Jeff’s blog

As great as it was to spend a whole weekend with my girlfriend, it has been even harder ever since. That week, all we did was everyday stuff, ran the kids around, went to their sports, worked. Which made it not feel like a vacation, but like I belonged there. Which was great, while I was there. The problem is, it made my real home life feel not so much like home anymore.

All I think about when I’m alone now is how much I want to be there. I realize one week doesn’t show how we’ll be actually living together. I realize to drop everything here and move there would be a huge step. I realize our love for each other doesn’t mean we will always get along. I also realize that I don’t care. I can’t stop thinking about the times we have spent together and how happy I am during those times. It sounds corny but it is so true with us, we complete each other.

It doesn’t feel fair that we can be so much in love and we can’t even live in the same state. It feels like I’ve done something wrong and am being punished, it is torture. Thank God for technology. We text while we’re at work, talk on the phone every chance we get (had a 6 hr. 39 min. conversation the other night) and IM when we’re both sitting at home on our computers. As much as we talk or chat, I want more. Maybe I’m being selfish for not being content on what we have but she does so much for me that I haven’t had in a long time. She makes me feel loved. With her words and her voice, with her looks and her touch. She actually wants to be around me and I have missed having that feeling of someone who loves me the way she does. Hell, I may have never had that feeling, I just don’t know anymore.

It’s not fair that the one person who makes me extremely happy lives 600 miles. Don’t give me this crap about life isn’t fair and blah, blah, blah. I don’t care, it isn’t fair and it most certainly sucks. We have both discussed this and we both feel it’s better to have what we do then not have anything at all so we’re both in for the long haul. I just hope, for both our mental states, that it isn’t too long of a haul.

On Friday, we went to our 5th annual Father’s Day weekend camping trip. I took a half day as to get over to my moms and start packing up the vehicles. After some delays on getting everything packed up we were off. As we are heading down there, I’m watching the outside temperature gauge in the van go from 78 degrees all the way to 91 degrees when we get there. First thing I notice as we enter the campgrounds, is there is barely any cell service. Already knew this might be a problem as it was last year, but I was hoping a new tower went up since then, no such luck. We step outside and it was so muggy. We all start unpacking our vehicles and putting up tents. In the past, Tina and I have been the laughing stock because it always took us so long time to put up our tent. This year, Nae and I put it up in about 20 minutes. So I guess we all know who the problem was all these years – lol. After all the tents are up and we are all sweating our asses off. A storm rolls through to the north of us, really cools down the campgrounds, just as it starts to get nice, here come the rest of the crew. We ate supper of burgers, dogs and Brad had brought marinated shrimp all on the grill. Some mac and cheese as well for the kids. Before it gets to dark, we break out the cornhole game that Brad brought. Teams were Tony and I verse Brad and Robert. Brad and I threw against each other and Tony and Robert threw. Brad and I pointed like crazy but we were always cancelling each other out. We quit with 1 game a piece needing a rubber match. We quit when it started to get dark. It started to rain not long after and we tried to play some games under the awning that we keep everything but the rain started coming down at angles with the wind and we decided to pack it up and head for bed. After we get in bed it’s start pouring rain and very windy. I texted Cheri as long as I could in the tent before we both decided to head for bed. Everytime I hit send on a message, I would have to hold my phone up in the air and hope the message went through. I needed that Cheri time too because we hadn’t been able to communicate much during the evening. I’d be doing something and my phone would go nuts during the evening. I finally be somewhere to get service and I’d get 10 or 12 messages at once that were all waiting.

Saturday morning, we get up, have some breakfast and swap stories about our flooding tents as we all had some. Started playing cornhole again, only this time Robert & Kristen had taken the kids fishing so we replace Robert with Randy. Picked up where we left off the night before at 1-1. We took it to a game 7 before Tony and I pulled it out. After that we all went down to the beach. Most of the adults stayed up at the picnic table while some laid out in the sun while the kids all tore off into the water. After awhile, we headed back to the campsite for lunch and relaxation. Kids played and rode around on their bikes while the adults took showers, kicked back, took some naps. ect. Eventually, we ate supper of marinated chicken & more shrimp with potatoes. After stuffing ourselves, we went back to your cornhole game and it just got embarressing. Tony and I realed off win after win for about 8-10 straight victories. Brad didn’t want to quit until he won a game so we had to put lanterns under the boards so we could see the holes in the dark. Brad finally gave in and we went and had some smores and sat around the fire. This was a great time around the fire because Samantha was falling asleep on me. After I sent her to bed, Trevor climbed in my lap and did the same. To this day, I love nothing more than my child to fall asleep on me. I’ll miss that when they grow up. Everyone headed off to bed and I went to the tent for my “Cheri time” As great as this weekend was, it really sucked that Cheri and I couldn’t talk. We rely on modern technology to keep us together and apparently camping isn’t modern enough yet.

Sunday morning, I got woke up to the kids yelling at me because they wanted to give me my father’s day cards. So I got up, and all the father’s opened their cards. The kids cards were great, they made them, I assume last week some time. They both had the Michigan logo on them along with father’s day greetings. Couldn’t have asked for better cards. After breakfast, we started to tear down the tents and get ready to leave. We took the kids down to the beach one last time, this time I got in the water with them. Had a really great time there as well because both kids hovered around me the whole time, it was good time with Trevor because we were out pretty deep and he thought he had to hang on to me, we played together awhile and Samantha would pop over and play as well. Like I said, a really good time. After that we changed clothes and headed home.

Best part of the trip home was I was able to talk to Cheri without holding my arm up in the air. As great as a time as I had camping, it was hard not being able to communicate with her. We tell each other what we’re doing most of the time and I think that’s because we’re so far away we both want to know what each other are doing. I was expecting more questions from the family about what was going on, i’m sure they know the stuff about Tina but was expecting question about Cheri. I think they think it’s just a rebound kind of thing and I’ll eventually tire of it. But I don’t see that happening, I see spending a long time with Cheri. We seem to be perfect for each other, like we’ve been waiting for each other our whole lives. Even though we are 600 miles apart, we feel like we’re together most of the time, thanks to technology. The first time we saw each other again, it was like we known each other our whole lives, it was comfortable, no nervousness or anything. We text good mornings and IM goodnights. We text all day long and when we’re both at our homes we IM until bedtime. We don’t put our lives on hold either, we log off to take care of the kids or other commitments. Which tells me i’m not obsessing, i’m in love. Maybe after Cheri and I have been together for a few years, people will start to see the committment we have for each other and take the relationship as serious as we do.

Anyways, I digress. The camping trip probably doesn’t sound like much to most of you. But I had a really good time and have some good memories of time with the kids and the rest of the family. Some time with my older nieces as well, they came to the family late and I get the feeling they aren’t always comfortable around me. I have fun joking around with them, not sure they always do with me. Oh well, good time was had, that’s all that matters. Now I’m back home to real life, not sure that’s really a good thing but it is what it is.

For my 1st real blog, I want to explain why twitter, facebook and myspace (and maybe this blog) are important to me. Some of you know some of this some of you don’t. Some of you wonder why I like to spend so much time on the computer, this is a lot of the reason why.

It started in October of last year. To avoid getting laid off, Tina had to go to 2nd shift where she had more seniority. It wasn’t too bad, I was still working 1st. We didn’t see each other in the morning but I’m a night person and would stay up late until she got home from work and we’d have about an hour to catch up on the day so it wasn’t too bad. While Tina was at work, I had both kids every evening but we had a weekly get together at my mom’s for supper because my brother had his kids that night. Then a few months ago, they had another layoff. They downsized a lot of departments, so a lot of people got shuffled and I ended up having to go to racking or another shift. I chose to go to 3rd shift as the racking pay would be almost a $3/hr pay cut. So now, I see Tina for a few minutes when I get home in the morning, and about 5 minutes at work. Not much time to talk. Marriage is fine, been married way too long to let something like this get in the way. But I do get lonely to talk to someone (an adult.) And our Wednesday nights are gone because my brother moved closer so we don’t meet at my moms anymore.

This is where the above sites come into play. I’ve gotten in touch with a few people from school that I talk to again (Cheryl & Gary) plus I talk to family a little bit but mostly, I feel connected to other people and that helps with the loneliness. The kids are great but I can’t exactly carry on long conversations with them, and they go to bed at 8 so there’s a few hours when I’m by myself. Anyone who knows me, knows I like my alone time. I’ve always been a loner, but I get way too much of it now. On 3rd, there’s a few people I talk to but no one I really talk to (if you know what I mean.) On 1st I had a few people I could really talk to. Weekends are great, Tina’s home and she’s my best friend. Has been for 15 years. But it gets lonely during the week.

I really like the twitter because everything goes to my phone (if twitter ever gets fixed that is) plus it’s cool to actually communicate with celebrities, makes you realize they are just normal people as well. I don’t have too many “friends” on twitter which is the downside. Facebook is great because I got together with a lot of people from school. Which is real funny if you know me because I absolutely hated school and before, didn’t really want anything to do with most of the people I went to school with. That was why I didn’t go to the last reunion. I think I might actually go to the next one. I got back together with an old friend (Gary) and made a new one that I didn’t talk too much back in school (Cheryl.) Plus with facebook, I have 13 relatives, including some in college and other states that I get to keep up with. Now Myspace is another story, it was the 1st of the 3 that I got hooked on. I like it because I could “decorate” it with backgrounds and pics and such, but I just don’t use it much anymore. The last status update I put on it says “is not updating his status anymore here, come find me on facebook or twitter. There’s a link on my myspace profile page.” There’s only 2 people that I really communicate with on myspace anymore. One (David) has a facebook page, but prefers myspace. We e-mail through myspace here and there. and Chris, who works 2nd shift so I talk to him more outside cyberspace through texting, e-mailing and talking anyways. So I don’t use the myspace very often anymore.

Hope this clears this up some. Helps some of you understand why I’m always trying to get you people signed up for facebook or twitter or why I get cyber”needy” and want to talk. Well this is long enough, so I’m going to say farewell. Almost 800 words for my 1st official blog, hope my website has enough space if they’re all this long – lol.