So it goes...

So I will turn 57 on Tuesday. This is both a non-event and a shock to me. I say a shock because it is hard for me to believe that I am on the far side of fifty. I tell my wife that most days I feel like I'm twenty eight. On those days I do too much around the yard, house and on my bike, I am quickly brought back to reality that I am every bit of my 50 plus years. Those days are usually followed by mornings when I wake and every joint needs a little encouragement to get moving. But I can't complain. My weight is the same as it was 20 years ago. Ever since I turned 40, it has been much more difficult to keep at a constant weight, but I've managed fairly well. It's an ongoing goal of mine not to increase my waist size on my jeans, (like Jerry Seinfeld) because, well, it's a slippery slope. Before you know it, it's sweatpants all the time, including at the grocery store. And I am fairly healthy too. Sure I have some chronic things, like numbness in both my f...

Well, my son turns 20 today, which I think officially makes me old. I tell people that there are days where I barely feel twenty, but they are usually followed by days where I feel 65. So, I guess that's a trade off. Myrtle Beach, 2001 Having just met my nephew's first son, Roy James a day after his birth, I was reminded of my own son's birth. A hot, hot day in August of  '98 we went to the hospital early in the morning. His birth was fairly routine - no complications to speak of with one small exception. When he was delivered, the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck. As a result, he was whisked away to neo-natal ICU immediately after I cut the cord. This made for some very anxious moments. I remember talking to my mom on the phone right before it happened and when they said they were taking him to ICU, I sort of freaked out. It was a precautionary measure for sure, but one that made me very uneasy. The thought of losing a child was frightening and unsett...

Today my mom celebrates her 83rd trip around the sun. If you know our story at all, you know that she is a woman of great perseverance, deep faith and a get-it-done attitude. Having to raise seven of us, almost single-handedly for many years, you begin to understand how these attributes enabled her to keep pressing on through the hard times; because there were a lot of hard times. How people react and respond to adversity shapes who they are, and before you know it you're eighty-something and still leading by example. That's my mom. There are some solid memories of moments in time where Mom was there for me and my siblings. Moments that stood above others enough to make an impact. Once she bought me a cheap desk for my room. It was a poorly made thing, but I'm sure she got a deal on it because money was always tight. Well, two days into it a couple of the nails had popped out and one of the drawers wasn't working. When I complained to her about it saying I didn...

We celebrate another milestone tomorrow. My brother Rob would have been fifty. It is a sad occasion in that I wish he were here so I could have helped him celebrate it. At the same time, I'm choosing to turn it into a happy occasion. The reason being, it's what Rob would have wanted. He would want us to celebrate him, not cry into our beer. If he were around, I have no doubt that he would take all the age jokes and senior citizen cracks and ribbing in stride, and would probably throw some barbs back as well. He'd smile big for the camera - it was his style. You don't see any pictures of Rob with the straight-line, no teeth smile that I have in most pictures of me. He was truly a very happy person an he wanted others to be happy too. In looking back over the past years, there was no birthday of his that really sticks out to me as being special. Because I am in Waukesha and have been for 27 years, I didn't get the chance to go to many of his birthdays. The one I ...

Today would have been my stepfather Jack's 83rd birthday. He died in 1997 of Progressive Supranuclear Palsy or PSP. This is a disease that affects 1 in 100,000 people over the age of 60. It is characterized by loss of balance, changes in mood, inability to control eye movements, depression and a host of other bad things. My mother and he divorced in 1985, so I didn't see him much after that. Though he was far from perfect, he was the only dad I ever  knew. He liked his drink and it was the cause of both of his failed marriages. The outcome of his marriage to Mom was that we inherited a great step-family that we still see and love. We actually lived on the same street as his first wife, Portland Avenue. More ironic is the fact that her name was Mary, as was my mom. At one point there were two Mary McKasy's on Portland Avenue, as if the post office didn't have enough trouble getting things right. While Jack had his faults he gave me many things in this life. He gave...

I spent much of last weekend fishing for musky in the northern reaches of Wisconsin. The weather was, oddly enough, very fall-like. We left from Waukesha on Thursday morning in a steady drizzle and drove for 5 hours in an almost constant rain. My friend who went with admitted he was in a funk and a bit on the cranky side. We got up to Presque Isle about 2:00 and the rain just kept on coming. It rained so hard and long that we didn't even get a chance to fish on Thursday which was part of the reason behind leaving early. We hung out and watched baseball and football that night with the intention of getting a full day of fishing on Friday. Friday we woke to high 40's and a light rain and winds gusting 20-25 mph. We got our warm clothes on and covered it with our rain gear. We committed to trying one lake and if that was too choppy or slow fishing, we would try another. We stopped in town and got some live bait, sucker minnows that were $7.50 each. (Yikes). These are big fish,...