Project Throwback: 1955
My dad and his grandfather on his grandfather’s porch sometime summer 1955. The puppy is named “Mucho” and is the first Mucho. Makes sense now why the black dog I owned at age 16 in Bellingham in 1987 was named Mucho as well.
Project Throwback: Summer 1957 (?)
I couldn’t tell you if the year 1957 is correct, but I think it is for this picture of my dad and his Uncle Rush are in the picture.
The family owned (maybe still owns?) a logging company up in Oso Washington. My dad was raised by his grandparents and once they had passed away he joined the military (well he was given a choice, military or jail for stuff he did at 17).
He left the town and the family there and never looked back (except for staying close with Uncle Louis who lived near him in Seattle until he passed away in the mid/late 70s).
I know he talked a few times with some of his family from up there, but it was a handful of times and not at all after my teen years.
Project Throwback: Summer 1951 (?)
Another of my dad’s childhood pictures, cleaned up easily enough, did crop out a lot of side image of the side of a building though. I do want to say that it wasn’t me that cut off great grandmother Clara’s feet in the picture. That is how it came.
Dad lived with his grandparents all of his childhood, didn’t know his mother was his mother until he was 10 or older I believe (before then he thought it was his older sister). Yep family drama there.
The Project Throwback is having the effect I was hoping it would. For whatever reason I have the urge to clean the pictures up and post them more than I would do just to clean them up and put them away.
Project Throwback: April 5, 1956 (?)
One of my dad’s childhood pictures. I believe this was taken in 1956 and was in North Dakota. Unfortunately he isn’t around anymore so I can’t confirm. I think 1956 because he mentioned some sort of trip back to Philadelphia that year (a driving trip).
Unfortunately no real memories for me to talk about. The only thing I can say is I miss him, and I wish he had a better shot at life, but honestly he did pretty well with everything he was dealt with anyways.
Project Throwback: April 3, 1973
Here you get to see my parents John and Mary, at the ripe old age of 25 and 24 respectively, along with my grandfather Laughlin. Yes he was the one I was named after when I was born (pretransition), yes my name at one time was Laughlin, but funny enough I never, ever went by it. I don’t ever recall my parents calling me Laughlin, it was always Lucky (the nickname of my grandfather in the photo).
I think this was taken in my grandparents house near Green Lake. I only visited there a handful of times (with a lot of stories with my cousins) and that looks like the dining room which was located between the living room (which would be to the left of the picture) and the kitchen and entry way to the bedrooms on the right. Although possibly I could be mistaken since I was not 2 yet when this was taken and I don’t remember their house clearly until I was 8+.
Actually I like this project, already more photos updated since I wanted to do this in 2019. I am learning to crop out a huge open section on their right (making the photo look too lopsided). The only sad thing is many of the photos we had from this time period were all printed on textured photo paper so editing them is harder. Also for adjusting the colors, I am gladly relying on the computer with my color blindness.
I thought I would give a brief update of everything. I think it might be a lot of things so I will try and separate them out and address them in small paragraphs.
1. Home Hunting: Things are going pretty well. We put an offer on the good condo I mentioned in the prior post. It started at 80k. After we looked at it, it went down to 75k a few days later. After talking a bit, the wife and I decided to put an offer in for 70k plus they cover closing costs. The owner accepted after asking for 15 more days for bank approval and we pay two months of HoA fees instead of one. Considering they agreed to $2,500 more in closing costs for $257 more in HoA we were ok with that. The snag in all of this is that the condo is a short sale. So now Chase bank will take 2-3 months to decide if they will take it or if they will counter-offer. W really likes the home so I am willing to pay the list price. In the end even list price the condo, with HoA and taxes will be the same price as our current apartment, so if it works out its a win win.
2. Job: My new job is working out fairly well. The people are nice, and very patient. My only issues lie mostly in the fact that I have never been an “accountant” before so tossing me on the hardest fund as basically their full time analyst, plus giving me two other funds and two outside agency oversite is a little overwhelming. While my experience as an auditor and tax accountant has actually added a whole ton of things I bring to the accounting, I still have to dust off accounting techniques that were in school about 7 years ago. Two months down, I will know more in four months how I feel about accounting as opposed to auditing. Both have positives and negatives, we will see where the chips lie then.
3. Family: Things are doing ok, while it looks like my dad has lung cancer, it isn’t confirmed until his next appointment in January. I am going to do the best I can to avoid worrying about things. The wife is under a lot of stress with school, I feel like I haven’t seen her in months, and with the new job and new possible living situation my stress has probably made it hard for her to feel like I have been around.
4. Hobbies: I haven’t felt like doing much video game/web wise. I do have a ton of LP’s that I had wrapped up early that are scheduled and coming out fairly regularly. But strangely I really haven’t been playing much. I have been digging around the idea of drawing/writing again. I think I will start doing that, even if my content is usually fairly “adult” in nature. I want to get one group game going again, maybe that will get me out of this funk. I am thinking though it wont be a real space game, I am considering a google plus hangout game. I keep most of my stuff online anyways, and there are a lot more people available to play if I do it online.
5. Online: Finally my online habits are in the air. Currently I post a lot on Google Plus, and W and I have tumblr accounts (right now it just mirrors here). We have talked about shutting down most of our websites and using tumblr, but my problem is the lack of format capability with tumblr. So next week or so I have to figure out if I want to use tumblr sites or continue to use my domains. While originally I was considering tumblr only, I think I may keep a couple of domains open just so I can keep gaming campaigns going (and just have them repost to tumblr).
I am rambling now, so I will let you all go. I want to try and post more. I will post up W and I’s tumblrs in the next few posts.
I just woke up from a horrible dream. Not a zombie, nightmare infested dream but one that could happen.
We were at an older house, one that had fallen into a lot of disrepair. It belonged to an old lady who I never saw the face of, but we could hear in the background freaking out about the fact she might have to leave. We decided to start cleaning in the kitchen, anything to get her place into a liveable condition. The kitchen was pretty darn bad, it looked like one of those “hoarder” type setups, full of garbage and other debris, along with a broken down feeling.
I started cleaning the walls and noticed they were a weird stucco type texture. As I dug into cleaning, I realized they were stucco because of dirt, grime, but especially because of bug eggs everywhere. As I cleaned, the eggs would hatch, mostly cockroaches, but other types of bugs. This isn’t very surprising, I do have a weird phobia with roaches and of course if this was a bad dream it would have that.
It was at this point I noticed the floor had holes in it. It was an old style wooden floored building. However, the hole was pretty big around, I would say almost a foot across. As I cleaned I noticed more and more insects crawling out. Over a couple minutes that I kept killing them, the insects were larger and larger as well. I eventually yelled back at the old lady that she has to come with us as I woke up trying to get her to move.
Now, that may seem like a weird dream. However, at the end I realized it was about my parents. My parents are having their health decline severely lately. They can’t clean as well, which we help with, due to inability to reach places. Their apartment isn’t like the one in the dream. Except two large issues.
The first issue is the floor by the second door into their living room. It is rotten through. You can feel the floor boards give under the carpet that no matter how often you clean, it begins to develop a mold (I assume its because the floor pushes through to under the apartment crawlspace). Supposedly they have talked with the landlords and the landlords are trying to figure out what to do about it. The problem being is my parents don’t want to move. They love the apartment and they are scared to. So it sounds like the landlord is trying to figure out if they can repair the floor while my parents stuff is there (I could repair it, but landlords are always funny, if my parents have even really talked with them).
The second issue is something I can handle, its just a bit of money up front. ALL of my parents furniture is used, ratty and pretty much destroyed (well not pretty much, it is). They haven’t had new furniture in decades, all of these are things that were at goodwill and they have had for 6+ years, or things my dad has been able to find and bring home. They have already agreed to let me buy them a used sofa/couple of padded chairs to replace them, I just haven’t been able to do that lately.
I think I am going to need to do that next weekend. The furniture is incredibly bad due to their health, but especially because of their dog and  just the fact it is old furniture. They were fortunate and got a new bed last year so that part is good, the bed is in good shape. I think I will contact the local “We Care” and see if they have any good used furniture for sale. I saw a few years ago they carried some nice stuff, and its for a nice charity. If not I will have to go to another place. I will also have to rent a U-Haul pickup, theirs is dying, to deliver the old stuff to the dump and the new stuff back to the apartment the same day.
Well, I am starting to calm down. I doubt I will sleep the rest of the day, but maybe I will play some video games or something.
This morning I had a very horrific dream. It started out well enough, I was in some sort of school as a teenager (although with my current memories, and the fact I knew I was married to my wife). My siblings, and wife were all attending. It was one of those hugely large wooden structures with the old school wooden classrooms. There was some sort of lecture we were attending and eventually we had to go back to the dorms (we lived at the school).
Something shifted and I was working for an organization (illegal one) with my dad. I was still going to the school though. Unfortunately one of the teenagers had witnessed something and we had to remove the witness. I tried to talk my dad out of doing it and instead to let me to do it, but he insisted he didn’t want me to do this (my dad in the dream was the father of my childhood, younger, definitely more fit). After awhile I agreed and I set it up so he could remove the witness (16/17 year old male).
When that was done we found we couldn’t move the body, so we had to leave it in the bathroom. That freaked us both out, but we sort of bunkered down in another part of the school. Thats when we saw my little sister go into the bathroom. Next thing I know we here a small caliber pistol shot from the bathroom. I look over at my father and he had a horrified look that I knew I had as well. My first thought was she shot herself.
We raced up to the bathroom and went into the stalls. We opened the middle stall but she wasn’t in it. However, I saw a tiny hand on the floor under the next stall (she would have been 10-13 or so). The most clear thing about that scene was her hand was twitching. I raced to the next stall and stopped for a horrifying second. Then I kicked it open (it was locked) and she was laying there with blood running from the side of her head from a bullet wound. She heard me and moved her head looking at me. She was trying to say something and my last memory of the dream was reaching down, grabbing her tiny little body, picking it up and telling her “it will be ok, I will get you to a hospital”.
It was a pretty fucked up dream…..
Oh, and I was even more thrown off when I woke up because we turned our clocks back an hour last night.
Well this wasn’t the update I wanted to post, but its funny how things happen so close together.
First let me say I know my family loves me, I love them, but they are by far one of the most dysfunctional groups I have ever known. Lets give you a brief recap of my family before I vent.
Parents: Father is a Vietnam Vet with a long prison/police record for violence(but for the record never sexual/physicall abused us, and the name calling only happend when he was drunk). In my early life he worked constantly and did well, my last 20 years or so he became unfortunately a raging alcoholic who after getting put away for a DUI has been sober (from alcohol) for over 2 years. My mother is a sweetheart, never did anything bad except a constant habit of asking for stuff from me, but thats easily satisfied, she has been a good mother albeit now she has diabetes and had a heart attack last summer (but the doctors were surprised no damage and they dont think she will have any more problems, and this was a serious only 20% live heart attack she had). Unfortunatley my parents have done/sold/excessed every drug known to man.
Sister: Loves me, I know it, has two kids (one feral one not, the not one I am sure will be gay when he is 16). Followed my parents footsteps, is an alcoholic, cant keep a job and really only calls me for help.
Brother: Same as sister except he sometimes shows remarkable clarity and wants to clean his life up, biggest problem is he is a lazy ass who doesn’t like to work.
By the way, in the 17 years I have worked on my own, I have never ever once asked my siblings for a dime, a ride or anything. NOT EVER. (and actually I have loaned my parents money 20 times more then I have ever gotten from them and same with rides/etc). Thats why this is so frustrating.
There is more about the family, but I realized that would take up way too much space.
So this morning I get up super early, my mom asked me to give her a ride over to the Salvation Army so they can pick up a chair, no problems, I don’t mind doing that at all. So I get up super early, call them at the time I am supposed to be there because I have this sinking feeling that they are on a “run” (non alcoholic, but on other things, not meth though). My dad answered the phone and immediately I know they are jagged and not going. He kinda rambles on about not needing me today and I quickly get off the phone because I hate talking to him when he is ramped up. My mom is asleep and she called later, everything is cool. So I got up early for nothing (albeit I have been working on MU’s backend and its going to fucking rock).
Ten minutes later I get a call from my sister. I was surprised and hopeful she just wanted to say hi. I should have known, her first words were, “Can I borrow $20 until tommorrow”. I normally would probably do it, she is good at paying back usually but I am broke. I told her so and she accepted it gracefully but I could tell she didn’t believe I was broke, so this frustrated me even more.
Five minutes after that I get a call from my brother. His first words are “What you doing today?” I explained that I am going to work (and I have a feeling he is going to ask for something). His next words are he needs me to come over and fix his computer. I tell him I would be happy to do that but it might be Saturday before I can come over (tonight when I get home from work I have to spend with wifey since she is off) and I am not sure if I will be able to make it over there later (he constantly nags me to give him things, fix his computer, etc and I just wasn’t sure when I wanted to commit to going over there since thats all he usually wants from me). He has a fit and asks why cant I come over there after work tonight, I try to explain but he is still having a cow. I ask him “are you paying me to do this?” because now I am feeling taken advantage of, and he starts throwing a bigger hissy fit. Now after the previous two phone calls and his fit throwing I lose my temper and say “fix it yourself” and hang up. Of course he calls back, wondering if we are going to work things out I answer and he says “fine I will” and hangs up.
So, all three of my blood-family groups have been fucktards today (although my parents less so – they didn’t say anything or do anything bad, they just didn’t follow through). Why is it the only family around me that doesn’t piss me off is my non-blood family whom I am feeling closer to then my blood.
on a side note, my mom just woke up and called me, my parents don’t intentionally fuck around, just sometimes they get too “involved” in partying and fuck up. Things are good with them, but this is all just so frustrating.
Never have I ever asked my siblings for anything, its that much more frustrating (not a dime, not a ride, nothing)
I have been up since 3:15am because of a dream
It started out fairly ok, it was me, Sage, Sean, an old friend named Jay and a couple of people I don’t know. We were out in the boonies when Sage and Jay get this idea to score some drugs. The drugs came in the small clay containers that you broke open and inside was powder that got you high.
Part of me was a little worried, Sage sometimes can be a little flirtatous with others when “high or drunk” and so I was a little put off. But for some reason not to be out done I bought a kilo of the stuff (I dont normally get high, or even drink).
So we wandered around and Sage disappeared with a bunch of people, leaving me by myself. All of a sudden I was in Fred Meyers (the FM before the refit) and my parents were there. I was still carrying the kilo and still angry that Sage bailed on me with a bunch of people to go get high.
I yelled at my parents that we aren’t supposed to be shopping and my father and I got in an argument as we walked outside. I said “Fine walk home” and got in my truck, both of us were still angry and I found myself driving down the road with my dad behind me in a Model T, the whole time we are arguing. He eventually gets mad and chucks the gas cap on the model T thats on the driver side at me, I all of a sudden get worried as I see gas spilling out onto the car, while he is yelling at me.
Then I see a cop come up on us, flashing lights and all. I realize I still have the kilo of powder and I make a break for it, my dad tries to help but I notice that his car is swerving and where the gas came out, it has caught on fire, I watch as my dad climbs out of the car while its still moving, gets caught up on it as it skids to a stop, my dad is lying there on the ground hurt when I see the cop try and stop before he hits my dad or the car, the tire of the cop car goes lengthwise across my dad’s body flattening it and when it gets to the head it squishes like a grape.
I then woke up and couldnt go back to sleep.
Fuck…..
