Stress is a killer!

Mike Jr Solo Sunday rant on the killer known as stress!

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Welcome, welcome back to another edition of the Free Agent Fans Podcast. It's Mike Jane coming at you guys, and today is Sunday. This would be one of my Sunday solos or Sunday rant. Don't have a Free Agent Fans podcast right now, the post. But next week, well we didn't post last week because it was Mother's Day, first of all. I hope all the mothers out there had a very wonderful Mother's Day. So we didn't post anything. I took the day off. Just kind of reflect and enjoy Mother's Day. It was very exhausting, to say the least. It was fun, but it was exhausting. I spent time with my mom, me and my sister, and her son, and my mom's four great-grandbabies. My sister's fourth ran and a wife. I got a surprise that day because my son showed up. My daughter couldn't be here. She was still in Chicago in college, but my son showed up. And my other daughter, she's always with me in my heart. So my mom got to see at least two of her grandsons and her four grandbabies, because he's the only grandchild with my sister's son's only grandchild with kids. So that was pretty nice for her. For me, it was a little bittersweet because I can't lie, I do miss my mom the way she used to be. If you don't know the backstory, my mom has dementia and depression. And it's starting to, she used to have good days where she'd be herself again, and you know, she would be like, I'm back. I'm myself, I'm this, I'm that, and yada yada yada. But those days are gone. She just kind of comes in and out of she's asleep. And when she's woke, you know, you may get a good conversation out of her for about a few minutes, but it's hard for her to remember what the conversation was about because it's her short-term memory that has been affected. Long-term memory is great. She can tell you everything about my childhood, everything I did, her birthday, her address, all of that. It's just short-term, which seems so unfair because she would otherwise be fine and normal. I just wish they were fine. I hate to use the word normal because, you know, it makes me seem like, I don't know, normal just feels bad. But she would be herself again. You know? And I truly miss that. It it it does hurt because this is somebody that was super strong to me. She was my superhero. You know, I had my dad and my mom's dad, to my grandfather pops, who have both gone home to glory, miss them both. My grandfather pops, he passed when I was in high school. So and I'm in my 50s now, so it's been a while, so uh the grieving process, but I still do miss him. My dad passed some years ago. Still miss him, you know. I used to, especially football season. You know, my dad passed right before the year before Denver got their quarterback. His name slips my mind. My dad lived, he moved from St. Louis to Denver when he came home from the prison. He uh moved out to Denver. Stay out of trouble, and his mom was out there, and he went out there to take care of her. Met a wonderful lady, they became common-law, married, they were together for so long. Wonderful family, all that, you know. So F was doing well. One of my cousins was out there with him, maybe a couple of my cousins were out there with him. So he was uh thriving and doing well out there. And Boat Nick's, I think that's the quarterback's name for uh Denver, he died the year before Boat Nick's first year starting, and Denver had a pretty good year, and it really sucks because my dad used to always say, Oh son, all they need is a quarterback. If they get a quarterback, they're gonna be alright. And he wasn't here to see that and see them making the playoffs and kicking butt now that they have a quarterback. So hopefully he's up there, looking down, watching it and getting a little bit of joy from his Broncos doing well now. But yeah, miss my dad, miss my grandfather, I miss my mom being the way she used to be. Like she was a really strong woman, and it just hurts to see someone that was that strong, her work ethic, you know, she protected her kids like a proud lioness. Me and my three sisters, I mean, she was very, very protective over us and all that. And now to see her, you know, not even be not even go to the bathroom on her own, you know, she has to wear her uh pull-ups, pampers, diapers, or whatever you want to call them. And, you know, she often soils them. Sometimes she'll soil right through them. And if you're not paying attention, if you don't get up and try to force her to go to the bathroom, she may soil your furniture or anything like that. And it just really hurts. And I know other people out there who are experiencing this with their loved one, you know what I'm going through, what I'm talking about. To see someone who taught me how to be strong and work and all that, instill all that into us. It just, you know, it's like she's a kid again. There's nothing we can do about it. I just wish they would find a cure for it. I'm even curious, my mom's gone home to glory before they do just to spare other people. I know other people went. I have a couple of friends who their moms have a friend, a couple of friends, a co-worker, their moms also have dementia and it just really sucks. But anywho, so we didn't post last week because of that. We were enjoying it, but we did have a wonderful meal, and she enjoyed seeing the kids, so it was great for her. And now that she's home and that we're taking care of her, I think that she will probably live a lot longer than she would in the place that she was at prior to us taking her home. And often sometimes I wonder, are we doing her a disservice? Because I look at my mom and I'm like, okay, she is suffering. Because a lot of times when I hug my mom, she'll whisper in my ear, I can't beat this, Michael. I don't know what's wrong. So I know my mom's in there fighting, trying to be herself again, but she can't. You know, she's in there and she's like, well, maybe I can't beat it, but we all know that, I don't know. You know, it would take uh, you know, some intervention from God to beat it. Because I mean, like, I don't know the statistics, but I haven't ever heard of dementia being taking an L, you know, dementia's undefeated. So she's in there and she's trying, and that hurts even more because now with us taking care of her, she we we probably extended her life about who knows, five, ten, fifteen years to have to watch this. And I'm like, did we do her a service? Should we just left her where she was? Because my mom, all tweaky told her mom would probably be, she would be dead by now. If we would have left her, she probably would have, she probably wouldn't have made it through January of this year. But that's a whole other story because there's some we have some complaints against that way, so I can't really talk about it, but she wasn't being taken care of. Properly. She fell from her head. And my mom is, you know, she's a fighter. So we thought that would do it, you know, like, oh man, we're gonna lose her over this, but she's fighting, she's hanging in there, so but I don't know. I feel bad at times, like, okay, I'm extending her suffering because I don't want to watch my mom like this. And then sometimes I feel like, okay, am I being selfish? Is she really suffering? You know, it looks like she is, but she can't tell us if she is. But it just feels like and it looks like, and you know, who wants to not be able to hold a normal conversation and all the stuff that she used to do with my wife's mom? They were like the best of buddies, and she can't hold a conversation with her anymore. My mom loves her dearly. She loves Miss Barbara dearly. And vice versa. Miss Barbara loves my mom, and it's like, this disease came in and just took all that away. You know, and as I sit and think about it, man, I'm like, man, tragedy is just, and I know I'm not, you know, nobody's immune to tragedy, but I just look back and it's like, I really have to focus on the good things that happened in my life because tragedy has taken a lot, man. Took my daughter, seven years old, and she was just the most special little girl that just brought light into any room that she walked into. Once she warmed up to you, once she warmed up to a room, it was like, give her a mic. She's about to do her comedy show. And, you know, it's just, she was just a real bright light and taught me a lot about love. So, and I look at that, you know, how I get over it, I'll never be over, I'll never be the same person that I was before she passed. But I look back at who I am now, and I look back at all the things that she taught me, and that's one of the ways that I, you know, deal with it, cope with it, I guess you could call it. I look back to all she taught me how to not roll rage, you know, she just taught me so much about love. And I've talked about her and she wasn't mine biologically, but in my heart, she was mine in every way, shape, form, and fashion of the word. So, you know, it doesn't make any difference. You know, you think like, oh, okay, well, we can heal heal faster, you know. It wasn't he is biologically, but I was with that child from birth. So a day she was born, November 23rd, 2008. I was with her. I took her to November 23rd, 2008. I can't remember, it may have been Thanksgiving or the day after, I don't know. Maybe it was on the 22nd or 20th, whatever. But she was born on that day, and her mom and myself, we had a week-to-week agreement with my son, who is my biological and, you know, my daughter's brother. And that uh, I don't know if I got her really, but I feel like, you know, I blocked a lot. When I lost her, I blocked a lot out, and her mom had to remind me of how long I had been in her life. Because this is how trauma works. I'm learning about this through my therapist with my PTSD from the military who denied my claim, saying it wasn't they go with that police connected anyway. We're working on it. But um, I learned a lot from my therapist that about the brain and how it tries to protect you. I blocked out an entire maybe what three-year span of being in my daughter's life. I blocked all of her birth and me, you know, taking her like a day after she was born, uh, or two after she was born, because she was a newborn. And I I went over to get my son, and his mom, she was, she was looking really tired. You know, she just had a baby, she was living with my son, he was 10 years old, the baby was new, all that stuff. And I went over and I saw her and I was like, man, she looks tired. I was like, okay, give me a bag, put a bag together, and give me that baby. I'm taking that baby with me. Because I had been online, I seen her, she had took a picture of the baby online on a big old turkey plate, and she was so cute, I was like, oh, that's my baby, give me my baby. And you know, we joked back and forth or whatever, because you know, we had been, we had gotten through all of the nonsense and drama with our son and all this, so we were in a better place, more mature and co-parenting and friends uh at that point. And when Gandhi came along, I can't pause it because I I do sip when I broadcast, and today I'm sipping on American Honey. Please and I just endorsed you. Please pay me. But anyway, so we I went over to the house and I saw that little baby, and I'm like, oh I gotta take this baby with me. You look tired. I mean, she's like, Are you serious? I'm like, yeah. So I had blocked all this out. And I picked up from like maybe three years old. I thought I started hanging out in Gabby's life at round three. And at some point, Kim reminded me, well, her mom reminded me that you know, dude, he was there from like shortly from the days after she was born. You took her, and so I took her, and from that moment on, that was me. Every week I went and got my son, got my daughter. And that was for seven years, every other week. And she was just phenomenal. And I have a lot of stories my son has, he could probably tell you some stories because he was panning. So a lot of times he was like taked off because I treated her differently, you know, and I try to tell my son though, you know, like, man, look, dude, I didn't want to have to come visit you behind a prison glass. So I had to be a little stricter on you and, you know, a little hard edge. My daughter, I didn't really have to spank her much because all I had to do was raise my voice and she would start crying. And oh, Danny, I'm sorry. So it was different. You know, I had different methods. My son, this dude was the type of kid that if I told him, hey, don't touch that stove, it's hot. He looked me right in the face as he would slowly be putting his hand towards the stove to touch it. Like, okay, let's just see. So that was him. So, but, you know, he's maybe uh I I mean, I've always been proud of my son. He he's a really good kid. And, you know, like we all do, we go down roads and we go down dark paths, but he's survived all that. You know, if we're lucky, we survive it. And I am super proud now because he is in the same field that I am in now. He is he has started IT and he got his first job working for the company that I worked for in IT. So he's green, he's new, he doesn't have any, you know, real IT background like I did. I went to school and all that, but you know, I learned about the IT field. You don't really have to do all that anymore. It is so different now because back then in my day, we used to have soldering kids where we could solder chips and all that back to the equipment if something this or that, we have to change our memory. Don't do any of that nowadays. You just send it out for warranty. So IT is a lot of, it's a lot of troubleshooting, problem solving, and people person skills. So if you got that, you can probably do, yeah, you got to know the basics, how to turn things off with the plug-up, things like that. But that can be easily taught. You don't really need all those years of school for that. So kudos to him. He's super happy, super proud of his job. He sends me messages from me, him imaging his first machine, doing all this all by myself. You know, I'm learning, I'm setting up computer dance, yeah, meeting customers. So it's really cool. I'm super proud, super happy. We're gonna go out next weekend and celebrate his new job. And it's also on his birthday. So we're gonna have some fun and as a family because my other, my other daughter, who was my daughter that passed, they were becoming best friends. So she's in town now. We went to, that's why I don't have, I didn't have a real big topic for today. Because we went to Chicago and picked her up, and I'm a little tuckered out. Like, I gotta be honest, I'm I'm tired. We drove and we usually we would go pick her up, we would stay a day, you know, get some rest and hotel. But when we saw those hotel prices, thanks, Donald Trump. When we saw the prices of everything and the price of gas, we were like, look, dude, it's only, I mean, my wife was like, look, it's only four and a half hours. Let's drive there in the morning, get her, get in the car, drive on back home. So, and we did. And we got that rental like six in the morning, got to Chicago. I think we hit the road, maybe eight or something. Got there around noon. We would have got there a lot sooner, but I don't know what was going on with my bladder. I was like stopping like every gas stop. Like, oh, I gotta go again. And it was like a full bladder, though. So, and I intentionally didn't drink a whole lot of water. So I guess I was, I don't know, from the day before I was full of water, but anyway. So we got there, got her packed up, loaded up, hit the road. We got back on the road about five o'clock. Got here, got back home about 9:29, whatever, something like that. Somewhere in the nines. And yeah, took that rental car back. And I mean, we were beating. I'm tired, and I didn't even drive. My wife did the whole drive. She did driving there and driving back. And originally she was gonna drive there, I was gonna drive back, but I have what is it called? Rotator cuff, messed up my arm. I don't know. I guess it's from so here's a public service announcement for everybody. You know, when you get older, you gotta know your body. If you're not growing up or whatever, you gotta know your body. And in my older age, I was still curling the 50-pound weights and doing all the stuff. And I'm not a huge dude, but I am strong. And I was, you know, big on health and all that. But as you get older, man, you gotta scale that down. So I learned, but a little too late. I'm probably gonna have to have surgery on this shoulder because we're gonna try the ortho and the therapy and all that to see, but I need a quick fix so I can get back in the gym. But I'm gonna be back in the gym smarter, you know, because right now all I'm doing is cardio. I still run and I'm just losing weight. Usually I typically, the most I've ever weighed was like two eight. Once I got up to 210, and I'm 6'4. So, you know, I was in pretty nice, you know, because it was it was muscle and workout. But now, before the rotator, I had dropped back down to like 199, 200 pounds. And uh now, since the rotator, I'm at like 189, 190, and I'm like, nah, I don't want to get this small. Because I'm not hitting the gym, I'm just cardio. And, you know, cardio, that's gonna do it. But I also was diagnosed with uh higher cholesterol, so I need to lower that. So the cardio is helping there. And changed my diet, but you know, being the health nut that I was, I had to Google stress and I found out that maybe that's why I should have talked about, you know, stress, man, stress is like they call it the silent killer, and it is. It really did a number on my cholesterol. I looked at my my chart. We have that's what the hospitals here use. I don't know, wherever you at that they use that is anyways a way to see your doctor's business over the years. So I go yearly in my regular doctor business, and I was looking at my cholesterol levels. They were under 200 for F just going there because I was eating right, I was doing my thing. When this happened with my mom several years ago, stress levels swiped. And that's when I first noticed my cholesterol crept up over 200. It was like 219, and my doctor's like, ah, it's not that bad. You don't have to put you on any medicine right now, I don't do that, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I think another year it was at 230, 240, maybe, I don't know. And, you know, still he was like, all right, you need to watch it, you know, blah, blah, blah. But this year, when I went, and now I had to take this statin to bring it down. My cholesterol was at like 280. And I done nothing but stress. And over this last year, with this situation with my mom, and over the last year, I was not diligent in my eating habits. I ate a lot of Chick-fil-A. Now, this is not a bad Chick-fil-A, do not chocolate soup. I'm not saying that they caused me heart problems, but I was eating a lot of that American, the fried chicken sandwich with the cheese and the waffle fried, delicious. Delicious meal, but I was eating it probably way more than I should. I was doing it a lot for lunch, and because it was just convenient, and my job was stressful. You know, uh, we crossed back over and I became a manager, and I don't have enough people on my team, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. So everything in my life, my stress level went dramatically. And I wasn't doing those things. So I have things that I do that keep me from getting stressed out, that relieve my stress, like putting together Legos, writing. I completely stopped writing altogether, and for like a year, you know, and I was promising some more D6 books coming out, and I'm working on another project I was called uh Ashes to Dust. I just stopped writing altogether, wasn't putting together any Legos, wasn't doing any other stress stuff. All I was doing was still working out, turning up my shoulder, unannounced to me, and running. So those were stress relievers too, but all of that helped me stay focused and stay unstressed. So once I got this diagnosis, I started doing the whole 360. I went through the house throwing away, well, the 180, throwing. Everything. Ice cream, potato chips, all that. You know, just got real crazy. And I started doing my research, and they were like, yeah, stress. It's a huge cause of it as well. So I looked back and like, okay, I had to scale down the Chick-fil-A dramatically. Still love it, but just not gonna eat it as much. Scaled out a lot of stuff. You know, I had started back eating pork bacon, which I was big on turkey bacon before, and I was like, I was kidding it in on the real bacon, the delicious pork bacon. So all that stuff I gotta change back and gotta kind of get back to my whole vegetarian vegetable roots, meat, my meats was chicken and fish. Beef every now and then. I rarely eat any pork. The only pork I eat would say outside when I was doing the bacon would be ham on the holidays. So, you know, and I'm I'll probably keep that tradition, but we're gonna see what it looked like in holding. Because I don't want to be taking a pill the rest of my life just to keep my cholesterol down. I want to get the stress out. So I'm back Legoing, I'm back, back writing, doing all that good stuff. And I was actually going to I was actually gonna play a after talk after this podcast, but I didn't realize I would be yammering on this long about what I'm talking about now. So I'm just gonna finish, but we'll do an after talk some other time. I'll save it for another day. I can't record all of the after talks. So some well, I do record Dana all up, but I can't post all of them because some of them audio quality, and like I said in the last uh podcast, I figured out the sound issue with the static and all of that. Working on a fix for that. And the next podcast with the group of fellas, I'm gonna control the crowd more so that we don't get all those over talks, and that's when the static and stuff comes in. And when Big Dog starts laughing like the King of Scarlin all high and shrill, that's when it really, really gets bad. But we'll uh we'll fix all that. And it's gonna get a whole lot better once I get my basement complete. You know, I just I just need to go find me, guys. I mean, for real. I mean, the price of lumber, man. I mean, my basement is 50% done, right? So he did it in two stages, because I had I had the money for the first two stages, and the last two stages, I gotta get, I gotta raise that money. I gotta get that money, right? So my basement is framed up, it's walled up. The last two phases will complete the floor, the electricity, and put the mounting and all that on the wall. So that'll pretty much complete the basement as far as everything I would need to podcast in the room, the air duct, all that. And the last phase would be the bathroom. So that's going to take up the last phase. So but it's framed, bathroom, framed, everything. And I'm going with the same guy because I don't believe in, you know, like I could go out and try to find somebody who's like, hey, can we do this to, you know, make work some deals or whatever? But I like this guy's work. He's uh very good at what he does, and I'm gonna stick with that. So but once all that's done, we'll have it, we'll be in a better place. But back to what I was discussing, stress. You gotta, I don't know, whatever your stress relievers are, you gotta, you gotta tap into those, tune into them, keep them very, very visible in the forefront of what you do, because even they slip up, it only took me a year to completely freak myself out and jack up my cholesterol levels. And I don't know if that's quick, but it seems like quick to me because I've been like all my life, I've never had cholesterol problem. Like I said, I'm in my 50s. So one year is like, oh my gosh. And you know, I'm very, very conscious about my health because I'm taking a statin. You don't want to drink a lot when you have statins, and I'm not a heavy drinker anyway, but to me, this is oh, you need to not drink at all. But I know the rule is, you know, you don't drink one or more than one drink a day while you're on statins or whatever. But I don't even drink that much. Like I'll have a drink when I podcast once a week. Or if I'm with the fellas, we may take some shots or whatever, but I'm not drinking every day. So, and like this is my first drink, like the last week's podcast, because we didn't do anything. And the week before that, when I posted the after talk, I didn't have a drink. Um, so I think what I'll do moving forward is I'll announce what I'm drinking so you guys can know. And American Honey is my favorite, so I do love that. And I did get, I got a bottle of uh, what is it called? I'll have to look, I forgot, but it is really delicious. It's Angel's something. Angel's Door or Door, I don't know. But I'll get it, I'll have it for the next podcast and I'll share the name. And like I said, I'm gonna start trying to project what we'll be talking about in the next week. Now, I won't do that for this next week's podcast because I'll be honest with you guys, I have no clue what I'm gonna talk about. It'll probably be something current event. And there's a lot of current event because I'm probably gonna be solo on that one. Because I don't think I get with the fellas until the 22nd of Oh, wait, so actually. Okay, so yeah, we will. Oh, yeah, 22nd. So I just have no idea what we're podcasting on. Well, anyway. So we're gonna be a free agent fans podcast next Monday with all of the fellas unless something changes that. And moving forward, I will give you an idea of what we're podcasting on for the next week. So you can decide if you want to tune in or not, which you probably will. You probably should, because I mean it's only gonna get better. And I know I talked for years about YouTube, this and that. We're gonna get on YouTube. And I started putting some of the audio recordings on YouTube, but once my room is finished in my basement, we will have video. I got it all set up. Room is set up nicely to do this. And like I said, I'm not getting paid for any of this, guys. It's just something that I like to do. And it's it's a hobby. I think it's fun. If the fellas stop thinking it's fun, I'll still do it by myself because I enjoy doing it. But anyway, I'm gonna let you guys enjoy your Sunday. This will be a solo Sunday, the Free Agent Fans podcast. Check us out at our website, thefreeagentfans.com. Even though I'm doing this on Sunday, I'm gonna post this later so it counts. I post all of our podcasts on Sunday evenings, even the ones that are supposed to, because originally we started out with a Monday podcast, then we started doing the gut check Fridays, and then I start doing solo Sunday. At some point I will go back to that. But right now, it's just every Monday, which actually I post on Sunday evening. So this will go out right after I'm done talking here. So you guys enjoy your week. The Memorial Day holiday is coming up. Get some barbecue in you. So, oh, so that I don't post on holidays. So what I do with the fellas on the 22nd won't air until the next week. So taking off for the holidays. So you guys enjoy your Memorial Day. There will not be anything new. You can come back and listen to this one again because you just love listening to me rant. Or you can listen to anything else on our website at thefreeAsentFans.com. So there you go. I actually did give you a preview of what's coming for next week because it's the holiday, there will not be a Free Agent Fans podcast. But join us the following Monday, which would be the first of June. You guys stay blessed, stay safe. I'm out of the way.