I started 2015 working in the oil field. I absolutely loved my job. I met so many good people while working in the field and I worked for a company that in some of the hardest of times I could rely on and from the get go showed me that they invested as much as they could in their employees and treated each other as family. Toledo Mudlogging has taken me to places I never believed I would go to. Unfortunately with the fall of the price of oil jobs began to slow down and they worked me as much as they could. Going into April I had only worked a couple of weeks the whole year. There was a bunch of reasons that I had to leave this job, finances, needing insurance, and something 80% of you all didn't know, I was going to be a father.
Being a father was my driving force to come home for good. Coming home, getting a stable job with insurance, and being home for my family is why I'm here today. Unfortunately life doesn't always work out the way we plan it to be. In June we lost the baby. Kay and I lost out little girl. I spent days being distraught. We kept everything quiet until we knew that the baby was going to be healthy. We were both happy and optimistic. I came home from work one day and was spent so I slept hard; so hard that I missed 29 phone calls and multiple voice mails. By the time I returned that call it was too late. To keep the illusion to the outside world we carried on as if it had never happened. I know that when we were alone and when the lights were out we mourned in our own ways. Kay and I mourned separately. I tried to be her rock when we were together but alone I was distraught.
I'm gonna back up here a bit because in April I had started my new (current) job. April is when I had left Toledo Mudlogging and started working for Reser's Fine Foods as a maintenance tech. This is a job that honestly I didn't know if I was going to be any good at. All my life I've worked retail, call center work, and as a mudlogger looking at rocks. I didn't know much about how to trouble shoot a machine to fix let alone be sanitary about it in the food industry. I was just working in the oil field and make my own lunch covered in drilling fluid and oil. Hell, I bumped my head more often than not because for the last 7 years I wore a hard hat. I knew it was going to be a challenge. Even as I write this I know I'm not great at my job. Sometimes I wonder if I'm barely even good at it but everyday I try to find something new to learn. Luckily here I work with a good group of guys despite the fact that we can all be assholes.
2015 was full of so much loss. Most importantly I lost my uncle Leonard this year. It was hard. I had to watch my mom cry and comfort her while I cried quietly before I would go to bed. I can still remember my uncle's laugh. It was infectious. Of course I already talked about me loosing my little girl. I lost pets this year. When I move back to Kansas from Louisiana my ex Cody kept all the pets. This year we lost our black lab Treble and got closure on Lucky who had gone missing last year. Today I learned that her cat Cooke passed away as well. When Cody and I were together she was always a "daddy's girl" and followed me around. She was one of the few cats that I loved. I'm going to miss her so much. To add to the loss count Kay and I had split twice this year and still are. Despite how much I love her we have some difference that just can't be worked out right now.
The best time I had in 2015 was a trip to Orlando, FL where Kay and I took her children to Disney World and Universal for her daughter's 16th and son's 15th birthdays. OMG if you've never been you need to. Disney World is nothing short of "magical". I was a huge Disney fan as a kid with the likes of Aladdin, the Lion King, and what not. Go, by all means, go. Words don't describe it so here....
Let us not forget Universal Studios.
It was a heck of a time and there are so many more pictures from both but there's just too many to add. Hopefully the pictures speak for themselves about the time that we had.
This is getting long so I'm going to end it here. I may have missed a few things but this is all my year in a nutshell.
I promise for those of you who read these that I'll be blogging more often next year. Just wait because I've got a few things in store.
-Pat!
