theotherstephencobert

[theotherstephencobert]

March 28. 2025 - "The best laid plans of mice and men…"

sigh

I need to backpedal for a moment and tell you something from a few years ago. In the first half of 2013 I was lying in bed one evening when for some reason I decided to check my heartbeat. I got quite concerned when I realized I was skipping beats: I'd get two beats, then a pause, three beats, another pause, two beats and a pause, maybe four beats and… you get the idea. I looked it up online and got the news that the occasional skipped heartbeat is not cause for alarm; I checked at my next doctor's visit and my doctor confirmed it. Just the same, that was at least one reason I got a bicycle that July and started on an exercise and diet program.

Okay, on to 2025. In recent years my weight had gone back up, and even though in the past two or three years I'd gotten it a little under control I still weigh a lot more than I should. This Winter I have been blowing off the bike rides, jogging and trips to the gym because it was just so darn cold out there. (The fact that I got lazy might have had a little something to do with it, too.) This past Tuesday, March 25, I went to the Wesley Pre-op center for (of course) my pre-op for the surgery this Monday. They did all the expected things: temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, etc. They drew some blood, and they also did an EKG.

I thought it was all more or less a formality, but then the nurse gave me the news that the EKG was a little concerning. If I understand correctly, it showed I was having a little TOO much heartbeat skipping. They later informed me that they would have to get clearance from my cardiologist before they could proceed with the surgery on the 31st.

I have been calling my cardiologist's office and the surgeon's office for the past two days, but have gotten no definite word from them. With the weekend coming up and my operation being early Monday morning, I am really wondering if everything is going to fall into place in time and we're gonna get this done. I don't think what's going on in my cecum is going to progress to Stage 4 or anything if they have to postpone the operation for two weeks. And in the past couple of days I have gotten the bike out of storage and gotten some exercise. But this possible (probable?) delay is not doing wonders for my stress level, which I think might already be pretty high.

I will post any updates as I get them.

[theotherstephencobert]

March 20, 2025 - "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans..."

I have a confession to make. A major life event started about two months ago for me. I held off on posting it on social media because it seems as if a lot of misfortune has occurred in my life over the past few years and I didn't want my blog to come across as a replay of the Linda Ronstadt song "Poor Poor Pitiful Me". But it's been going on long enough that it clearly isn't any false diagnosis. And I'll be frank: prayers, positive energy and well-wishes would be appreciated at this time.

You may remember about four years ago I was making jokes about how I had gotten my sh## together, sending a sample to Madison, WI, where Exact Sciences Laboratories, the makers of Cologuard, were located. When I did that in 2020 the results came back negative and I breathed a sigh of relief. Well, they recommend re-testing every 4-5 years, so near the end of 2024 I sent them another sample, well wrapped and sealed. This time the results came back "Abnormal", so my doctor made an appointment for me to get a colonostomy.

On the morning of February 6 I arrived at Kansas Gastroenterology on the far east side of town. The examination took maybe an hour and I was knocked out throug all of it. I was hoping this was going to be one of those "false positives" the commercials for Cologuard admit can hapen, but it was not to be. The doctors found eight polyps in my colon. Seven were pre-cancerous, and one had progressed to cancer. More concerning, the examination found a growth "about the size of a peach" in my cecum (the pouch that connects my small intestine to my colon). The doctors sent a tissue sample to their lab for analysis, and the results came back the next week that there were cancer cells in the tumor.

This is very, very early stage cancer - the doctor described it as "superficial" - but it is cancer and needs to be treated now. The month of February was a plethora of doctor visits of all sorts: blood work, CT scans, discussing my options. A CT scan of my chest revealed a lymph node that one doctor thought was a little suspicious, so on March 14 I had a biopsy done at Wesley Hospital. I got the news back on March 19 that the results were negative: there was no cancer found. I suppose this is something I had better get used to - now that it's established that I have or had cancer, we have to watch and make sure it doesn't gestate or metastasize.

Almost 20 years ago, my daughter Tandra discovered she had Stage 4 cancer that her doctors believed started as colon cancer or ovarian caner. She was only 27 at the time, and by the time it was discovered it had progressed too far for any treatment to save her. I have no doubt that the whole point of me taking care of this now is so the cancer doesn't progress to the point that it's life threatening.

The actual surgery to remove the tumor is scheduled for Monday, March 31, quite early in the morning (I have to report to Wesley Hospital at 5:30 am). Prayers and positive energy for me between now and then will be very much appreciated.

[theotherstephencobert]

February 6, 2025 - 257¾ lbs and falling

Longtime readers of yjis blog may have noticed something about my postings. For the past few years my postings about my exercise program have been a lot fewer and further between, and my postings about my weight have been non-existant. The bicycle riding has had to fall by the wayside in the winter because it has been too cold - and in recent weeks, too snowy and icy - to bike safely. The weight, however, is another matter. This morning, February 6, I stepped on my scale and my weight registered at 257¾. This is the first time since Feb. 2, 2020, that my weight has been under 260 lbs. I am fitting back into clothes I haven't been able to wear in years; in fact, some of them are loose fitting! So maybe you want to ask me, "What happened?" Frankly, I don't know for sure… but I have a pretty good guess. In the first half of 2017 my weight was pretty consistently between 210 and 220. (In fact, on Jan. 1 I hit a decades-low 207.2.) Then, on June 2, my father passed away. I will confess, I was wracked with guilt the next day as I took part in the a River Festival's River Run 10K race; my thoughts were, "My Dad died, Mom is alone for the first time in almost 70 years and here I am, galavanting around downtown Wichita playing games and eating overpriced pizza and lemonade." A week later I joined my brother Dave and his two sons in a visit to my mother in Knoxville. Then I went home to Wichita and pretty much played the game, "Well, life goes on…" My weight passed 230 before June was over, then by September it was over 240. I managed to keep it in the mid 230's to 240's for awhile, and then at the start of June 2019 my mother passed away… and my weight took off. By mid 2022 I was in the mid 280's: as much as I weighed when I started my weight loss program in 2013. The ability of the human mind and human heart to deceive itself has never been gauged and probably never will be. All that time, I would have told you in all sincerity, "But I'm exercising and eating the same as I always have been! I have no idea why all of a sudden I'm putting on so much weight!" I am pretty sure that, back then, I never really took the time to deal with the loss of my parents. Instead of doing something healthy like finding someone to talk with about what I was dealing with, I self-medicated. Some people do this with drugs, alcohol, anorexia, bulimia, etc. Of cpurse, my self-medication was overeating. I stopped regularly recording my weight in September of 2022 (gee, I wonder why?) and started back up in 2024. My weight by then was from the mid 260's to low 270's. Then in the last month and a half I started losing regularly, to where I was in the mid to low 260's. I attribute the loss to finally laying off eating at McDonald's (when it, and a Wendy's, are just a block away, sometimes the convenience is just too much of an incentive.) After these past seven or so years my weight is finally on a downward track. I'm hopeful I can keep it up.

[theotherstephencobert]

YOU WILL NEVER READ A TRUER WORD ON TUMBLR. (Or anywhere else online.)

(Or anywhere else, period.)

[theotherstephencobert]

STRANGE CASE OF DR. CYKYLL AND MR. DEHYDE

The tale of a man who discovered a magic potion that PREVENTED him from turning into a monster

With apologies to Robert Louis Stevenson

There once was a man who called himself Dr. Cykyll. He loved to ride his bicycle. Every day the weather permitted, he would ride his bike everywhere he could: to work, to friends' houses, to the market, to the bank, to the park… anytime he needed or wanted to go somewhere, he would go on his bicycle. On weekends and holidays, Dr. Cykyll would go on trips to towns and special locations hat were a little further away just to enjoy the extra cycling these places allowed him to take in.

But Dr. Cykyll noticed that a strange thing happened when he would ride his bicycle, especially on hot days. He discovered that after a long stretch of riding, his pep and endurance would start to wane. He became less able to maintain the speed or distance that he knew he could ride. He became irritable and edgy. His thinking became less sharp and more confused. In some of the worst times, he became unable to ride his bicycle at all. He became MR. DEHYDE.

But Dr. Cykyll was a smart and alert man, and he sought a solution to his problem. One day he made a wonderful discovery. He discovered that, if he prepared a magical potion created by combining one part of oxygen with two parts of hydrogen, he could go longer distance and ride faster without turning into Mr. Dehyde, or even feeling the warning symptoms of the change starting to happen. Furthermore, even if he started to turn into Mr. Dehyde, if he drank more of this special compound even the symptoms would disappear and he could continue his cycling for as long and as fast as he wanted. He had found a cure for the transformation!

Dr. Cykyll got online and did a little research and discovered this wonderful, magical compound was called "water", and that it was pretty common and had been available for some time. This was a bit of a bummer to him, as he was thinking of patenting the formula and making a bunch of money licensing the manufacture of it. But in the end he was happy to be able to guarantee that he would never have to worry about turning into Mr. Dehyde again.

Thus ends the tale of Dr. Cykyll, the man who discovered a magic potion that PREVENTED him from turning into a monster!

[theotherstephencobert]

Personal Inventory - What the hell happened over the last 7 years?

I have been contemplating it ever since I first became aware it was going on, and I am going to share a few insights into what I think happened. I am not sure even now that I completely understand why it happened, but maybe my putting it down into my Tumblr blog will allow me to see it in perspective.

What I'm talking about is this: I started a health, fitness and weight loss journey back in the summer of 2013. No formal diet, just get in some good exercise and eat healthy foods, lay off the fast food and carbonated drinks, make it a lifestyle change instead of a diet or a quick fix. For four years it worked: I went from a weight of 290 (almost certainly more than that before I started weighing myself weekly) to weight in the neighborhood of 215-225 lbs. I got fit enough to take bicycle trips to small towns 20-25 miles distant. In the scheme of things I added running to my journey and completed a number of sanctioned 10K's. 2017 started out as a banner year for my continued progress. And the, midway through the year, it turned downhill. My weight went up into the 220's then the 230's and then the 240's in the space of just four months. I still rode my bike and ran regularly, but all the progress I'd made with my weight loss just kept reversing itself. I found myself giving the whine of so many people in weight loss programs, "But I'm doing the same thing I've been doing for months [in my case,years], how come all of a sudden it's not working anymore???"

I had been through so much in those four years. I was enrolled in my local YMCA in 2014, and when I reported that I'd lost 45 lbs in the course of the year they did a blurb about me for their online newsletter, "Another Y Success Story". In the summer of 2015 I rode my bike to the small town of Clearwater, KS, some 17 miles from Wichita (a feat that my granddaughter Savannah was quite proud to tell her friends about). Just before Christmas of 2015 a car ran into my left leg in the Walmart parking lot; I had to take time off to heal but then got right back into the journey. Three months later a lowlife jerk ran over my left leg while getting away after robbing me of my change purse (with all of $6 in it). Again, some time to heal and then I was back in the swing of things. I rode my bikes hard and long, and rode them until they fell apart or were trashed. My response was to go buy another bike and get right back onto the road.

So what could have happened in mid 2017 that would make me lose all that progress and then eventaully put the whole journey on hiatus?

I am pretty sure this is at least part of it.

On June 2, 2017, near the end of a bike ride, my mother called me to tell me my father had died. This was the day before I had planned to run the 10K River Run, an official part of the Wichita River Festival, and (ironically) the day before what would have been Mom and Dad's 65th wedding anniversary. Dad had been in failing health, so the fact that he would die soon should not have been a surprise, but the news was still a shock to me. I told the desk clerk on duty at the hotel I manage; she was pretty good friends with my son Travis and called to tell him, and he suggested to his son Jordon that maybe Grandpa needed someone to be with tonight. So that evening Jordon joined me at the hotel and we were together that night and in the morning.

I have detailed the 2017 River Run on this blog and also on my Facebook page, and I will come clean about something here that I did not say on either site: I was wracked with guilt over the whole thing. I wrote about how Dad was very much a family man (which he was) and how I was honoring his memory by taking part in the River Run and River Festival with my grandson. The truth was, I was trying to cover up my feelings of, "My Dad is dead and my Mom just lost her husband of 65 years and I'm galavanting through downtown Wichita with my grandson playing Soccer Ball Billiards and chowing down on overpriced pizza and lemonade." I had been a notorious no-show at family get-togethers and holidays; part of that was I was so busy at the hotel that I didn't take time off for anything, but another part was Wichita is pretty near 1000 miles away from Knoxville by the preferred roads of travel and I was too broke (or too cheap) to afford the air fare or even the bus fare.

The next weekend I went to Knoxville to join my brother David and his two adult sons to visit Mom; it was the first time any of them had seen me in person since my sister Carol's wedding in 1993, and in fact David's sons were 2 and 4 years old then. A running gag was that every hour or so my phone would ring, I would look at the caller ID and roll my eyes and everyone else would laugh. The people at the hotel were blowing up my phne because it was the first time in over a decade I wasn't there to put out the fires and answer questions: "Steve, where do we keep the light bulbs for those new lamps James bought?" "Steve, this guy has a reservation for two nights but he only wants to stay one night. What do I do?" (The laughs were a lot quieter when I got a call from an irate guest at 1:30 in the morning.)

I discussed my feelings of guilt with my sister Carol later on. She confessed that, the weekend I got together with Mom she was scheduled to take her recent high school graduate daughter Rachel to Colorado to apply at the Air Force Academy (not the sort of thing you can bail on or reschedule) and she was wracked with guilt that she didn't join us to visit Mom in her time of mourning.

Anyway… In 2006 I responded to my 27-year-old daughter's death by throwing myself into my work. I was salaried then and so I worked ridiculous long hours, at least once working over 1/2 the total hours in the two-week work cycle. I was running on fumes and fighting off exhaustion. So in 2017, in response to my father's death, I made the (I see now) stupid decision to just go on with my life like nothing had happened… "life goes on" and all that.

I made the mistake of not dealing with my father's death. The problem was, I had no idea how the hell to deal with his death. What was I to do? Sit down and talk with a friend or counselor about my feelings, maybe regularly over time? Go to a rock quarry with a sledgehammer and smash a lot of rocks? I suspect (it didin't seem this way at the time but I am very good at deceiving myself) that I self-medicated with food a lot more than I realized. Remember that "whine" I mentioned at the end of the second paragraph of this post? Truth was I was slipping back into my old habits of eating at fast food places and hydrating with fizz.

My father's death was just the start: Two years later my mother died, almost two years to the day of Dad's passing. I got the call from Carol the morning of July 1 as I was preparing to run the 2019 River Run 10K.) Of course 2020 was the year that damn COVID-19 shut down the world. Then in October of 2021 my ex-wife Teresa (with whom I'd been on good terms since our divorce) died of COVID. And then in February of 2022 my son Travis joined his sister and mother in death. I'd like to say he died of liver failure, but the plain truth is he died of too much whiskey. (As his mom's next of kin he had to tell the hospital not to resuscitate Teresa, and even though that was what his mother had told him her wishes were, he was despondent with guilt over it and medicated with alcohol.)

I was still exercising with the bicycle, but in the time after Mom's passing my weight climbed into the 250's and then into the 260's to 270's where they stayed for a couple of years. Then in mid 2022 my weight went over 280, was consistently there until the start of September when I for some reasom lost interest in recording my weight anymore.

It's been a year and a half since then. My bicycle had two flat tires and a rusted out drive train. My finances (or maybe I should say my priorities) wouldm't allow me to get another bike until just recently. My weight is now in the mid 260's… maybe I did something right between the Fall of 2022 and now.

But I still have to ask: Was the death of my father, and the deaths of other family members, the real reason my health and fitness journey was sidetracked? And if it was, have I REALLY dealt with it? Or like a chiming electric clock that no one replaces the batteries to, has the issue just grown fainter and fainter with time 'til it's at the point I just don't notice it now?

To anyone who took the time to read all of this: I welcome any insights or advice into what might really be going on here and how I might effectively deal with it.

[theotherstephencobert]

March 17, 2024 - The comeback is on!

In this blog I have made many references to what was my favorite bicycle shop in Wichita,, KS, and that wasTom Sawyer's Bicycle Shop. Well, in the latter part of last year (2023) the owner decided to retire, and rather than turn over the reins to someone else he closed the shop. Tom Sawyer's had been a Wichita institution for decades, and when it closed the news was reported on the evening news.

Wichita has quite a few excellent bike shops, and when I needed my bicycle repaired (the tires had gone flat some months earlier) I took it to Bicycle X-Change, the longest-standing bike shop in Wichita. (I think that may have been true even when Tom Sawyer's was still in business.) The conscientious worker I spoke to brought to my attention that the drive train was also rusted out, and in order to make the thing rideable it would cost about $189. This was one of those $120 Walmart mountain bikes, and clearly doing the repairs was not cost effective.

That was a few weeks ago. I got paid this past Friday - lotsa overtime on the check - and so yesterday I went to Bicycle X-Change's east location to get a quality used bike. (Even with overtime I don't make all that much money.) I found this great 7-speed bicycle that suits my needs just fine, and so now I am back on the streets again!

I rode my bike home from the shop on E. Central Ave., about 7-8 miles I reckoned, and maybe I didn't set any speed records but I got some great exercise and took a few more steps in getting back into the swing of health and fitness. In fact I like the bicycle, and the feeling I get when I ride it, so much that I rode it to work yesterday evening.

What with the nicer Spring temperatures, I anticipate the people of Wichita are going to be seeing a lot more of the old guy in the orange t-shirt and the blue bicycle in the coming weeks and months.

[theotherstephencobert]

I AM BACK (and Inspector 12 concurs)

Anybody else remember Polly Rowles? She was an actress whose most memorable movie roles were back in the 1930's in flicks like West Bound Limited and Springtime in the Rockies (both 1937). She had some minor roles in movies into the 1980's and also roles on soaps such as Somerset ad The Edge of Night. I regret to say she passed away in 2001.

But most people nowadays who remember Polly Rowles remember her as the no-nonsense Inspector 12 from Hanes clothing commercials in the 1980's. I am one of those people who remember getting a new pair of pants, reaching into a pocket and finding a slip of paper reading "Inspected by #17" (the number would vary). Apparently someone at the Hanes' ad agency thought it would be interesting to build a commercial series around one of these inspectors and show just how demanding they were and how good the clothes must be to get passed by them. Rowles' catchphrase was, "They don't say Hanes until I say they say Hanes!"

I have been thinking about that commercial a lot as I have started my 2024 resolution to renew my health and fitness journey. Yes, I slacked off. Yes, my health and fitness suffered for it. My weight is at an unhealthy level and I have lost a lot of the stamina I had before about 2022. But I am back now.

I have gotten in a few good-sized runs since the beginnig of the year. My speed is not going to set any records, even in my age group, but speed was never exactly my strong point even in my earlier runs. I am getting back to eating healthy and laying off the fast food and the fizz.

People who have read earlier posts of mine may know that I have lived with a lot of naysayers in my time. I am all too familiar with those who would tell me, "Come off it, Cobert! It's been two years! Who do you think you're kidding, thinking that you're still on any health or fitness journey? Get real and go back to your couch and your Bic Macs and fries! It's over!" It's that kind of talk that reminds me of Inspector 12 and inspires me to reply, "It's not over until I say it's over! And I damn well don't!"

You watch.

You'll see.

[theotherstephencobert]

[theotherstephencobert]

April 4, 2023 - No. I have NOT fallen off the Earth! (Yet, anyway)

Followers of my blog (who, I understand may have gotten a bit fewer in number over the past year or so) have probably noticed that my posts have gotten quite few and far between. Like I posted a Labor Day post last September and haven't posted anything in the seven months since. Some of my followers may have stopped following me, and I can't say I blame them. For those of you still following, perhaps you are wondering, "This guy was so gung-ho about his health and fitness journey. What the hell happened?"

I'll be frank: I think I've been kind of depressed over the past few years. I have slacked off on my exercise journey pretty badly, and my weight has gone up to nearly as high as it was when I began my journey almost ten years ago.

Many years ago, the Hanes clothing company had an ad campaign that I think was called "Inspector 16" Inspector 16 was a tough, no-nonsense clothing inspector, and her catchphrase was, "They don't say 'Hanes' until I say they say 'Hanes'!"

I feel the same way about my health and fitness journey. Yeah, I've been sidelined. And maybe I've had some issues. But, dammit, my journey isn't over until I say it's over! I've come back from getting hit by a car in the Walmart parking lot, and then three months later getting my left leg run over by a guy who robbed me. I shall come back from this, too.

A little news on what's going on here in Wichita: At the beginning of March, the owner of Tom Sawyer's Bicycle Shop (a business I have revferenced many times on this blog) decided to retire after 60 years in business, and the bicycle shop is now permanently closed. There are other good bike shops in Wichita, but I will miss Tom Sawyer's. On a more personal note, about a month ago I had my sleep tested and discovered I have severe sleep apnea. The test revealed I stopped breathing (with a "stop" lasting 10 seconds or more) on the average 63 times every hour. The same test showed I responded well to a C-PAP machine, so I am in line to get one soon.

In the past week I have gone out on a coule of short bicucle rides to get back into the swing of cycling. Today I biked the mile and a half to Sedgwick County Park, rode the 4-mile perimeter route and then biked home. A stiff southerly wind made the ride home a bit of a challenge, but I did complete the ride. Tomorrow they're predicting rain and colder temps so I'll probabl take a rest day. But I am coming back: I've done it before, and I'll do it again.

[theotherstephencobert]

Labor Day 1972 - The Man Upstairs Did WHAT?!?

This Labor Day marks a most interesting anniversary that I wanted to commemorate (or at least write about) this year.

Fifty years ago, 1972, I was 17 years old and living in the Bible Belt state of Tennessee. During Labor Day weekend of that year, on and off I would tune into the Jerry Lewis Labor Day MDA Telethon to check out the entertainment amd to see how much had been raised to fight Muscular Dystrophy. The telethon itself was not without controversy: a number of people took issue with Jerry's very public ways to raise money for the cause. Also, many kids with MD, and their families. took issue with being called "Jerry's Kids". However, as my nephew Dan Cobert brought up in response to one of my Facebook posts, the Telethon at least meant Labor Day was here for SOMETHING and not just because "we need a major holiday between July 4 and Thanksgiving".

In 1972, though, the MDA Telethon had a special bit of notoriety all its own.

In the course of the Telethon, Jerry referred to kids with muscular distrophy as kids that "the Man upstairs goofed when He made them". (I personally remember Lewis saying it a couple of times Saturday evening going into Sunday morning. The timing of the comments probably didn't help matters any.))

The phones at the local (Knoxville) TV station carrying the Telethon were ringing off the hook with religious folks (mostly Christians, I'd guess) expressing their indignation at Lewis' sacrilegious and blasphemous comments. I remember when the show cut away to the local station, the local hosts were trying to keep the 1972 Telethon from turning into a disasteer. I recall local personality Carl Perkins saying something like this: "If you were offended by what Mr. Lewis said, we have the address to the Muscular Dystrophy Association here at the station; you can write to them and Jerry Lewis will get your letter. But PLEASE do not refuse to donate to the MDA or decrease your contribution because of what Mr. Lewis said. If you do not donate this year, you will not be hurting Jerry Lewis, you will be hurting children with muscular dystrophy who need the services and research that your contributions make possible."

I don't remember that controvery ever occuring again during a Labor Day telethon. I suspect there was enouugh of an outcry across the nation that MDA officials probably asked Jerry to cool it with the "Man upstairs" comments in future Telethons.

Incidentally, Jerry's comments came about 9 years prior to Rabbi Harold Kushner publishing his book, "When Bad Things Happen to Good People". Dr. Kushner was inspired to write it after his oldest son, Aaron, died from progeria, a rare disease that causes children to age rapidly and usually die in their early teens. Obviously (no pun intended) more orthodox than Jerry Lewis' emotional comments, Dr. Kushner uses the book of Job in the Bible to try to explain that in this world some things happen that God did not do and cannot or will not prevent. (It seems to me that conclusion is almost inevitable in a world where God has given His creations Free Will.) I know for fact that at least some Christians were quite vocal in their disagreement with Dr. Kushner's conclusions.

[theotherstephencobert]

[theotherstephencobert]

April 29, 2022 - Been too long

For those of you wondering, no, I did not fall off the earth. (Yet, anyway.)

The above is a selfie I took towards the end of a bicycle ride I took this afternoon. I rode to my bank to make a much-needed deposit, then rode around the neighborhood near the bank for a little bit, then back in the direction of home, stopping for a moment at the Kwik Shop (where I took the above pic).

My health and fitness journey has taken a beating in the last five years or so. Shortly after my father died in 2017 my weight started creeping back up. What I didn't understand was, it semed to me I was doing everything just the same as I'd been doing them since 2013: I was getting lots of exercise, watching what I ate -- okay, my eating habits werem't the best, but it didn't seem to me I was eating all that much more -- and I was losing all this ground I'd fainted in the previous four years.

This past Winter was another Winter of Our Discontent.My exercise has pretty much been riding my bike to work and back. Better than nothingm I'll concede, but considering my job is all of one mile from where I live, it was a far cry from day trips to Goddard or Maize. Plus, I missed a lot of days when it was so cold I opted to get a ride rather than brave the elements.

I think it's at least possible I am clinically depressed and haven't acknowledged it. A health care provider suggested it during an in-home visit a couple of months ago. I have a few friends at work who have told me they see the signs of it in me.

I have also had friends suggest that perhaps I have not dealth with the grief in my life. I lost my father in 2017, my mother in 2019, my second ex-wife (with whom I'd bee n on good terms) in late 2021 and my son (my only surviving child) in early 2022.  I have been challenged to examine myself and see if I have been dealing with the grief or just going through the motions and then covering up my feelings. My problem is, it's so hard to see the whole picture when you're in it. "Sometimes the very thing you're looking for is the one thing you can't see."

I'd like to think that, with my ride today, I'm ready to start getting back and regaining ground that I'd lost. But, as always, time will tell.

[theotherstephencobert]

Reblog if your blog is safe for trans followers.

[theotherstephencobert]

I want to make clear that my re-posting of this is not a put-down of the people who offered me words of comfort and encouragement during my recent loss. Those words  were deeply appreciated. But at some times, silence speaks louder than words can.

Wednesday quote

“When someone is going through a storm, your silent presence is more powerful than a million, empty words.” ~Thelma Davis

[theotherstephencobert]

I actually posted this photo her on my blog back in April of 2020 on the occasion of my family helping me move to my new apartment. The man on the right of the photo is my son Travis.

It is with deep sorrow that I must announce that my son, Travis Atwater of Wichita, KS, passed away this morning of liver failure. He was 37.

All prayers, good wishes and positive energies for his family would be very much appreciated.

[theotherstephencobert]