It’s unfortunate it took Krusty’s passing to finally bring me back here. As many of you know, life did a good job of kicking my ass for awhile. Between the pitfalls of life in coal country during the 8 year on coal and Conductor Jr’s battle with cancer, it was a tough road for awhile. Things have worked out. The politicians moved on to other battles, the trains are still running, and Conductor Jr. is alive and well @ 14 with any chance of his cancer returning now down to single digit percentage points.
I have a lot to be thankful for. The Lord took good care of us. If he never answers another prayer I can never say I was dealt a bad hand. I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t affected me though. My view of life, people, and the world we live in have been forever changed, some for the better, and some for the worse. I’m soldiering on though, is hillbillies are the resilient type.
Mrs. Conductor has had a pretty rough time though. She became a shell of her former self. She tried multiple times to readjust to life after cancer, but she hasn’t had any luck. We sold our house and did well. Plans to build fell apart and my 1 year plan ended up being more like a “some undetermined point in the future” plan. I can’t go into too much detail, but We invested every dollar we had to set her up in a business that soon fell apart. It wasn’t actually her fault, but regardless, we ended up with nothing to show for what has amounted to an $80,000 disaster… thus far. There’s a lot more to the whole ordeal, but it really destroyed her psychologically. She got professional help and she’s finally starting resemble (albeit slightly) the person I remember. We’ll get there. Ended up getting a house from family on the cheap and while we’re happy here. It’s small for a family of our size, but it works and it allows us to function as a single income family so she can focus on getting better. The biggest downside for me is the little 1 car garage. I haven’t set it up yet. But it’s going to be a real exercise in efficiency of space and organization.
I’ll get a thread going for my project as soon as I get all the left behind junk cleaned out. Hope all is well with you guys.
