Fourteen years ago, I formed my most vivid holiday memory to date. July 4, 2001 is a day I will not be forgetting. Dirk, the true genius of DIY plumbing, made our family an arsenal of firework-powered weapons. Most notably, he made a series of steel pipe “guns” which shot bottle rockets. As you can imagine,
Jenny sent me a link to the article included below, and it made me happy inside. It will forever live on a wall in my house, because I need perspective too. If you have something that helps you, tell us about it! Share in the comments. We are all learning different things that help, and
The ‘Stigma Fighters Anthology Volume One‘ went up on Amazon recently, and it includes an exclusive article by yours truly. Stigma Fighters is a non-profit advocacy group on a mission to educate folk regarding mental health issues. There are some powerful, beautiful, and (sometimes) heart-breaking stories in the 230 pages of unbridled honesty. It is
I was thinking about my old house again (go figure), and I remember a nasty old well we had. Our water source had been converted over to County utilities years before we came to squat in my childhood home in Arkansas. Long before the fire got the property, the ice wreaked its havoc as well.
I just looked up my childhood home on Google Earth. We all do it, right? We wonder who lives in the room we learned to read in, or who mows the lawn we seeded years ago. I just wanted to see if my old chicken coop was still standing. It wasn’t. The entire house, the well,
Dude. This snow bullshit has got to stop. I don’t like ice, Sam-I-Am. Too many bad memories. When I was a teenager, I had to take an electric chainsaw, with a 120 ft. extension cord, out into the snow, and cut logs down for fuel. Every couple of winters, my parents might buy a rick
There’s nothing like looking up the people from your past on offender databases, and finding that many of them are felons. I went through some databases, and found uncles, my father, my step-fathers (all but one of them), and many other “role models” from my past listed. Yay for public records. Good news, though: I’m
Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (also known as C-PTSD) is a little confusing. The term isn’t accepted by the American Psychiatric Association as a mental disorder, but is used to describe PTSD that is the result of extended exposure to trauma. Here’s the deal: The term PTSD describes the symptoms that a person experiences after they’ve
When kids act out and misbehave, we’re quick to assume that they’re spoiled, lack discipline, or are just having one of those days. For the most part, it really is usually one of those things—not that parent’s want to admit that their child is anything less than perfect. Unfortunately though, some poor behavior could actually
Seven years ago, I was wearing a blue long-sleeve shirt. It was robin’s egg blue, my favorite shade of blue for when I’m tan. A friend came up to me and complimented it. She said it made my eyes look nice. Instead of saying “Thank you so much!” or something else similarly appropriate, I said
