Us

this is us on our wedding day.
I love this woman like no other...

This is harder than i thought!

for someone who is very well versed in software applications and such, this blog is a real pain in the ass! sooner or later i will get this to look and feel the way i want it to, but it will be long and hard i am sure. Tonight, i figured out how to add a "comment" field in here. This is when i wish my son and i were speaking, as he has quite a grip on what is needed in a blog. you know what?!
he has neglected it since Feb. and maybe this will get him going again.

Shit!
I just posted a pic of me back in 1977 at my graduation. it's pretty cool, as all my sibs are with me. (you gotta remember that i am still figuring this blog stuff out)

Well....I talked about past stuff last night. now i will talk about "present".


I am married again (3 years) and have been with this woman for 10 years. she is 12 years younger than I am (which some find shocking) and i couldn't picture life without her. she completes me. How did we meet?...........Glad you asked.....

On December 26th, 1994 I was coming back from a visit in NJ. I reached The port authority in NY and it all came to a standstill. After awhile, Greyhound decided to release an "overflow" bus because there were so many people traveling.(day after Christmas)

This bus was absolutely PACKED!. Just as we were about to leave the station, a man got sick on the bus and was escorted out. She was led on in his place and asssumed the last seat on the bus all the way in the back. (you know? the one that seats three near the bathroom)

I caught a glimpse of this Redhead with eyes that took my breath away and i thought to myself;
"how do i approach this?"
I sat a mulled the situation through my mind over and over again....I mean, here i was.....a guy in a 1967 Brooks black leather motorcycle jacket, short hair (not so anymore), guitar in hand. Basically a "boy" from the wrong side of the tracks...CLEARLY!
I began to "romanticise" the situation and wondered what she was about, as she looked totally lost and drowning in thought.

Well...there were two girls on the bus that were sitting across from each other, but were clearly together and speaking a foreign language. one of them was sitting in the seat next to me and at this point Shannon (my wife) was sitting alone. So here's what I did.....I politely asked the girls if they woulkd like to sit together (knowing full well they would) and asked Shannon if she would mind if i shared her seat with her for that exact reason. She let me sit next to her. We started talking and the more she talked the more i wanted to hear. seemed that she was going back to boston (actually a town in mass. called milford and that she was going to take the orange line (part of the subway system in Mass. that she shouldn't take that late at night)

I had no car or any form of transportation at the time, but told her that I would take her to her car (subway and all) and make sure she got to where she was going. I told her that "chivalry is not dead" and that not every guy had an alterior motive. so we talked some more and the subject of me being a songwriter came up. I had some music that influences me to this day with me and thought that i would share this with her. The first song (our song to this day) that she heard was "Burgundy Heart-Shaped Medallion" by David Wilcox (what a musician he is!)

anyway....I digress, as i always seem to do.

I saw this vision to her bus (after the subway) gave her my number and told her if she ever wanted to see Boston by foot, to give me a call and we could do it. again, i told her no strings attached. I left her and watched her leave and got back on the subway to go home. It was COLD!
the bus i took didn't go all the way to where i lived, so i had to walk a couple of miles to get there well after midnight. All i can say is that it was worth it. She called me on my birthday and everything came together after that. There are no words to describe the feeling that I have for her I write for her now, when I can, as I have always written dark things in the past. I have never known happiness the way I have it now. Would I go back and change anything? No. Everyday she deals with me I love her more. I used to be scared of the way i feel, but now I embrace it.My Wife. My Life. Shannon.

this is me and my siblings. i am in the middle. this is when i was younger than my children are now. i was 18 

Well, this is where it now starts. I really have no idea where this will go, but it should get interesting as I progress. I started this because I found my son's blog and found it interesting. maybe I will post a link to it later, if he ever continues with his. It is quite extensive and hopefully I will be able to do the same thing with mine as I figure things out. This blog has been sitting idle for almost a year because I just don't know what to do with it. I chose "fuktup" as this will probably get there quickly. hopefully it will be interesting enough to keep people coming back.

I am a songwriter (aspiring for decades at this point) who writes "lyrically oriented acoustic music". some call me a "folkie" but to me that dredges up the likes of the Kingston Trio or Burl Ives....I do not fit that genre. They are traditional and I am very far from that. My problem is that I simply cannot perform onstage. Don't know why or where this came from, as 10 years ago I had no problem with it. I realize that being middle aged that I am never gonna be a "superstar" or anything like that, so I am starting to figure out how to get my music into the right hands. I want to write for others. The stage , for me, can go to hell. I don't want it or need it, but, I have to write. I went through my repitore' and have 23 songs I want to submit, 34 more that I am working on and 104 archived. people that come to kind in form of my writing style (lyrically) are Harry Chapin, John Prine, and many others you probably have never heard of. I have copyright issues right now that have me at a complete standstill, (money is the thing) but it hasn't dampened my spirits as I am in search for musicians to play with and record with in my humble studio at my home. Until my copyright issues are tended to, I will not record anywhere but here as I want no one having anything of mine that is unsecured right now.

In the meantime, I get up when I have to, go to work, come home and eat and go to bed.......then repeat this sequence. in the middle of it I write and rewrite. I am divorced once with two children from my first marriage; boy 24 and girl 21. my son hasn't talked to me since he graduated high school for unknown reasons and my daughter talks to me when she can. I feel that my son doesn't talk to me because I may be an embarrassment to him.(you know...being 45 with long hair, pierced ear, tattoos, dark past and being the eternal "rebel without a clue"
Who knows what his problem is? I figure that since he is now a man that someday he will let me know and we can go from there. I miss having him in my life. I can't help but feel that he was somehow misled about me somewhere along the way and I just never had the chance to defend myself. (or explain myself as the case may be)

I am very proud of both of them though. My son graduates from orno maine (university of Maine) this fall.....With honors! My daughter just started there and from what I am told , she is doing well. they both top me out as I never attended college. I went to a vocational school in 1985 because I was going to get reimbursed from my employer at the time (Motorola) but otherwise I have maintained that "hands on, Blue Collar" attitude. I really do hope that as my daughter fumbles around with what to major in that she considers writing.....(they were right! the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.) She writes impeccably. she just needs a little refinement is all. she would fare very well in journalism as well as creative writing.