Work.

"Hey, this woman needs help over by the rock. Can you help her out?"

"Yea, sure."

Spring is here. I'm getting busy again with stone and rock. Now, however, I am not happy about it.

"So, I'm looking to build a pond... and they tell me, uh, that I should put stone around it. What kind of stone do I, ahh, use, to put around... it."

"Most folks use fieldstone."

"Which one is that? Is that, like, this stuff?"

She's pointing to moss rock, which is dense, dark stone that would make up God's fists if he had them. I don't want her to use moss rock for this pond, mostly because I have no desire to break my back picking it up out of the ragged wooden bin it lays in.

"No. That's moss rock. Fieldstone is over here."

She's gazing back at the moss rock, but I'm trying to move her towards the flatter, lighter rock. I notice she's also kind of cross-eyed, and it freaks me out because that's the second one I've had in three days like that. Never think that people in retail have your best interests at heart- unless you are a genuinely nice guy or a very hot woman, we will not go out of our way... or at least I won't.

As I'm talking and giving my whole bullshit thing about rocks and stones that I've perfected over the years, I suddenly get very depressed. I hate retail, and I'm tired of dealing with people and pretending like I care. What do I want to tell them? Something similar to....


- Do you realize how fucking smart I am? Do you understand that I have a motherwhoring college degree, and yet I am still inexplicably stuck at this shithole job working with a bunch of drunks, felons, and drug addicts? I can quote Shakespeare, Tennyson, T.S. Eliot, or Coledridge off the top of my head. Can you do that? Can you recite the fucking, "Out, out brief candle, life is but a walking shadow that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, then is heard no more" speech without thinking about it? Can you?

I'm tired of dealing with dumb dagos that I have to humor into thinking that they have half a fucking brain. I'm tired of telling jerkoffs how to lay a patio so they can ask me the same fucking question ten minutes later, or go to someone else and ask the same question and try to get a discount on some rocks.

Why the fuck am I still here? Why? Lady, I don't give two flying fucks what stone you want to use, and I don't care what the fuck happens to this pond. I've helped out a million shits with ponds, and all it's done is torn my fucking hands up and made crappy money. You think you're any different? You think I should go out of my way for you, so I can load up eight hundred pounds of stone and you can not tip me and I can hope you hit a fuckin telephone pole in some kind of karmic retribution? Not fucking likely.

"Yea. Use these rocks. They're flat and look natural.

"How much is a pallet?"

"Around $220."

"Oh, OK. I'll be back for them another time."

"Great."


I'll be waiting. With fucking bells on.

Lessons from St. Patrick's Day

1. If you drink enough, seeing who can take the hardest shot to the face may sound like a good idea. It is not.

2. If you drink enough, putting a cigarette out on your knuckle may make sense. It does not.

3. As Brendan Behan said, Guiness does indeed make you drunk.

4. If you drink enough, it may seem like a good idea to call the bouncer, "A fucking doucebag." It is not.

5. The day after St. Patrick's needs to be a national holiday, or at least a paid day off for any of those 1/8 Irish or more. Fuck healthcare, you politicians- work on this! You will have my vote.

6. I should be banned from all things having wheels. Even tricycles are dangerous to me.

7. There are many beautiful women in New York City. None of them want to talk to me.

8. Never ask one of your best friends why he caught the shallow end of the gene pool because you think all his cousins are hot and... well, look at him.

St. Patrick's Eve

Tonight is the most holyiest of nights, the eve before St. Patrick's Day.

Tomorrow is one the only day of the year that I will try to get past my Catholic grudges and try to go to Church. It is the day that I will walk into St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City to a backdrop of wailing bagpipes, and light two candles for two dead men at the first statue to the right; one for my grandfather, and the other for my best friend. I will go to numerous pubs, and drink until I can't see straight anymore. It will start off in a good natured, fun way... and after many hours and many Harps, it will turn into sadness, as it has always done with me after I've drank for too long.... Why, you ask?

Because as anyone who is Irish in their soul could tell you... "To be Irish is to know that the world will break your heart."

And so we drink.

Happy St. Pat's, and "Up the Republic" for every tough bastard who gave his life for the old Emerald Isle, our home across the ocean that our families fled from so long ago.



Riamh Nar Dhruid O Spairn Iann

Veterans

Guys who work outside are like modern day Thoreau's. We are more observant of the weather than any meterologist, and we see the change of the seasons before the rest of the people. When you're outside for 50 something hours a week for years, you become like ole' Henry, listening intently to the sounds of the woods, waiting to hear the cracking of the ice on Walden Pond that tells us that the long winter is ending.

With that, of course, comes new jerkoffs. They stream in from all over as soon as the add is placed in the paper, that fateful, "Help Wanted, Yardman" that gets plastered all over Northern New Jersey at this time of year. They are looking for jobs doing anything, working anywhere, and very often the garden center is in their list of shit jobs that they'd love to do.

There are two types of people that are employed at garden centers: the full timers that have led a fucked up life and ended up needing to pay the bills by any means, and the part timers who do it either for extra money or just because they're bored. Me, I'm the second type, who works there mostly because I've been doing it for so long that one more year won't kill me; I've got a degree, and will eventually move on (although whether that is sooner or later remains to be seen.) The characters I meet through that shithole are ones that one of a kind, though, and their fucked up lives are more interesting than anything I could pull out of my own head.

-----

He walked up to me the other day as I was driving the forklift, locked in a wrestling match with frozen pallets of topsoil. He has flaming red hair, pale skin, and a forearm decorated with a black celtic cross; when he came here the first time four years ago, he was a dumb, scrawny 18-year-old who called himself white trash, and had a taste for illegal drugs. He would pull up in a beat up old Saturn with a half wrecked bumper, blaring Kid Rock from the windows and smoking Newports. I had liked him immediately.

He worked for a long while, and was good at the bullshit that the job entails. When I think back to when he was there, I have to climb a ladder of faces as to who was there at the time, what they looked like, where they were in relation to others who worked there... it's likely climbing a mental ladder backwards in time to figure out who he knew and who he didn't.

After a spell, he'd decided to go into the Army. I think I tried to talk him out of it, as I always do with dumb kids who want to sign up, but it didn't work (as it never does with dumb kids itching to sign up). He had seemed kind of directionless in his life anyway, so I most likely thought that the Army might be good for him and give him somewhere to go, maybe a career or something.

"You guys hiring?" he asked.

"Yea man. We're picking up some now and they haven't got anybody here besides me... you looking for a job?"

"Yea."

"How was the Army? You done already?"

"It was alright. I was in there three years, that's all I signed up for, so I'm done."

He's thicker than he used to be, no longer the boney kid that left here. He's a little more composed, a little less goofy. Age and the Army work wonders for some.

"I'm surprised they let you out... they're in a bad way for guys, aren't they?"

"Yea. They threw all kinds of shit at me, offered me 30 grand to take another tour. I told them, "Fuck that." I was in Afghanistan... I wanted out."

He's younger than me by a couple years, but it struck me as I looked at him that this fucker is a "veteran" already. When I hear the word "veteran", I think of the eighty-year-olds with withered forearms who wear blue hats with a picture of a battleship on them and ask you to hump a bag of 5-10-5 out to their cars for them... I don't think of this guy. I don't look at any of my buddies who are getting back from Iraq or Afghanistan as "war veterans". It is strange for me to realize how much they've been through already compared to me, even though some of them are younger. The term "veteran" is something that I'm going to have get used to as my generation gets older. It is funny how things change when you get older.

It occured to me, also, that he had not heard about Ryer. This was one of the guys that said that me and Ryer were like older brothers to him, and yet I never had a chance to tell him about what had happened. There's no need to quote what I said here- it's the same fucking thing I've had to tell everyone for the last two years. He blinked and looked down, surprised.

Seeing this guy brought back a flood of memories about the way things used to be- reminiscient of a time and place in my life that I will never get back. But in the last few months I've been taking the advice of Ryer's old girl, and trying to let go... and when that coincides with other decent things happening, the days have brightened a bit. It is ironic that this fella comes back at this time. I am looking forward to hearing the things he has to say now... both of our lives are far different than they were the last time we met, and there are many days that lie ahead of backbreaking work under the sun.

Musical Brawls

Q104.3 plays a lunch block of Mellencamp songs yesterday while I'm working with another guy.

"Mellencamp kicks ass."

"Yea he does. But I think Bon Jovi would kick hiss ass."

"Bon Jovi? Are you kidding?"

"No, man. C'mon, it's Bon Jovi... he'd be goin' all "dead or alive" on him."

"You're full of shit on so many fucking levels. C'mon man. We all know I like Bon Jovi; that's a given. But he's a pretty boy. Fancy girly hair, leather pants and all that shit... he's not tough at all. Mellencamp was the one with the jeans and the t-shirt, working on a farm and all, gettin' in trouble all of the time. He's one of those tough hillbillies... those guys are nuts. "Little Pink Houses" was even a tough song, and it's got the word "pink" in it. "Paper in fire", "Authority Song".... all about getting in trouble. Just tough songs. Bon Jovi? "Bed of Roses"? "Have a Nice Day?" I think not."

"Fine. What about the Boss? He'd beat Mellencamp's ass."

"Sorry man. Don't believe that either. Bruce was always the skinny beat poet guy until "Born In the USA." After the Born in the USA days, Bruce would put up a fight; he bulked up a lot. But before that, Mellecamp was like the Hell's Angels to Bruce's hippie poets. The Boss was riding the rails, and Mellencamp would have been the bull, you know? Now it'd be an even fight though, cause Mellencamp smokes like five packs a day and has had a handful of heart attacks... but he also has a tattoo on his forearm... still a tough hillbilly. Now it'd be a tough call."

"Yea... Bruce did have a lot of soft songs. A lot of melancholy ones."

"Exactly... but then you know who would kick all of their asses."

"Oh yea. Lemmy. Probably all at the same time."

"Fuckin a' right, man."

Spring

it is days like this, when we are so close to the breaking of the long cold time, that i long the most for hot nights in backyards overlooking the faded lights of Pompton Lakes, drunk, wandering around talking to women who are beautiful but would never look at me. They are hazy nights where the pool lights waver as the water dances and jives with joyous movement, and young people with nothing to lose drive under streetlights that have seen all of this before.

It is the summer, with lightning storms and thunder and fire that makes you think for a second that we never quite stop breathing, that our spirits never die, and that there is more for us in this world besides the sometimes passionate, sometimes mundane, always doomed life that ends looking at the cream colored underside of a coffin lid until the world explodes or burns or fades. No warm floodwaters hurt me as much as the stacked snow during a blizzard; if summer be a shortness of breath, than winter is the gallows.

Summer is the green field where death is powerless, and nature wars to make us believe.

Believe what? That doesn't matter. As long as you believe.

Politics

I don't talk much about politics these days. I've had it out with every asshole in the world about politics, and I've basically given in to the fact that Americans are much dumber than I thought and the world is doomed to destroy itself in some orgasmic religion driven fury that I will have no part of. However, I will say a few things in the light of this coming election that has the Democrats wondering what soldier to send to war against the Republican political machine.

Yesterday I watched Barack Obama give a speech to a room full of black leaders and preachers on the anniversary of the Selma Riots, and it was then that I realized one thing: this man is the last great hope for our democracy.

He speaks with the eloquence of a Clinton mixed with the honesty of a Lincoln, and when he talks, men listen. The Democratic Party line is one that is among the most noble in the history of men- that no man should starve, and all should have a floor that no one can fall below. It is not a Communist line, as the Karl Rove's of the world would love you to believe; simply a humane one. When that is mixed with the message that every man can be whatever he wants, and can pull himself out of the gutter and climb to the peak, as Obama himself has done, it can be a beautiful thing. When combined further with the fury and passion of a man who can talk with the fire of a black Southern preacher....it can be unbeatable.

And then what have we on the other side but the frothing cunt of a woman named Hillary Clinton, who, as an underhanded, lying, scheming politician, lies in the high grass like a snake, waiting for her chance. She bounds from up from Arkansas so she can pretend to be from New York to get elected, pulling bullshit lines from her carpetbag of tricks, about how "We the people of New York" blah blah blah. She represents the American monarchy, the ideal that one family can be in power for possibly 16 years, and that two families could be for 27. She is the politician who starts including God in her speaches after she realizes that America is still blinded by religion, who will con and connive her way into the Oval Office in whatever manner she can. I liked Bill Clinton, even though looking back, I would not trust him all that much. I still liked him, though, and that was his great power. A charming leader is a good thing, especially in politics. Everyone needs to remember that this cold hearted bitch is not him, and do not let her fool you into thinking she is.

If Obama gets the nod, I will support him as much as my measley abilities allow me. If Clinton gets it... then this year, I will vote Republican, and abandon the Democrats, possibly forever.

Why? Cause fuck them, and fuck her.

Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love... true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in.

Rant

I have hit a wall as far as writing goes. Normally I have an endless amount of bullshit that I rant about, but for right now I'm stuck and fucked.

The one thing I really want to do is continue that short story, "To Hell", but I have no idea where to go from there, not too mention I fucking hate the title now too and want to change it. It seems my creative spring has dryed out.... or there was an oil spill or something in it, at least.

So, instead of my normal stories, I will put up this ranting list about Myspace.com. Don't sign up. Please. There's enough fucktards on there that I think should off themselves already.

On Myspace:

1. If I see one more motherfucker that "TyPeS LyKKE dIs!!!" I will punch someone in the cunt. This doesn't make you cool- it makes you a fucking idiot. Learn to spell, and whatever thing you're doing that makes the capitals turn on and off, stop it. If I could, I would break all the fingers on your left hand so you would have to type normal, like the rest of us.

2. Bitch, you ain't a diva. Know what a diva is? A woman who is eccentric but can sing really well, and so we put up with their bullshit because they can create beautiful sounds. Sorry, you're a nineteen-year-old girl from some shithole town in Jersey who wears too much makeup and has an accent that sounds similar to the noise a cat makes if you stuck a blowtorch up it's ass. On top of that, you think the fact that you are stuck up makes you a diva? No, it makes you a bitch.

3. Hats off to the one dude I saw who just had a picture of him shirtless puking in a toilet, and his display name simply said, "I DRINK GIN". Fuckin right you do, buddy.

4. If you're a woman, and you are so damn insecure that you have to steal another woman's pictures and claim that it's you in the hopes of men thinking you are cool before they find out you're ugly, then you got problems lady.

5. Your band sucks. Seriously. You will never be my friend.

6. I like it when women put up damn near naked pictures of themselves on their profiles. Why? Cause I like naked women. However, don't wonder why men don't respect you after you have a picture of your ass in pink panties pasted all over the internet. Even better is when you have the tramp stamp tattoo right above it, and it says, "Daddy" with a little rose or something. Yes, I bet he's proud of you for that one.

7. Guys who 1) go tanning, 2) get their eyebrows waxed, 3) have steroid acne all over their shoulders, 4) wear sunglasses at night or 5) use umbrellas, you must immediately find an egg slicer, put your balls in it, and be rid of them. We are ugly, mean, and unclean, and once you start using wax to remove your hair, you don't deserve your boys anymore.

8. My song does not run right. It's choppy as hell, and it really takes away from the aura of my page. This pisses me off more than I can tell you.

9. Don't complain about how much your boob job hurts on a bulletin. I have to scrape together quarters tomorrow morning so I can buy a pack of smokes, but you've got enough money that you can get huge fake cans? Yea, your life sucks... I wish my life sucked that much. Give me a break.

***(The only time this is admissible is if you post before and after pictures. Naked. While wearing a cowboy hat.)

10. No, I don't want free ringtones. I hope every one of you that steals my password for that garbage gets ass cancer.

Free Beer from Perverts

I've got nothing really to write about, so I'll put this comic up that my buddy Harry made. It's a bastardized version of "Peanuts" where the characters are actually me and my compatriots. They're pretty funny...especially considering he does all this with just Paint...no photoshop.



"Free Beer from Perverts" -This comic came to me after watching a program on TV with a buddy of mine. The program focused around Cops who pretend to be little kids looking to get funky with weirdoes from the Internet. I took it one step further figuring with my buddy we that can get these Perverts to show up with beer in tow... the rest became Legend.

Wino...Soon you got to choose

I call him three times on the way to the house to find out if we need beer. Three fucking times. I figure that being as he said we could pregame there, he'd have beer, but I just wanted to make sure. Fuck it.

I walk in the house, and see him empty handed at his computer.

"Motherfucker, don't even tell me you don't have beer."

"I thought you were getting it."

"I called you three times to ask you dick, and you didn't pick up."

"Oh. I lost my phone..."

I light a cigarette and pace around the room, because I really don't want to drive back out to get beer, even though the place is only maybe five minutes away.

"Well, I got a lot of wine."

"I hate wine."

"Yea, but it's free...and it's here."

I grimace...but it's free, and it's the only thing that we have. "Alright. Fine. Get a fuckin bottle."

He goes into the garage. "What kind you want?"

"I don't know. Red stuff. Who cares?"

He grabs a bottle, and then goes unpstairs to find a corkscrew. Like the pictures of absolute class that we are, he pops it open and takes a huge swig, then hands it to me. I do the same, and shake my head after it to

"Man, I fucking hate red wine."

"We got white, too."

"I hate that more."

We've got to get a ride to the bar, which is a little over a half hour away, because neither of us will be in any shape to drive later on and we're both cruising for #2 on DWI's if we take the chance. Of course, we've actually got to be already drunk to get any sympathy from anybody. Eventually a girl I know tells me she'll give us a ride in a half hour, and suddenly it dawns on me that we're not drunk like we've been telling everyone.

"Paul, if we're telling her that we're wine drunk, then we better be drunk when she gets here."

"Shit, you're right." He looks at the clock. It's 9. "Damnit, we better get moving."

In between pounding this stuff, somehow James Joyce comes up. We agree that Portrait of an Artist As a Young Man is one of the best books around, and also that though Finnegan's Wake was complete bullshit, we both wish that we were 1) smart enough to write a book in half Latin, half French, and half Gaelic, and 2)famous enough that people would study the book for years trying to decipher our bullshit like scholars do with that fucking book.

By 9:15 the first bottle is gone. He looks at another one on the table, then looks at me.

"Shall we?"

"But of course."

He pops the second bottle, and we're both feeling a little...merry.

The girl gets there with her compatriot, who is having a tough time believing that me and Paul are 1) on our second bottle of wine in fifteen minutes or 2) arguing about literature of the Irish Renaissance period because neither of us look like we're all that educated, and you certainly can't tell from our vocabulary that revolves around the words, "Fuck" and "You".

Paul's eyes are bloodshot when he hands me a medicine bottle. "Take some of these."

"What are they?"

"B12. It'll make you feel better tomorrow when you're hungover." He looks at the empty bottles. "Cause we're gonna have a hell of a hangover."

I take a few and wash them down with wine. Ten minutes later this bottle is gone. As we get up to walk to the car, I light another smoke and feel my stomach twisting into a knot.

"Paul, I think that B12 is bothering my stomach."

"It's probably the wine."

"Nah, it's definitely the B12."



Later on, we will add this bar to the growing list of those that the NJBA is banned from after we almost get into a Braveheart-esque brawl with the bouncers, who threaten immediately to call the cops because they're outnumbered heavily (although the odds are they would have killed us, because I watch my two of my buddies yell at the bouncers, screaming and threatening...and then just fall down because they're hammered).

Anyway, I don't want to get into specifics, but certain people (the bouncers) are fucking cocksuckers at this certain bar in North Jersey (Park City Bar in Rutherford). Don't go there.

Winter and Not working

When your job is nearly completely dependent on the weather, it can make for some boring times. Right now, there is a blistering ice storm outside that is raining BB's on New Jersey, and I, again, am out of work for the day. When you only work for three days a week to begin with, and you've been going stir crazy for the last couple days anyway....

Winter is like jail. I have little to do except eat, sleep, and lift. While this might not be a bad thing for me, I can't wait until Spring.

Did I ever tell you fuckers that I hate winter?

The Return from Montreal

Sometime in January

We were an hour into the thick New York state night when I began hallucinating. I hadn't done any drugs in at least three days, but I had been drinking heavily and not sleeping more than four hours at a time, and so now, here, I leaned against the cracked window of Chud's terrible smelling Hyundai SUV with a cigarette dangling from my mouth listening to the comedy station on Sirius. He is half awake in the passenger seat, and he's already driven for four hours, three and a half of them being through customs because Canada sucks.

He burps, and a tremendous wave of nuclear gas rolls out of his stomach, and now I know how the people that lived next to Chernobyl felt. I look at him, and I'd be glaring if I could open both bloodshot eyes at the same time. My kids will have three legs and four fingers because I breathed that in.

"If you do that again, I swear to Christ I will run us right into a tree and kill everyone in the car. You don't want to be responsible for that, now you do you, Chud?"

"Sorry dude." He makes a funny noise, then settles back into his disgustingness.

I am trying to focus on the road. Chris Rock is making fun of white people and some crowd made up of mostly white people is eating it up. I love Chris Rock, but hate the people that think he's funny. It's exactly the opposite with Dane Cook.

The sign ahead is green, glaring, and large; a city is coming. I want to look, but if I look it will take me four seconds to focus on the road again, and that means we may all die when I miss the lines. I t's 8:30...FUCK I looked at the clock, I may as well look at the sign because if we're going to die, it's going to happen anyway now.

Albany. 136 miles from New York City. We live about 30 miles from New York city, so that means it's 106 to where we live. If I go 60 miles an hour, it will take around two hours and we will have traveled 120 miles. Fuck, that means we overshoot home.

- Dumbass you wouldn't overshoot home

- Oh.... right.

If I do seventy, it will take less time, but the math is too complicated for me to figure out and all I know is that we may be back by 10 if I can keep going 70 but if I go 80 we may somehow end up in Atlantic City (don't argue). I look at the clock and it's 8:32. FUCK.. LOOK AT THE ROAD! NOT THE CLOCK, THE ROAD! Damnit now you can't see anymore.

Four seconds later my eyes refocus. Good. We're still on the road. I really don't want to kill all of us. Chud wouldn't care, but the two in the backseat would and I, for one, would be mortified.

Chud wakes up and burps again, and I start yelling and swerving.

"What the fuck did I tell you motherfucker? Do you want to die? Is that what you want? Because I will drive this motherfucking car right into that motherfucking tree. See that one?" I'm pointing at a big dead thing that towers over the highway. "Yea, that one."

Fuck, I looked away and now I can't see the road again.

"Sorry dude."

I light another cigarette.

This must be what acid is like, minus the green leprachaun that I am sure would be hanging out with me if I was on it. He'd be a better conversationalist then Chud.

By the time we make it home at 11 o'clock (I have no idea how this happened, because my math and ETA's were flawless), I had drove for three hours, my eyes circulating between the clock, the road markers, and the chalkboard in my head figuring out how long till we got home.

Eventually, I can't see the signs anymore and pull over, and make one of the other guys drive, telling them that if they like living they will get my exhausted ass out of the driver's seat.

Keep on keepin on

Well we started shooting hoops,
Now we're sipping Black and Tans
From the park to the pub
Was the course we ran.
The times have changed, but friends remain
My heart and soul's with you
Cause one thing's for sure, i always swore,
I'd never turn my back on you-

Never turned our backs,
Stuck together through and through,
The times have changed,
But my heart and soul's with you
Wouldn't turn your backs
And you didn't walk away
We'd never run,
We'd stand as one,
And this is what we'd say:

Times were tough,
But the memories remain
Situations rough,
But we overcame.
Side by side, one for all,
Together we grew
Cause when it's said and done,
I'll look back on friends like you

When I was down and I was out
And no one liked my games,
One too many fights and bloody night
For which i was to blame
But you wouldn't turn your backs
And you didn't walk away
Cause we'd never run We'd stand as one
Until this very day

Never turn our backs
Together through and through
The times have changed,
But my heart and soul's with you
Wouldn't turn your backs
And you didn't walk away
We'd never run, we'd stand as one
Until this very day





I just watched the Green Mile for the first time in a long while, and am stunned by it. The first time I saw it, I may have been too young to truly appreciate what was going on, or maybe I didn't want to hear the message.

That message was that no matter what happens, there is hope. Hope for everything. For happiness. For freedom. For strength. For humanity...and for me. There are times when life beat me down so much I didn't know if I'd ever be the same. And I wasn't... but then that's the trick. I'm not supposed to be the same, I'm supposed to learn, and take away things, hard lessons that I would not have learned or taken to heart if I hadn't been hurt so badly.

There are some out there that are seriously worried about me. Don't be. Like anything else, I will put my head down and keep on going. I fuck up a lot, and hurt a lot of people when I do, but I'm learning. I'm much weaker than I thought I was, and the fact that I'm still alive now is a testament to the strength of those around me, and the indominable spirit that has been infused into me in the last few years.



We fight the good fight.

NJBA- Never Alone.




Yes, I'm getting very sentimental lately. I must be on the rag or something...don't worry, I will get over it soon.

The one quote that is keeping me going right now:


Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It is a very mean and nasty place and it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't how hard you hit; it's about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward. How much you can take, and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done. Now, if you know what you're worth, then go out and get what you're worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hit, and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you are because of him, or her, or anybody. Cowards do that and that ain't you. - Rocky



I'm just trying to get back up I guess.