Restored

I received a letter in the mail today from the Minnesota Department of Corrections stating my civil rights had been restored. I knew this was the case a week ago but it was nice to see it in writing. The letter was three pages long and dealt mostly with registering to vote. I like that, but I was more interested in the emboldened paragraph that stated, “However, if you have been convicted of a Crime of Violence under Minn. Statute §624.712 subd. 5, you cannot possess or receive a firearm for the remainder of your lifetime. In addition, you cannot possess or use tear gas compound and electronic incapacitation devices as defined in Minn. Statute §624.731.”

Well, shit. I’ve never been convicted of a violent felony or any other passionate crimes for that matter. I wonder if I am able to own or possess a handgun.

The letter only has one other paragraph not related to voting, and it goes like this here: “The Department of Corrections is not responsible for determining the eligibility of a person to ship, transport, possess, or receive a firearm. If you need assistance to determine your legal rights please obtain private counsel.” This paragraph was not supported by bigger, darker letters.

Who the hell has or can afford private counsel? Well, I do. And I can. You see, through work, I am enrolled in both Legal Shield and ID Shield. For one low price, my credit, credentials, and my street cred are all protected. So I asked a robot lawyer over the Legal Shield app and this is what she said, “The following is required for a felony review: Paper associate agreement. A copy of the court documents indicating the actual charge(s). A copy of the court documents stating the current disposition and/or documentation of the release of probation. A detailed explanation from you (me) regarding the charge(s) and what lead to the charge(s). A character reference letter that is not from a family member, your spouse, your sponsor, or an acquaintance by a Legal Shield associate.”

It looks like a lot, but most of that stuff is public record, (as far as a letter from somebody I must not be very close with, we shall see.) and I can find it quickly because I have all of the necessary info. I should have started the second paragraph by stating that I do not want to own, possess, or receive a firearm because I am white and I don’t think white people these days handle them too responsibly. I would however, like to use or receive tear gas compound but I would not like to possess it. So, as soon as I do a little footwork, I can find out what my status is as a citizen who has served his time for his crime.

 

Other than that, where do I go from here? I have nobody to answer to. I have nothing to fear: I am not going back. So, how can I be of maximum usefulness to my fellows and those still suffering? I want to start bringing meetings into locked facilities which I can now do as a normal voter.  I sent an email to the corrections coordinator for A.A. in this district, and am awaiting a reply. I will continue to write as it continues to be a form of therapy for me. The fact that I have so many followers is amazing, and I am happy to say that my post entitled Expired has reaped 857 views, making me as famous as Wally Wingert. I’m not in it for the fame, which is great because I have gained none and made exactly $0 to date from blogging. But it could be time to change that. I have written repeatedly that the first year of the blog has been edited down to book format, and we are waiting for…. I don’t know what to happen. Maybe a publisher? Maybe to be discovered by somebody who knows a publisher? Like I said, I don’t know. But I do think that many of our posts, combined or separate, are worthy of more than just Facebook shares. If I had the time I would write more creatively and more often, and maybe more fictionally which I tried a while back and really enjoyed. I would like to explore writing on different topics as well, like dogs or potatoes. You get the idea, I want to keep writing, and I will. I want to explore other avenues, and I will when I can. And I want to publish a book. And, well, I will. But then you people have to buy it.

My first week as a free man went just like the week before, and I plan to change very little in my life as a result of my new freedoms. It is nice knowing that I completed something in my life which is a great feeling. I would like to complete more things from now on, like this post.

Banana Penis

I reached under my prep table on the fry station today expecting to grab the top of a box of cooking wine to refill a plastic bottle I use to dispense it quickly when the time comes. What I found instead was a banana. It was no ordinary banana. It was black, but not broken. I didn’t know at first what it was because it kind of felt like a small human arm, but it wasn’t the right temperature. Trust me, I know the proper temperature of a small human arm (it's 165 degrees for a minimum of 15 seconds.) I looked and saw it had been there for a few days and I did what all men everywhere do next: I poked it. It had liquefied inside, and when I picked it up, it fell limply in my hand as if it were my own penis, although it was much larger and darker. I’ve never seen my own penis that close up.  I wonder if I should publish those last two sentences, or even this paragraph. Anyhow, I threw away the rotting banana, and I got to thinking; I really want to go to England to see David Gilmour.

About once a year since I sobered up, I Google David Gilmour concerts, and this is the first year aside from Live in Pompeii 2 that something came up. He’s playing as a guest at the O2 in London with Van Morrison and Pretty Things in December, and I am now free to roam about the world, and I have a travel bug that I got from my mom and I think it’s time to go somewhere.

The idea first came out of my mouth a couple weeks ago and I asked Amanda if we could go, and she said yes. She preliminarily asked for assistance with the girls while we would be gone, and it’s already covered. Amanda and I have gone back and forth over the idea a few times in a couple weeks, and we set a boundary for the price of an airline flight that would serve as a catalyst or a hindrance, and I have found something below that number which, I believe, means that we are going to go to Europe. I can’t believe I just typed that.

 

There are many days between now and December, and I haven’t purchased the tickets yet, but I can feel it. I mean that I believe that this is going to happen. Many of you know that I am a huge Pink Floyd fan. Well, I have seen Roger Waters a couple times, but I’ve always wanted to see David Gilmour in the flesh. Well, this could be the opportunity to go on an amazing vacation with the woman I love, and see a living legend. I will keep you all posted.

I planned on writing a full 700 words for this post but I ended up watching several YouTube videos, and time has escaped me. It is now time to make dinner for the girls and get myself to bed. Please comment on this post however you can if you have ideas, good intel on flights, or want to give me money for all of my hard work to help pay for all of this! J

Expired

It’s been a hell of a run. Specifically, it’s been four years and twenty-five days and a few hours since my sentence of 50 months was pronounced. As of today, my sentence has expired. The thirty-five days I served in jail after my arrest was added to the total to complete the judgement. I’m free.

I am free to roam about the country or world as I please. I am free to register to vote, and I will. I am free to drink alcohol, and I won’t. I am still not allowed to own a gun, and I don't care.

This is the second time in my life I have completed a sentence while sober. The first time I was put on probation I was 18 years old, and I didn’t get off until I was 26. It was for a one-year sentence. I couldn’t keep it straight back then. Time and time again I tried to find sobriety, but I was too young, and I had not gotten anywhere rock-bottom yet. Actually, I found a series of bottoms that would get deeper over the years, and eventually I found that it was easier to stay down there rather than dig myself out. I managed to scrape together a few years of abstinence where I did eventually end my probation.

This round is different. This sentence has been incredibly challenging in so many ways. Staying sober was just a result of working on the things that were killing me, namely selfishness, resentment, dishonesty, and fear. This round turned into something so much greater than myself, which I used to think could not exist for me. I wrote in a recent post that everything I do, every prayer I pray, and every thought I have these days is dedicated to people other than me, because selfishness is the root of all of my evil. It’s true. This is why I don’t post pictures of myself at the gym or constantly say what a great job I’m doing in life. The only people any of that stuff matters to can see the results of my accomplishments every day when they wake up, or anytime they see me in a condition that benefits society. They can see a man that loves them and works hard for them: not for myself. My reward is love. My incentive is this life I wish I had known was imaginable twenty years ago. It took me four years without a drink or a drug to have everything I need.

Prison is behind me but its lessons are not forgotten. I.S.R. is over and I will never forget the tumult. Now parole is done, and I never want to go through it all again. This much I know: I have built up a solid defense for the first drink. Actually, that’s all I have done for the past three-or-so-years since my release. I maintain my sobriety, and I prepare myself for life when it doesn’t go my way.

My commitment to the commissioner of the Department of Corrections has expired, but I must continue this way of life—one day at a time—or I will fall right back into the grip. I never want to be the man I was when I walked into the courtroom for sentencing, but I won’t have a choice if I give up my effort now.

My life in recovery these days needs a boost. I’m not in danger; it’s just different from St. Paul. My home group in my home town was regularly attended by 100 people trying to get their lives straight. That number went down to about ten when I moved to Delano, and here in Silver Lake this week it was just me and another gentleman. Now, that counts as an official meeting, and I do service work in that meeting, but I like a little more variety so I think I will look for a second weekly venue. Also, none of my sponsees call me anymore. It’s nothing they’ve done, and likely nothing I’ve done other than moving an hour away from everything. This is what I need to find at a bigger meeting. Nothing can so much assure my sobriety as working with other people who are going through what I have been through.

I’m happy, not complacent. I’m motivated, not stagnant. And most important, I’m sober. Here’s to another step in life.

As a Species, How Did We Survive?

We were driving west down highway seven when the oldest girl observed, “Look, there’s a cat sleeping in the middle of the road!” I paused my stifled laughter to explain that it was a raccoon, and that he chose a very noisy spot to nap. What I decided not to relate to her was that the raccoon’s intestines appeared to be lying next to the bloated omnivore, and its head was facing a direction that was not possible in its former life. I also didn’t mention that all of the police vehicles we had passed just minutes ago in Chanhassen were there because a couple cops shot a kid. There are just things you don’t tell children yet.

The girls and I just got back from the Silver Lake public pool. We were there for over two hours and I’m sure I’ve burned. There were three lifeguards on duty, and both girls were wearing life jackets. Even with all of that protection, I stood as a sentinel with my arms crossed, and my eyes open for danger.

All of this got me thinking. How are we alive? Children are not smart, and if we weren’t here to feed and protect them from birth until, I don’t know, when they don’t need life jackets to swim anymore, could they survive? How did early hominid survive and evolve into a much smarter and developed being? So many stupid beings must have died in so many ways before we invented external safety measures.

Most of us have a natural instinct to protect our own lives, but I don’t think we’re born with it. I guess that makes it not an instinct. If you put a baby that can crawl next to a cliff, it’s going to crawl over the edge if it’s facing that direction. You might need to give it a little push, but I think it would go over on its own if given enough time. So, babies are definitely stupid, and we have no visceral need to protect our own lives. In fact, it’s way more efficient to our species if more of us die.

Transition

I’m in the beginning stages of planning a trip overseas with my girlfriend. I’m not going to reveal anything more than I have yet over Facebook, but I will say that I am hopeful to see a musical icon that I have wanted to see since the beginning of time. My guess is that it will be expensive, and we won’t go unless we find the right flight. I will keep posting on this as time passes.

 

It’s been a long week. I realize that this post may appear to have no direction, and you may be right. The girls have not had daycare for almost two weeks which means that Amanda and I have had a lot less of our own time and fewer opportunities to get things done without distraction. Tomorrow (Monday) is their last day without daycare, and we are going up to the cities for a fun day of science and family.

I’m exhausted, and it usually isn’t a good idea for me to write when I’m in this condition, so I will sign off here in just a tap. I do think I’m funnier—or at least more sarcastic—when I’m tired, but as I review this very post I see that the material is funny-ish at best. A baby falling off of a cliff has nothing to do with recovery. And with that, I pass.

 

 

Holiday Road 2

A three hour drive brought us to my aunt and uncle’s cabin in Minong, Wisconsin. It sits majestically over a calm lake, and is surrounded mostly by long grass and dense woods. The cabin stands on a property I’m familiar with, but haven’t seen for over a decade. They bought the property—I’m guessing—thirty-years-or-so ago and my uncle used to take me on camping and fishing trips when it was just a small clearing in the woods. I was innocent then, and I was thinking the other day that it was possible I had never been on that property under the influence of anything, but then I remember being on a weekend trip when I was about 16 and smoking a little reefer after Uncle Tex went to bed. No matter, I am sober now, and this post isn’t about my drug-riddled past.

We would be there for four days which included two full days and arrival and departure on either end. The weather had treated us properly thus far on our jaunt, and this day was no different: beautiful, sunny skies and low humidity. We pulled up to the cabin, unloaded, and began to relax.

With two children running around the house causing disorder and commotion, and the full summer swing in effect at work, relaxation is something Amanda and I are not used to at any point in our day. We had spent the first four days of our summer vacation on the go, even though we were at another cabin. Even when we weren’t out on the pontoon and just sitting on the deck, we still needed to be alert for dangers to the children as there were vehicles, a lake, and other vacationists about and it seemed that we were always yelling for the girls to stay close to us or far from the water and whatnot. In Minong, it was just us four.

The first day was spent shopping for our weekend at Henson’s Country Foods, which also has sales of cattle feed, haircare, bulk beef jerky from the nearby Jack Link’s factory, and sports an enormous liquor store. I bought a box of bacon ends and pieces which is a treasure for anybody that cares to know. We brought back out booty, and I fired up the grill and made too many cheeseburgers. It was beautiful.

Our first full day was spent in or near the water. We tried out a paddleboat, but with only one backrest to be found, and one adult paddling, it was too much work, and I gave up. We tried the kayaks next and had a little more success but he wind was stronger than us that day and we each had squirming children on our laps and we retreated to the shore. The girls donned P.F.D.s and went swimming. Here are a few good pictures from the first day or so.

 

I posted this picture in my last blog, but I took the time to accidentally upload it again, so now you're stuck with it.

Just another perfect view from my camping chair.

The shimmer coming off of the lake added so much to the beauty of the evening and the trip.

 

 

 

On the second day, something happened. It wasn’t a phenomenon. In fact, according to the internet, there isn’t even a term for it. Upon my first search, the term vergi kept coming up, but it isn’t that. Vergi is the word for rain that evaporates before it hits the ground. What we saw, we’ve all probably seen before but I have never seen it for such duration. For a solid ten minutes, there was rain visible to us over the lake, but it was not raining on us. It was no more than a couple hundred feet from us, but not above us. It was spectacular. After two minutes, I commented that that was probably longer than I had ever seen it happen. According to the internet, it isn’t that uncommon for a rain cloud to exist, but not pour down on me. The article that I read made me feel like kind of an ass, but rain has to start and stop somewhere, I’m not special for being there when it happens. But I still feel special. So special.

We made s’mores, we played by the lake, we ate copious amounts of food, and most importantly, we bonded. Each day brings us closer together, and we survived our first vacation. This picture says it all.

 

It's been six days already since we left that cabin on a lake in Wisconsin. I've worked my full work-week, and it seems like that nine days flew by in a blink, but all of those moments we captured--not just with the camera, but in our minds and our hearts--will be with us forever.

 

 

 

 That’s the last picture I took at the cabin, and my third favorite. The first, of course, is the one of all of us in the screened-in-porch. This is the second—timing is everything.

 

 

 

 





Holiday Road

Presently, I am sitting on a cushioned wicker chair, surrounded by wilderness (technically, I am enclosed in a screen porch which protects my frail body from insects.) My computer display tells me something I have never seen: Not connected—No connections are available. It’s beautiful.

This vacation started five days ago during a downpour—with Lindsay Buckingham’s Holiday Road playing over my speaker and the girls humming along—with a long drive from home to the Cut Foot Sioux Resort in northern Minnesota. It was four days of fun, fishing, swimming, and relaxing with my favorite ladies. As some of you may have read, I celebrated my four-year sobriety anniversary on this trip, although I was bordered by normal people enjoying normal-people beverages for the entirety of that day. Stuff like that doesn’t bother me much anymore. The only thing I really think is, it must be nice to be normal. I will celebrate my achievement with my fellows when I get back; I’m in no danger.

 

Fishing. I don’t really care for water, much less the swimmers who inhabit it. I haven’t been fishing legally in years, and I probably haven’t enjoyed it since childhood, but I made the best of the situation this (week)end (foodservice people vacation on weekdays) and caught a few keepers, and even fileted a couple northern. The “Y” bones are tricky, and fish flop around a lot, and I plan to never kill a fish again. I also caught some decent sized walleye but had to throw them back because of the size restrictions imposed by the MN D.N.R. Here’s a picture of me trying to hold a fish which is my hugest pet-peeve on Facebook.

 

Apparently, that is not how you hold a fish. Immediately after this picture, the fish flopped, and I dropped it and it was stupid and I didn’t like getting it back into the water. Lesson learned: I still hate fishing. (P.S. my girlfriend and her 7-year-old can both hold fish better than me.)

There was much to glean from the first leg of the trip. I loved following the loon family and listening to their calls. Eagles soared high above, and we watched an osprey catch a fish a mere fifty feet from our pontoon. Nature is what pleases me, and I haven’t been short on the visuals yet.

 

More than a feeling: this picture expresses the culmination of every event on the past four years of my life. You cannot feel what I feel when I see this picture, but I hope you can understand that this is my happiest moment in life. I am free.

One of my favorite moments of that first leg was going to a butcher shop in the middle of the woods. The worst part of that shopping trip was that they were out of pork cutlets. Only people who know what those are will understand how impactful that can be.

 

The girls had their own fun with some other children who were there for the week. It’s always easier when other kids are around to distract them from clinging on to us 24/7. The story is different at our current location where it is just us four, but of course, this is much needed family time.

Campfire. It’s been years since I sat around a proper campfire. Last night was the first, and I will get to that in the next post. I should write more about Cut Foot while it’s still in my mind.

Jumping ahead a little, this is the first campfire I built in sobriety. It brought back a lot of memories of drunken Vince, some good, some bad. None of those mattered this day, though. I sat back with my loves and enjoyed the sights and sounds of nature.

 

We were in a small cabin with Amanda's father and his girlfriend. That’s six people in a small area for four days. Fortunately, the weather was permitting, and we spent nearly every available moment basking in the sun and cooking meals on the grill. We made several walks down to the resort office which doubled as a grocery store/bar/gift shop/bait shop/gas station/etc… They also had ice cream which is what we were after. Kids and adults all should like ice cream. If you know any adults that don’t like some form of the dessert, you shouldn’t trust them. We indulged ourselves. My favorite part about eating ice cream with children is that we make the same amount of mess on our faces and shirts. Actually, I’ve just been told that that is just me, and most adults are more responsible about keeping themselves neat and tidy, even on vacation.

The four days sped on by in a flash and it was time to pack up, sleep, and hit the road in the morning for a three-hour tour that would bring us to Minong, WI to my aunt and uncle’s cabin on a small, pristine lake in the middle of not much.

 

More to be revealed…