Tag Archives: veterans

Moved to the Country

A few years ago, I made a blog post announcing that I had become a homeowner.  At the time, the house I bought was considerably bigger than I needed. But I was planning ahead for something that would be not just for me, but also for my girlfriend, that later became my wife, and her two teenage children.  It was a beautiful 4-bedroom house with tons of space.  And it was in an area that I wanted to be in.  Since 1990, I had lived just a few miles from the beach on the Florida Emerald Coast, except for one year when I lived about 15 miles north of the coast.  It had always been a wonderful area to live. 

The Brick

I was 19 when I first moved to Fort Walton Beach and I was at the beach every day I could make it.  At that time, my life revolved around making time for the beach.  All my kids grew up going to the beach, one of them was even a paid beach lifeguard for a season.  The kids loved the beach, the waves, the sand.  I always enjoyed taking them.  As they grew up, I went to the beach less and less.  They had their own rides or, eventually, drove themselves.  Today, I can’t remember the last time I went to the beach.  Probably when my sister came for a visit a few years ago.  But as I look back over the last 10 years, there are plenty of entire calendar years that I didn’t even step foot on the sand.  All while living maybe 10 minutes from the beach. 

The area I once treasured as paradise outgrew itself and was no longer desirable to me.  My wife and I decided to move out to the country and found a terrific house on a small lake.  It’s a much smaller house, but much bigger lot, and on a lake.  Did I mention the lake?  We can still go to the beach, but it would take at least an hour to get there.  Unless it’s tourist season, then it might take two hours or more.  But now I can walk out onto my back deck and enjoy the lake view any time I want.  No tourists.  And that is part of what makes it a great view.  The lake itself is beautiful, but the peace and quiet make it close to perfect. 

Living out here is a little different.  Not like the old Chevy Chase movie Funny Farm (1988) when he moved from New York City to the country. But there are some quirks and a lot of dirt roads. There’s plenty of farmland and most of the people here move at their own pace.  Up the road within a couple miles, there are horses, cows, and pop-up produce stands.  And we do have a favorite pop-up produce stand.  We’re about 7 miles north of a small town that has a lot to offer.  I love the mom-and-pop restaurants and shops, local activities, and I especially love living in an area that takes things slower. It’s much better than living in a more populated area.  Speaking of slow, we even still have a Radio Shack in town.  Time must have slowed here quit a bit, I thought all of those stores closed years ago.  And slow is perfectly fine with me.  I’m not in any hurry.

Radio Shack. Can you believe it? Open 6 days a week.

Since I had to quit my “real” job a few years ago for medical and health reasons, I do gig work like Door Dash, Uber, and other things.  Out here I do Door Dash.  There is almost no demand for Uber.  The only good Uber trip I’ve taken since moving here was a 60-mile, one-way trip going north into Alabama.  That was one of three Uber trips I’ve taken since moving.  There’s just no demand for it here.  But Door Dash is busy, as long as I drive south towards town.  Many of my Door Dash trips have taken me down one-lane dirt roads.  One of my trips even took me across a one-lane wooden bridge.  And in just the first two months I did Door Dash after moving here last year, I had already delivered more alcohol and pregnancy tests than I had in the 3 previous years of dashing.  Actually, I had never delivered a pregnancy test until I moved here.  You’d be surprised how many of those get ordered in this area, usually getting picked up from a Dollar General store.  Maybe it has something to do with the copious amount of alcohol people order for delivery out here.  There could be a connection between those two things, who knows?

(L)One of the many one-lane dirt roads my Door Dash travels have taken me. (R) A paved road that turns into a one-lane wooden bridge. Always an adventure out here.

This was a good move to come out to the country.  My mental health hasn’t been this good in years.  My wife was able to transfer with her state job and is now closer to work than she’s ever been, so that worked out extremely well.  Being retired from the military, I don’t have to keep a full-time job to survive and provide.  That’s why I like doing gig work; I make my own schedule and work when I’m able to, usually two or three days a week.  I do a lot around the house and in the yard, when my body allows it.  I’m cooking more new things than I ever have, exploring recipes that I would have never tried before.  I’ve become more active with the VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars).  And I’ve been writing more.  And I have really missed writing. 

Life is good, y’all.  I’m living proof that no matter how bad the past was, no matter the pain, bad memories, or failures that dragged you down, you can get back on top of life.  And I thank God everyday for where I am now, not just where I live, but who I am.  I’m glad you stopped by Story of My Life today.  Good day, God Bless.

Dave

Did I mention the lake?

Eat Good, Die Happy

I was chatting recently with a buddy of mine that I’ve known for more than 20 years.  During that time, we worked together at three different places over the years in various capacities in different types of jobs. And we have kept in touch for much of that 20 plus years. Mostly we would talk about our kids, our relationships, and what mutual friends and former coworkers were doing. Lately, most of our keeping in touch is about doctor visits at the VA and cooking.  Since we’re both veterans and like to eat, we have a lot to talk about on both subject. 

In our recent conversation, he brought up having to change his diet for his health.  I told him that’s the worst part about getting the lab results at a doctor’s appointment.  I went on to tell him that I don’t mind dying one day, but I’d like to die happy.  Seriously, if I knew I was going to live this long I certainly would have taken better care of myself.  Coincidentally, I had just had an appointment with my primary care doctor at the VA the same day we were chatting and, among other things, the doctor went over my lab results from the previous week.  I, too, need to make a couple small changes.

This conversation with my long-time friend sparked a memory from my very early teenage years.  I was probably 12 or 13 years old, at my grandparent’s house on one of the many trips we used to take to visit them.  One evening, Grandpa pulled something out of the refrigerator for a snack.  Grandma scolded him, saying that the doctor told him not to eat that because it would kill him.  Grandpa put the lid back on the container, put it back in the fridge, and went about his business. No complaining, no arguing. That was the end of that.  Or was it? 

The next morning Grandpa and I were up early, probably getting ready to go out on his boat or some other adventure on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  At one point while getting ready for our day, Grandpa got in the fridge and had that snack that he had been warned about the previous night.  Did he forget about being chastised by Grandma?  How could he forget something as important as not eating a specific food that would kill him?  I couldn’t believe it so I chimed in and reminded him.  “Grandpa, you can’t eat that!  Grandma said it would kill you!”  Grandpa smiled and what he said still resonates with me today.

Grandpa said, “Well, I’ll die happy then.”  And that was it.  That’s all he said about it.  He didn’t ask me to keep it a secret.  He didn’t try to explain or rationalize it.  He just wanted to eat whatever was in that old butter tub that was used for leftovers.  I can’t for the life of me remember what the food in question was.  And I have no idea what his lab results were that would make him have to change his diet, but he didn’t seem to care.  He was going to keep being himself no matter what the doctors suggested.  He was doing what made him happy. 

I’ve always been that way with food.  I don’t remember ever turning down a cheeseburger or pizza or biscuits and gravy.  And I love to cook.  If you are on my Facebook page, you’ve likely seen hundreds of food pictures.  Some pictures of the food I cook at home, some pictures of food at restaurants we like to go to.  I have a drawer full of printed recipes and a ton of screenshots on my phone of even more recipes.  I love to cook and I love to eat.  My Facebook page and my belly are proof.

For much of my adult life I was able to counter the effects of eating all kinds of good food by staying in shape.  I should probably point out that when I say “good food,” that doesn’t mean healthy “good,” it means tastebuds “good.”  But anyway, I would run a few miles a few times a week, occasionally do a little workout, and, of course, being in the Army Reserves we did a lot of activities that encouraged staying in shape.  Well, at least in “good enough” shape for me.  At any single point in my adult life, I could have benefited from losing 5 or 10 pounds to trim up my gut.  But that never bothered me because I was healthy, in decent shape, and could run for miles.  Not fast, but slow and steady miles.  I felt good,  I looked good, I was going to eat what I wanted. 

Let’s fast-forward to me now being in my mid-50s.  Add the aches, pains, injuries, surgeries, and other issues from working hard all my life. I now find it considerably harder to counter those effects from eating what I want, when I want.  I can’t do some of the things I used to.  And I miss doing those things, like running, working a “real” job, and just being more active in general.  I have a long list of problems that have developed over the last 5-10 years from my previous military service.  I’m planning on doing a blog entry of all those things in the near future.  Especially now that we seem to be figuring out some of the issues.  Well, maybe not figuring it all out as much as managing things.  That’s a mess of a story for another time. 

My lab results at my recent appointment weren’t horrible.  There are just a couple areas I need to address, nothing dire.  But I want to address those areas without adding to what seems like a myriad of medications that I’m already on.  I guess I should point out that some of those medications are why my labs aren’t worse.  But I don’t want more pills, I want fewer.  And when I asked my doctor about downsizing my pill collection, he said there was only one medicine that he might consider discontinuing.  So, I have to decide to either eat better (as in healthy), instead of just eating “good” the way I like to, or get back to where I can do some kind of exercise regularly.  The exercise part has become difficult since getting a joint replaced in my foot a few years ago.  After two surgeries, my foot still will never be good enough to run like I used to. Or walk long distances or even stand in one place for more than a little while.

So here’s the plan.  I’m going to keep eating what I like to eat because being happy is important to me.  But I’m also going to mix in a few salads and some healthy choices.  I will get back on my step-elliptical.  I was doing that regularly before my last foot surgery. I think I can still do it because of the minimal bend it requires with toes.  I won’t do anything crazy or drastic to change my lifestyle all at once. That rarely works for anyone. But there a handful of little things I plan to do for starters.  And then eventually build on that.  We’ll see how it goes.

I think Grandpa had the right idea, to some extent, about dying happy.  He went on to live for about 10 more years after that early morning conversation we had sometime around 1983.  Apparently, whatever it was he ate that morning wasn’t going to make him drop dead on the spot.  And whatever it was, I’m certain he ate it whenever he could get away with it.  But he was probably smart enough to only eat it once in a while, and only while Grandma wasn’t looking. Especially while Grandma wasn’t looking.

I think this is the lesson I want to take from my memory of that morning with Grandpa: Being happy is important, but sometimes we have to weigh what that happiness brings against what the side effects or dangers will be.  Going to the beach for 5 hours can make you happy, but that sunburn is going to be horrible unless you take precautions.  Rock climbing can make you happy, but that fall will kill you, so you better make sure your equipment is right.  And of course, eating “good” like I always have makes me happy, but I have to fix a few things with my eating habits. 

Thanks for stopping by Story of My Life today.  I hope you enjoyed it and maybe got a little motivation from it.  Good day, God Bless.

Dave

A small sample of pictures from the last few weeks of my eating and cooking adventures.

A Family of Military Service

This week’s post will be a link to an article that my son and I were interviewed for.  The story is about children of Service Members that also join the military.  I thought it was pretty cool the article got published on Veterans Day.

I am part of family that has deep routs in military service.  My grandfather served in the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force.  My dad served in the U.S. Air Force.  My son and I are U.S. Army.  I have cousins, uncles, in-laws, grandparents, and a nephew that have all served.  I am truly proud of my family’s service to the United States Armed Forces.

Below will be the link to the article and a couple things I’ve written about my family’s service to our country.  Enjoy.  Thanks for stopping by today.  Good day, God bless.

Dave

https://www.thedailybeast.com/they-fought-after-911-now-their-children-are-fighting-the-same-endless-war

War Stories From My Grandpa

Passing the Torch

 

 

The 4th of July

Happy Birthday America! This week we celebrated 241 years of Independence. A lot has changed in America since we told the British to bugger off and leave us alone. The Founding Fathers of this great nation had the courage to stand up and fight for the freedoms we still enjoy today. I for one am grateful. I’m not sure I could pull off the British accent, so it’s a good thing that 241 years ago we became our own sovereign nation. LOL.

With the celebration of our Independence comes many festivities, including fireworks. And with that comes social media posts about veterans dealing with PTSD and the yard signs that some put in their yards asking people not to do fireworks around their home. That seems to be a topic of debate from what I saw on a couple of Facebook posts. I have PTSD. I served in Iraq, then later in Afghanistan. I avoid being outside during fireworks, if only for my own sanity. I don’t have flashbacks or lose my mind, but my anxiety skyrockets and some of the memories of the fear I experienced resurfaces. So, I simply stay indoors.

Here’s the debate, as far as I can tell. The post I saw states that some veterans are milking the benefits of being labeled with PTSD, which in turn is stigmatizing all veterans, also that they are looking for attention and disability ratings with the VA, and that many who post the signs never heard a shot fired at war and that the rocket impacts they heard were miles away. I think there is some validity to some of those arguments. Many years ago, I thought most people claiming PTSD were overreacting. But I don’t speculate on that anymore. It’s not for me to judge. I can’t speak for any other veteran, but I can tell you what I have experienced.

One thing I experienced were rockets landing on a base I was at. Multiple times, multiple locations throughout Afghanistan. Building-shaking, loud booms. While I handled it well at the time, I never took the time to process it all until I got home. By then it was overwhelming. I was trying to process everything all at once while trying to adjust to being home. And I wasn’t doing it properly. I wasn’t talking to anyone about my mental problems or getting the counseling that I knew I needed. I was trying to avoid the stigma that I had created in my mind of being labeled with PTSD. And I desperately wanted to avoid that label. In 2011, I talked the VA out of diagnosing me with PTSD more than a year after I got back from Iraq. I toughed it out and Soldiered on, which in retrospect was a bad idea. In 2015, there was no way to avoid it. I had reached rock bottom and was forced to get help.

During one rocket attack, I remember feeling the building shake from the first explosion. Then the second blast- it was much closer, shaking the building in a way I had not experienced before, all while grabbing my gear and getting to cover. As I sat alone in the bunker, the third blast felt like it was almost on top of me. It was loud, it was close, it was the only real time I thought I might die over there. On only two instances do I remember having that kind of fear while in Afghanistan, that attack was the worst one of them. I could hear each boom getting closer and closer to the bunker where I was taking cover. In my mind at the time, if there had been a fourth one, it would have been right on top of me, based on how each blast was clearly closer than the last. Fireworks elicit those feelings and memories in me.

Even so, I don’t want anyone to not celebrate with fireworks. This is America and that’s how we celebrate, we blow up stuff. I can stay inside and be just fine, for the most part. The noise and booms will still get to me a little, especially when there is a long pause followed by a firework that is obviously too large to be discharged in a neighborhood. As I write this, neighbors are firing off an impressive amount of pyrotechnics at almost 11pm on July 4. My anxiety is through the roof. But I don’t want them to stop. Keep celebrating. It is America’s birthday after all. I can handle it.

During each of my two deployments, I never had to fire any of my weapons. But for the more than two dozen missions I went on in Afghanistan, I was locked and loaded, ready to go every time. And on the handful of missions that I needed both my rifle and my pistol, they were both locked and loaded. For those of you unfamiliar with that term, ‘locked and loaded’ means there is a magazine in the weapon, and a round (bullet) in the chamber. I would only need to flip the switch from safe mode and pull the trigger. I was always ready. And I wonder if being ‘ready’ that many times and never getting to use my skills and training had some kind of adverse effect on me.

I’ve wondered for a while if sitting in a bunker through all those rocket attacks and never actually engaging the enemy contributed to some of the symptoms of my PTSD. Maybe because of all the adrenaline spikes without being able to release that energy right then and there. I don’t know. I’m sure there’s a study on that somewhere, I’ll just have to do some research and find it. How, or would, I be different today if I had in fact fired my weapon and directly engaged the enemy? Would I have handled post-deployment better? I don’t know what the answers are, but I do know and accept that I have PTSD. But I can’t let that stop me anymore. I work. I live. I function. But there are moments where I can’t deny that it has some power over me, but not as much as it used to.

With all that I shared here, none of it even comes close to my most traumatic memory of war. Tune in next week when I will share a story that I rarely talk about. It’s a memory that resurfaced uninvited recently and maybe writing about it in detail will help.  Thanks for reading this week. Good day, God bless.

Dave

Related posts:

PTSD is Contagious!

PTSD Moments

The Storm

 

Rest In Peace, Laptop

Well, I went a couple weeks again without posting. I’ve received a few messages asking about it, checking on me. Thank you to those that noticed and reached out. I’m doing well for the most part. Much of life is falling into place, or at least I feel good about life lately. It’s been a while since I could say that. It’s all a process, and I’m accepting that it all takes time. I have made progress in some areas and still have a ways to go in other areas. But I’m getting there.

 

I have no excuse for two weeks ago, but the reason I didn’t post last week was because my laptop died. Not just died, but DIED, all caps died. Services to be held at a later date, I’ll keep you posted. I took it to a local computer shop and the look on the guy’s face told me that my laptop had already crossed over to the hard drive in the sky and there was nothing to do to save it. He couldn’t promise that the data could be retrieved and saved, but that he would try. It took a while, but he saved most of my data. Thank you to The Tech Center on Eglin Parkway in Fort Walton Beach, you did a great job.

 

About a dozen pictures from the laptop were not salvageable, but here’s some of what I could have lost. The first five chapters of the book I’m writing. 4,000 or so pictures I took in Afghanistan. My writing, my poetry, everything I’ve ever written for my blog. Years and years worth documents I’ve been collecting from my army reserve career. All my medical stuff I had on the laptop for the VA. The only things completely irreplaceable, were the pictures. I have all the paper documents somewhere. I can rewrite the book, though I think it would be lacking since it was written with such passion when I started. I think I’ll start backing everything up on my next laptop. Currently, I have hijacked my kid’s desktop to get this done.

 

My laptop served me well. It was a gift sent to me while at Fort Hood by my parents after my laptop I had at the time died, very similar to the way the current one went, quietly, in it’s sleep. And where I was, on North Fort Hood in the summer of 2013, I was not able to just go shopping for a new one. For those of you who might have been to North Fort Hood, you know it’s a wasteland of Hell with very little in amenities. And it’s possibly home to the worst chow hall in the army.

 

My laptop was a low-end Toshiba that didn’t have a lot of bells and whistles, but was perfect for taking to Afghanistan. It did everything I needed and allowed me to stay in touch with the outside world. Every time I escorted the chaplain on a multi-day mission, I took it with me. I kept a journal of our trips on that laptop. I would log were we went, with whom, what we did, where we ate, how many times we heard the thunderous booms of the incoming enemy rockets. The most booms we heard were at Bagram, but the ones that got closest to us were in Kandahar. I logged every helicopter, plane, and convoy ride. I even noted the one or two times we walked from our base to another.

 

For being a low-end laptop, I would say it held up very well considering it went to war, traveled to and was used in six different countries, was dropped more than once, and exposed to extreme weather conditions. The casing is broken, some of the plastic is cracked. The actual laptop will never be what it once was, but it didn’t lose the important information I had on it. It needed some help from a computer expert, but the data was still retrievable. I have access to it again and can continue with the things I was working on. This ordeal was actually a wake up call for me to get my butt in gear to work more on my book and other writings.

 

In the last couple months, despite some things just not going well, I think I’m doing pretty good, or at least better than I have in a long while. I came to the conclusion recently that I should not be content to be miserable in life. If given the choice between happy or not, choose happy. I choose Happy. I can see a huge difference in my relationship with my children. I can see some improvement in my attitude and reactions while driving. I have become more patient in general with most things. I still have many PTSD issues, but I’m making progress. My sleep doesn’t always go as planned, my dreams are actually getting worse and more vivid. I still have too many days where I am unmotivated and lack energy and don’t do anything. I’m still very hyper vigilant to my surroundings. But overall, I see progress.

 

I think in some ways I’m similar to my laptop. There’s nothing hugely special about me, I’m kind of low-end, but I did the job required of me and then some. I served my purpose, I served my country. I’m broken and falling apart and I will never be what I was before, but I still have most of the information in my head. I can still access so many things I have learned in my life. The data in my brain doesn’t flow like it used to and often times gets out of order. I get confused sometimes and frustrated with how my brain works. But I have my weekly visit to my psychologist at the Vet Center, I have my medications, and I have a friend that keeps me smiling everyday and helped me realize that I do not have to be miserable in life. I’ll be ok, sooner rather than later, I think.  I know.

 

I do plan on going back to posting weekly, every Saturday. But if I miss a week here or there, I’m ok, I promise. As important to me as my writing is, I think I’ve moved past it being a necessity for my own personal therapy. I think I’m working through life’s situations better than when I started writing here again back in February. I’m certainly doing better than I was a couple months ago. I will keep doing what I’m doing, keep moving towards that light at the end of the tunnel, keep hoping for the best and believing it will happen.

 

Thanks for reading. Choose Happy! Good day, God bless.

 

Dave