Closing

... a chapter. A sale.

On a home that isn't one anymore, and hasn't been for a while.

In February of 2004, I closed on my house in Minnesota.  I was so excited to buy my first house.  Moving out of my apartment.  Parking my car in a garage.  Playing my stereo as loud as I wanted.  Doing laundry @ 2 a.m. if needs be,  & not needing to hoard quarters.

Then came mowing my lawn.  The conventional wisdom is right:  There are few things more satisfying than working in your own yard.  To tame the chaotic & wild nature of the grass, to battle the weeds.  Just the way it looks after it's been cut evenly.

Initially, it was too much space.  I went from a one-bedroom apartment in the 800 sq. ft range to a nearly 1800 sq ft 3-bedroom house with a spacious family room downstairs.

I enjoyed wiring the basement for my surround-sound system.  I enjoyed adding wire shelving to the garage, upstairs bathroom, and upstairs bedroom closets.  Laying out and planting a vegetable garden.  Wiring up electrical outlets on posts in the front yard to support my array of Halloween and Christmas decorations.

I even enjoyed shoveling snow in the artic cold of a Minnesota winter.

Over time, I replaced appliances:  The refrigerator.  The water softener.

Over time, I acquired things:  A kitchen table and chairs, a patio table and chairs, crystal stemware.  Bed, sofa, bookshelves, and a desk.  A lawn mower, a trimmer, shop vac, power tools.

After months in the house on my own, my girlfriend moved in with me when her apartment became a potential health hazard from the suspected drug lab next door.  At times, the house didn't feel empty, but crowded.  Pets played in the basement.

Then my employment opportunities changed.  I found myself 250 miles to the south of my house.  For a year and a half, it sat empty.  Well, empty of my presence.  I periodically drove up and checked on things.  When my contract job in Des Moines became full time, I moved the rest of my belongings south.  A couple of months later, an opportunity arose for me to rent the house, so I hung on to it for another two years, checking in on it with less frequency, especially after I started dating the woman who would become my wife.  After proposing to my wife, I saw the house differently:  It was extremely unlikely I would reoccupy it, so I saw it more as anchor around my neck.  Late this summer, I put the house on the market.

I didn't get what I wanted for it, but I walked away with some money in my pocket nonetheless.

Five days ago, I saw my house for the last time.  As I pulled away with the trailer attached, I felt somber.  Closing on the house was a closing on a segment of my life.

But it was easy to drive away:  It was just a piece of property.  No longer a home.  It hadn't been one for years.

No my home was to the south, about 250 miles.  And there was a woman there, waiting for me.

A house is just a structure.  A home is much more than that.

Family

An ambulance picked up my mother-in-law this morning after she had trouble breathing.

Here we are, on vacation with a bunch of my in-laws and some of their families.  As if there's a good time for a family emergency.

But what I saw humbled me in new and profound ways today:  My father-in-law and his two sons and two daughters (including my wife) are with my mother-in-law in a hospital an hour away.  Tomorrow evening, when I get home from this vacation, they will be over four hours away.  They won't be coming back to the resort tomorrow, when we were slated to go home.  Instead, they will stay with their mother as doctors work to stabilize her.  So my mother-in-law's siblings, their families, and my wife's siblings' spouses all pitched in to clean the resort room and pack the father-in-law's car.  My father-in-law and his children returned from the local hospital just long enough to say their goodbyes, bring us up to speed, and make their way to the hospital an hour away.

Later, as I sat by the pool and helped my in-laws' spouses watch their kids, I realized something:  I was part of this family.  What I had in common with the other would-be strangers around the pool was that we had become part of this family.  We have married into it.  In my fellow strangers' case, we had added children to it.  Taking the kids to miniature golf, ordering pizza for them.  Despite my railing against the notion of collectivization, what occurred today was just that.  Nobody simply took care of his or her self.  We pitched in and got it done together.  As the only collective that ever comes close to truly working:  a family.

This evening, the clanging bells of the ice cream truck summoned children from around the resort like moths to a flame.  I took a picture and texted it to my wife.  Her reply?  It was just the pick-me-up she and her siblings needed.

So tonight I close with a prayer for my mother-in-law:  That she may recover quickly and enjoy many more years with her children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, grand-nieces, and grand-nephews.

Key moments

Every life has those key moments.  Some are happy, some are sad. 

All of them shape who you are.

Today, I'm thankful for each of those moments, even the sad ones, because they've taught me a powerful lesson in life:  That our time upon this planet is short, and seizing the moment, enjoying life to the fullest, is one of the gifts our Creator has bestowed upon us.

Those moments helped me get over my reluctance to move out of my comfort zone, where I had a home, a portion of my life that extended over twelve years.  But I drove south and made a new home in Iowa.

Those moments helped me ask a beautiful woman out on a date.  In my solitary existence, I had the companionship of pets, and a schedule that was all mine, to eat, sleep, and exercise when I wished.  I stepped outside that comfort zone to know love and companionship.

Those moments helped me speak with another man about how I loved his daughter and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, and ask for his blessing.

Those moments helped me take that beautiful woman on an unusual date involving a helicopter ride, at the conclusion of which, I got down on one knee and asked her to be my wife.

Those moments led me to today, when she will become my wife, and I her husband, in front of family and friends.

Thank you, God, for all those moments.

From http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/node/8759

This past weekend, a small group of perhaps a dozen protesters gathered outside Dayton's Hara Arena to protest the sale of modern sporting rifles at Bill Goodman's Gun and Knife Show.
From the article:

"We know that guns are being sold on the floor inside Hara Arena illegally" said Jerome McCorry. "No background checks no identification of any kind."
McCorry said "AK-47s and M16s are not gonna be used for hunting, they're not going to be used to protect anybody. These are the weapons that are coming back and being used in mass murders and mass killings."

After reading the article, a Buckeye Firearms Association supporter decided to contact McCorry, the apparent protest organizer, to inform him about the inaccuracies in his statements about firearms (it isn't illegal for private individuals to sell a gun at the show without a background check, people aren't selling M16s or fully-automatic AK-47s at Hara Arena, modern sporting rifles are used for hunting, gun shows are rarely used by criminals as a source for guns, rifles [of any type] are used in murders far less than fists or baseball bats, etc.).
The supporter quickly found more than he bargained for. A simple Google search for Jerome McCorry reveals that the man trying to tell the public what weapons they should be allowed to own is a convicted felon.

 A convicted rapist, no less.  Hmm, guess he's not hot on a woman having to "explain how her attacker how he ended up with two bullet holes in him", as Ann Coulter once said.

What part of "Shall Not Be Infringed" don't you understand?

The beauty of Constitutional rights is that I don't have to justify or explain my need to exercise that right to anyone, least of all a Briton by the name of Piers Morgan.

A long year

It's been a long year.

• January:  After fighting with MediaCom cable for two months, my cable TV service was restored.  Never is a long time, so I'll just say I'm extremely reluctant to give them my business again.  So far, Qwest/Centurylink hasn't pissed me off.
• February:  Short month.  Nothing memorable besides Valentine's with the girlfriend.
• March:  This is when my job situation started to change.  One co-worker was fired, and my boss announced his move to a different department.  In early March, I was contacted through Facebook by neighbors of my aunt, whom had been discovered by police in her home after having passed away some ten days prior.
• April:  All alone at work, as my colleague returned to India as his year's tenure in the States expired.  I was excited to see the 1940 U.S. Census.  And I took my girlfriend on her second and my first cruise.  To the Bahamas.
• May:  RIP Morgan.
• June:  RIP Bailey.  Dori has a health scare.  801 Grand.  Okoboji.  John Deere turns 175.  One year since I met my girlfriend.
• July:  God-awful heat.  Cooler in Florida!  Telltale signs of the drought:  Waist-deep water at the buoys at Storm Lake.
• August:  Dori develops tooth problems.  And I suffer from a month-long affliction of high body temperature and general lousy feeling.  But I don't let it deter me from educating myself on diamonds and doing a little shopping.
• September:  My first helicopter ride.  And I ask her:  "Will you marry me?"
• October:  My folks visit.  The two set of parents meet.
• November:  Thanksgiving in Kansas City.
• December:  Blizzards, icy roads, dead batteries, and a Boxing Day cold.  My last Christmas as a single man.

Modern marvels

Posting this from 30000+ ft