Me

I don’t talk about it a lot. I’ve mentioned it now and again, the fact that I have twice been homeless. Let me explain to you what it’s like.

The Lead Up

I was newly divorced. I divorced my wife because I was working two jobs- for the Fire Department, and as the maintenance director for a steel mill, and she wouldn’t work. Originally, she wasn’t working because the kids were too young and it cost more for daycare than she would make. I was working two jobs to make it happen, then I would come home from work and my wife would tell me it was time for me to mow the lawn. Dinner wouldn’t even be on the table. The house wasn’t clean. She hadn’t done shit all day but watch TV. I got pissed one morning, put the TV on parental lock, and left her a note saying that once the house was clean, she could call me and I would give her the PIN to unlock the TV. That caused a HUGE fight.

Then there came the day that both kids had started school. I told my wife that she could get a part time job during the day. She refused, and said the whole reason she got married was so she wouldn’t have to work. I started feeling like a walking ATM, and told her so. More fights.

Then our female friends started telling the both of us that I was working too hard. After a year of this, during one of my shifts, a woman who worked at the fire department offered me her couch. I never went home again. Two months later, I filed for divorce and got an apartment. My wife accused me of leaving her for the other woman, but didn’t even consider the reasons why I left, even though I told her so.

Losing a Job

While the divorce was pending, the steel mill went into bankruptcy. I was laid off, along with 80% of the rest of the manufacturing division. That hurt, because that job was paying me almost $30k a year, more than I made at the fire department. I did get quite a bit of money out of them later, but that is a story for a later day. Either way, half of my income was now gone.

I was making $1000 every two weeks at the Fire Department. I lost $280 in taxes, leaving me $720 every two weeks. Following the state law formula, the court ordered that I pay $348 to my ex wife, nominally for child support, leaving me with $720 per month to live on. The support was taken from my check before I even saw it, so I wouldn’t be a ‘deadbeat dad.’ The rent on my apartment was $600, then there was electric.

Life Being Homeless

Within two months, I was homeless: I slept on friends’ couches for a couple of weeks. I had been forced to break my lease- I just didn’t have the money. Their wives/girlfriends didn’t like it, they were kinda funny and all, and now my friends were funny, too. (Those of you who get that reference are old, just saying)

So I started living in my car. I got a second job, picking up garbage after the Shamu show at Sea World. That paid less than $7 an hour. I bought a car at a “buy here, pay here.” I wasn’t eating much, I couldn’t afford it. I showered at work. As a perk of the job, the city allowed us to use the gym at the civic center for $20 per month. I joined so I could take showers at the gym. I worked out a lot because the gym was air conditioned.

My meals were wieners and mac n’ cheese. Sometimes I had 7-11 chili dogs, They were cheap. Once a week I treated myself to a drive thru burger. I lost almost 30 pounds that summer, but I was in great shape. I was running the combat challenge in just over three and a half minutes. Not world record time, but respectable. (The standard is 7 minutes or less. At the time, the men’s world record was 1:20, and the women’s was just under 4 minutes, IIRC) Here is what it looks like:

I lived in that car for about three months. I finally found a couple of roommates. There were three of us living in that 3 bedroom apartment: Two men and a woman. I worked two jobs: Fire department and janitor at Sea World. I also went to college at night, so I could make more money.

The point of this story is that I didn’t give up. I didn’t complain about how things were unaffordable. I didn’t stand on the corner and beg for money, nor did I accept charity. I didn’t scream for the government to give me handouts or any of that nonsense.

Today’s bitching and complaining is some weak assed bull crap.

My thoughts on the question from earlier.

In December of 2024, I was in the room when a violent patient attempted to attack a pregnant doctor because she wouldn’t give him the drugs he wanted. I say attempted, because I stepped between them. He tried to punch a pregnant woman. He punched me in the face. He got probation. The secret is, the guy is a criminal douchebag that keeps getting his ass in trouble for hitting women, children, and feeble old men. The first time he got tied up with someone that wasn’t putting up with it, he got his ass handed to him, then went to jail. The system doesn’t handle people like this very well. He has arrests for battery, domestic battery, stalking, and witness intimidation- nearly all of the victims are women and old men.

In the case of this afternoon’s video, the assailant grabbed a woman’s ass. As it turns out, it was the wrong woman’s ass. It was the wrong woman because there was a real man there. I don’t mean real man in some macho, chest thumping sense. No, a real man is one who understands a couple of things:

• Men are put here to defend and protect those who cannot do so for themselves, women and children especially.
• More specifically, men are here to protect THEIR women and children.
• If a man won’t protect others, he isn’t a man.

Women want that as well. A wife will put up with many things- she will help when money is tight. She will put up with your bullshit. All a wife REALLY wants and needs is to feel safe, and it is the husband’s duty to make that happen. If you can’t protect her and make her feel safe, then you have failed in your main and most important duty to her.
I actually showed that video to my wife, and she fully supports my opinion on this. Her statement was “Oh, we aren’t playing that game.” I told her to call the lawyer and come bail me out. The likelihood of a person with a clean record being charged with anything more than a misdemeanor is very low as evidenced by the dirtbag who punched me.

I don’t care. I will fight that fight in court. One thing I won’t EVER do is stand there and watch while somebody takes liberties with my wife. I will do whatever it takes to stop that attack on the two of us, use any necessary force- up to and including deadly force. If I am not willing to do so, then I might as well not have a wife or a carry permit.

One of the people who formed my core beliefs as an adult was Robert Heinlein.

• If it has to be done, a man—a real man—shoots his own dog himself; he doesn’t hire a proxy who may bungle it.
• Law-abiding people hardly dared go into a public park at night. To do so was to risk attack by wolf packs of children, armed with chains, knives, homemade guns, bludgeons… to be hurt at least, robbed most certainly, injured for life probably — or even killed. Murder, drug addiction, larceny, assault, and vandalism were commonplace. Nor were parks the only places — these things happened also on the streets in daylight, on school grounds, even inside school buildings. But parks were so notoriously unsafe that honest people stayed clear of them after dark.

Nowadays, many people think they are “more civilized” because they don’t believe in things like duty, responsibility, and honor. They think concepts like personal responsibility and sacrifice are outdated and quaint. They can’t even fathom things like spanking a child. We are civilized, don’t you know.

So now we are expected to put up with people grabbing our wives. We must do nothing but stare at the floor in shame and call the police. Who will do nothing but take a report and “take cover” behind their police car until the violence is done.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, the kind of person who leaves the defense of my loved ones to others. If you try to attack my wife (and make no mistake, grabbing her ass is a sexual attack) you are about to experience some serious repercussions.

Whatever it costs me to hire an attorney is what it costs.

One of the people on Twitter accused me of White Knight syndrome. At first I thought that he might be right. I had a girlfriend who once accused me of being a professional rescuer in every sense of the word, and she didn’t mean it in a nice way. No, a white knight is one who tries to save everyone. I don’t do that, but I will save my wife. Every time, no exceptions.

As a veteran, as a firefighter, and as a paramedic, I rushed into more dangerous situations than I care to think about. I was willing to die for those people, many of them I haven’t even met. I would do no less for my wife.

It’s my duty as a man, as a husband, and as a human being. I will accept the consequences of that, whatever they may be. One thing I won’t and can’t accept is to stand by while my wife is attacked.

I’m not taking shit. This isn’t bluster- I’ve run towards the sounds of gunshots, into burning buildings, and been into situations where most people won’t go. It’s part of my core beliefs- I won’t bow down to anyone, nor will I allow those I have sworn to protect to suffer or be attacked while I stand by and do nothing.

The last day of the vacation finally arrived. We got up at 7am, went to breakfast in the hotel, then caught a cab to the airport. The plane boarded at 1030 am. For crossing the Atlantic, I always try to fly first class. Why? Because the seats are large, they can lie down flat to form a bed, and it makes a long day otherwise tolerable.

They take your meal order when you get aboard. Soon after the plane took off at 11:10am, I got served the meal. I had a salad, Lasagna, and a pork loin in a tomato gravy that was really good.

Dessert was frozen yogurt with raspberry and granola topping that was outstanding.

While I ate, I watched John Wick, then after I laid my chair down and took a 3 hour nap. I woke up with about 2 hours to go, and they served us finger sandwiches with walnuts, cheese, and crackers as a pre landing snack.

We landed in Boston just after 1pm local time and began our nearly three hour layover for our Orlando flight. When we arrived in Orlando, we were picked up by family and finally got home just after 8pm, which was 2am in Paris. Despite the 3 hour nap, a 20 hour travel day was exhausting.

Our vacation lasted 21 days, spanned 4 countries and an entire ocean. The total cost of the trip was pretty high at just over $15,000, and at the same time was a great value for what we got out of it. It was a great trip and I don’t regret this first attempt at semi-retirement. A good part of it was while I was in Paris, my boss contacted me and offered me three extra days at work, and to entice me into accepting, offered me a $400 per day bonus. Hey, that’s nearly a quarter of the trip paid for.

It pays to be one of two board certified emergency nurses and one of only 5 nurses certified for ultrasound guided IV placement.

To be clear, this series of posts on our European trip is meant to serve as a chronicle of a trip that we returned from 2 weeks ago. Some people seem confused on that point. For OPSEC reasons, I never discuss our travels until after we return. Don’t want anyone who doesn’t have a need to know being aware of our absence.

So this is about day three in Paris, the 20th day of our trip. Being our last day here, we did a bit of shopping, a bit of packing, and some lying around doing nothing. To be quite honest, we had both reached a point where we were just tired of being on this trip. So we went to breakfast, and I want to show some pictures of what a European (French) breakfast looks like. First, there are meats and cheeses:

Fruit:

Baked goods:

along with the Omelet I pictured in other posts.

We walked a couple of blocks to the Champs Elysees. We didn’t get much, mostly because prices were ridiculous. Here is a purse we saw

Yeah. That purse wasn’t big enough to hold $3500 worth of stuff, making the back worth more than anything you would put in it. We walked into the McDonald’s- not to eat, but to establish prices for my Big Mac index. A Big Mac in Paris costs about $10. Just the sandwich.

We stopped by a French pastry shop and bought some Eclairs (chocolate and coffee flavored, if you are interested). We also hit up the Lindt chocolate store. I bought about $150 Euros worth of chocolate. We are still snacking on it two weeks later.

Then it was dinner time and get ready for bed. Tomorrow is a travel day, so it will be a long one.

On the way back to the hotel, I saw a store with a raisable vehicle barrier to prevent smash and grabs.

Today, we continued our bus adventures and also did a cruise on the river Seine.

The island in the middle of the river that contains both the Louvre and Notre Dame used to be a fortress where the king oof France lived. Taking this river tour really reinforced that. You can see how easily defended it was.

We visited the Louvre to see the castle, but we didn’t want to wait in the long lines, brave the crowds, and pay the high fees to enter the museum, but the castle was magnificent.

It was pretty cold. At dinner time, we encountered the first truly rude Frenchman of the entire trip. I didn’t want to drink alcohol and noted that the restaurant we were dining in had Coca Cola, so I ordered one. The waiter presented it to me like it was a bottle of wine and called it “American Champagne” then asked how I wanted my beef prepared- “burned the American way, or the French way.” Dick. It reminded me of this:

After dinner, we went to watch the Eiffel tower at night, as it was on my wife’s bucket list of things she wanted to do while in Paris.

The first 5 minutes of each hour, there are sparkling lights on the tower:

And that was our second day in Paris.

We got up early and had breakfast. The hotel where we were staying provides breakfast as part of the price of renting a room. They had a European style buffet with plenty of ham, fish, cheese, fruit, and some baked goods. They also served omelets to order. This place made the fluffiest ham, cheese and onion omelets I’ve ever had. Once breakfast was done, we headed out to see the sights.

Whenever I visit a town I’ve never been to before, I try to find the double decker busses. They usually charge you a fee for the day, which allows you ride those open topped, double decker busses without restriction. They usually have a circular route around the tourist areas, where they play a narration in several languages, and are a cost effective way to see the sights.

As you can see, the weather wasn’t great for sightseeing.

There were at least two squads of troops patrolling the immediate vicinity of the Eiffel Tower. Note that they have magazines inserted, but also have chamber flags in place. You can see the chamber flags if you zoom into the picture. We would periodically see armed patrols throughout the city, mostly centered around tourist areas. These aren’t parade troops- they appear to be (to my non-soldier Navy eye) regular troops- rifles with the bluing worn off in places, that sort of thing. The beret colors varied- we saw black, dark green, maroon, blue, and black.

These guys were just standing on the banks of the river Seine.

There was a giant shopping mall, two buildings- one for the women that was five stories tall, then you cross a pedestrian bridge over the street to the men’s building, and it was three stories tall. Even the building looked like artwork:

I really like the little cafes that are everywhere. Less of the franchise slop that you find in the US, more of little privately owned places.

The buildings and architecture make me realize just how talented craftsmen used to be. Even in the US, we don’t make stuff like this anymore.

Despite the fact that we rode a bus most of the way, we still managed to walk nearly ten miles, according to my smart watch. After a day like that, it was time to get some dinner and head back to the hotel.

We woke up at our hotel in Barcelona and headed to the train station. Because we didn’t know what to expect, we arrived at the train station 45 minutes early. There wasn’t much of a waiting area, I guess Spaniards don’t arrive early very often. Still, the train station was clean and there was no graffiti. You did have to pass through airport style security, complete with X-rayed luggage. Then they had all of the passengers for the entire train line up cattle style, then pushed all of us into the train at once.

We soon boarded the train and it headed off to France. The train was nice, and since we paid for first class tickets, we got comfortable seats and were seated on the upper deck, surrounded by large windows.

It was a beautiful ride, and the GPS in my phone said we were moving along at 120 miles per hour for most of the trip. It seems like there was a castle about every half a mile or so.

We soon arrived in Paris and took a cab to the hotel. It was rather chilly outside, 46 degrees. There were low clouds that looked a lot like it was about to snow, but I know it was too warm for that. What this did mean for us, was that it would rain every single day we were there.

When we arrived at the hotel, my wife’s true genius at this sort of thing finally made sense. Some of you asked how we managed to turn time share presentations into a free stay, and this is how she did it. We always stay at Hilton hotels. Whenever you do that, you are always approached by someone who offers you 100,000 honors points (Hilton Honors is the company’s loyalty program) or more for listening to their pitch. My wife would say yes, and we would be roped in to a 3 hour time share pitch. Once, she even booked a stay at Myrtle Beach, for which she got even more points. Again, another time share spiel. All told, she earned (we earned) over 2 million points in less than two years.

When she was planning this trip, she found a nice hotel in Paris that was part of the Hilton system and cashed in half a million points for a 5 night stay. When I say this was a nice hotel, I mean when you walk into the lobby, they offer you canapes and champaign while you wait for them to check you in and get your bags to your room. The place was really nice. She was determined to make this trip memorable, because we have been together for twelve years and married for ten.

Once we were in our room, we went to dinner.

Looking at the wine list, I wanted a Riesling, and they wouldn’t only sell non-French wines by the bottle. The wine was 54 Euros for the bottle, and (French) Onion Soup was 15 Euros.

That price was a bit of a shock, but everything, and I do mean everything, in Europe was expensive. Gasoline was 2 Euro per liter, which works out to $8 per gallon. Still, a crock of onion soup costing $20 explains how they afford “free” healthcare, and also explains how Europeans stay so thin.

Dinner was duck confit, followed by a shared crepe for dessert.

In all, dinner was about 180 Euros- yeah. That’s $220 American dollars for dinner, even if you don’t count the wine, the dinner was more than $150.

We walked a block back to the hotel and arrived to find the bed had been turned down, and cans of spring water were left on each bedside table and some jazz was playing in the room. Oddly enough, the song was c’est si bon. Nice touch.

At this point, we are 16 days into our 21 day vacation, but this is debarkation day from the cruise. As we go through customs, there is a new twist. I’ve been to Europe before, but this time, they both take a picture for facial ID and take everyone’s fingerprints. As we traveled about Spain, I noticed African “migrants” in each town, blatantly breaking the law by their mere presence, and selling black market goods by laying them out on the sidewalk.

It seems the world is full of police powers and restrictions for everyone except illegal immigrants, happening everywhere and in every country, almost as if it were an international conspiracy. It’s shit like this that make me understand where the “one world government” theories come from.

We were spending the night here in Barcelona, so we checked in to the hotel then proceeded to walk around and do some sightseeing. This was a charming little book and stationery store near our hotel.

I love writing letters on parchment paper using fountain pens, but that is something almost no one does any more, and I wanted to go in to see what they had. What did they have? Four stories of fine paper, expensive, high-quality pens, and interesting paper goods like these book sized models:

This pen was on sale for more than $2000 Euros- that’s about $2500. I like fine pens, but not this much. A pen costing this much should come with a membership to the blowjob of the month club. If you’re getting screwed, might as well get some foreplay.

We weren’t especially hungry, so we decided for a light dinner. This is what we had:

Along with a few glasses of Sangria:

Off to bed, so we can take the train to Paris in the morning.