Venting time

I need to blow a friggin gasket for a sec...

What is with people and their attitudes towards kids school sales drives. When my daughter was young I used to give to everyone who asked for their school events. Candy bar sales, candle sales, calender sales what ever was asked of me by my friends.

When Jessica became of the age to have these drives everyones wallet seemed to dry up. Now I've commited to not doing it anymore because I got jaded when it was my daughters time.

A co-worker just came in selling calenders for his kids and I politely tried to decline citing no money on me. To which he was willing to extend me the credit till I could pay and again I politely declined..

This co-worker just stormed out of my room in a fit of anger because he didn't get his way. Now I'm as giving as possible to all that know me and maybe I'm a bit off base here but these things should be banned from work..all they do is create resentment.. Now he is angry at me over a lousy $5 and I'm angry at him for his tantrum......

people- Get the fuck over it, if you don't get what your after then act like an adult ..or don't bring the damn things to work...........

Dee and Me

I'm a bit bored and I haven't blogged very much lately so I figured I would talk a bit about my boring life...

My Wife ...

What is there to say about your spouse? I mean a lot of people joke about the things their spouses are good for, or they would like to do to them.It always makes me wonder how much of that is a joke and how much is how they really feel...

So here's my disclaimer...

Diane is my best friend in the whole world and there isn't any way I could imagine her not being a part of my life. We have always been the type of couple that enjoyed each others company on varying levels. Some may think that's a bit too mushy ...so whatevah ..The fact is there is no one I enjoy being around more ...

When we get out of bed we aren't looking what we are going to do on our own, we are always looking to the other asking what do you want to do today... This isn't to say we never have a lone time but we certianly love doing most things together ...

I met Diane in the spring of 1983 shortly after I had graduated from high school. I had taken a temporary job working at Burger King (bleh) in between Machinist jobs. Diane was one of the first people I met the day I started there and neither of us were looking for a relationship as we were both involved seriously already. I was 17 and she was 18 ...

I only held that job for a short 2-3 weeks and went on my own way but every once in while I would bump into her be it going into B.K myself or at the local mall. She would always ask if I was still dating my girl and the answer was usually yes.

On one friday evening after breaking up with my girlfriend I happened to go out with another gorl from B.K and some friends when we happened into the restaurant for a quick bite and to hang out. Diane happened to be working that night and my friend Pete saw her and was very interested in her. The girl I happened to be out with knew Diane and approached her to see if she could get old Petee a date ..

She told Diane that guy over there is interested in you and want's you to call him and proceeded to hand Diane Pete's phone number.Diane made a natural assuption that this girl was pointing at me and was happy to hear this news... until she found out whose number she actually had... Old Petee never got that date..

Later that year around November Diane and I bumped itno each other at the local mall and the usual conversation started..are you still dating so and so .. But the difference this time was that we were both unattached!! Diane promptly handed me her phone number and told me to call. While this was going on her mom happened to come up behind her and Diane wanted to make a point of introducing me...

Um mom .. I'd like you to meet Steve .... STEVE!! ..... WTF ...She didn't even remember my name!! Without missing a beat I said please to meet you Mrs Hoh (I swear that's her maiden name) and my name isn't Steve ..it is Kevin. .. Diane has never been allowed to live that down to this day ... Maybe not the most romantic way to start out ..but certainly memorable .. Below is a few pictures of Diane and I when we first met and now ...


yep still together after all this time

Whoa ,,,been a long time!

Seems like forever since I had anything to write or I guess the time to write it..that and I'm just really lazy at times with creativity.

A week and a half ago Diane and I had the pleasure of seeing Paul Rodgers and Queen in concert. I had to admit when I first heard they were touring together I couldn't imagine Paul stepping into Freddies shoes, boy was I off base.

While he would never be able to replace Freddie he certainly fit the bill and did all the songs justice. They did a wide arrangement of hits from Queen, Paul, Bad Co and Free and it was a rocking 2+ hour show.

The highlight was for the song Bohemian Rhapsody in which they used concert footage of Freddie live and played along with the video. It was a heartfelt ftting tribute to the memory of Freddie and Queen.

At the end of the show for the Encore the most astounding thing happened that caused Queen to play the Encore out of sync. After leaving the stage the crowd erupted in the foot/clap beat that rings proud for We Will Rock you and they had the timing down perfectly. When Queen re-emerged Roger Taylor picked up on the drums right where the crowd was keeping a beat. It was awesome to hear and be a part of. Normally they would transition into We are the champions but because it weas done in this manner they actually went back to do All Right now before finishing the night with Champions...

All in all it was an awesome experience and if you like either band go see the show ..

On a side note ..

Happenings..

I broke down a bought a 25th anniversary Charvel and I'm so pleased with this guitar. It is a one off from the released series and is the only Red one ever built. The guitar is everything I had hoped it would be. After getting it I had a friend who is an old Ibanez player check it out and he was in such awe of it he ended up buying his own which I helped him aquire through a friend "hippie Tim" from the JCF... (Thanks Tim!)

Sully~ He's finally a homeowner!! Congrats dude, it's been a long road for ya but it's great to see lifes puzzle falling into place for ya. Good things are in your future..

Annah~ I happened to notice on Annah's site about the HRC event she attended and wanted to make it a point to have people support this. We all need to get along and care about each other on this crazy planet and this is just another step in harmony. I am of the beleif that ignorance only keeps us uncivilized and uncaring.... Keep on learning and rocking...support it ..

http://www.hrc.org/

On another note Annah is almost done with her book and I for one am looking forward to reading it, she seems to be moving right along ...keep up the good work!!!

As far as me? More to come I guess but for now my lunch break is over dammit!

Keeping up with the joneses .. or at least 1

Ok ..Em loves these little quizzes and loves to post the results on her blog ..and she gets me everytime I go there to see what I get ..

So here ya go Em guess we could hang together....

Am I cool or uncool? [CLICK] You are Super-Cool! Woah! Step back - the future's so bright for you it's blinding me! You are the coolest of the cool. Everyone looks up to you as the benchmark for being coooool. The fonze was your grandfather. Any cooler and you'd freeze! WOO it's chilly in here. Cool quizzes at Go-Quiz.com

He who has the last laugh...

Alma D Sunderland... I'm not sure what it was about the Canadians and their odd names. Alma's Dad's name Was Luger Caron and her Mom Lumina (Dancause) Caron. Guess it makes me happy I was born in the USA ...

Alma seemed like such a bad name that in order to get to her we branded her the name of Bertha after all how could you get any worse than Alma correct?

Late Sept of 1984 my grandmother had been having chest pain but never said a word to my mom. I had been estranged from the family that summer and had been living back in Lawrence with my 1/2 sisters. By the time I had gotten new of my grandmothers problem she was already bedridden at the Lawrence General Hospital.

I moved back home around that time to help out with the stuff that was happening. We would take daily trips up to the hospital to see Bertha and spend time with her. She seemed to be doing much better than anyone had expected but she kept saying that her only way home would be in a pine box.

It's funny when death ensues at old age because 2 of the oddest things can take place. They say the elderly know when their time has come and it certainly seemed to fit what was happening with my grandmother.

The 2nd thing is that when something major happens it seems they always get a lot better right before they leave us. I've seen this time and time again with family members and friends elderly relatives. We call it the calm before the storm.

Nov 4th 1984

I had been going to band practice not far from my home and we were standing in front of where we rehearsed very late at night maybe around 1:30 am or so. At the drop of a hat I saw my mothers car speed past us at a high rate of speed heading for the general and I knew this wasn't good news.

Diane and I got in my car and headed behind her not being able to catch up, my friend Pete right behind us. When I got to the hospital it was what I had suspected "Bertha" had taken a bad turn and this was it. I went down to let Diane and Pete know what was happening and my friend offered to take Diane to her house for me.

By the time I got back upstairs it was just a matter of minutes before she was gone but it was one of those rare instances where she was lucky enough to be surrounded by her family when she left...


I know at this point this story certainly doesn't seem to have a last laugh at such a sombering moment, but it was the next day that would end up having the oddest turn of circumstance.

We had gone down to our local funeral director that our family had used for years to make the arrangements for Bertha's funeral. In the midst's of setting up the obituary for Alma D Sunderland we learned that it wasn't really her name and that the D in the middle was in fact her real name...

Derilda A Caron was her birthright ............. DERILDA!! Somehow all of those years of calling her Bertha and thinking there couldn't be anything worse had just been trumped with an Ace card!!

RIP Bertha we miss you

One step at a time

Living in the condo was a pain in the ass as you always have close neighbors that are either nosey or want to tell you what to do. The flip side to it was it was nicer than the old house.

I'm not sure it was easy on Bertha because the bedrooms were on the second floor and she was getting up there in years. By this time I was in my early high school years and trying to enjoy what would probably be one of my last summers before I started working.

Early one summer morning at around 5 am I was laying in bed when the craziest thing interrupted my slumber. Mom had gotten up to get ready for work and was in the shower when Bertha decided she had to go to the bathroom. Bertha was one of those like most elderly people that when it was time to go, it was time to go.

My mom never made a habit of locking the bathroom door but for whatever reason on this particular morning she had. Which apparently was very distressing to Bertha. Her only course of action was to head for the 1/2 bath on the first floor.

In the condo going from the second to first floors the setup was as follows. Come out of the front bedroom turn left and go down 3-4 stairs to a landing. At the landing you turn left to go down the main staircase to another landing about 3 foot by 3 foot. Directly in front of the last stair was the hall closet and turning left and one more stair brought you into the livingroom. The was no easy journey for an old woman who "Has to go"

Bertha got to the first stair and decided that she was probably in a bit of trouble because she really had to go badly. The way to make sure she didn't have an accident was to bend down and grab the bottom back of her night gown, pull it between her legs and hold it in her words "To prevent herself from spilling anything"

As she proceeded down the first set of stairs and navigated her turn she did better than anyone could have hoped under the circumstance. What happened next was something that to this day I can remember being awaken from a dead sound sleep.

As Bertha hit the approx 5th step form the bottom she got hung up in the night gown she was carefully negotiating to prevent any mess from happening. Urban legend has stated it was at this point she moved from an elderly woman to "Evil Knievel" status. Bertha launched from about the 5th stair head first into the closet door on the bottom landing and plopped right down on her ass!!

The story from my perspective as ...


ZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Boom Boom Boom ..... Dead Silence ....
Then a faint voice- Joan! Joan! Joan! I fell down the stairs.

I remember going form dead sleep to running about 1.2 of a second and mom the same form the shower. As I came around the corner of the top landing there was poor Bertha sitting on her ass looking up at us ...

Mom and I quickly made sure she was ok but being old and heavy getting her up was lifting dead weight. As we got her off the landing the sudden stench hit us that Bertha attempting to spare us spillage had in fact dirtied the entire landing...

As though not to miss a beat my mother looked at me and said... I gotta go to work you clean it..and back to her shower she went..

Bertha was no worse for wear in her attempt to break the record of oldest living human to fly but to this day I'll never forget those words "I gotta go to work"

It would be several years before I'd get to delegate things to my own child that I didn't want to do ....

proper dosage always helps

We moved from Lawrence to Methuen in 1978 to get a bit out of the city. Lawrence was always known to be an immigrant city and that was how it came to be a city in the 1800’s. Largely made up of immigrants from Ireland, England and Canada and later Italian and Spanish the city was built largely by mill workers.

By the late 70’s there was an influx of people moving to the suburbs Into single family homes and more and more property owners becoming absentee landlords. This created a decline in the quality of life within the city as you had people renting solely for profit and renters who didn’t care to take care of what they didn’t own.

My grandparents had bought the house we lived in at 78 Marble Ave in the depression. If you were to pay attention to the census records from the 1600’s to the early 1900’s you will tend to find families that stayed within a given area for long periods of time. My best guess of this is because it just wasn’t easy to consistently move entire households like it is today.


When my grandparents made to move from renters to owners they had already had their children and were renting on the first floor of the 3 family at the corner of Marble Ave and Ohio. It was by stroke of luck that the house right next door went up for sale and they bought it.

In 1978 it was time to close that chapter of our lives and move onto better things and my mother had bought a tri level townhouse in the next town over. At that time it was a 2 bedroom unit and 3 of us so I got my own room and “bertha” and mom shared a room.

We had gotten to know several of our neighbors and had befriended a family in another unit in the complex where we would spend a lot of time hanging out. The Jacklins has 2 kids that were close to my age and my mom got a along with the parents so it was to be a good mix for friendship.

One day while visiting the neighbors something about bertha grew more and more odd. Her answers to questions were becoming more and more strange as the night was progressing.

Mom- It’s starting to get dark outside
Bertha- No thanks I’ve already had my tea

Mom would look a the neighbor oddly

Neighbor ..is there anything we can get you?
Bertha- Yes it’s a very nice day outside

Again looking perplexed my mother finally decided to ask ..

Mom are you taking any new medications I don’t know about? No, just a bit of cough syrup bertha replied.. My mom thinking this was a bit odd disappeared to the house and brought back a simple bottle of Robitussin cough syrup.

When asked if this was the correct medicine my grandmother agreed that it was and my mom proceeded to make sense of the label. Ma, how much of this are you taking? 4 spoons every 2 hours why? My mother started to laugh at that point because the label read 2 spoons every 4 hours! My grandmother was high on cough syrup!! I would have never thought that possible …

Bertha was not a very tall lady but had some definite weight to her and was a very large breasted woman. This was a symptom of the family that would not only plague herbut every other woman (And some men) to get the Sunderland gene. We had decided to take Bertha hime to allow her to sleep off her high and I ust admit that even though it was a short walk from one door to another trying to to walk with a drunken old heavy canadian woman was not the easiest of tasks…

As kids we used to mess around by standing in line with 3 or 4 people arm in arm and walking leg over leg like the monkees did in the opening credits of there show.. Taking Bertha home was almost reminiscent of that very move ….

Caught between a rock

Being a youngin and being watched by your grandmother had certain benefits. It was easier to get away with things as they never seemed to be as attentive as our parents might be, Bertha was no different.

I remember easily being able to coax money for the ice cream man, the corner store or what ever needed at any given time.

On one particularly hot summer afternoon I was out hanging around with my buddy Bob. Back then at the age of 8-10 one of the big rules was to leave the hose alone. My grandparents had lived through the depression and such and were always concerned about wasting money (The hose was attached to the water bill)

On this day I had gone against better judgment because I could get away with most things and decided to pull the hose out and basically have a water fight. Ever paid attention to a child with a hose and a pressurized nozzle? Anything and everything becomes a target.

I used to get a kick out of shooting the water straight up in the air and having it come down on me to cool off from the humid summer air. The thing that made this easy to get away with was the fact that we had the huge air conditioners in the window running and that pretty much drowned out anything from the water to kids screaming... Oh and the fact that the TV had to be turned way up to overtake the AC!!

After a period of time I needed to run in the house and go to the bathroom and upon my return ran into a minor issue ..

"Bertha"- Where are you going now?
"Me"- Outside
"Bertha" No your not
"Me" thinkin I'm busted now asks why not?
"Because it's raining outside and your mother doesn't want you out in the rain ..


Now have you ever been caught between a rock and a hard place? I guess that was it for a 9/10 yr old. In my haste of spraying the house directly up in the air I neglected to realize that the droplets hitting the air conditioner reverberate through the house like the sound of heavy rain ..


Geez what's a kid to do? Point out that it's not raining out or that you were using the hose and risk getting in trouble or just stay in .............