Busy, busy month. Went to Scotland with Mike and Mikey, used
Craig as our driver for the third time, and as usual he made the trip effortless for us. First couple of days there was snow, and it was gorgeous. I never really realized what the 'crunch' of snow sounded like because it rarely snows here. On the second evening, Mike's gallbladder started acting up. We were staying at
Castle Levan in Gourock at the time, it's a nice place run by a Czech couple who wanted to own a castle and sold their home in England to make it happen. Mikey really liked it, partly because it was a castle, and partly because it is supposedly haunted. By the fourth day I was on the phone with a nurse from our health insurance company because I thought we were going to have to go to the ER in Edinburgh, but with a little Tylenol (equivalent) and some z's, he made it until Christmas Eve, when we
did go to urgent care. They did some tests, gave him some morphine, we scheduled an appointment with a surgeon for that Tuesday, and then surgery followed on Wednesday. In the meantime I was battling a nasty cold, feeling pretty crappy myself... but nowhere nearly as bad as he did. I was just glad that if it had to happen, it happened while he was home, and not while he was in Afghanistan. It's partly because of the quality of care, and partly because I hate feeling helpless... I want to take care of him when he's sick, not sit here and worry, unable to do anything.
After a couple of days to recover (it was outpatient laproscopic surgery), we flew to TN to see our land. In a word... scary. At first. There are two ways to get to our property, and the way the GPS initially took us was full or sharp twists and turns on narrow streets that looked horrifying when we thought about what it would be like to pull the fifth wheel behind us. The land itself was also a bit shocking to see in person... we thought we had more cleared, level land and actually drove by our property without recognizing it.
Then things got better.
We spoke to a wonderful lady at
H&H Hardware in Gainesboro and she steered us toward a contractor who can not only level our land, but also run the water line and put in the septic. He reminds us of a friend of ours, very straightforward and easy going. Things were a lot less scary once we got in touch with him... after that we could envision what the land
could be. Also spoke to my cousin Jason, who is going to do our concrete work, and I think he has a good handle on everything, so we need to put the two of them in touch with each other and I think we're 3/4 of the way there.
Everyone we've met in TN has been incredibly nice and it seems like we stumble onto the answers we're looking for, sometimes like magic. We managed to get the water, electric and all the rest somewhat lined up while we were there. We also got in contact with a real estate agent that has a piece of property that sounds perfect for Nashoba... waterfall, building that was used as a youth camp, across the street from a river, more acreage than we were looking for, and at a decent price.
On the way into TN we also stopped by a
wolfdog sanctuary. Was really nice to see all the woofers and also see how he set his place up. He was a really nice guy who had lots of good advice. He's not open to the public, but since I volunteer at St. Francis he let us drop by for a visit. Small world too. One of the volunteers I work with, Natasha, brought one of the wolfdogs to him from Texas. He looks like he's happy with his pen mate, he was lucky she found him and was able to find him a good home.
Came home, relaxed for about a day, then drove to Austin to see friends and family.
On our second to last day there we went to
Red's Indoor Gun Range in Pflugerville and shot for a while. As I was changing out a mag, the range officer tells me to clear the range, and they herd everyone out into the shop. Because of the urgency I thought someone had shot a finger off, or a gun exploded in someone's hand. Turns out that a man had chosen to commit suicide. He was about 70 years old and had recently found out that he had a bad case of cancer and left a note on the front seat of his van saying that he didn't want to be a burden. We didn't know that until the next day, we just knew he was on the floor and blood was pouring out of his head. Tried to figure out every possible scenario that it could have been accidental, but it was pretty obviously intentional, even before they proved that it was.
Mike is the one that actually told them to call 911. He was standing back from the lanes, watching me shoot in one lane, and his sister shoot in another lane. He happened to be looking around, heard a somewhat muffled shot and saw the guy fly straight back, still clutching the gun. He tried to alert the range officer but he was on the other end of the range, so he ran out, assessed the situation in a quick glance as he ran by (as he has been trained to do) and realized that the guy was dead. He calls it a 'through and through'... in one ear and out the other.
I didn't see anything as I walked by. Mike said that was intentional, he was trying to shield me from it. I did look through the window afterward and see the man lying in a pool of his own blood, his ear all fucked up, ear protection gone, and I remember thinking it was weird that the blood wasn't as dark as mine, that maybe he was anemic. Part of me wishes I hadn't looked, part of me probably would have imagined worse if I hadn't looked. I think everyone was in shock at that point. One young guy tried to stop the blood from coming out, he said he tried CPR, but what he really did was put his hands on each side of the guy's head. He came out with his hands covered in blood. I felt bad for him; I told him he needed to get tested because no one knows what kind of disease this guy might have had, not trying to be mean, just practical. Everyone who worked at the range was very nice and helpful, the police were personable, it was handled as well as it could be.
For most of the night I was pissed off. There were two children on the range at the time. The mom was able to shield the little boy from it, but the little girl happened to turn her head and saw it. If this man wanted to die, so be it. He could have parked his van in a garage and let the carbon monoxide put him to sleep. Instead, he came to a public range, rented a .40 caliber Ruger, put it behind his ear and blew his brains out in front of a bunch of strangers. Luckily no one else was injured, and no one saw it actually happen... we were just left with the aftermath... the memories of what we did see... the time we spent making statements to the police, waiting to be released... the millisecond of fear that one of us might have accidentally shot him (impossible)... the questions... making copies of our driver's licenses.... the extra trip we had to make the next day to retrieve our weapons.
People who knew him may choose to remember him fondly... I do not. To me he was a selfish asshole.
That night when Mike finally fell asleep I had a mini meltdown. It started with me thinking that I felt bad for not feeling sorry for the guy, felt bad for feeling nothing. Then all of a sudden I was wracked by sobs that I was afraid might wake Mike up. After I had a good cry I was okay... I got up and took a shower, then went to bed and fell asleep, but it was about 3 am at that point. Woke up feeling groggy and listless the next day, partly due to lack of sleep, partly due to the wine I drank the night before... probably also due to what had happened. I'm not going to let it stop me from going back to a gun range. I've been to several over the last decade and this is the first time it's ever happened. You just can't predict the future and it could have happened anywhere.
We came home Tuesday evening after having drinks with a friend in Houston. Yesterday and today were 'normal' days... doing stuff around the house... shopping for groceries... taking out the trash. I told Mike that I really like normal days with him around, doing normal things like normal people.
Neither of us can wait for his stint in Afghanistan to be over. Four months doesn't sound like much, but when you're on the home stretch every second seems like agony.
One last weird coincidence. An attorney we're working with for something completely unrelated is going to introduce us to an attorney in Nashville that wants to do work for a wolf sanctuary. She said he's willing to help us with our charitable status filing, which is about a $10k value... don't know if he's planning to do it for free or not, she just mentioned a number - but I do know that, from what I've heard, it's a monumental task and we will be grateful for the help. How cool is that? It was completely random.
