Sep05

Another year older…

by jimmyfjames on September 5, 2012 at 11:46 am
Posted In: Dearly Departed, Growing Up, Life Changing Events, Long Island, Relationships

I normally do not feel that old. I mean I am going to be 42 in just over 2 weeks, but I never really felt… old. Maybe it is because I am a guy and since we mature much slower than women I haven’t really felt that old. But life has a way of changing that.

A couple of weeks ago I was on my Facebook and catching up on the goings ons with my old friends and I arrived at a post that just made me feel much more than my soon-to-over 41 years. I came across a status update that one of my high school classmates had passed away. I have no idea why this affected me so much. I mean I knew the guy… in high school. We never hung out. We had different friend circles. I had neither seen nor even bumped into him since graduating, yet it affected me.

Maybe it is because he was only a few months older than I am. Maybe it is because I didn’t think of any of my friends were at the age where we needed to attend each other’s wakes or funerals.

It seemed like just yesterday we were graduating high school and wondering what we wanted to do with our lives for the rest of our lives. And then, in the blink of an eye, we are 40 + years old and some of us have already passed away.

I feel bad for Mike because he left behind a wife and 3 kids. His kids now have to grow up not really knowing their dad because his life ended way too soon. I still have no idea what happened. All I know is that all my old High school friends on Facebook posted pictures, goodbye messages, memories and the like. I do remember him from high school and he was always a nice guy. I know I cannot even imagine passing too early and leaving my wife and daughter behind, not being there to see our little boopah grow up, get married, go to school and such. I can’t imagine not enjoying my wife’s hugs when she leaves for work in the morning or the weekends we make sure we do something together.

I have to say… Mike, I am sorry I was so overly shy in High school and did not have the privilege of knowing you better. I apologize to all my high school friends who I do not converse with as often as I would like nor see. I do wish everyone is doing well and having happy lives!

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Aug23

[Writer’s Workshop] Share your writing Process

by jimmyfjames on August 23, 2012 at 3:49 am
Posted In: Blogging, Mama's Losin' It Writers Workshop

My writing process is VERY, very simple. The problem isn’t the process… it’s finding the time to move my brain ideas onto the blogosphere. That is the problem. There needs to be more time in the day! I would say I can’t wait until we start to terraforming Mars so we can live there, except we would only receive an extra hour per day. And that extra hour would be an extra hour of the boopah fighting going to sleep and throwing her food on the floor to let us know she is done!

When I do find the time, it is pretty quick. I just sit down and type. Usually it takes me about an hour to write out a post. So that living on Mars thing is really starting to sound like a plan! That usually also includes adding of photos, if I have anything to add and editing the document so that it fits into the constraints of my blog theme. Of which I am still trying to find a theme I REALLY love!

I type all my posts in Microsoft Word. I have heard MANY things about this and usually all negative, but I can type it all up, add and edit the pictures and post it all directly from MS Word. It also is a great tool as sometimes I want to write a post and I do not have internet connection. I know it is unheard of, but since my in-laws live in Maine, there are MANY places where I cannot locate internet.

After the spellcheck, then I save a copy to hard drive and then publish to the site.

I have to admit, I do have a bunch of ideas for posts as well as for adding to my tech blog, all in my head and I need to learn to be more disciplined in putting them on paper, well, computer post that is and then publish them. Sometimes I even post and then edit it later, just to fine tune everything. If it is a post I feel passionate about, like the one I am posting this weekend, then I can get the post written and up in less than an hour.

I still have this tendency to write these really LONG posts and sometimes I think I write too much in order to arrive at the point. I hope I do not, but it is all part of my process. The longest part of all of this is locating the pictures I want to add since all my pictures are just jumbled together in folders from the day they were taken.

So tell me, what is your process? DO you think I need to learn to make my posts less… wordy?

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Aug16

[Writer’s Workshop] If I could tell my teenage self…

by jimmyfjames on August 16, 2012 at 2:54 am
Posted In: Childhood, Growing Up, Life Changing Events, Mama's Losin' It Writers Workshop

There are SO many things I would tell my teenage self. I would say all these things:

1. Do not be so shy all the time. It is easier to talk to people than you think.

2. Do NOT be friends with the kid down the block. Not only is he going to steal from you and lie about you to get you in trouble. He is going to become a HUGE drug addict… so stay away.

3. The girl across the street… she does not and will never like you… move on.

4. Save at least some money every week to put towards a car so when you are 18 you can get a decent one. It will make your social life, especially senior year, so much better.

5. Give your parents a break. They are doing the best they can so every once in a while do something nice for them so they know you appreciate them.

6. That girl in homeroom that you have had a crush on since 7th grade… she does like you… but nothing ever happens because you are TOO SHY TO ASK (see #1).

7. Although High School sucks, if you apply yourself more and be more active you can have a really awesome HS experience.

8. Invest money in Microsoft. If you do, will not have to work… EVER!!

9. The girl of your dreams, you will not find until later in life and it is very worth it so be patient, have fun and watch for her when the time comes.

10. Be more serious about your future. Do some studying in HS so you can go to a real college not one that you go to because no others will take you.

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Aug10

Goodbye to Our History to make room for more Money!

by jimmyfjames on August 10, 2012 at 4:40 am
Posted In: Blogging, Childhood, Growing Up

I need to lose weight. I know I will get it done, but right now I have other things I need to finish but I still like to go for walks when I can. I would rather go out for a run, but that can’t happen because ever since I started working in the ER, my feet have developed Achilles Tendonitis which then turned into Planter Fasciitis. So running is almost impossible. If I really need to run, I can but not for long distances and I used to run 7 or more miles every night!

So now I walk when I can. Usually I take pretty long walks. The other night I was not in the mood to be out too late so I only walked 3 miles, but then there are nights where I am out for over 6 miles. It feels good, but at the same time I do not feel the same kind of burns I usually felt after a run. But when you walk you see so much more than you normally do, which brings me to the main topic of my post.

I have seen more businesses out of business then active businesses. It is really sad. I went past our old neighborhood not too long ago and a lot of the places which were open, but I admit I never went into, were all closed up. Now, I am not saying since I didn’t go there that is why they closed, but I am saying that maybe they weren’t interesting enough to stay in business. It is so sad to see this happening everywhere. All these businesses are closing. What triggered this post is that a New York staple business went out of business and I never even knew it.

When I was little we used to go upstate all the time. My parents owned 15 acres with a house on it and we would go up there quite often. When I was old enough to drive on my own, I would go up there with my dog and we would do a LOT of hiking and that would be one of my week long vacations. Well, every time we went up for a week my Dad would take us to the Catskill Game Farm. It was basically this little zoo which had some very unique animals and was a VERY big attraction… back in the 50′s and 60′s. But as things changed and everyone wanted to go to amusement parks and go on rides, it started to die off. It went from having 500,000 visitors a year to almost 100,000 visitors and so the owners decided to close down.

I remember going there as a child of maybe 5 or 6 and feeding the baby goats milk and the baby deer these ice cream cones full of feed and they would climb all over you trying to eat the feed. My wife and I are planning on going away to a place her family used to take her when she was little and it was close by so we thought we would take the boopah but we can’t. Because it closed, just like so many other places.

Although I like progress and new technologies, I also feel we need to hold onto some of our older American customs so our kids can learn from our past. I am afraid that most of old Americana is going to be lost in the shuffle that is this recession/depression. I understand that nothing can last forever, but sometimes we hope that it will. I guess I hoped that I could bring my munchkin to some of the places I used to go to when I was little, share in the nostalgia and pass something on for her to remember and bring her family to and tell them how her father used to come here and then I brought her and now she is bringing her kids… but that seems unlikely.

In NY, it seems if it can be converted into a strip mall or apartment building, it will be “pshaw” to the past. It saddens me that our past very well may be devoured into oblivion because it makes more money to put up a strip mall, but what about history? Are our kids going to have to find out about all these great things we used to do on family outings via Youtube? I hope it doesn’t come to that, but for right now I am going to mourn the loss of the Catskill Game Farm and forge ahead to find new places to bring my daughter to so she can have the fond childhood memories that I have.

Have you lost any favorite childhood vacation spots?

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Aug09

[Writer’s Workshop] My Morning Routine

by jimmyfjames on August 9, 2012 at 1:18 pm
Posted In: Babies, Fatherhood, Mama's Losin' It Writers Workshop, Parenthood

I chose this topic and had everything planned out on how I would do it, but I ran out of time as usual. So here it is in a nutshell.

2am go to bed. (Hey! I work in an ER until 11pm and can’t fall asleep until then!)

4am Boopah starts to stir, cries once or twice and either goes back to sleep or I have to run in and put a pacifier in her mouth or she will wake up Erica. I think she actually has a vendetta and her cries are actually saying “Get me my PACIFIER or else Mom is so waking up!”

6am Boopah wakes up, Erica gets her and does the breakfast thing with her while she is getting ready to go to work. Erica that is. Boopah is only 1, she can’t work… or can she?!?!

8am Erica wakes me up so I can go into the living room and watch boopah while she plays. Her normal playing routine is play with toy, go to daddy and crawl all over him for 20 seconds and then get off daddy and move on to next toy.

8:15 Boopah goes to the computer or move everything blocking the power cables for the computer so Daddy tells her “no” then says it more sternly and then yells it while Boopah is laughing. I think she just wants to taunt me.

8:30 Time to change Boopah and hope I can keep her distracted long enough to not squirm too much while I am changing the diaper. Usually it doesn’t work and I have to hold her down so I can change her.

8:40 After playing for a while Boopah gets her foot stuck in a way that she can’t remove it so it’s Daddy to the rescue.

9am More crawling on Daddy but this time we stand on Daddy, usually in an area that will hinder the making of a brother or sister.

9:05 After recovering from the latest walk on Daddy movement, we turn on and play all the recorded episodes of Pocoyo as that is the only cartoon that keeps her distracted. It’s good to have 7 episodes on the ready!

Between 10 and 10:30 we give boopah her morning bottle so that she hopefully takes a nap long enough for me to do some studying.

10:45 Change boopah again, this time she is getting tired so she whines and kicks a little but doesn’t squirm as much.

11am-noon Boopah falls asleep and I can finally get laundry, computer work, studying done.

2pm Boopah wakes up and its time for her to have lunch. Feed her lunch while she fights because she is a baby who is hungry but wants to fight geting food. What is up with that! It used to be she would cry until she was fed now she cries if she is fed.

2:30pm time to get everything together to bring her for her short 3 hour babysitter session so I can get to work and then Erica picks her up!

It drives me crazy, but I would not change a single minute of it!

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