As I get ready to turn 30, I am happy to say that I am very happy where I am in life.
I have a very beautiful wife, Abagail Kathleen, who I love very much. We had a great night last night of celebrating Valentine's Day with our traditional dinner at the Cheesecake Factory followed by a romantic movie. This year, we saw the recently released film, "He's Just Not That Into You." We celebrated Valentine's Day last night, on Friday the 13th, because we found out this week that some friends were coming from out of town and wanted to hang out tonight.
I am happy in other ways. I have a great house in a great part of town. I have a wonderful Shih Tzu, named Sloopy, who just turned 2 last weekend and is happy to see me every time I come home. He loves me unconditionally. I love how he greets me at the door and makes little howling noises to show how happy he is that I have arrived at home.
I have a wonderful family who is very supportive of me. They are trying at times but they are blood. I am fortunate to have most of my family here in the Columbus area where I can see them a lot. Sometimes, certain people get overly clingy *cough, cough* Mom *cough, cough* but I know that they only do so because they love me and hold me dearly in their thoughts.
I have great friends who always bring excitement and fun to my life when I get to hang out with them. It is always good to see them and talk about how their lives are going and seeing how everyone is evolving as they grow older and more mature.
Some things, though, I could be happier about. I guess I am lucky to have a job in this economy, but working for Meijer is not what I want to do with my life. It is difficult for me to have had succeeded so much in school but to only have experience working for Meijer, which was always intended to be just a part-time high school and college job. After being with Meijer for 13-1/2 years, it is getting very tiring, tedious and depressing. I don't enjoy working there and wish that the countless companies that I apply for jobs with would just give me the chance to have an interview so that I could convince them that I would be a great addition to their workforce. I know that I am hard-working, reliable, and able to do many things but I just need the employers to find this out.
One of the things that I hope happens in this 30th year of my life is that I hope to find out that I will be an expecting father. Abby and I discussed that we wanted to be sure that both of us had stable careers before trying and I was happy to find out that she got her teaching job this past August. Since then, we have been trying like crazy to expand our family but the fruits of our labor have yet to be seen. I want to have kids soon so that I won't be that old when they get old enough to get into sports. I want to be able to help teach them how to do things that I used to love doing without being in pain or having bad knees or things that my father had when I was a kid. It was hard not being able to toss the pigskin around with dad without him jamming his ring finger and having to go to the ER to get his wedding band cut off. It is things like this that I hope to avoid by being a younger father to children. When I was born, my dad was about 31 and my mom was about 26. That is getting close to the age Abby and I are approaching. It is not fun to think that and I hope that God will bless us this year and help us to become parents.
Sometimes I reflect on what could have been. What would have happened if I never had a heart condition and would have been able to play contact sports or join the armed forces? What would have happened had I not had to move around all the time as a Navy brat and been able to stay at one school for my whole life? Would I have developed life-long friendships rather than befriend people for a couple of years before having to move away? Things like this just make me wonder about what could have been but I definitely want to say that I am happy with where life's road has guided me. It is said that God has a plan for all of us and it will be interesting to see what God's end result will be for me.
Anyhow, happy birthday to me! 30 years and counting! Yeah memories!
