The City Mouse in the Country

 It's been a bit.   When I started this blog I was in a stable place and a stable condition.   I thought that I was done with moves and surprises.   I would have been perfectly happy to just work for another five or ten years till I retired.    If I'm being completely honest with you but since moving back to Western PA just about six years ago, things have been odd at best and difficult at worst.   I've questioned why we moved but for better or for worse, this is home. Then I lost Facebook and that was one of the drivers, if not the main driver that drove people to this site.   Then my job situation changed drastically.   At first it was fine but it was clear that the company really didn't have a spot for me, and as they transitioned from "work from home" to "return to the office" it became hard for me to justify a commute of over 100 miles each way.   The jobs that I worked after that were temporary in...

Pap's info is here .  It's a funny thing, when you know someone has only a limited amount of time.  You wait for that phone call with a mixture of sadness and relief.   Relief in that person has moved on into a better world, or that their suffering has stopped.   In that, you no longer have to worry about them.  It's also a phone call you dread, because that person brought you into the world...and now you are alone. This is an article that I've started and stopped a thousand times.  We always were worried about my dad, much more than my mom.  When she died, it was more of a shock.  Even after 2 + years I'm still not sure if I'm done processing it.  Mostly I just miss talking to her. My dad and I had a good relationship...but not much to talk about.   He was passionate about sports, where as I was more like my mother and was interested more in politics and world affairs.  Still though, we played catch for hours, he ta...