What Good Is A Soapbox...

...if you do not use it? It's obvious to me why so many webblogs grow dark & dim over time, although there are many who can do a good job of stringing together words with proper punctuation, there are but a select few who can successfully do this over time. In some ways Digby over at Hullabaloo (see sidebar) is a hero to me, over the years I have never found a post of hers to be less than thought-provoking. (Not that my writing skills could ever approach hers, the main thing we seem to have in common is that we both write in the English language) There are of course others whose posts are more profound or more provocative but many of those people are writers in their daily lives and their blogging seems to be more an extension of their daily lives and not as much a labor of love as Digby's. Still, having been a longtime blog reader, when I decided to create this here joint, I resolved to fill it with a sufficient number of regular posts that would qualify it as a 'true' sixth-tier blog - don't mind being yet another "voice in the wilderness", feel very much like one of those already in my day-to-day...

Kind of a melancholy time at the manor these days. Found out my ex father-in-law died 24 November 2007 or thereabouts. I married his child in 1988 but eventually had to file for divorce in 1999 as my spouse's mental health issues had gotten to a point where they were not simply unmanageable; my efforts to help and assist this person to cope with their stuff were actually making things worse. After we divorced, their goddamned psychiatrist then and only then consented to the hospitalization that my now ex-spouse had required for years. It's been now, what, 8, almost 9 years? And over this time, I still send my ex- xmas & bday gifts as my ex- is on SSDI and the little help I have to offer is greatly appreciated. While we will never get back together, I have never stopped caring about this person either and never will, I guess. So it was kind of an expected shock that he finally died and I must say I've been having premonitions about this for most of this fall. He was 88 years of age and was married to his sweetie for 62 of 'em. Served in the Philippines during WWII, a seabee I believe, where he met his wife.

Have some good memories of him, some times we shared together. A funny one was him painting over tiny cigarette burns in the vinyl of the kitchen floor of the house I bought for his child and me back in 1992 - if you know where to look, you can still see his handiwork. My favourite? An afternoon we spent removing foliage from the bed outside of the front windows in order that flowers could be planted there instead., digging & tearing nasty scraggy bushes out of the ground, roots and all.

Dog bless you and keep you, H. Paul _