Rough week

Ms. Sidney

Well,

No new hobby related work was completed this previous week, seems that real life thought I needed some stress in my life. Its funny how we take things for granted sometimes. I am glad that my hobby usually allows me some escape from the day to day rat race called life, but this past week I lost my hobby mojo.

So where to start, well as some know I am slowly taking commissions again for Saguaro Painting Service and recently I took on a commission for a decent sized Team Yankee commission of about 30 vehicles. For this commission I had to do assembly and it seemed that I was never going to get anything completed because the stack of plastic was not going down. Now this is usually not an issue for me, but this one just seemed to be taking a long time. To make matters worse, I am trying to get this commission completed by the end of the month, oh and one more thing the wife and I were supposed to go out of town for the weekend for Valentines, which would cut down on painting time.

So, I pushed forward, but then on Wednesday, our 16-year-old Black cat Sidney started acting very strange. She had recently lost some weight, but we thought that was normal for an older cat. But then she stopped using her litter box, which was a clear sign something was wrong. So, a trip to the vet was in order on Wednesday night and the vet told us that it would be $500.00 in tests, now the vet was very compassionate and told us we needed to go home and think about two things, one if we do the tests, it could be nothing or it could be something major. In his opinion it looked to be something major due to her symptoms she was having. So, the wife and I had to talk about the other option of having her put down. Well we decided with the vet that the quality of life for treatment, her age and the cost, the best thing was to let her go and make the tough call. She was scheduled for her last visit Thursday night.

So, my wife leaves for work around 6:00 am on Thursday morning, as she was getting of the freeway, I very large section of rolled up carpet padding came off a truck in front of her blocking her whole lane which hit her car. She knew right away that damage was done as she heard something crack and her something dragging. Luckily, she was able to keep control of the vehicle and was just around the corner from her work. The hit caused major damage to the driver side front bumper and front fascia of her car. Her work employees were able to “fix” the car to make it drivable for her trip home and she quickly made a call to our insurance and started a claim, I am thankful that I have a low deductible to pay.

Then as I am driving in to work, my brother text me to let me know that his wife’s father was just diagnosed with stage four terminal lung cancer and they were trying to process that! It seemed that we were being tested and I did not know how much I could handle for one day! All this bad news coming all at once was a lot to take in. I was pretty much numb at work with all the info I had received and was glad to be off on Friday.

My wife made it home and thankfully my son, daughter in law and grand baby came over that night, my son wanting to go with my wife to the vet to say goodbye to Sidney.  It was tough but was the right choice, it was made somewhat easier by the fact that our grand daughter was over and was a happy baby that night. We still have three cats and they of course spent that night looking for Sidney, which hurt us as they did not know what was going on. So, we showered them with lots of cat treats and played with them more than usual.

We decided that we would not go out of town and decided that we would just have a quiet weekend at home, we needed the time to adjust and comprehend everything going on around us. Sunday, I went to my local shop and many folks knew of my rough day and had very kind words. But one friend in particular was very sympathetic, and we had an awesome chat, shed some tears and made each other feel better.

And that’s what is important in this hobby of toy soldiers, the human contact we have with each other. Even though I did not play any games, my friends were there for me on a tough day, they listened and comforted me. To me, gaming is very special, out of all things I can buy, build, earn, time is the one most precious commodity that I can not get back and for my friends to take time out of their games to talk to me to make me feel better is an awesome gift! I am thankful for all my gaming buddies (you know who you are) that helped me this past weekend.

Sorry for the ramble, just had to get this off my chest.

TK