I think it is kind of sad that most of the time we need something to happen before we truly appreciate life. I was at my parents house last night and they were watching Live For The Moment, the “reality show” special that CBS aired about a man that has ALS and was given the opportunity to live out his wildest dreams before his time is up. I am not a super emotional person,  but I will admit that I did tear up a little bit watching the show. Sometimes it takes seeing something like that to remind me that I should be living every moment like its my last. I think it’s a little sad that we have to be reminded of things sometimes to realize that we are taking things for granted, myself included. Sometimes I take for granted that I can walk just fine, even though I have a prosthetic, then I see someone missing a limb that can’t afford a prosthetic or that can’t be fitted with one for whatever reason and all of a sudden I realize how much I take for granted.

Reading the article below about all of the people that have lost limbs in the earthquake in Haiti is one of those reminders. It makes me very thankful for what I have, and sad at the same time that there are people in that situation. I was reading another article today about a company that was asking for people to donate old prosthetic limbs to be sent to Haiti because the demand for prosthetics over there is going to be so high. I think I will dig out a couple of my old legs this weekend and see if I can find a place to drop them off. It’s the very least I can do with what all that I have been blessed with at the moment.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35103003/ns/world_news-haiti_earthquake/

 Hope you all have a good safe weekend, and don’t forget to live like you were dying!

I feel bad when I don’t post for a few days. I feel like a slacker, even though I have been doing everything but slacking the last few days. I am making some changes, I will tell you more about that in a few days, and life is kind of hectic at the moment. If it wasn’t hectic, t would be boring right?

I haven’t completely given up on this whole video blog idea, but I haven’t really made much progess on it either. I decided I would break out the camera today and use the drive home to try it out. I am in the car for 30 minutes on the way, so why not put that time to good use. I set my camera on the dash on the mini tripod and hit record. I wasn’t sure how it was going to turn out seeing as I couldn’t see what was in the frame and all. Once I got home, I quickly realized that the idea was only good in theory as the sun was so bright shining through my window that all you could see was a bright white scene inside my truck. You couldn’t really make out a face at all much less get any idea as to what I would look like on camera. So it is back to the drawing board on that one.

I am not giving up though, I will give it another shot when I have some free time and see if I can come up with something a little better than what I came up with today. I can tell you this, after listening to myself talk on camera for more than a couple of minutes I can already tell there will have to be much editing involved before anyone actually gets to actually watch me.

Have you seen the commercials for the new show The Marriage Ref? This one makes me laugh.

I told you I was going to tell you about some of the feedback I have received about my blog, and since some of the feedback has been I start stories but never go back and finish them, I figured I really should tell you about it since I brought it up. For the record I have been trying to be better about not finishing stories. Any-who, I had a friend ask me this week when I was going to start doing the video blog thing I talked about. She even offered to be my camera person. I am not sure that is a good idea, since she told me a while back that she put a video of me on youtube from when we worked together a few years ago.

 
So, yeah, probably going to just do my own camera work this time around. I appreciate the offer though, really I do.

Last week I was talking to a friend, and he told me that he had been reading my blog. I asked him what he thought of it, and he said “you sure bitch a lot!”. I didn’t really know what to make of that. He said the blog must be my place to vent and get things off my chest. I don’t complain a lot to people, which may be why it seems like so much of the content on here is negative. In a way, this is my place to vent and get things off my chest. I suppose that is a good thing, because nobody likes to hang out with someone that complains all the time. I try to be positive and upbeat about things, but after his comment I got to thinking that people that don’t know me in real life may not get that. To the casual observer reading this blog it may appear that I am a regular Debbie Downer, and that is not really the case at all.

I don’t want to come across as complaining all the time, but part of this point of this blog was to let people in on what its like to live with differences, and a lot of the time living with differences is more negative than positive. I choose to focus on the positive, but I also want to share the negative and not just try to ignore the negative aspects of being different.

I am off to sit in the woods for the last time. Hope everyone has a good weekend, and seriously…thanks for listening to my “bitching”.

This made me laugh today. I don’t really get how a 4 year old boy with shaggy hair is a distraction to other 4 year olds, but  a 4 year old boy with braided hair is good to go. I guess that is why I don’t make the rules.

Figures I would post write about wanting to blog more this year and then get sick and not feel like blogging. I am going through my yearly cold thing at the moment and haven’t really wanted to do much of anything the last couple of days. Maybe I will be more creatively inspired tomorrow?

I have had a couple of friends this week give me feedback on my blog. When I get to feeling better I will share with you what they think of my blog.

I have read a lot of peoples blogs that have talked about the year they had in 2009 and their goals for 2010. I thought I would share a couple of my goals with you for this coming year. The main goal for this blog is to write more. I look at the calender of my posts in the sidebar to the right and there were months last year that I only posted a couple of times. That just isn’t going to cut it. I am sure you guys expect more from me, and I know I expect more from myself. I am not going to promise a post every day, but I am going to try my best to post as much as I can. It took me a while last year to really get into my groove, and I am not sure I am completely there yet, but I am getting closer for sure.  

I also want to start doing some video  blogs. I mentioned this before and I will be honest with you, this one may be a hard one for me. I think it would be a great way to share a little more with you guys. After I mentioned it a little while back, I thought I would give it a try. I got out the video camera and started rolling. I realized something after talking on camera for a few minutes. I am not very camera friendly, and I hate the way I sound. I watch other peoples videos on youtube and I think, that cant be very hard. I was obviously wrong, it is hard. I am not very natural on camera, but I am going to give it an honest try despite the fact that I probably won’t be happy with the outcome.

Those are my two main goals this year for this blog. If any of you have ideas or suggestions I am more than open to hear what you have to say. Shoot me an email, unless your Gilbert Arenas, or leave me a comment and let me know what I am doing right or wrong, or if there is anything I can do to make the site more enjoyable for you guys. And yes, I know that last Gilbert joke was probably uncalled for, but sometimes I just can’t help myself.

Being an amputee definitely has its good and bad points. One of the annoying things about my leg is that since it comes up to my knee there is a lip at the top of my prosthetic that sometimes gets caught on things or pinches my leg if I bump it on something. The other night I got too close to the knob on the bedroom dresser and the knob hung on the lip of my leg and I got stuck. I didn’t know I was stuck until I tried to take a step and that leg wouldn’t budge. I can’t count the times I have bumped into something and pinched my leg to the point that it bled. I have to watch it sometimes after I have driven for a while. When I go to step out of my truck my leg wants to stay in the truck. I have only fell out of my truck completely a couple of times, usually I catch myself before I hit the ground. These are all parts of being an amputee that can suck at times, but you get used to those little annoyances after a while.

Being an amputee does has some advantages though, and I have been enjoying one of them for the last couple of months. I have spent a lot of time hunting this year, and it has been cold. Nothing sucks worse than sitting out on the woods and your feet getting cold. I only have to worry about the one foot, so that is a plus. When I am sitting out there in the woods in the morning and it’s 11 degrees I will be thankful I only have to worry about one foot getting cold. Of course if my leg falls off when I am sitting in my tree stand, like it almost did a couple of weeks ago, I may be singing a different tune.

Did I forget to mention that my leg almost fell off while I was in my tree stand a couple of weeks ago? I am always really careful when I am climbing ladders, and I was getting ready to get down out of my stand and wasn’t paying attention and my leg started to slip off as I was about to climb down. I was paying enough attention to catch it before it came completely off, but it did get me thinking about how I would climb down out of that tree and down the ladder on one foot. Maybe I should practice getting in and out of it on one foot, just in case? Yeah, probably not. I think that’s one of those bridges I will wait to cross. I can tell you that it is a weird feeling when you are twenty feet up a tree and you think your leg is about to fall off. It’s that same feeling you get when you lean over the side of a boat and your sun glasses slide of the top of your head, only a lot worse. Knock on wood, I have managed to keep it on all season, of course now that I have said something about it I am sure that will change. Because that is usually the way it goes for me.

I am a big fan of using examples to explain things. You can tell me that something is a bad idea and I may or may not understand. If you tell me something is a bad idea and then you show me an example of someone doing that thing and the consequences that came from it I am more apt to understand that it was indeed a bad idea. I like to use humor as a way to deal with things. I am very rarely a serious person, I can be when I absolutely have to be, and I find that humor can be a good way to handle those awkward moments life sometimes throws at you. However, humor is not always the best way deal with a situation. I know this is an extreme example, but I think it is a pretty good one.

Today was not a good prosthetic day. I wore a thin sock today and about mid way through the day my leg started loosing suction. I had to go to the local big name retail store to buy a cable for work and as soon as I got out of the truck I knew it was going to be a long walk to the electronics section for my cable. With every step my prosthetic became slightly looser until each step I took resulted in that annoying soundI mentioned earlier. I felt like I needed to say “excuse me” after each step I took. On the way to the back I tried to step as lightly as I could to minimize the sound, but there was a point where it just became comical, at least to me. I was having an “I don’t care” kind of day to begin with, so I just continued with my walk of shame to the back of the store. Depending on my mood there are days when I would step into an aisle, and adjust my leg to try and stop the noise, but today just wasn’t one of those days. Some days, I just really don’t care if my leg is making noise or not and when it is I just have to laugh it off. There were times when I would pass someone and they would look at me funny, and I couldn’t help but laugh. I am sure there were a few people in the store today that probably thought I was a little crazy and had lost my manners to boot. Oh well, it amused me and made an otherwise boring trip to the store at least somewhat entertaining.

That was an example of humor making a situation bearable. Sometimes life is just funny and you have to laugh at it. Like I said before though, there are times when it is just not appropriate to laugh at things or to make jokes. I said this was an extreme example, but I think it does show that humor definitely has it’s time and place.

I will resist my urge to comment on the example I am going to use, because it deals with something I feel very strongly about and that is gun control. I do think it is a perfect example of when making jokes is not appropriate though. For whatever reason, Gilbert Arenas decided to bring firearms to his place of employment. In the process of doing this he broke his states gun laws and the policy of the NBA on firearms. As much as I try to steer away from being serious, anyone that knows me would tell you how true that is, even I know that humor should definitely be avoided in this case. I think in this case an appropriate response would have been to admit what you did was using incredibly poor judgement and try to express how sincere you were. Calling the commissioner mean, and using your “hand guns” to mimic shooting your team mates, probably not the best response on his part. There are just times in life when you can’t make jokes and you have to take things seriously, even I know this. I do, I swear! As much as humor can be used to diffuse a lot of situations you have to know where the line is and stay on the right side of it.

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think about the subject!

I mentioned yesterday that Josh and I make an annual trek to Red Rocks to see Blues Traveler on the 4th of July. I think we started this annual trip in 2002. We have both been big fans of the band since the late 90’s and have had some really great trips to Denver over the last few years. If you will excuse me while I jump off on this rabbit trail for just a minute. If you enjoy live music, I would say find out if your favorite band is playing Red Rocks and make the trip to see them there if you can. If you ever get the chance to see any concert at Red Rocks you should go. It is such an amazing place to experience a concert, it is unlike any other venue I have been to. If you are in Denver for a concert I would highly recommend going to Brickyard BBQfor some burnt ends.  I mean since you are that close and all. After our whole rental car incident last year and being stuck at Denver International for an extra day and finally getting another rental car to drive back home, we drove 30 miles back into Denver just to get some burnt endsbefore we left. I felt like Harold and Kumar when we finally walked in and ordered. Me and Josh both ordered two orders of burnt ends and enjoy every bite!

There may have been a rabbit there, but maybe not, anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, going to Red Rocks to see Blues Traveler. In 2003 they played an acoustic gig at a local record store and did a meet and greet type of thing. We were there a day early so we found this record store and checked it out before hand. The acoustic gig was just John Popper and Chan Kinchla playing a few songs. It was very up close and personal which was nice. On another rabbit trail, if you like live music and don’t already know about the live music section of archive.org you should check it out for sure. I am a big fan of live music, I know a lot of people are not, and there are a ton of bands out there that are taper friendly and archive.org has a huge archive of live shows from all kinds of bands. You can check out the acoustic gig the guys from Blues Traveler played at the Twist and Shout record store on there if you are interested. Ok, I think that is the last rabbit trail for this post. After they played a few songs, they met fans and signed autographs and that sort of thing. Me and Josh waited in line to meet the guys and get some stuff signed and I have to say it was quite the experience. We were towards the end of the line and when we walked up to the counter I took of my hat so the could sign it. When I handed it to John he saw my hands, and reached out to shake my hand, as he was shaking my hand he just says “oh cool, can I ask what happened?”. I say sure, and tell him the short version. He seemed really fascinated, and our handshake was a little longer than normal as he was looking both of my hands over. Unlike some people, he was very polite about it and wasn’t gawking so I did not mind the attention. Now normally I try to keep a low profile when it comes to showing off my hands, or my leg. I say normally because there are times that warrant showing off your prosthetic leg to strangers, you just have to know when its the right time. I took my cuefrom his curiosity and decided that this was one of those times. Josh wanted a picture so we bothwalk behind the counter and pose for a picture with them. So there I am standing next to two guys from a band I have loved and followed for a few years and am a huge fan of. There is a line of people waiting to be where I am standing, and I figured now is as good a time as any to show people I have never met my prosthetic leg. I told John that I would really like him to sign my leg if they didn’t mind, I said if you think the hands are cool then check this bad boy out, or something like that. I pull up my pants leg and give the old wooden leg a tap and ask if they would sign it. I am not sure how much the people waiting in line could see, but everyone that was on our side of the counter got a good laugh out of the situation. The were bothvery cool, and signed my leg witha sharpie. I have never been one to worry about how my leg looks because I am pretty rough on it. It is scratched up, and I knew the sharpie would be worn off before to long so it was worth having it written on just so I could tell the story later on.  

Ok, one last rabbit trail. Maybe this is more of a side note, than a rabbit trail, but either way I thought I would mention it. Whenever I write a post like this, I always hit the preview button several times before I actually publish it. I like to see what it is going to look like to the reader versus what it looks like to me in the wordpress editor that I am typing in. I type what feels like this long drawn out story and then preview it only to find out it’s like two small paragraphs. I feel like sometimes I am rambling on forever and probably not making any sense only to find I have only typed one paragraph, although that one paragraph probably doesn’t make much sense. I read other peoples blogs and I see how well written some of them are, and then I look at mine and I wonder what in the world I am doing. I think I am just really critical of myself and everything I do. I hope that is the case, and I am not boring you all to death. If I am please let me know and I will try harder I promise!