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Penrod Family Reunion

Yesterday was the Penrod family reunion (Julie’s family).  The desired location was Payson Lakes in southern Utah County.   We had five out of six families show up and had a great time.

Highlights

With 26 people it was tough to catch them all on video or camera without making it a dedicated goal, which I didn’t.   I’m not sure even all of my own kids made it on here, so my apologies to anyone who feels like they got shorted or left out.

This was just a one day event at the lake.  We enjoyed the day just relaxing and playing water sports.   The paddle board and kayaks were a great hit and even the little kids loved the water.  I think all but three people got in and got wet.

Three of the families actually decided to do some camping the night before, and so they all got together for a pre-reunion campout.   The other two families (including us) arrived around 11 am and stayed until approximately 5pm.  It was about as much sun as I could take.

The sun burns were surprisingly mild and I was only worried about one child getting heat stroke/exhaustion (mostly because of the ride home with grandparents when the AC stopped working).

Lots of water, lots of fun, and lots of laughter.  It was a fantastic way to spend the day.   I hope that everyone else felt the same way.  We’ll look forward to the Penrod family reunion again next year.

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Making Progress… Slowly

It took a little over a month, but we are finally making progress on the house “remodel” effort.

ENDLESS CLEANING

Most of our first few weeks were simply spent on cleaning out he space to be “remodeled.”  I keep putting that in quotes because it is only partly accurate.  We aren’t technically remodeling the house, we are actually finishing it.  The space we are primarily focused on has never been completed.

For years it has served primarily as a storage room.  Things put into there were neglected and forgotten.   I’ve found countless items I had forgotten I owned, and so have my parents.   I’ve posted several humorous lists about it that you can read here, here, and here.

Here’s a quick glimpse into what this room was when we started.

As you can see, there was a LOT of stuff to go through.  Much of it went into the trailer and was hauled off to the landfill.  Some of the items were good and useful and were moved to a different location in the house.  And some of it is needed to finish this space.  But first it was the cleaning, and it took us a seemingly endless period of time.

I may or not have noticed in the video, but there were open access points directly to the outside.  These allowed birds to almost freely come and go from this room.  This meant that along with dust, we were also cleaning a fair amount of birds nests and feces along with our own possessions.   For the first month we did nothing but cleaning/organizing.  But as I say, it finally feels like we are really making progress.

MAKING PROGRESS 

Insulation

This space is a bit over 1200 square feet.   In the end it will turn into 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, 1 full kitchen, a laundry room,  and a living room (which will likely be filled with that pool table you saw).

A big portion of our cleaning was dealing with those big piles of insulation blocks.  This room is over the garage and needs insulation from that space, and those blocks were always intended for that purpose.  Because the space was never finished, the floor boards were never screwed down and were easy to lift up.  So up they came, and that block insulation went down below it.

This week we were also able to get additional fiberglass insulation blown in on top of those blocks.  This was done to fill in gaps left by the block insulation and to provide the appropriate R-value.   We were able to do this ourselves and was a fairly easy process.

Insulation in floor

Plumbing

The plumbing for a kitchen was already in place, but we needed to add plumbing for the bathroom and wash room.  We started that last week and are almost done.  A good competent professional would probably have been done in about 5 hours, but we’re all either old (Dad), broken (myself) or in need of direction (Julie/kids).

As an aside, Julie has repeatedly proven herself as the best worker amongst us.  She doesn’t always know what to do, but she is the most capable one to do it.   She has definitely been held back by Dad and I because we can’t keep up with her.  Absolutely completely awesome!

One of the challenges slowing us down is the fact that we need to get the plumbing done before we put the floor down, and we need the floor down to build walls, but it is nice to have walls built before you do the plumbing.   We’ve spent a fair amount of time discussing the best order to do things in, and another longer amount of time going back and forth to Home Depot for supplies.

But we’re making progress.  We have the rough plumbing done except for vents that need to go through the walls.  For water supply, we only need to connect to the house water lines AND pray that where we brought the supply through the floor is in the right locations.

Main trunk of rough plumbing
The main trunk of the waste lines made from ABS, before insulation was blown in

NEXT WEEK

Next week we will hopefully be making progress again.  We think that on Monday the HVAC guys will be there to install the gas line for the furnace and to the oven in the kitchen.  When they are done we can start building the interior walls.  We’ve bought the electrical wire to run from the meter to a separate breaker box in this space.    And if all of that gets done we’ll start running the individual electrical lines for outlets and lights.

I won’t hold my breath for all of that getting done next week.  We are painfully slow.  A competent craftsmen could build the walls in half a day.  I think it’ll take us three at least.   Dad used to be more than competent, but 70 is just around the corner for him.   I’m young enough, but just unable to do more than about 30-60 minutes of real work a day (broken into 5-10 minutes segments).

So keep watching and I’ll give you more pics and fun stories about what we’ve got going on.  If you notice the countdown timer at the bottom of the page we are now under 2 months before school starts, so any day we aren’t making progress is a day driving me nuts.

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Feeling Numb

I haven’t posted much lately.  That’s because I’ve been feeling rather numb.

NUMB

As someone with depression, numbness isn’t new to me… and yet it is.  While I have also been feeling quite emotionally numb, what I’m referring too is an actual physical numbness that has taken hold of my left arm.

Tuesday of last week I lost feeling in about 1/2 of my left hand and a good portion of my forearm.   My pinkie, ring finger, the portion of the hand below them, and down into my forearm to my elbow is all tingly and numb.

I don’t think I’m having a slow heart attack, and I don’t remember hitting it on anything.  I have no explanation for why this has happened.  At first I thought my arm had just fallen asleep, but it hasn’t woken up for a week now.

REACTION

I haven’t done anything about it yet.  I called the VA and there was a 15 minute wait on the phone to schedule an appointment, so I hung up.  Waiting that long would have made the rest of me numb too!  If it doesn’t get better than I’ll be force to call back I’m afraid.

I mentioned it at my mental health group meeting last week and one of the VA guys said that my Ulnar nerve runs down the arm and if it were pinched it would cause numbness in those fingers.   I was interested in that, so I looked up more info on it.

ulnar nerve numbness

Turns out he was right.  I often rest the inside of my elbow on the edge of the desk while on the computer.  The cause, symptoms,  and other info here was exactly as I’ve experienced.  Gold-star for Alan!

I says it can go away in a few weeks (!?!) at home.  If not to see a Dr.  If it doesn’t go away then it may need some surgery (!!!).  So, I won’t be spending as much time at my computer desk.  So if you don’t here as much from me you’ll know why.

Post about the insurance call I mentioned last week is still coming.

Josh will hopefully be posting about his first Scout Camp, so look for that upcoming!

Thanks for all the love and support!

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Mental Health Crisis

While I had an absolute blast on Saturday at the Elders Quorum social shootout, it wasn’t all roses and might have started me on the path toward a mental health crisis.

Dealing with Mental Health Issues

While I have several firearms, and feel like I am quite proficient in their use, I don’t actually use them all that often. Last weekend was the first time in 2017.  I think I only had them out once in all of 2016.

I’ve even stopped carrying my sidearm.  I still have my carry permit, fully support carrying, and think it is largely a smart thing to do.  But while I think having one is a good idea for most people, unfortunately I think it might be more dangerous for myself to have one.  Maybe as my treatments at the VA continue this will improve.

I was slightly nervous about the shootout on Saturday, but mostly that was nervousness about other people’s safe handling of the weapons.  And everything at the event was fine.  I felt good.  But later, after returning home, I started not doing so well.

Mental Health Crisis

I don’t know even if it is directly relatable to the shootout.   I was slightly depressed all afternoon afterwards though.  And when I get depressed I want to snack as a way to distract myself.  About 10pm I headed to the store to pick up a bag of chips.  I had the windows down as I drove to feel the cool night air.

There is a Maverick gas station on the corner of  state street and 300 East in Pleasant Grove.  As I went through that intersection a man I didn’t see yelled to someone else, “Hey, will you…(something). ”   I can’t identify why, probably the inflection in his voice similar to somebody else I knew, but something about that sentence had me back at Fort Huachuca in an instant.

As I rounded the corner of that intersection, only a fraction of a second after hearing the words, I was already in a panic.  I was shaking and terrified.  Immediately I pulled over into the Smith’s parking near the same corner.   I spent 20 minutes there just trying to breath; to relax; to convince myself that I WAS safe.  It was as long a 20 minutes as I’ve had in quite a while.

I texted Julie, only telling her that I wish she had come because I was feeling “some anxiety.”  I had thought about telling her to grab Blake (her father) and coming to pick me up.  I was in really bad shape, but I didn’t do that because I didn’t want to reveal to Blake/Joan how bad I was doing.  (Yes, I see the irony of that decision and then sharing it here on the blog.)

Ongoing Issues

The only reason I relate this to the shooting at all is that during the episode I kept hearing the gunshots ringing in my ears.  They’re probably unrelated.

I eventually convinced myself I WAS safe and calmed down.  I made it home just fine.  That was Saturday night.  Sunday was… difficult.  No full blown meltdown at church like I’ve done before, but periods of it were difficult to get through.

Monday was… fine.  Julie has spent several days trying to coax me to talk.  But I don’t know what to say to her.  She can tell I haven’t been well. Nightmares, as expected, have been worse than normal.

Today, Tuesday, wasn’t a great day either.  This morning, still on edge and dealing poorly with the stress, I got a phone call from the insurance which didn’t help (I’ll write more about that in another post).  That was while on the way to my parents to do some work again today.

No work took place though.  While discussing what needed to be done my Dad made some fairly benign comments directed at me that set me off.  I didn’t want to blow up so I just left.  I stood, said I couldn’t handle it today, and left.  Julie tried to stop me saying Dad was just joking.  I said I was leaving and if she wanted a ride home she better get in the car too.  A few minutes later we were on the road back home.

Family is great… but everyone needs a friend!

So here I sit feeling like a grade A loser unable to control his emotions.  I feel like I’m just barely hanging on.   I wish desperately I had a friend to call.  The one and only good friend I feel like I’ve had since my discharge is now way back in Missouri, possibly never to be seen again.  A while back he suggested I get out there and meet people, saying I’m a great guy and will find friends.

Despite feeling like I’ve tried doing that, it hasn’t happened yet.  Everybody else at my stage in life seems to already be set in stone with work, schedules, friends, family.  Nobody has time/room in their life for a needy, broken vet.  I can’t blame them.  I wouldn’t really want to hang out with a depressing mental case either.

I’m desperately missing Joshua, who is at Scout Camp this week.  With him here I could find a reason to get out of the house at least and go help him practice some basketball or golf.

Don’t panic… I know I’m loved.

I know Julie loves me, and so do the kids.  And my parents.  I know that.  I know I can talk to them (despite what happened with my Dad today).  I’m sure I could probably reach a church leader or two.   I know there are people to talk with, even if it is only because of their calling, but I wish I had even one good friend as well who I could call up and get together with.

And I wish I could stop all this damn crying!