We had 10 of us there at home on the northern California coast for Christmas but when all our kids and spouses and grandkids went home after about 10 days with us for Christmas my wife and I sort of felt like two marbles rolling around in our 2500 square foot house near the ocean.
This was made even worse because our two dogs passed away in the winter and spring of 2018 so this made our lives even more isolating in some ways. My wife and I get along great but with our kids living in San Diego, Portland or Europe it is a lot to deal with that they are not nearby anymore. It makes quite a difference if your kids you can actually pick up a phone and then go see in person.
However, I have traveled all over and even I now live 400 miles from where I mostly grew up from ages 8 to 21 which was in Glendale. I don't even know one person anymore who lives there that I know of presently. So, where we live is totally up to my wife and I at this point because everything has changed as our kids have grown up. I have kids 44 down to age 22 now and an adopted daughter who is around 32 now and her husband the same age with a new son 1 year old now and I have a 4 year old Grandson too. But, none of them are nearby anymore which means we have to travel to see them or they have to travel to see us one of the two. We can afford to do this but seeing any of them more than once every 3 months or so just isn't practical anymore we find.
So, this trip to Mt. Shasta has been especially healing for me. I've met a couple of new people who seem to be kindred spirits so that is nice. Also, some friends who have been away for a few months to Thailand and India are now back here and I'll get to visit with them too. Also, last night I took 3 friends to see "Aquaman" and they all loved it. So, that was good too.
So, sometimes all you need to do is to go somewhere you love to renew yourself and to move yourself into a new direction when you get stuck. My wife is researching a German Shepard trainer to get either a puppy or a 2 year old already trained and she also wants a corgi.
However, my favorite dog was actually a Border Collie Long hair German shepard mix who was the single smartest dog I have ever known. People demanded I give him or sell him to them because they all fell in love with him but I kept him to the end of his life. He was an amazing dog that lived to be about 16 years old in the end. We also had a corgi and for a few years we also had a yellow lab but I think he was older than the people said he was when we got him so when our corgi that he was bonded to died he couldn't deal with life without her and soon he was gone too.
So, maybe it's time for us to get either a border collie German Shepard mix male or just a German shepard (long or short hair) and another Corgi female because my wife loves corgis. We raised our last puppy and she lived 15 years until about this time last year I think.
It's very hard to lose a dog who is like a family member and sleeps in your bedroom with you next to your bed. I know younger people often sleep with their dogs in their beds with them if they are single but for me having your dog sleep beside your bed is often very comforting especially if your dog is 70 to 90 pounds and could alert you to a potential intruder or even a raccoon or mountain lion nearby.
I always felt safe with my dogs in the forest because they could alert me to mountain lions or other things like raccoons nearby or bears in the forest. It's good to know where large things are whether they are animals or people.
But, coming to Mt. Shasta this time has been especially precious for me because of meeting wonderful new people as well as people coming back from overseas. It's a good year.
Trump isn't everything. We still have our lives and our families and life is okay even if 800,000 government workers have no food and are losing their homes and cars. Life still goes on somehow always with us or without us.
Keeping that perspective is important if you want to live very long.
Yes. Life is completely crazy in some ways. But, it has always been this way. I cannot think of a time when something wasn't seriously wrong with the world.
1950s-when I was a child. PTSD was rampant in anyone who had survived world War II and the Great Depression. People were nuts and many self destructed after world war II and the Korean War.
1960s- I was 12 in 1960. When I was 15 Kennedy was assassinated (so I started dating because I figured if Kennedy could be killed so could I at 15 and I didn't want to die a virgin) so laughable now but then I was very serious.
The Bobby his brother was assassinated and Martin Luther King was assassinated too. insanity!
The Viet nam War was drafting everyone I knew in High School and some came back in body bags at 18 to 21 years of age. I was lucky. They gave me a 4 F because of Blunt Trauma childhood epilepsy from 10 to 15.
The 1970s- Nixon resigned because of Watergate and the tapes. The Arab Oil Cartel OPEC made gasoline in the U.S. go from 17 cents a gallon in 1969 to 1 dollar a gallon by 1980. This caused recession after recession and caused the middle class to begin to die in the U.S. and poverty became worse here too and homelessness began to be a problem then because of extreme changes in cost of living costs for everyone. In the 1960s a man 17 years old without a high school diploma could working 40 hours a week only support about 5 to 7 people and own his own house and car or cars working as a carpenter or garbage man. But now, even with three jobs working 60 to 80 hours a week people can often barely support even 1 or 2 people with no cars and not owning a home. So, you see how awful things have become economically for the U.S.
The 1980s- people became survivalists because they saw that the Viet Nam War had bankrupted the nation economically through wasted spending and wasted lives killed in the fighting.
What survivalists didn't know was that by loaning money to Europe and other countries after World war II we had made many friends around the world so they loaned us money to keep going and the U.S. didn't go bankrupt. But, millions of people lost everything in the Savings and Loan Crisis of the 1980s and some committed suicide because it financially ruined them.
1990s- This likely was the most stress free time I can remember because of the Collapse of the Soviet Union and the economic ties to China made people worry a whole lot less about getting nuked in their sleep.
2000s-But all this was ruined by 9-11 and people using planes as missiles with passengers inside into buildings. And things have been a complete mess on earth ever since then. The 1990s were the closest thing to "Normal" I have ever seen in my entire 70 years here on earth.
So, it's always been insane. If it weren't Trump it would be something else. It's always like this. the most stress free time likely was the 1990s for the whole world. This is just life on earth the way it really is always.
But, coming to Shasta has been peaceful and nice this week!
Thank you God!
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