Hey Y’all

Yeah, I’m still alive. I know it’s been awhile, which is the reason for me writing, I feel I owe y’all an explanation. You’ve been my second family for so long now, and I have benefited immensely from it in more ways than I can begin to describe. So I guess I should explain where I’ve been, not as a “woe is me” tale (y’all know that’s not my style), but just in fairness to all of you so you don’t think I abandoned ya.

A little over 5 years ago my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. At first there were only minor annoyances, but as I know many of you can attest, things deteriorated until you become mired in daily dealing with the new reality he was living in and that you had to contend with.

To add to that my mother, who was raised in a depression era small town and is not the worldliest of people decided that she wanted to try and restructure her home loan. Now understand, my parents have been subsistence workers for all their lives. From working the fields, running a bait shop, working in factories and construction sites, they’ve always gotten by but never really gotten ahead. Back in 1990 they bought a modest new home on a couple of acres in an unincorporated and underpopulated area of western Palm Beach County. It was a good buy and its value increased. My parents refinanced a few times (a few too many in my opinion, but I wasn’t really consulted) and all was relatively well. Until things start to get a little tight. So my mom hears about the “Stimulus” programs that were supposed to help homeowners (the ones that bought more house than they could afford because the Fed told the banks that they HAD to lend to them or else they were raycisss, or something) and decides to try and refinance and get a better rate, maybe lower her payments. So she goes to the bank that her mortgage was through (I shall not name it), thinking it would be like dealing with the bankers she was used to in small town Ohio, you know, where they know you by name and know your family etc. To this day she still thinks that all businesses are small town mom and pop and that the employees she has dealt with a few times will remember her. It is in fact an innocence that I miss in our nation. But such was not the case with the banker she met with. Let’s call him “Bill”, just for shits and giggles. Well old Bill tells my mom that since she is current on her payments that he can’t help her. Then he actually “advises” her to stop making her mortgage payments for a few months and come back and see him.

Yes, you read that correctly. And you can well imagine what happens next, except that not only was she now behind on her mortgage, “Bill” no longer works at that bank and no one there has ever heard of him. So now I get involved. I try and talk to the bank, but basically they want all three back due mortgage payments or they were going to start foreclosure proceedings.

Long story short, we got a lawyer, fought it as best we could, but eventually they sold my parents home at auction. That home was all they had, after 70 years their entire lives accomplishment was that house. I met with the new owners, an investment firm looking to flip it and they agreed to sell it to me at a small profit. Problem was that I couldn’t get financing on it for a myriad of reasons. So in December of 2013 they moved in with my family. We stored what we could, but a lot of my parents things had to be thrown away or sold. I owned a nice little 3/2 concrete block that was perfect for my family. But a 3/2 can get mighty crowded when it goes from 4 people, 2 dogs and a cat, to 6 people, 5 dogs and a cat. My parents were basically living out of a bedroom. Add to that my father’s Alzheimer’s was progressively getting worse and you can see how it became a very difficult living situation for all of us.

I spent a good year trying to figure out what was best with the limited funds I had available until one Saturday in January of this year my wife’s uncle suggested that we sell our house and buy a new one, preferably one with an in-laws quarters. Now, every so often God will intervene and show us the path he wants us to follow, and that night was one of those times. Both of my wife’s brothers and her sister had all just recently financed their first homes through a local broker who they all raved about. But I thought that my home wasn’t marketable enough or worth enough for the idea to work. But considering as how my in-laws were all speaking so highly of this lady (Whom I shall call Carrie) who had secured their financing, I decided to at least contact her, which I did via email the following day. After a short conversation, in which Carrie found out that I was a vet who hadn’t used my VA benefit yet, I found out that not only was my house worth way more than I thought, but there were a lot of people in the market for it. I also found out that I was worth more than I had thought, my credit was better than I thought, and that I was in very good shape. Fast forward three months and we had sold our house and closed on a new one, with an in-laws quarters (the only one on the market in our area), that is literally 175 yards away from my daughters’ school.

So things were finally looking up and a lot of weight had been lifted off my shoulders, except now I had to move 16 years worth of accumulated stuff from my house, and unpack 70 plus years of stuff that my parents had stored in PODS containers, what we had been able to save that is. So things got pretty hectic. Dad’s Alzheimer’s had until this point only deteriorated his cognitive functions, he was still as healthy as a horse. But one of the first weeks in the new home he had sudden onset of exhaustion and unresponsiveness. He spent three days in the hospital during which time we didn’t meet with one single doctor. Not a very pleasant experience to say the least. But fortunately dad had recently enrolled in a local senior assisted living program that works miracles. They have a team of doctors who work together in determining care for their patients and are like mamma lions protecting their cubs. They intervened and had dad discharged and brought to their facility. He was home in a few days but he was now beginning to show signs of physical deterioration as well.

Part of the new house was an old pond that had been used as an irrigation source and was now basically dried up. We were in the process of filling it in when my dad managed to fall head first into the pile of concrete block fill. He was relatively unhurt, but it was the wake up call that it was now too dangerous for us to continue to care for him at home by ourselves. It was time for him to move into the facility full time.

He deteriorated rapidly after that, the Alzheimer’s finally affecting him physically as well as mentally, and on August 15th, the Feast of the Ascension of Our Blessed Mother, my dad went home to God.

So as you can see by this abbreviated tale, things have been a bit distracting for me. As I said before, this is not a “woe is me” pity tale. I simply believe that I owed an explanation to everyone as to why I have been so absent from these pages for so long. I owe you all so much for everything that I have been blessed with through this place for all these years, I just wanted you to know where I’ve been and why.

I’m really hoping that I can start once again sifting through the daily onslaught of statist bovine excrement flowing from the leftists in this country and start writing again on a more frequent basis, but there is just so damned much going on in the world that needs to be confronted, and so little time to do the issues justice. We are seeing the fabled death of a thousand cuts inflicted on our republic and our civilization, and it can be depressing and overwhelming at times. But there is hope, much hope. I firmly believe that the statists have pushed too hard and the American people are continuing to wake up and get pissed. We have a good field of some truly conservative candidates to choose from, not just the usual line up of establishment “It’s their turn”‘s. And the candidates doing the best in the polling are the political outsiders.

And hey, Weepy Boner is gone!!!