I am the eighth child of two nearly perfect parents.
My four brothers and three sisters are mostly responsible for molding me as a child. I believe I may be the best and maybe not so best parts of them. I learned from them as a child and I still do to this day.
My roots are deep in the Midwest United States, where farming meets industry and people work, hard play hard and love their families greatly .
I am rich (by any standard) with life experiences because of the aforementioned things but mostly because of my parents. They spent their lives showing us the country on extended camping trips, and vacations to far away places. We spent weekends, water skiing, fishing, and exploring wherever we were. At home we worked. With eight of us, there was plenty to do. Dad had a garden, bigger than most people’s I would assume, and we had to tend to it. Of course Mom kept the house. It was always clean; the laundry always done, which in itself was a full time job that my sisters took on. Being the baby of the family and having twelve years of separation from oldest to me, I had relatively few tasks as a child. That changed as I got older and fewer were around to share in the load. But, true, the load lightened as well.
So in the nutshell, I had a charmed childhood and that is my base.
The rest of my life up to and even beyond the fall that change it was blessed as well. Again, it was family that blessed it.
I have two awesome children who are grown and married to someone I think is pretty great. Between the two they have blessed me with four unbelievable grandchildren that I am certain will be featured in some of my stories.
My brothers and I worked for the family business. An unbelievably successful HVAC company founded by our father and his cousin six plus decades ago. The business owned and operated by Dad and his cousin, my brothers and our cousins is now in its third generation of ownership and going strong. This work has afforded me a life I could never have had without my father, brothers, and cousins. They taught me the work and gave me opportunities to go further than I could have on my own.
Over the course of the five decades I have lived I had many interests and hobbies which may come to light in the posts on this site. I had a passion for water skiing early on. I skied for a local show for years. Of course there was and is deer hunting. I hunted first by bow and then later by rifle as well. That lead to some trips hunting out west too. Then there is the fly fishing for trout. I learned as a child how to handle the fly rod and this love affair will follow me to the grave.
In 2019 I fell. Its that simple. Its that fall, how and why it happened, along with lessons I have learn in recovery that started this blog. I will write about all of it eventually. But that is not all I will post about. I see this as a sort of public diary. I hope you take something from it. Even if its just a good story.
So that’s me; youngest of eight, blessed beyond measure, father, grandpa, hunter, fisherman and a life filled with things to write about.
Tim