• When placing flags in front of graves, I fall into a habit of reading the name, unit, and dates on each gravemarker.
  • In the local veteran’s cemetary, they tend to be men and women who served when they were young, but lived a long life. A World War I veteran who lived into the 1970’s, a Spanish American War veteran who died in the 1930’s, that sort of thing.
  • Gravemarkers tend to be grouped by date of death, which makes sense when you consider that the cemetary would be filled in as requests for burials come in.
  • Every so often, though, this morning I came across the grave of someone who died in their teens or early twenties mixed in with veterans who died in their 70’s.
    • Those tend to give me pause. This was someone who probably died in combat or due to wounds from combat. They didn’t come home to their families, they didn’t make their own family, they didn’t live to see their golden years.
    • They were all Korea, Vietnam, or GWOT veterans. I assume that World War I or World War II casualties were interred overseas.
  • I also ran into a few graves with family names that are uncommon here in Kentucky, but were pretty common back home in North Dakota. I need to check the geneology to see if I have kin buried here.
  • The local Boy Scouts come together on Memorial Day weekend to place flags, and they start with a small flag raising ceremony before fanning out to attend to the graves. One of Boo’s friends has taught himself to play the bugle, and when that young man played Taps, it raised the hair on the back of my neck.
  • At such events, you see both good and bad parenting. One couple I saw had a young Scout and his little sister placing flags. The little girl put the flag in place and her brother would push it down. Mom and Dad were there to supervise and hand them flags as needed. It was cute and good to see a family doing something like that together.
  • I also saw some ignorant bint who was livestreaming the event and making comments during the initial ceremony, all while her child was hopping up and down on the headstone for an aircrew that had been buried together.
    • Luckily for me, another dad got to the mom and asked her to parent her child before someone else did. I’d like to think I would have been polite and respectful had the other guy not been two steps ahead of me.
  • Afterward, I took Boo out for breakfast. A teenager the size of a grown man, dressed in full Boy Scout uniform, draws the eye at the Bob Evans, I must say.
    • I considered taking him to Waffle House, which is our favorite breakfast spot, but the one that was convenient is in a rather stabby part of town, and I value both his safety, as well as my own. For him, I was worried something ignorant might happen while we enjoyed our hashbrowns. For myself, I was concerned at what She Who Shall Not Be Named would do to me if something happened near, much less to, the last scion of her father’s house.
    • I need to take that boy out to eat more often. He has no skills at all in talking to cute teenage waitresses, and that means I have failed him as a father.
      • Luckily for us, she seemed to speak fluent mumble, so she got his order right on the first try.
  • Dinner tonight was a “Make All The Food” exercise.
    • Grilled ribeye burgers, chicken thighs, chicken legs, bratwursts, old-fashioned hotdogs, pasta salad, grilled potatoes with onions and garlic, and homemade chocolate chip cookies.
    • I am officially done cooking for the next 48 to 72 hours. If they don’t want leftovers, Little Caesars is ten minutes away.

It’s been 5 months since I left my former employer. I had been there for just shy of 24 years when I got the “Would you be interested in a buyout?” email. The payoff for leaving, monetary and otherwise, was good enough that my decision was made within 24 hours, and I left just after Christmas. Since then, I’ve been making my part of the monthly budget using that payout, and can continue to do so for quite some time.

Since then, I’ve been catching up on sleep, cooking, baking, house care, and little projects. I’ve gotten a little bit of writing done, and it’s getting easier. Somewhere around 2016, things got too crazy and I started running a consistent deficit in excess brain capacity, so writing shut off like I had turned a switch. It’s coming back, slowly, but it’s nothing like it was a decade ago.

It’s a cliche to say this, but the mind is a muscle. It requires regular exercise. I’m at the stroll-the-mall stage of redevelopment, but should be up to speed sometime this summer. I have a couple of Boogieman stories I’m working on, and those darned Romans started talking to me again, so I’m going to at least get them off the Arabian peninsula this year.

I spent the first couple of months just decompressing. I didn’t know how on-edge and tired I was until I looked at a picture I took in December and compared it to the man in the mirror in March. Things had definitely gotten out of hand, but I’m on the upswing now.

I did a bit of travelling, read some books I’ve had on the shelf for too long, and baked way too many desserts and treats. I’ve discovered the simple joy of starting a podcast or a lecture, putting on hearing proection over my earbuds, and riding the lawnmower for a couple of hours.

I’ve been looking for a job, but the Venn diagram between what employers need/want and what I am looking for in a new employer isn’t exactly a circle. I can’t wait forever to get a new job (the payout wasn’t that generous), but I also don’t have to go grab the first job I can find just to keep the lights on. There have been a few nibbles from recruiters, even an interview or two, but nothing solid. It will eventually come, and I’ve been considering getting a part time gig somewhere just to get out of the house a few days a week.

I joked the other day that one sign of my improved attitude is that I’m cussing in foreign languages a lot less. Spewing f-bombs out loud was frowned upon at my former employer, but nobody ever raised an eyebrow when I muttered to myself in Finnish, German, or Russian. OK, one time I made a guy from Smolensk spit out his tea, but he laughed about it. Now, I don’t even need to curse a lot in English, which is something I haven’t experienced before in my adult life.

So, overall, I’m doing OK. The family is still secure, we’re not losing the house or anything anytime soon. I’m rested up and starting to get back to being who I like to be instead of who I have to be. Irish Woman has not had to tiptoe up to my desk and tell me she’s worried about me since Thanksgiving, and we’re figuring out how to be boyfriend and girlfriend again.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a detective having to deal with some otherworldly stuff that needs my attention.

• It is telling that the highlight of my week so far has been having someone come out to empty the septic tank.
  • In related news, it is never a good thing when the septic tank guy knocks on the door and says “Sir, I’ve got some bad news.”
• Note to self – Cutting up serano chilis is an awesome way to make your arthritic hands feel better for a few hours.
  • Secondary note – It is a good thing that you wash your hands immediately after ward.
  • Tertiary note – Normal hand soap will not remove all traces of capcaisin from your hands the way strong dish soap has in the past.
  • Quaternary note – Nothing clears out sinuses partially stuffed up from seasonal allergies like macing yourself by touching not only your nose, but also both eyes after washing your hands with soft soap after cutting up chilis.
• Kentucky has gone from unsasonably hot and muggy to “We need to get some gopha wood before the animals start to show up” raining to unseasonably cold and windy and then back to hot and muggy several times in the last week or two.
  • The arthritis I mentioned above is demanding answers and wants to speak to the manager.
• It’s May in Kentucky and the trees are screaming. I feel their pain, after waking up in Kentucky and wanting to scream every morning since 2001. All I can tell the cicadas is to be strong.