her.

The car has been sitting since June and hasn’t never even been started as I had the only key, no ones else wanted the responsibility of the key. So last night I caught a ride to my dads, jumper cables in tow as I figured the battery would be long since dead. I walked up to my dads car wondering if I would have enough gas to drive the 20 miles to the nearest gas station, wondering if I was going to get pulled over for driving a car that wasn’t registered or insured, wondering how much money this was going to cost me in the long run, wondering if I was even going to be able to get the car registered in my name, worried that something would go wrong, and then I got a strange feeling that I should try the key, so I did.

She unlocked when I hit the button on the key fob and turned over when I started her. She had about a quarter tank of gas and all the tires were fully inflated. She had an oil starved tick from the top end when I started her, but as the oil flowed and she warmed up, she quieted down.

I pulled my dads clothes out of the trunk and put them in his house, along with his glasses and address book. I’m not sure what will happen to them, but I know that my fiancée and I will take care of his car.

As I pulled out of the gate and drove down the road, she started running even better. After using up most of the old gas and replacing it with new gas, she ran even more confidently down the road.

It was like she had been waiting for me to come back and rescue her the whole time.

What dreams may come….

Not long ago I had an odd dream. I have been mulling it over in my head, and I think I may have it figured out, but I am not totally sure.

In my dream I was in prison, slated for execution. However this was not a normal prison, it was set up kind of like the Matrix. Everyone was in a rack, in a coma like state, but hooked up to some sort of hood. The hood fed your consciousness in to a VR prison. People on death row were given the privilege of dying how ever they wanted to in the VR world, just as long as they died. Death in the VR world would make your body die in the real world. 

Well in my dream the VR system broke down, and all the inmates found themselves awake, in a prison devoid of guards, and a world going through some sort of apocolyptic event. I had a vague sense that it was something along the lines of The Road, but with more death. My dream shifted to three of us banding together to explore/survive the outside world.  I remember that one of the inmates and I had a family bond, he may have in fact been my grandpa, but I am not sure. I do know that I somehow ended up with one of my grandfathers old revolvers. 

We were packing supplies on to some sort of sled or wagon contraption, not really sure what it was. When the third inmate, out of no where, killed the one that may have been my grandfather. That inmate and I fought, trying to kill one another, but not succeeding. We eventually called a truce, and decided to still team up so that we might survive the outside world. 

My dream them shifted to us exploring an old shed like structure. I asked the inmate what his way to die in the vr world was. When he did not answer, I turned around and he was gone. I walked outside the shed and went over to the sled thingy, when out of no where he attacked me with a knife, stabbing me in the lower back. I pulled out the old revolver and emptied it in to his face. At that point in the dream I was looking down on myself, and watched as I slumped over the sled thing, and laughed as I died. 

My perspective changed to that of a prison guard, standing next to a bank of controls and monitors. I was watching my own death through the monitor. I looked at a female prison guard sitting at the controls and asked her “what was that all about?” She looked at me and said, “he died how he wanted to, and I think he figured it out at the end.”

After that, I woke up,