January is not my favorite Month

I won't say I hate January, that's too strong a word. But besides the awful weather, it carries many difficult memories for me.
Two in particular bubble to the surface every year, and they both happened in 1995.

First, I got to celebrate the New Year with my Mom in the Hospital from a stroke/diabetic coma. Then on January 29, the night before she was to come home, my Dad collapsed at home while watching the 'Niners crush the Chargers. He died around 2 AM the morning of the 30th.
That was 14 years ago today.

It was very difficult that morning to walk into her hospital room, see her fully dressed, sitting in her chair, ready to go home. Then I had to tell her the man she had been married to for 49 years had died downstairs in the ER only hours before.

So today is not my favorite date on the Calendar.

I could go on and on with a litany of bad memories that have their anniversaries in January, but there is no point. It's the past, and we are supposed to move on from it.

I welcome February with open arms.

By the way, Nemo is still alive, as are the rest of the fish. I have this hope that if they make it to February, they will survive. we will see.

One Fish, Two Fish, Blue Fish, Dead Fish

The Casey family has a long history of looking after God's other creatures. Presently, we have three Cocker Spaniels in our house. We have a feral cat living under our deck, two bird feeders that I keep filled, and as of Saturday afternoon, several sea creatures in a Salt Water tank.

The Salt Water family came about because someone who was moving needed to give their fish a new home, and Mrs C convinced me we should take them in.
I moved them, and their 26 gallon tank, on Saturday Afternoon, and set it up in our TV room. I honestly didn't think anybody had lived through the move. I only saw one of the fish swimming around afterwards, the water was very murky from being shaken up during the car ride. (Note: A Glass tank with 26 gallons of water is VERY HEAVY.) It was also very cold Saturday, and I wondered if the brief exposure to the cold might have been too much of a shock for them.

I was relieved Sunday afternoon to see them swimming around. I fed them, and all seemed well. Mrs C returned from Cape May Point Sunday Evening, and gave them all Casey family names. The two Clown fish she named Nemo and Paint, the bright blue Fish, Dory, and the fat Brown fish she named Bug. There's also a starfish, who, I think in a premonition of what was to come, buried himself in the sand.
Tuesday, Bug was down in the corner, floating sideways. That's not good. But when I went to remove him, he sprung to life and swam away, prompting Mrs C to rename him Lazarus.
Wednesday, I came home from work, and old Lazarus got a new name: "Floater."

Yep, he was dead. So I gave him burial with full honors in the Porcelain Sea.

By the way, we got some crabs as part of the package deal. I know how that sounds, but they do scurry around pretty cool between the rocks.
I'm worried though, because Nemo is acting like Bug/Lazarus/Floater did before he died, and all the fish are hanging near the bottom of the tank, only swimming up to eat. Only Dory is acting like all is cool, swimming all over the place.

We are visiting some Fish Professionals on Saturday to get some advice, but I'm worried that it may be too late for the rest of the gang by then.
So when it comes to caring for God's other creatures, we Casey's are good at dogs, cats, and birds, but fish?
We're going to have to work on that.

I'm writing as fast as I can

I finished the memoir Tuesday night. I wrote most of it Saturday, while drinking lots of Rolling Rock. the more I wrote, the more painful it became, so I wrote it as fast as I could, before it became too painful to write.
I revisited the most painful moments of my life, and I didn't gloss them over. Writing about my parents and their deaths 6 years apart, and my own guilty conscience concerning my actions was both cathartic and agonizing.
In my home life, on the outside it looks fine, and financially it is, but spiritually and emotionally, I am trying to walk forward on a carousel that is spinning faster and faster, and I don't know if I will get my safety strap on before it gets too dangerous.

Stevie Wonder may have been blind, but I think he saw it pretty clearly:

Signed Sealed delivered, I'm yours, Here I am baby. I've done a lot of foolish things, I can be a broken man.

I'm not a broken man, but I've got my battle scars, and I understand many of the wounds are self inflicted.

When we disregard and ignore our past, it eventually returns in the present to bite us in the ass. I consider myself bitten.
The unresolved conflict that I compartmentalized and buried almost twenty years ago has returned in a new form. I didn't solve it then, I was too immature. So here it is again.
No more denials. Once you get past the pain, as Pablo Cruise says, love will find a way.

I'm writing as fast as I can. I hope I can write the ending this time before it is too late.

The Cell Phone in the Toilet

It's one of those occasions where I offer a piece of relevant advice to all my blog peeps out there. Today's lesson is this:

Never try to answer your cell phone while standing at a urinal

I will label this Casey's law # 6

I have been a bit harried at work this past week, and the damn thing never seemed to stop ringing at the most inopportune times. I was expecting an important message, and I know I should have let it go to the voice mail.
But as we all know, I can at times, be an idiot. The phone slipped from my grasp and splashed into a place from which i did not want it to go. So what did I do?

I went to the Janitor's closet and grabbed a pair of rubber gloves, and a bucket. I dug it out, dropped it in the bucket, and then put about a gallon of water in, and then a cup of bleach. I let it sit for an hour. You ever hear a phone ring when it is in water? It's weird, it reminded me of the tsunami I launched on Ripple tank town during a high school physics experiment more than 30 years ago. It had to do with sound waves dispersing across water. I couldn't emulate that noise with my lips no matter how hard I tried.

After about an hour, and about a dozen unanswered calls, I dumped out the bucket in the janitor's closet sink and ran water on the phone for a few minutes. Then I wiped the phone down with a terry cloth towel.
She's still working! The color faded a bit, but as long as she's working, who cares!
I've had it more than two years, I'm due for a new one in a month or so. Think I should tell them what happened? I'll bet Mrs C never uses it again!

Happiness is a Heated Mattress Pad

It has been cold. Not just annoyingly cold, but uncomfortably cold. Mrs C made it known to me that no matter how high she turned the controls on her electric blanket, it didn't seem to get very warm, or make much of a difference. I wasn't all that concerned, because I had no electric blanket on my side of the bed. I had added an extra sheet folded double on my side. I wasn't freezing, but I wasn't exactly toasty either.

With that in mind, I told her I was willing to pry a few extra dollars out of my wallet and purchase a new electric blanket for our King Size bed. You know these things aren't cheap, right?
So Saturday afternoon we are at the Big Box store, and the selection is kind of slim. They don't have any King size blankets, which is a stumbling block for me, because I'll be damned if I'm buying two electric blankets.

Then we get to a display at the end of an aisle, and they have of all things, a King sized heated Mattress pad. It has controls for both sides of the bed! It is one big pad, but has separate controls! This has win win situation written all over it! Mrs C can roast on her side, and if I feel the need, I can put my side on low simmer!

So I pried the $65.00 out of my wallet and purchased the heated Mattress pad. We put it on the bed as soon as we were home, and put it right to use Saturday night.
How did I ever sleep on cold nights without this thing?! It is great! The heat radiates up from below, and really soothes my achy joints. The state of early morning stiffness in my surgically replaced right hip diminished drastically in one night. The heated mattress pad works much better than the electric blanket ever did.
More importantly, Mrs C is happy, as are the dogs, who like the bed being nice and warm as much as anybody else.
Sometimes domestic bliss can be found in the most simple pleasures. At least for this most recent weekend, Happiness is a heated mattress pad.