Thought for the day:
To embrace the blessings of liberty one must first embrace the responsibilities of liberty. What are these non-enumerated responsibilities? Good question.
Hint:
They're not what the tee-vee tells you they are.
Good luck and good hunting.
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How 'bout a bunch of baloney...
Or should that be Bologna? Or Bologne?
Which calls to mind a non-sea sea story. One day in the distant past our crew caught an R&R hop across the Adriatic to Venice. We didn't like the Venice vibe at all so we rented a Fiat and drove to Bologna to try the sammiches. Bologna was very cool and the sammiches were wonderful. Then on a whim we decided to drive the 850 kilometers (530 miles) to Bologne (not Boulogne! There are about 5,000 Boulognes' in France, one around every corner it seems) to see if the two cities were clones of one another. Our drive through the alps in high summer was spectacular. We'd left Bologna after local noon and overnighted in the tiny Swiss town of Russ, part of the municipality of Silenen, which had nothing to offer except clean beds in a quaint and creaky inn, spectacular beer and a home cooked meal, and locals who were hugely amused at our attempts to converse in Italian, French, and German. Fortunately for us, everyone we talked to spoke much better English than we did. And the waitresses were spectacular examples of Swiss Alpine beauty. Bologne was not a clone of Bologna, and we didn't come within 400 kilometers of Boulogne-sur-Mer, which is up by Calais. We stayed in Russ on the return and were greeted like family. All in all it was a wonderful bit of rest and relaxation. Then it was back to Venice, hop on the VR-24 Greyhound, and back across the lovely Adriatic, where we had work to do.
Those were the days!
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Saturday was the very last day the little one would ever be two years old.
Sunday morning she woke up and it was her third birthday!
A year ago I was sitting on a couch in a crowded living room in the midst of a grand second birthday party. In the middle of all that chaos and excitement and love I got blown up by a smile and the most spectacular eyes in the universe.
In that moment I realized that I was orders of magnitude happier than I'd ever been in my life.
Today happy is still a thing for me, and I'm kinda surprised that that's the case. As it turns out, happy is a choice I make, and it's up to me whether I go to happy or not. Surrounded once again by chaos and excitement and love it's an easy choice to make. I wish my Alexzandra were physically here, and I'm forever crushed by her physical absence, but I know she's here in spirit.
As I left off writing this to go do birthday party stuff I was feeling pretty sad. I asked God to give me strength and lift my spirits. I didn't want to be a big crybaby raining my chosen misery on everyone else. As always, God hooked me up. I asked Alex to be with me, and she was. Everything was okay after all.
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What's better than playing outside on a beautiful day?
The four year old taught his great-grandma his favorite song. It's the theme song from a computer game (properly a video game I guess) that had something to do with Freddie. I believe the lyric is actually "fire, fire, fire, I'm dancing with my deepest dark desire." That makes sense to me, but the Z-man says I'm wrong. It actually goes, "fire, fire, fire, I'm dancing with my deepest Doctor Zire." He's more likely than I to be correct. In this video there's a bit of three year old finger slime on the camera lens.
Later it was time for presents.
And cake.
The cake was made by our local bakery, and Mary Sue's cakes are awesome.
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Physical therapy has been super. My muscles and joints are working better every day and increasing flexibility is making me feel and move like a much younger me. This all makes cardio, strength, and endurance training so much more pleasant. It's hard and joyful work and it pushes me farther and farther away from old-guy land.
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Here's a Corpsman Chronicle re-run. This one got missed when I fixed (?!?!) the numbering scheme and put CC's on the sidebar.
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Be well and embrace the blessings of liberty.
Did the bad weather across NE Colorado hit you yesterday? Springs must be near. Thunderstorms, hail, and tornadoes.
ReplyDeleteWe had a cool, cloudy day with a quarter-inch of rain and no severe weather. Pretty springlike so far, just slightly cooler than average. Could use a bit more rain, but that's par for the course.
DeleteThanks Frank.
Friends out by Haxtun got hammered. Several inches of hail and flooded creeks. Several gravel county roads are washed out. I-76 in places looked like a Wyoming blizzard, only it was hail. Some of the hail was ping pong ball sized.
DeleteSpringtime on the Great Plains!
DeleteHappy B'day to the princess!
ReplyDeleteGreat Corpsman Chronicle recycle. I don't remember that one (a benefit of getting older, so lots of stuff is "news.") A gripping tale, well sold, and lots of valuable instruction and insights.
John Blackshoe
Thanks John, it was a big day for a little big girl. I am surely blessed.
DeleteThat was an interesting medevac. I think we did good work bitd.
I, too, choose happy.
ReplyDeleteSo many don't understand it's an inside job, mostly.
Took a long time to figure that out.
Of course, being in decent physical condition help, too.
Now, I want to go to Bologna ...and Russ.
It is indeed an inside job, mostly. Between God and family I'm more set up for success than I have any right to expect. Hate to squander that!
DeletePhysical health helps a great deal too.
Bologna and Russ were awesome! Those were the days!
Thanks Skip.
"As it turns out, happy is a choice I make, and it's up to me whether I go to happy or not. As it turns out, happy is a choice I make, and it's up to me whether I go to happy or not. "
ReplyDeleteYes! Although I would rather not have learned this, I have learned this, too.
Thanks Borepatch.
DeleteI am and will always be conflicted about the hard lessons I've learned from Alex's death. I'm glad to learn them because living and learning is the right path. But the cost is and will always be a scant micron from too much. And in the same conflicted way, I'm glad to have learned that as well.
nice post
ReplyDeleteAmazon Bellen