Twenty years

I was asked by and old friend I haven’t spoken to or seen in twenty years, “So, what have you been up to?”


So, here you go. What I’ve been doing for the last twenty years



Got my GED

Took flying lessons

Discovered I was colorblind and had to stop flying

Went back to school

Went to racing school

Made a few friends

Did a lot of drugs

Moved from friends house to friends house

Joined the Air Force

Went to Texas for Basic Training

Started Tech School in Sheppard Air Force Base

Moody Air Force base Georgia for six months

Flew back to Ridgecrest for vacation, no one had changed

Three hell filled years in Fairbanks Alaska

Thrown out of the Air Force for writing some bad checks

Three months in Federal Prison for the bad checks. (200 dollars worth by the way)

Moved back to Ridgecrest

Realized I will never find work in Ridgecrest

Moved in with my father in Long Beach

Met a girl named Tamara

Got married

Moved to Las Vegas

Back to Ridgecrest

Tamara leaves on my birthday

Shot in the head with a BB on same birthday

Spent the rest of the night in the emergency room

Stayed with Don and Christy for a few weeks

Didn’t like living in their garage

Divorce final

Move back to Long Beach with my dad and his fifth wife

Start work at a record store

Met Dawn

Married Dawn on a whim one month later

Had two daughters

Fired from record store

Start work at another record store

Become assistant manager

Get fired again

Decide to get a big boy job

Work at a mail order pharmacy on permanent temporary status

Get fired because I had to stay home with sick kids

Decide I don’t want to be a complete failure and decide to learn a trade

Attend truck driving school. I like to travel and I get paid. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

I hate it

I drove to New York, ate a hot dog and leave again

Start a job with a hazardous waste pick up company

Worked 13-17 hours a day for two years

Quit that job and started working on the Goodyear blimp

I loved it

Stayed there for two years and was fired for being a stupid liar

Dawn was laid off two days before that

Applied for welfare so the kids would be insured

We both find new jobs within a week

Been here three and a half years now

Dawn wants out

I’m sad but understand

I move out

I met one special friend who helps pull me out of my depression

Got the divorce papers last Saturday

I’m cool with it


 A brief glimpse at the past twenty years.

We must connect.

I’m going a bit backwards today. Maybe it’s the lack of sleep or the boredom at work, but I am just bummed out today. I think the desire to connect with someone in a non-internet sense is getting to me. I really should make friends that are a bit closer to me, someone I could go see after work if I wanted to. I’ve never felt like this before. I’ve never had a desire to connect with others. It’s very foreign to me.

Three unrelated topics

01/12/2010



One of the reasons I picked my apartment was because it’s so close to the Port of Long Beach. I love listening to the ships come into the harbor and blow their horns. It reminds me of being a kid in San Pedro. I guess its a little happy memory from my childhood before everything turned to crap.

This morning I changed my mind. I’m used to hearing a ship come in late at night and it doesn’t usually bother me. At 4:30 I was awaken by a horn. Every two minutes for a half hour they blasted the horn. I couldn’t go back to sleep. I laid there listing to that damn horn. Happy memory shattered.



My friend sent me a box of cookies. I never got them. She checked the tracking and it said the package was left on my doorstep on the 23rd of December. I live in a secure building. It’s locked up all day and night. That means someone in my building took my cookies. Bastards, I hope you feel stupid when you opened the box to see what you could pawn and found cookies.



One my favorite things to do for Dawn, was to make her mix cd’s of music she may like. I would spend hours going through my music collection trying to find the right mix. I don’t get to do this anymore. I miss doing it.

I decided that anyone who wants a cd can have one. I love putting them together. I love exposing people to new music. If you want one, let me know. No two will be the same. Each one will be different and personalized. So, if you want one, hit me up on my Facebook page.



Cheers,

James

Where's Shirley?

I never explained the Verne/James thing. I am named after my fathers great grandfather James and his father Laverne. James Laverne Robison. Laverne went by Verne. He was not my fathers’ biological father. He was his step father. I’ve never met his real father. I don’t care to meet his family, he is the only one I considered grandpa. Dad’s grandfather is a step also. It’s the same on my mothers’ side. No one will say anything about her real father. I recently found out he was a Ukrainian sailor. Grandma won’t say anything else about it. I’m not going to pry.


For the first 13 years of my life I went by Verne. I hated it. I always got teased for my name. It was always “Hey Laverne, where’s Shirley?” To this day I can’t watch Laverne and Shirley without cringing. After the show was canceled, along comes Jim Varney and his stupid “Hey Verne!” crap. After that, the movie Stand By Me had a dumbass character named Verne.

When I started 7th grade I thought, here’s my chance, no more Verne. It was a new school with new people; I would start using my first name. It sort of worked. There were a few people from elementary school who insisted upon calling me Verne. Verne morphed into nerd. For the entire 7th grade and half of 8th grade people called me nerd. It sucked, but it was better then Verne.

When I left Rialto, No one called me Verne anymore. Even my family called me James. Verne was dead.

20 years later.

Verne has been resurrected. With all this digging in to my own past, I decided to reefer to myself as Verne again. It just seemed fitting. I can’t escape my past so I will embrace it.



01/11/2010



I woke up all congested. I took a Claritin. Now I’m all amped up and jittery, but I can breath. Every once in awhile, I’ll think of Dawn, It doesn’t last to long and I go on with my day. It doesn’t get me sad. It’s impossible not to think of her sometimes. It would be foolish to think other wise. You can’t spend every day of your life for thirteen years and not think of them occasionally.

I think I really don’t love her. Those feeling are gone. Sure I’ll always have a spot in my heart for her, but yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s gone. I’m not even angry with her new man. He can give her something I was not able too.



Time to work on Verne I guess.

It's offical

I got served my divorce papers yesterday. I am not sad about it. The person who served me is a friend of Dawns, and all things considering, it was nice to see her again. She is one of the few of Dawn's friends that I actually liked. We chatted for a few minutes yesterday after business was taken care of about what my options are now. I have no plans on fighting this. We verbally agreed on everything so there were no surprises in the papers. I am now technically a single person. The only thing I can't do is get married. I don't plan on doing that again any time soon.

This is the first weekend I've spent alone in awhile. So far the boredom hasn't killed me. I've just been reading, playing my bass and watching movies.
The single life ain't to bad I suppose.

And for those of you that keep track of my Facebook page, I decided to keep Molly the jerk cat around. She's still a baby, she will grow out of it.

Feelin just fine.

01/07/2009


I got to work and emailed Dawn. I asked her if I could see the girls. She said if I am ready to see them that would be fine. We got in a weird conversation about me finding a girlfriend. Talking to your wife (technically we are still married) about that was weird. She told me I need to start dating. I told her I’m considering it.

Last night I had my girls for a few hours. Abby started calling me dad instead of daddy. That kind of made me sad. Dawn picked them up at 8. I used to get a weird feeling in my stomach when I had to see her. Last night it wasn’t there. It was more like; oh the baby momma is coming to get them. After the kids got in the car she said she needed to tell me something. She looked nervous; she looked in my eyes to try to sense what I was thinking. She said she had finally filed the papers and that I will be served on Saturday by her friend. She asked if I am OK. The truth is, I am fine with that. I can close that chapter now. She said I need to eat. I hear that a lot these days. We hugged and I went back inside and watched a movie.

I have to admit, I was sad for a minute. I knew it was coming and I expected it any day now. But it still stung a little. Rejection always hurts no matter how hard you prepare yourself for it. I began to think about what to do next. The answer I came up with is nothing. Nothing I can do about it. Life goes on. It’s been awhile since we broke up and I’m not sad about it anymore. I’m not angry about it. We weren’t happy together, we were two different people. I’m surprised we actually lased as long as we did. I’m off to better things. It’s time to start over with new people and new experiences.

When I get up in the morning, the first thing I do is put on the local news. This morning when I turned on the TV the end of a commercial was on. It said the dawn is your enemy. I laughed at that. She will never be my enemy, she won’t be my friend anytime soon, but she will never be my enemy.





Lithium update.



It seems to be doing its job. I am a lot more stable now, in a better mood more often. I still don’t like having to take pill’s everyday, but it does seem to help me. It isn’t just the Lithium, I’ve met a few people that care about me and have been very supportive through this whole ordeal. So drugs and friends, that’s all I ever needed.



Turns out I like being happy.

Medication - Spiritualized

You see me, I don't care.

01/07/2010


I used to get sad when I thought about us. Now I get angry.


01/16/2010
It was bound to happen sooner or later. I was driving home and saw the ex’s best friend behind me. She got up closer and picked up her phone and called someone. I’m pretty sure she called Dawn to tell her that she was behind me. She stayed in my blind spot for a few minutes. We got off the freeway and she passed me. I caught up to her at a stoplight. I looked her way; she turned her head and looked the other way. I’m not stupid; I’ve known you for thirteen years. I know what you look like Jennifer. You may not like me at all, but playing Jr. High If I don’t see him, he isn’t there games? I hold no animosity towards you. Sure I think it’s weird that you and Dawn both decide to leave your husbands at the same time. But a little wave hello would have been nice. I would have waved back.

Early 80’s

I used to have to see who I was told was a speech therapist in school. I never talked in class so they assumed that I had a problem. I figured out pretty quickly that he wasn’t a speech therapist. I would sit in his little office and play with puppets. He would ask me to draw pictures and tell him what I thought they meant to me. I told him I didn’t want to go anymore. He suggested to my mom that I see a regular therapist. As I mentioned before, that didn’t long either. I went back to my usual loner, quite self and sat under the trees and read on recess. I ate by myself. I made up stories for show and tell. I copied Ginny’s math work every day; the rest of the year was dull.

In sixth grade we had some weird string art project we had to do. We were supposed to pick two colors and make a pattern. That was boring. I used all eight colors. Mr. Smith said that I couldn’t do that, I had to choose and pick only two. I went home and asked my mom to buy some string. I told her I needed it for a project. She went and got me different colored strings. I did the project at home and turned it in. I got an F for being creative.

I rode the bus too and from school. When the driver was in a good mood, she would play the radio. When ever Celebration by Kool & the Gang would play, the kids on the bus would sing along. Should I Stay Or Should I Go came on the radio. Melissa turned to me and said “Verne, you should go.”