My Possible Date with Death

Tomorrow marks the 20th anniversary of the passing away of my Uncle Dave and it's got me to thinking about something that I keep in the backburners of my mind on low, and that is the possible family curse. Not so much on the family but on the Davids of the family, particularly my mom's side of the family.

My Uncle Dave is my mom's brother, her oldest brother, and he passed away from a brain tumor which he was diagnosed with about seven years before he died. He was only 37 years old.

My mom's youngest sister Carol married a David. He was the oldest of his siblings and he passed away in 1997 due to leukemia. He was 39.

You're all familiar with my first name.

I am the oldest of my siblings.

And, like it or not (I mainly say that part to myself), I am 33 years old.

None of the other siblings of my mother have passed away or had their spouses pass away from cancer-related causes.

I also think it would totally be ironic for me to get colon cancer as that is how Elizabeth Montgomery met her demise and I've always wanted to get to know her better, however, I wouldn't like to know what having colon cancer, or any cancer for that matter, is.

I know I'm being silly, but it still haunts me, that I'm the third David in the family and I'm getting close to the ages of the other Daves. I would like to say "third time is a charm" however, I also realize that deaths come in threes, and for such similarities between us Daves, I'm not thinking I'm going to be the charmed one.

My Review of Awakening Land, The (1978/TV) (3 DVD Set)

Originally submitted at WB Shop

Unschooled homesteader Sayward Luckett couldn’t read her name if you showed it to her, yet she fell in love with and married agnostic, book-learned frontier lawyer Portius Wheeler. Now it’s time to make a life with him in wild, wooded 1790s Ohio Territory. There will be children, seven in all; joy ...

Awakening Land, The (1978/TV) (3 DVD Set)

Great Liz Montgomery movie!

By David*P from Salt Lake City, UT on 1/27/2010

 

4out of 5

Pros: Informative, Entertaining, Engaging Characters, Original, Great Cinematography, High Production Value

Best Uses: Adult Viewers, Perfect Gift, At Home

Describe Yourself: Movie Buff

I've been waiting years for this awesome TV movie trilogy to be released and Warner Bros has come through! The picture quality overall is great, though there are few places where the film becomes a lighter blue.

And the only disappointment is finding out that in the first part on Disc 1 there are five minutes missing:( I hope Warner Bros can find a better copy of this first disc and make a way for those of us that purchased to get it.

(legalese)

Unicorns! Rainbows! Bunnies! Oh my!! PBBBBBBTTT!!!

Everyone always says that your day is what you make of it. I especially remember my Grandma Slack telling me when I'd complain about having to go to school, especially that part about waking up early, "Now, David, if you just tell yourself 'I'm going to be happy and have a great day' than you will."

BULL SH*T!

I have tried and tried these past couple months, every so often, to look at my job from a different point of view. I will honestly get to the point where I think, "You know? What are you complaining about? It's not that bad. In fact, it's good. You have great co-workers, you make money, and it's close to home." And then I'll take my first call of the day and that is not only blown to smithereens, but it's chewed, swallowed, digested and the crapped out in a big ol' lump of IN YA FACE!!!

Today was no exception. And I know everyone is tired of hearing me complain but I literally will go crazy and blow up if I don't! There is no where for it to go. So I've tried my damnedest since my last blow up here to not say anything about work, I've tried on Facebook and elsewhere, but I just can't do it. I figured that I would save my griping for those that truly understand and that would be my co-workers.

So today at lunch, after a harrowing morning of listening to bigoted blow-hards and crabby ignorant "people", I went into how much I thought it was a bunch of crap to have to put up with it when immediately one of my co-workers shoots me down and says, "You know we have to deal with negativity out there, and I'm sorry, but if you're going to bring negativity to the breaks, I'm going to have to leave."

*SIGH*

So really, I understand where she's coming from because she agrees with what I've been saying all along: it's nothing BUT negativity when dealing with our customers. However, I CAN NOT act like everything is OK, and that I'm fine with people telling me how horrible the company is I work for, how I essentially don't know anything, how I should even flinch at their not paying their bill etcetera. That's not how I'm designed! I'm designed to be me and guess what? ME doesn't give one rat's ass about something so STUPID as an unpaid bill, a broken piece of equipment, nor what you think about what you're paying for. I can't even ACT like I care. Now, were these people to tell me about how their wife is divorcing them, how they don't know how to control their kids, how they feel lost in life, how they enjoy mountain biking, THEN I would truly care.

I felt like Co-worker wanted me to come in and sing about unicorns, and candy, and kittens and clouds just so I can stay positive. Well, screw that!! Every time I do try to be positive, that energy is retaliated with more than double the amount of negativity coming from the customers and I'm not doing it!

I am in the midst of searching for other employment, but please understand, I am have to vent or I will literally have a melt down.

2009...eh!

So it's a couple hours into 2010 and all ready it's great because 1) it's not 2009 and 2) it's peaceful. As part of tradition here is a recap of the past year:

January

• Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America, the first African-American to hold that office. I stayed home from work to watch the inauguration and was so glad I did. The feeling of that day was priceless. It felt like one of hope and joy.
• Michelle's husband, Michael, moved here permanently and it's so nice to have him here.

February

• Mayson held my arm one night at Paul's and looked up at me and said, "Dave, I want to be you. You're funny."
• Bewitched Season Seven was released on DVD. It is my favorite season of Dick Sargent's because of the Salem-centered episodes and other great episodes.
• Went to HOT Katy Perry's concert with Michael and Michelle and it was a lot of fun. And did I mention she's HOT?!!!
• Mayson told me for the first time that he loved me when we had a very fun day playing games and watching Mickey Mouse. It was so sweet!
• Took Mayson to the Safe Kids Fair to see Spider Man. Mayson was so good and well-behaved and it was a lot of fun. We got our pic with the Star Wars characters.

March

• Mayson turned three!! I got him a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Playset that plays the "Hotdog Song" which he loves!
• Mayson's birthday party was held two weeks later at Classic Skating and I was having a really good time and doing really well at skating until dumb a$$ Pibby had to come up behind me and tickle me, not once, but twice causing me to fall down really hard. So then I lost my temper and since I'm such a girl I could only try to slap hit him and almost got kicked out by the manager. I was so embarrassed and I really wanted to end Pibby's life right there.

April

• It was so uneventful I didn't even bother to write about it in my journal.

May

• Paula Abdul released "Here for the Music" and performed it on American Idol. It's seriously such an awesome song and they played it like once on the radio.
• I was invited in studio at 97.1 ZHT to speak to Paula when they interviewed her over the phone and I got to tell her I love her and she said she loved me:) I also got to ask her when she was going to release her music videos on DVD and she said it was all in due time.
• We (my brothers and sisters-in-law...Heather didn't do anything but go get pizza and says she watched Mayson) and some other people re-roofed my parent's house. I didn't think we'd be able to do it but we did a great job. It was HARD work!
• I got a new job at Verizon Wireless in the Customer Service, which I was excited about, because of the benefits and because the Post Office was so boring. I also met awesome people in my training class.

June

• All on the same day, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Mackenzie's niece Sadie passed away. It was such a sad weird day.

July

• After over 20 years, I FINALLY received an apology from Jessica Fitton, via Facebook, for the way she treated me when we "broke up" as friends. It made me feel so good to know that she realized she had hurt me but that she also cared enough to apologize.
• Went to Lagoon with my friends a couple times and it was a lot of fun.
• Found a new Bewitched friend, Dayna, that lives in West Jordan and went over to her house to celebrate the DVD release of the Eighth, and Final, Season when all my friends declined my invitation for a viewing party. It was a lot of fun! However, I had hoped that maybe Dayna and I could start a romantic relationship and I found out she's a lesbian (or at least claims to be...I don't believe it...sorry Dayna!)

August

• My dad started dialysis and it's really strange watching him slowly deteriorate and very painful to see how it's affecting my mom.
• Grandma Pierce suffered a heart attack and stroke on the same day and we were told she wasn't going to make it. I missed many days of work, yet she's still around. It's really sad to see her suffering like that, but she refuses to give up the ghost.

September

• Not much happened except that I was in transition at work and started realizing how much I hated the job.

October

• My 33rd birthday occurred and I had a lot of fun with my friends and family at Pizza Factory again and then seeing one of my all time new favorite movies, "Where the Wild Things Are".
• Got to go to Reno for Halloween for the first time in two years! It was so fun and great to see Andrea and her family and Jone.

November

• Started to work for real at work with no assistance and my supervisor was the biggest ass! Had multiple breakdowns at work and had to come home early just to cope.
• Thanksgiving was nice at the Wilde's again.

December

• Got an earlier shift and a new supervisor, who is so nice, which I thought would help me in my liking my job better, but to no avail.
• The Slack Family Christmas party was a lot of fun.
• Christmas was SCREWED by the fact that I had to work on Christmas Day for four hours missing all the festivities at home.
• The day after Christmas I was violently ill with the flu...projectile vomiting, etc...so I called into work and was out the next three days. Because I decided not to subject my co-workers to my ill-ness, I am now thisclose to being fired because I didn't have enough time to cover it.
• I was thinking I wasn't going to do anything for New Year's, but Michelle came through in a pinch and put together a fun dinner party with a great ham dinner and I brought some awesome homemade Chex mix Mom made. Amanda, Mariah, Natalie and her boyfriend and Kyle were all there. It was a lot of fun and a great way to end the year.

Really, my job has tainted how I view this year along with Grandma Pierce taunting death and my dad just getting increasingly sicker. It wasn't really that bad of year, but it wasn't that great. I just have a feeling 2010 is going to be a stellar year...it has to be starting off with a blue moon!