I have been posting now for 3 days on things me and my family are doing and enjoying it a bit.  It is late on Wednesday about 10 p.m. ( i say late because i have been up since 4 a.m.) but wanted to get a jump on my daily post. Plus because I slept so awful from having things on my mind, I thought this might help with sleep.  (and the 1 or 2 shots of Jack Daniels )

I like writing these posts because I don’t have to be so official… Not that I am too much with my other articles, videos and podcasts, but  sometimes i just like to write.

I mean i will spell things correctly because there is a red line under them if i don’t, but as far as punctuation and (capitalizing the i) I am not going to take the time.  I say that because my wife and daughter are curious what i am writing about the family and correcting me on this.  So don’t expect it here.

So I changed my format a little bit and instead of just using the title of my name and divorce611 and the date, I put a little title that references what it may be about. I am sure this will change over the days and months but will try to keep the dates right.

My wife and I are not good planners.  I am not a good planner. I see my friends on Facebook over the summer posting their awesome summer vacation photos and understand that they probably made these plans several months or years ago and get jealous. Our plans are made about a week out, usually the day before we do anything which is usually camping in our motorhome.

Shockingly we made plans to go go camping about 3 weeks out.  AND got a camping spot at a supposed awesome place at Grays Meadow which it in the mountains outside of Independence, CA.

Now I am always concerned when I am able to get last minute reservations for a ‘hot spot with awesome reviews” but we are just going to go for it.

If you are not familiar with Grays Meadow in Independence, CA, it sits at an elevation of about 9,500 feet.  I read all the reviews and articles and the place looks amazing.  Most are what people refer to themselves as “minimalists” which means they are totally satisfied in a tent, cooking outside, maybe not even cooking, hiking and living on the land.  I am sure that people define “minimalist” different.

One thing is for sure.  The place looks awesome. We are staying in a campsite that has a river running right behind. From the photos it looks like we can fish from the site.  We’ll see with the drought and all here in California.

There are so many awesome photos of Grays Meadow that I will just post one here and them provide THIS LINK to google photos… You’re welcome!

I am going to be talking a lot about Grays Meadow because of the elevation. I said it is at 9,500 feet and the “minimalists” use this as a starting point to get acclimatized to Mount Whitney.  From what I understand, they will stay here a day or two to get ready for the big climb.

We are just here to camp and fish and hike for a few days and i am concerned about the elevation.  I have good reason to be.

When I was in the Marine Corps during Desert Storm in 1990 right after high school, I was first deployed to Okinawa, Japan at Camp Hanson.  Here, we assigned as the second amphibious task force to attack Iraq.  Okay, not the purpose of this post (and will discuss further later i am sure) we later deployed to Mount Fuji, Japan.

During our training we were able to train with the Japanese military, and later we deployed to Mount Fuji which sits a 12.388 feet elevation.  Camp Fuji is at the base of the mountain, but we did have the opportunity to climb Mt. Fuji at some point.

Man I can get off topic.

Anyhow, the purpose of bringing this up is that I do get AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) otherwise known as Altitude Sickness.  I did not know it at the time in my prime at 19 years old but I had a very negative effect at this altitude.  It was only through the last 20 years, and most recently in the last 2 years, that I don’t feel to good at high altitudes.

The interesting thing to learn is that is has nothing to do with age or how good of shape you are in. I was 19 ( or 18 can’t remember) and out of breath, had headaches and was disoriented at 12,000 feet. Okay, the bottle of Dom Perignon we bought in Tokyo, Japan a few weeks prior did not help with the whole altitude thing when we drank it is a celebration of our climb to the top of Mt. Fuji.

Okay, have gotten way off topic.  The point is I don’t do good at high altitude.  I have done some research on high altitude that i will discuss in other posts.

Good thing I made this part 1. We are about 2 weeks from our camping at Grays Meadow and already have talked about many things,

If i can remember, i want to talk about what you can do to eleviate high altitude or AMS symptoms that I found useful on the internet.  I will also discuss whether they actually worked as there is not a whole lot of discussion on the internet about it.

Even the Yelp reviews of Grays Meadow don’t say anything about the altitude or getting ready for that for us normal people, so want to make sure to discuss it.

Talk to you tomorrow.

 

 

 

Every once and a while I am not able to sleep. I will go to bed just fine and then wake up super early, not on purpose, sometime around 3 or 3:30.  Today it was 3:45 a.m. when I woke up and despite my best intensions, cannot fall back to sleep.

What happens is that I wake up and my mind instantly starts thinking about the day and I can’t stop thinking.  I will usually lay there for about 30 minutes and then just get up.  So here I am at about 4 a.m. writing this post.  At least I will be can get some marketing done early which is good because I have a busy day.

Today I not only have to run a business but also handle all the kids from morning to night.  My wife works a lot of hours and this week she is traveling far to job sites and is out by 5 and gets home late around 8 p.m.

So after this post I will be making breakfast, and lunch for all of us.  My son is going to summer and school and tutoring and I have to drop him off and pick him up 3 different times throughout the day.  He is redoing a few classes so he can have a 3.0 GPA so he can get into a specific college that the FBI recruits from.

I am glad he has chosen the FBI over a street level cop like I was with LAPD for 13 years.  I have one kid in college and the other is college bound. So glad they have their act together. Much more than I did at their age.  Probably why I ended up in the Marine Corps after high school.  Nothing else better to do. More on that I am sure.

Well, off to start my day.  It is now 4:25 and I have one cup of coffee in me.

Oh, by the way, totally remembering my mom’s birthday today.

Today is Tuesday July 28, 2015 and i was reading the post I wrote for Monday and realized I had left out the single most important, yet devastating, thing that happened over the weekend.

I guess I did a good job blocking it from my mind as it was something that was very upsetting.

Our beloved labrador who we had for just over 10 years had to be put down.  He got cancer which resulted in tumors in and on his body.  It started about 8 months ago where we noticed little bumps on his skin which later, and quickly, turned into large tumors on his skin.

We opted for surgery as we thought the tumors could be removed, but about three months after the surgery the tumors began popping up all over his body, despite being on 24/7 steroids which were supposed to shrink the tumors.

We took him to Happy Pets in Valencia where we have been going for a while last Sunday and Dr. Johnson said it didn’t look good and if it were her dog she would opt to euthanize. We decided that we would give it a week so we could have a few more days with him, and later that week on Friday at 5:20 we took him to put him down.

You love pets, but this part is so hard.  This is the second lab we put down in 2 years.  The other one got cancer also, but he was much younger, just 7 years old.  The hardest part was the kids, who have known the Scout since they were 4 and 7, so basically their entire lives.

When our last lab died, Saber, we were convinced by our daughter, Aundrea, that we needed another dog. So we have an almost 3 year old lab named Hudson.

Here is a picture of our Scout (along with our Hudson as a baby who terrorized Scout)

So, like i said, for me to write an article on a Monday after a traumatic event over the weekend, i must have really blocked it out on Monday.

I have to say that on day 2 of writing these more personal posts, i am really enjoying it as a sort of recap to the day or even to log in and write a few sentences during the day as my crazy busy days permit.

I think another way of coping for me was to decide to take our 3 year old lab out for a run every day.  This was day two of our runs and because I have not ran in a while, my legs are really sore. Definitely limping around the office today when going to get coffee in the kitchen.

Today has been a super busy day and have started 2 new divorce cases, working on a new Request For Order and answering all the phone calls that come it from new potential clients.  I tell ya, the summer months slow down a bit due to the kids being out of school, but now that they are starting to go back we are already picking up the pace.

Until tomorrow.  Tim