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Post by jbone on Jan 23, 2021 22:53:50 GMT -5
Things are smoothing out a bit. Long road ahead I think. But it's just today right?
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Post by whitefang on Jan 24, 2021 10:33:26 GMT -5
And hopefully tomorrow. And from 24 hours down to just one minute, ANY time together is worthwhile.
Whitefang
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Post by jbone on Jan 24, 2021 11:52:51 GMT -5
You know it man.
And depending on how things work out, if I end up alone, I plan to do a solo harp/vocal thing for a time. Maybe get a kick drum set or even a lap slide acoustic. Ultimately Jo believes I will find another partner or outfit, which I's like I think. But nobody can take her place music wise. We have such a language between us with outr instruments and voices. I will go on it that's the way it shakes out. Rather with her than without.
Every single moment is more precious that a Lotto win.
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Post by whitefang on Jan 25, 2021 10:27:29 GMT -5
Sounds as if like me, you hit the Lotto when you met your fair lady. Whitefang
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Post by jbone on Jan 25, 2021 14:29:34 GMT -5
We have that in common for sure Fang.
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Post by whitefang on Jan 26, 2021 10:36:37 GMT -5
And I'm willing to bet our friend DBM feels he shares that good fortune too. Whitefang
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Post by Deleted on Jan 27, 2021 11:29:46 GMT -5
If it weren't for Medicare, (and Medicaid before I qualified for Medicare), I would still be indebted to the doctors and hospitals for my kidney stone issues in 2006. I had 18 outpatient procedures over 7 months to get rid of the kidney stones. At the time we had at least $500,000 in outpatient surgeries, as well as a few in hospital stays for both the wife and I. Modern medicine gave me quite a few years to keep living so far, and hopefully some more years to continue.
Anyways, best wishes for Jo to have an easy a time as possible through these trying times. It saddens me to hear about her health issues. I hope the best for her (and for you amigo).
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Post by Deleted on Jan 27, 2021 15:05:06 GMT -5
Sounds as if like me, you hit the Lotto when you met your fair lady. I did also of course, I married a younger woman, 12 years my junior, but she is one sweet and nice lady. Not only are we long married, we are best friends also. I am 78 years old and she is 66 years old.
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Post by jbone on Jan 27, 2021 23:10:02 GMT -5
{Anyways, best wishes for Jo to have an easy a time as possible through these trying times. It saddens me to hear about her health issues. I hope the best for her (and for you amigo).}
It's a roller coaster. We have to wait some time before we can actually get a read on her lungs. Nobody has done an actual prognosis on that to date. The focus was on her tumor and now recovery from that surgery. I have no bad things to say about Medicare and we're hoping to get some assistance getting her on Medicaid as well.
There have been a lot of angels around us and miracles have been visited on us both with the cataract removals and on into this darker adventure.
Saturday Jo wants me playing solo up on Main St for an hour, just to see how it goes for me. I have a few songs picked out and probably will find some lyrics between now and then. The music will continue but I'm hoping it will be as a duo once again after much time for her healing and rebuilding.
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Post by whitefang on Jan 28, 2021 10:45:14 GMT -5
I did also of course, I married a younger woman, 12 years my junior, but she is one sweet and nice lady. Not only are we long married, we are best friends also. I am 78 years old and she is 66 years old. As you know, we're opposites in that My wife was 10 years my senior. If she were still with us she'd turn 80 this September, and I'll be 70 this July. She passed three months after our 30th anniversary. Ours was not the first marriage for either of us. I was her third husband, the first lasting 10 years, the 2nd only 15. My 1st went only 14. But we'd never, regardless, have matched that of her older sister Anita and her husband Stan, who celebrated their 63rd anniversary 60 days before Anita passed on Stan's 85th birthday(May 2) BONE; Still hoping the best for you and Jo. I'm only familiar with her through those videos you posted, but even then she projects as someone who's a delight to know. And I'm just basing that on those hats she chose. Whitefang And cripes! That "Whitefang said" won't edit out.
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Post by jbone on Jan 28, 2021 13:36:04 GMT -5
We're a few years apart and the truth is, when we met neither of us saw a potential mate in the other. But the Higher Power, whatever you prefer to call Them, prevailed and put us together in a way that was undeniably right.
My first marriage made 51 weeks and 4 days. Second was around 8 years, how I don't know looking back. This time, we're approaching our 17th anniversary and have been together over that by a few months.
Yes, Jo has a unique and attractive sensibility in her tastes. Hats. Clothes, instruments, songs both cover and original.
Saturday she is kicking me out to head for Main Street to play solo for an hour. As she puts it she will live vicariously through my adventures for a time.
I think she's going to be around a good long time yet and possibly even get back to music. She's not so sure but how could I be less than optimistic?
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Post by Deleted on Jan 28, 2021 17:21:00 GMT -5
My first marriage I call the 9 years war. Even though officially we were married for about 15 to 17 years. (can't remember exactly). We split up after 9 years or so after 3 or four temporary breakups. Then she moved out and went off to Colorado, at which time the boys came to live with me.
When I heard she was pregnant with another mans child at the 17 year of our marriage (by the way, later on I was asked to be that child's Godfather which I am still to this day, (the Godson came a month or so back to visit with my son Geno when he was here).
Anyways back to the divorce, I heard they were giving a no fault divorce in Colorado for $50. I was wintering in Southern California, and on the way back to New Jersey, the boys and I went through Vegas then off to Boulder Colorado to look into the divorce. We went down into Denver and did the paper work and we were divorced on the spot (which was cool).
After the divorce papers were signed, the former wife & her new man and I, went up into the mountains above Denver or Boulder for a hike. We took the trail near the hugh statue of Mother Mary on the front range of the Rockies. I was kinda in the dumps about the divorce because of the finality of it, I still kinda loved her. Anyways we smoked a big fat doobie, and walked a few miles into the mountains following a stream. At one point I felt like something came onto me and lifted all that sorrow off of me like an elephant was lifted off of my back. I was immediately at peace with the divorce and the finality of it. My spirits were lifted.
Several years later I was transporting my former wife and my Godson to a co-op health food store called Peoples Food. The former wife lived near me a few towns north of my place. When it was check out time my wife introduced me to this lovely young woman (my present wife) at the checkout counter. I tried talking shit to her but she seemed uninterested. I followed her out the door as she was over her shift and asked her a few questions, and I found out she was leaving for New Jersey the following week. I asked her "What the heck do you want to go there for? That is when I found out she was also from N.J.
A few years later I saw her again in San Antonio Texas (at which time I was transporting my former wife and my Godson back to another winter in California along with my own 2 kids) I tried again trying to connect with her which did not happen. I passed through San Antonio 2 more times that year on my way to Mississippi to do tree planting and also on the way back to Cali.
On the last time through San Antonio, I heard that my future wife was coming back to N.J. that summer. So I wrote her a letter from N.J. Asking her to come and see me. She declined because she thought I was still with my first wife (Which I had not been since before my first meeting with her several years before at Peoples Food) So I wrote her a letter which cleared up that misconception, and asked her to call me when she got to NJ. Several months later I was out side my parents house in my van, and my mom came out and said there is some girl on the phone, (At the time I lived on a resort island and there were 18 miles filled with bikinis, so I had completely forgotten about her. So I asked her who is this and she said Lynda, I said Lynda who? (at which time she almost hung up the phone, but did not) When she told me who she was I asked her to come and visit me, she was 50 miles or so north of where I lived and she hitchhiked down the shore to come see me.
Later that night she stayed and we started going to sleep in my van outside my moms house. A few minutes after we got in bed my Roman Catholic mother comes out and started banging on my van, telling us "you cannot sleep here, you two are not married". So I drove up the street to a buddies house who had a circular driveway that went behind his house and we slept there. We have been together ever since.
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Post by whitefang on Jan 29, 2021 11:14:25 GMT -5
Nice story. I met Alicia when she came to the pinstriping dept. I was working in so she could pick up some overtime. We talked a bit whenever I would help her guide the car she was driving into the "dogs" on the conveyor that pulled the car through the pinstripe area much like a car is pulled through a car wash. Part of the job called for leaning out the open car door to see your front tire get into the dog. But as she was 5'1/2" tall it was funny to see her trying that. Two days later she was back and as I walked towards the pinstripe area which meant I had to go through a plastic strip heat container, she was standing there with her hands coyly behind her back and pulled that old "Do you want a kiss?" trick, in which when I said "Yes" she produced a handful of Hershey kisses. I thought that was corny but cute(as I also thought she was too) and a few weeks later she came through on the last day before Christmas break and I had already bought and wrapped one of those huge Hershey kisses, and she came over to my department again after we got back from the break to tell me how funny and cute the gift was. We started seeing each other more often after that. And as my wife was often busy going out and entertaining her various boyfriends, I had time on my hands to go out with Alicia. After a time(by Memorial Day '86) I had left the wife and moved in with Alicia. And the Hershey kiss became our "thing". We've collected several plastic dispensers shaped like the candy, and a stuffed toy in that shape(with a "Hershey Kiss" ribbon coming out it's top). and I even found her a silver chain with a small Hershey kiss shaped silver pendant hanging on it. It's currently draped on the rosewood urn that holds her ashes. But I will share what I wrote in the Christmas cards to people in my family that long moved out of state and never met her. As she died two weeks before Christmas '18, it was why I wrote it in Christmas cards---- "When I met Alicia I was in such a dark place that had I not met her I might not be here now writing in this card. She said she did see me in that darkness, and she snapped me up out of that place so quick and gripped my heart so tight I couldn't go back there if I tried. And despite her being gone in the physical sense we know, somehow her hand still grips my heart tightly. Now, we know that for decades now people have been bouncing the phrase "Soul-mate" around. But I can tell you that Alicia was not and never has been my "soul-mate". She was my SOUL." And I do believe y'all can relate to that, eh? Whitefang
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Post by jbone on Jan 29, 2021 18:02:56 GMT -5
For real guys, I'm outgunned here. I know, it's not a competition. But for the sake of clarity I will tell you my history.
Age 20, I was adrift. Nursing a long broken heart and with no real prospects for a job, career, or even really a college degree. Just mostly lost. I met a gal at a teen hangout place that was trying to help poor kids with a future like what I was looking at. What began as a sort of counselor/client thing became a romantic thing. We got a place and I insisted- Catholic influence there- on marrying. She said yes. It did not take long to see how different we were and really how flawed I was. I did grow some in that deal but the end result was, she left me for a girlfriend. Talk about damage to male ego! I was wrecked for years. I did have my hookups and an obsession or two but I did doubt my manhood after that fiasco. Years later I made my peace with her and to my knowledge she is still with the same woman 40-odd years later. So that all took place by age 22. Some 13 years later after some interesting life events, chief among them my entry into sober life, I met my next life partner in a meeting. We were together a couple of years before I married her, and that one lasted around 8 years. Again, I got to learn some very painful lessons about myself and about relationships. I was a pretty big sucker and ended up losing a house and being saddled with a lot of debt, basically bankrupt on several fronts. Again, I had my affairs over a few years but ended up pretty much alone. I was getting used to that. I joined yet another band in a new city and a few days later a couple came out to a gig we were playing. The guy told me he was joining the band and played keyboards. His wife seemed pretty intelligent and interesting but my policy has always been to leave band wives alone, which I did. After about 4 months, This guy ad I who had become incredibly close friends, he died suddenly of a heart attack. His wife, now a sudden widow, needed help with the funeral. The band leader and I did what we could which included playing a song at the memorial service. Not long before this, I had been walking around my cold little rooms and talking to my Higher Power. I told Him, look, give me some reason to be alive, how about just someone I can help? Sadly His answer was to watch over my best bud's brand new widow. In a thousand years she and I would never have picked each other for mates. But sometimes Someone steps in and makes things happen. That was 17 1/2 years ago. We fell together more as friends than anything, and ended as lovers and spouses. Our 17th wedding anniversary is in a bit over 3 weeks and it appears that we are going to get there.
We have been through some hard times but also many wonderful times. At this point I am given to some real optimism about her future. I think she has one, which was questionable for a while. I can't describe the incredible feeling when she was wheeled through this door here after 12 days apart. Absence does truly make the heart grow fonder. Next week we hope to get some blood work done to find any cancer markers still present. I'm hoping there are none of course. But even it there are it's not so final. There are options beside poison and radiation. I want more than ever to be with this woman, my true love, for a lot of years to come.
There's the thumbnail sketch.
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Post by Deleted on Jan 29, 2021 19:57:42 GMT -5
@ JBone, try looking into anti cancer diets for Jo. www.aicr.org/cancer-prevention/food-facts/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI_ei3w7fC7gIVMB-tBh16AwfQEAAYAyAAEgLKV_D_BwEDiet is what I would do if I ever came down with cancer. Juicing is also a great anti cancer regimen, study it a little amigo, it may be an alternative to chemo (which by the way is a thousand bucks or more a dose co-pay)(weekly that is also) I live in a retirement community and I hear cancer stories regularly, My gym buddy Geno had about 20 grand in co pays for chemo, so it ain't cheap. Best wishes to her amigo. I hope she can get better so y'all can co-entertain folks for a long long time.
Google Cancer diets and look at all the options.
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