Mom’s Obituary

Priscilla C. Walker

Priscilla C. Walker, 22 year resident of New Port Richey, Florida, formerly of Jamestown, NY, lost her battle to cancer Saturday(February, 17th 2018) at home with her family.

She was born April 2nd, 1951 in Frewsburg, NY the daughter of F. Enos Johnson and C. Barbara Adams Johnson.

She was an animal lover who enjoyed spending time in the sun and reading Fantasy books.

She played on pool leagues in Jamestown and worked at several bars over the years in the area.

She worked at WCA for many years before moving south to Florida. She worked as a Radiology Technician for more than 25 years between WCA and her place of employment in Florida.

Priscilla is survived by Steven C.(Kathy) Birt, Travis R.(Emily) Birt, Michael Q.(Tiffany) Birt; 9 grandchildren and 1 great-grandchild; 3 siblings, Karen Wingate, Susan Johnson, Leroy Johnson.

She was predeceased in death by her parents.

She asked for and received a private family Celebration of Life on a beach in Florida. In lieu of flowers, you can donate to the American Cancer Society in her honor.

Losing my Mom. :(

 

Been really hard for the last couple of years to watch my Mom slowly lose her fight with Cancer. 🙁  She, being the private person she is, told all of us we were not allowed to talk about it. So we have been dealing with this quietly between all of us. Just the immediate family.

It all started in March 2016 when we went out for dinner with Aunt Susie and Mom.  Aunt Susie told us that my Mom had mentioned having some problems since January. We asked Mom about it, and she said she was getting ready to call the doctor to make an appointment. The problem had been going on for 2 months by then. She finally got to the doctors at the end of April, and they discovered cancer.  They scheduled for June to do Surgery, a full 6 months after she started having problems. 🙁 Never let anything that could be cancer wait this long. 🙁

By the time they did the surgery to try and remove it, they were to late, it had already spread.  Then due to complications from surgery chemo was postponed as well for like 3 months.  🙁  It finally started in like October.  She finally had the chemo rounds and then the radiation which took about 5 months and they finally did another scan. At that point they discovered it had spread. 🙁 She had already had the limit of radiation, and they decided they would try another type of Chemo as a last resort to try and buy her time. They told her the best hope was just to try to control how fast it spread. 🙁   Around the end of the year, they told her there was nothing else they could do.

 

We stopped over around my birthday to see her, and she had started to lose weight already from getting the flu and fighting that also.  Well, in visiting her, I managed to get the flu.. So it was 2 weeks before we got over again.  I then got a call from my brother telling me I needed to start stopping over regularly, because she was going down hill quick.  I was unsure how much could change in just 2 weeks, but we of course went over the next day to see how things were going.   Just 2 days shy of 2 weeks since I had seen her, and it brought tears to my eyes seeing my Mom in that condition. 🙁 It is horrible to see someone you care about take a down hill dive like this.  We are basically left waiting for her to die.  She does not have any hope left, and she has given up.

 

As much as I do not want to think about this, or really have to look at this regularly, I do feel that the warning should go out for people.  If you think there is even a chance that you have something wrong with you, do not put off getting checked. In 2 years, my mother went from being reasonably healthy for her age, a few aches and pains, but nothing serious, to laying in a bed, barely moving, and it hurting horribly to move, just waiting to die.  For the sake of those you love, and those who love you, please do not put off getting checked.

She passed peacefully in her sleep with Aunt Susie by her side on 2/17/2018. 🙁

Social problems across the nation

So looking at the news, I see more and more gun and drug problems. Anyone stop to think that maybe, if people could make a living off from their jobs, that maybe, just maybe, they would not be so quick to turn to drugs and violence? I mean seriously? Minimum wage is supposed to be the minimum wage someone can live on in our country, how the hell do they expect you to live on 7.25 an hour? So figure if you are working a 40 hour week, which most part time positions do not, as they do not want to have to pay benefits like insurance and such, you make roughly $290 per week before taxes.. So call it $210 after taxes. So figure, they are making roughly $800 to $1000 per month? Ok, so now lets look at the US National average for rent.. http://www.deptofnumbers.com/rent/us/ Hrm, so call it $900? So you can almost pay rent for 1 month on average with your minimum wage job.. Ok, lets say you live somewhere that you can get an apartment, even a dump for half the national average.. so $450. Now lets figure that you like food.. Food prices have went up a lot over the last few years. but, for the sake of argument, that you manage to somehow eat for $50 per week, far below the US average, but 8% of Americans say they manage it http://www.gallup.com/poll/156416/americans-spend-151-week-food-high-income-180.aspx. So you are spending $200-$250 a month on food. That is bare basics considering I know we can easily blow $100 on food for 2 bags of groceries if we are not careful. So now, out of that $800 per month, we have spent $650-$700 depending on 4 or 5 week month, and looking at an apartment that is half the national average and looking at spending less than 92% of Americans do on food per week. So now you want a phone? TV? Electric?($111) Water? Mandatory health insurance? Car? Public Transportation? You are looking at least one more job, just to cover basic costs.. and that is not even looking at if you are one of the many who actually took college classes and have student loans to pay for that left you still working a minimum wage job.
I see all these people arguing that we need more gun control. No we don’t. We need people who are not desperate to survive. What would you be willing to do to survive? Sell drugs? Hold up a store? Ok, so how about if you have a family and your child is sick? What would you be willing to do for your sick child? Still think it is a gun problem? In a time when corporations are making record profits, why is the middle class dwindling and the lower class growing? I still say they need to tax the crap out of corporate profits for a few years, and tax the crap out of any salary that more than three or four times the national average of $44k. Then raise the minimum wage. If they can not give all the money to the executives without paying huge taxes, and would have to pay large sums of taxes on profits, they are less likely to raise the costs of goods to maintain a high profit margin. I am not saying they should not make profits, but when profits come at the expense of the people doing all the work, maybe it is time for things to change?
Corporate welfare needs to stop. Creating a new slave population by giving people barely enough to live on needs to stop. Everyone taking their share of profits from the basic necessities of life needs to stop. You wonder why our society has a drug and violence problem? I am surprised we do not have more of a problem. They are doing everything they can to make it so we have no choice but to work for them cheap to survive. Seriously. Many places are making it illegal to collect rain water.. Many are making it mandatory that you are connected to the power grid. Gee, I wonder why they wanna take our guns away? It is not a gun problem. It is a desperation problem. We put our mental patients on the street by cutting social programs, give more corporate subsidies, and then the corporate runs news about the guns and violence problems and how we need to cut more social programs so the country can quit losing money. I have an idea, how about we stop paying house and senate 4 times the national average of $44k, stop giving 92 Billion a year away to corporations making Billions and seriously look at making a single payer health care system. All of which will never happen as long as corporations have lobbyists in DC bending our elected officials ears, while the American people do not. Consider this, Corporations can now spending huge amounts of money getting someone elected, then send a lobbyist to Washington DC to hang with them and influence them.
We need to take back our government from big money and big corporations. We need to change the laws again to not allow big corporations to donate to get public officials elected. Our government should not be for sale. Then we can see about making sure everyone has a living wage and decent health care. Then maybe we can fix the “gun and drug” problem, of course, at that point, maybe there will not be one, because people will not be so desperate just to survive.

Been a while since I posted..

So many things have happened since my last blog post..

January 2011, lost my mother in law to COPD related problems.. If you smoke, I sincerely hope you can find it in yourself to quit.. Watching my mother in law suffer from COPD is what convinced Emmy and I to quit.

November 2011, we jumped out of an airplane again! It was awesome! We flipped out of the plane, and because we had done it before, we got to drive the chute longer and everything! It was great!

We went to Bern’s Steakhouse finally! It was great! Love that aged beef! Mouth watering good!

Emmy Proposed to me on Valentines Day! After 18 years of being together, she decided she wanted to be married! So now we are planning a big wedding. I am both thrilled, and ….confused. A lot of extra expenses, but she is the woman I know I want to be with for the rest of my life, and she deserves to be married if that is what she wants. It is just one more expense, and one more thing we have to plan. Scary, but exciting.. More so then the skydiving in some ways. 😉

We got a new car. I love it! A Toyota Prius C Model 2. It is awesome! 50.6 MPG average since we bought the car.  I have gotten as high as 72.5 MPG.. So with a bit of effort, you can save a lot of money with it.

 

 

Weight loss and getting in shape.

So for the last 8 months I have been working out 3 times a week for about 2 hours per session. I have gotten in much better shape, but only lost about 10 lbs really. Well, in the last week, I have changed my diet up. I gave up most carbs and went to eating a lot more veggies and meat and I have lost 10lbs in a week. Pretty impressive considering I have not lost much in the last 8 months. I am thrilled to see it and hope I can keep up with the progress!

Ideas for Valentines Day for the Guys.

Ok, so I know Valentines Day is normally for the women in our lives. However, for any of you ladies interested in getting something for the man in your life, I thought I would link to this article I found. It is not going to be perfect all the way around for all men, but it at least gives some good clues for most of us. Of course, many guys would just as soon you forget us on Valentines Day and just remember us on March 14th! But to each their own.

I said I would post where I am at now…

Machine Low Row Back Extension Abdominal Pectoral Fly
Mon Wed Fri Mon Wed Fri Mon Wed Fri Mon Wed Fri
140 250 175 165
Weight
3 3 3 3
Sets
10 25 25 10
Reps
Machine Rear Deltoid Chest Press Shoulder Press Bicep Curl
Mon Wed Fri Mon Wed Fri Mon Wed Fri Mon Wed Fri
130 170 90 120
Weight
3 3 3 3
Sets
10 10 10 10
Reps
Machine Glutes Seated Leg Press Leg Extension Seated Leg Curl
Mon Wed Fri Mon Wed Fri Mon Wed Fri Mon Wed Fri
150 270 175 150
Weight
6 3 3 3
Sets
10 10 10 10
Reps
Machine Lat Pull Down Assisted Chin Up Triceps Pushdown Assisted Dip
Mon Wed Fri Mon Wed Fri Mon Wed Fri Mon Wed Fri
140 40 70 40
Weight
3 3 3 3
Sets
10 10 10 10
Reps

I also did a bunch of other stuff today.  Played with the Medicine Ball, did several free weight stuff.  All good fun! Was a good workout!

I can not believe….

So I was very surprised recently when we received a phone call from my Grandma and Aunt Susie.  They asked Emmy if we could run down on the 24th to get my Uncle Roy.  Emmy quickly asked,”So how long is he visiting for?”  Which was answered with,”He is not visiting, he is coming to take us back to Michigan.”  I was completely shocked.  How could anyone go back to -3 degree weather when it is 70 degrees plus here?  This just does not make any sense to me.  Ah well.  I am surprised, and disappointed, but I guess it is what my grandmother wants.