What A Freakin' Ruckus! 2014 In Review

When was the last time you used the word "ruckus"? Have you ever?

I think it's a word that you have to be a certain age to be familiar with.

Back in the way back when men were men and wore fedora's and spoke with Italian accents in the movies, "ruckus" could be used as a greeting: "Yo' Louie! What's za ruckus pal?" You know. Like "what's happening dawg?", like the youngsters say these days.

Come a little further along to my generation. "Ruckus" had taken on a whole new meaning. By way of example I will relate an instance of my dear mother using the word (believe me, I do not say that facetiously- I loved my Mom and can really look back and laugh about some of our memories, even if they weren't so hot at the time).

Back in the early 80's we lived in a cool old house at 1430 Meade St. in Appleton. This house was so cool, my brother and I had not one, not two, but THREE forts on campus! Seriously! One under the front steps, one under the basement steps, then I had my own private one in my walk in closet. That had a window. Scant feet from the garage roof. Not saying I ever jumped from the closet window to the garage roof, to the ground and took off for downtown, or a girlfriends house or anything. Just saying it was there is all. Digression of mammoth proportions. Only here at www.scotteb66.com

So anyway early on there my brother & I would be upstairs horse-assing around as my Dad called it. Mom would yell up the stairs "what's that ruckus up there you two? This isn't the Romper Room!" (For those unfamiliar with Romper Room or would like to take a trip down memory lane, here you go: CLICK ME-(really). )

A clatter, a bang, a cat screech, a growl, a tire squeal, an indoor firecracker explosion. Anything can be a ruckus. A ruckus is never specifically good or bad. It can be either. Ruckus is almost as versatile as the "F"-Bomb if you think about it.

Somehow I found myself using the word plenty this year. "What a ruckus!' "Damn ruckus!" "What IS that ruckus?"

How this old, seldom used any more word came back into play I have no idea. However I have been re-reading the Celestine Prophesy and that has some things to say about coincidences. Or lack thereof.

The last half of the year I get. I was steeped in nostalgia with spending a lot of time in my hometown, going through the old neighborhoods and watching the memories flit by like changing channels on an old dial TV. Remember that?

WAY off topic but do you remember the first remote controls on dial TV's actually involved a little motor that turned the channel? Great stuff we got to experience in the worlds coming of age!

Back to the point, although I'm not sure there is one: It was weird. Driving around at night in the different area's of town remembering and seeing fleeting ghosts of who lived here, which fight happened there, that girl who lost her life being hit by a car just feet from her house, on her bicycle, in front of her parents. The one you only new casually because she was a freshman and you were just a 7th grader. Angie Fida. Always very nice to everybody, even those of us not quite to her station.

I don't mean that to say she was uppity, she wasn't, but where her friends WERE snobby she was nice.

I've never been able to forget her. She's buried not to far from my family and I go to see her once in awhile for a minute while I'm there.

She was the first (and for the longest time only) experience I had with losing someone in my own age group and someone who wasn't a relative.

I see kid's today lose whole groups of friends in accidents and I feel blessed that Angie was the only such tragedy I had to experience in my youth.

And again I digress. See what I mean? Just a ruckus of thoughts in the head.

So 2014 starts out ok, nothing big. Started with a jointly prepared dinner with friends New Years Eve, followed by a fairly crappy band at a local bar. The only thing that saved that experience was us all playing a prank on our friend Ron (affectionately known as Mo-Ron. We mean "moron", but he thinks it means "everybody needs a little more Ron"). The prank was making it look to the whole place like he had proposed to his girlfriend with a faux gum machine sparkler in her drink. He tried to play it off, but he appeared quite un-comfy for a few minutes!  Super Bowl comes goes. 48th birthday comes and goes. Winter finally departs.

I decided to turn my computer repair hobby into a business. The timing looked good, found a shop right next door to my day job with a pretty low overhead and decided to give it a shot. So I set up shop and it started out ok. The shop was actually paying for itself by the second month.

Then the first whiffs of sh*t hitting the fan started to waft through 2014.

My dog dies. My Great Dane Winnie. My first Dane. My girl Dane that my boy Doberman helped me decide on before he died in 2008.

That's another story too. One I haven't been able to write yet. I've thought it was due to lack of time, but I think it's a matter of I'm just not ready. She had what's probably an "average" lifespan for a Great Dane, but it seemed awfully short to me. She was such a character and I really love her & miss her. I feel bad I went to work that day because I just knew something was wrong.

Next thing it's July and things start getting really crazy.

Kris' Mom,  Arlene goes into the hospital (another story you can find here called "Losing Arlene") for quadruple by-pass which turned into a whole bunch of other things- for the record, she made it and will actually be going home soon, finally. Or what will be home now. In December.

At almost the same time my aunt Donna who is my Mom's sister and my closest relative next to my Dad & brother needed her gall bladder removed. Which turned into a whole bunch of other things.

She unfortunately did not make it and my heart continues to ache. My last times with her are incredible memories that most will not experience and while of course I wish I had more time with her, what I did have was incredible. (If you're curious look for one titled "My Cool Aunt"). The hardest part is that now there are a lot of memories I have that I no longer share with anyone. Donna was the last to share a whole bunch of memories about our family. We used to rundown memory lane all the time. Now a lot of our shared memories are only mine, and in some ways it's hard to accept and it makes me also feel a bit alone. Not in a bad way, but it's definitely strange.

July to August when Donna passed became a blur and the trouble mounted.

At first Kris was having to take off work for extended periods to go stay in Racine to take care of her Dad while her Mom was in the hospital. It got expensive.

It was even more expensive with our kids out of school and a third one staying for the summer.

Initially Donna had been doing better, but when things turned I had to start taking trips to Appleton, which got expensive.

I seriously thought I was going to lose my mind trying to make ends meet. I probably actually did for awhile. Well, I did lose my mind. That's another story I'm not ready to tell yet either, so don't look for it.

August 22, 2014 was Donna's last day with us. My cousin & I and his girlfriend and Donna's two best friends were with her.

According to her Will, my cousin was nominated to take care of things and have everything passed to him. Long story, but Probate, especially for his own mother is not something he would be capable of. I was named to do it if he could not or would not.

I accepted it because, well, I know I'm the only one who knew a lot of how she felt and wanted things to be taken care of.

I had slightly assisted with my sisters funeral (again, another story) and wrote her obituary, but that was the extent of my experience with this sort of thing.

So now I had to plan a funeral and try to do it in a way that my aunt would be proud of and in a way that everybody else would be pleased.

Have you ever experienced this situation? Is it not absolutely unbelievable how some people get bent out of shape about somebody else's funeral? My main participation in my sisters funeral was making sure nothing stupid happened with what others had planned. This time I had to plan and make sure nothing stupid happened. It actually turned out quite well and as much as I'd have rather not had the experience, I think Donna would have been pretty impressed really.

More back & forth and now Kris is running to Racine, I'm running to Appleton, we're both running to Appleton or Racine.

It got expensive. A two income household with two people taking off work and traveling and eating fast food does not work. Money ceases to go out when it ceases to come in.

September came and we thought we'd get a respite.

We go to the Tomahawk Fall Ride every year with friends. This year we barely had time to get the RV ready. We do, we hit the road. 20 miles down the road we stop for air in a tire. Battery dies. Get it going. Another mile down the road the tire we just put air in blows. We have a spare. The tires for this RV are only currently made by one company and they're about $300 so I had stocked up on some used ones I found cheap.

Back on the road after finally finding a garage that had the right size lug wrench to bring us.

Very nervous for miles. We pass Wausau and finally relax a bit. We hit Tomahawk and are just about to our exit when the front tire on the other side blows. The other spares are at home in the garage.

We and all our friends were calling everywhere looking for a tire and finally got one. Got to camp and it was sh*tty and rainy all weekend. One short ride on the bike. The bands sucked. We didn't even stay for the "headliners". By headliners I mean guys using an old bands name, but they weren't really that band.

Made it home without incident which was good. I don't think I could have taken much more.

I had no time for my computer repair shop so it quit paying for itself. We still managed to cover it for a bit, but by October we couldn't pay for it anymore and I had to close it. And bring everything home and find a place for it in the house.

It's December, there's Christmas presents under the tree, but we're still recovering. I believe we will, but I'd be lying if I said I was no longer scared of financial ruin.

In the time since Donna passed, Arlene has gotten better, gotten worse, gotten better, went to a nursing home, back to the hospital, back to a different nursing home, back to the hospital and back to the nursing home.

In that time Kris' father Don has had problems himself.

They've suspected he's been developing Alzhiemers or dementia for awhile. "They" being his family. He's been getting worse in several ways over the past couple months. He ended up in the hospital and then the same nursing home as his wife.

The doctors determined he does not have Alzhiemers or dementia, he was just overdosing on his medicine. Well, they got that under control. But he still see's people who aren't there. He randomly falls, he forgets who his wife & daughters are, he harangues and insults them. An has no clue he's doing it.

Believe me when I tell you Don in his right mind would never do that. He is an incredible man with nothing but love and respect for his wife and daughters. I can tell you it would break his heart if he did know what he was doing.

They decided to send him home. Even though there is no way he could possibly take care of himself.

So Kris' sister Sue took him to her house and now her & Kris take turns being there to take care of him when the other is working.

This past weekend Kris took Don home to Racine. He had doctors appointments and Arlene needed to go home so she could be evaluated in home to see how she would do if released.

She's ok, some work to do yet, but they'll be giving her the ok soon.

Don's appointment didn't turn out as well.

His doctors say despite his feistiness, he's shutting down. Congestive heart failure among other things.

They say soon.

So soon in fact that they decided not to renew any of his prescriptions or schedule any further appointments for check ups.

They believe he'll go to bed one night soon and just not wake up in the morning.

It is such a sad thing to watch. Pretty much 60 years Don & Arlene have been together, living in the same house they always have. The house they raised their family in, the house that still looks pretty much the same with pretty much the same furnishings as when Kris was little. The house that neither will probably live in anymore.

Kris and Sue have been through so much with both of them. Arlene has been through far too much to finally make it through, only to lose her husband and virtually everything about life as she knew it before July.

Believe it or not, there's more. But I'm not going to get into. Living through 2014 once was enough for me.

There were some good things along the way.

Before Winnie passed we adopted another Great Dane girl, Sami the brindle terrorist. She loves Kris & I and the other dogs, but doesn't have much use for any one else. Including our children. Her & Winnie enjoyed their little bit of time together. They decided to be a team against the two black labs in play wars. Of course they'd win by sheer size.

After Donna passed I made a conscious decision to live more like her. Meaning to live and experience life rather than just work and issues.

Kris and I made time to do a few things. We spent some great time visiting with my Dad and step mom. We went to see the Brian Setzer Orchestra's Christmas Extravaganza which was the most incredible show I've ever seen.

Two weeks later I took my son Scott II and another kid, Kyle to see Buddy Guy at the same venue.

My two favorite living artists in two weeks with the best possible company.

Who's Kyle?

Kyle is a 16 year old kid that hasn't probably had the greatest life thus far, but he's an incredible kid, that's becoming an amazing young man. In all of my years as a teenager, probably yours too, I never did as much community service as this kid does.

But that's not how he ended up seeing Buddy Guy as his first concert ever.

That came about because at 16 years old he happens to be one helluva blues guitar player.

So good in fact that I maneuvered things to put another band together in addition to Gideon's Radio,  (which happens to have an all original CD called "Solid State" available on I-Tunes, Amazon and wherever digital music is sold- hey! It's my website and I'll make as many shameless plugs as I like!) to showcase his talents and maybe get him noticed while he has that edge of being 16. In the process we ended up getting another talented youngster to join us. Bree is a 20 year old singer who auditioned for The Voice, but didn't quite make it. She's got the talent and the voice and now we have the vehicle to get her and Kyle the experience. So now John the drummer and I are two middle-aged guys with a ton of music experience that we're working on imparting to these kids to help them along and give a little something back to the music that has been such a part of our lives.

Kyle Roberts & The Big Ruckus featuring Bree Morgan. That's right. The Big Ruckus. This all came together quite fast and once there was a show booked because of another bands cancellation, we needed a name. It was quite literally the first name that came to mind for me.

Very unique band that we're going to have a lot of fun with once we get rolling. That's another story that will come eventually too.  If you think you've seen all the "unique" there can be with a band, let me just say Kyle & I sit and the drummer stands. Find that somewhere else! Good luck!

We've got our first show under our belts. A week and a half after coming together.

That happened while John's Mom was recovering from a stroke just a couple weeks ago.

This past Saturday John's Mom passed, and I think it'll be after the New Year before we get back to work. You can follow that progress at www.thebigruckus.com.

It's now December 17th, 2014. Two weeks left in the month and ton's to get done before it's over.

Two weeks before we kiss 2014's sorry ass goodbye and welcome 2015 and see what it has to offer.

What a ruckus 2014 has been.

But remember. "Ruckus" is a very versatile word.

It can be a good or bad thing.

I prefer to see it as good.

As horrible as 2014's ruckus sounds, the truth is, it was also very good in some ways.

The important ways.

People. Life. Memories.

Through the up's & down's, families got closer. They showed what they were made of. That their spirit could not be broken and that they would not give up.

Family and friends that had been out of touch for years were brought back together for moments in time.

New friends were made, new dreams pursued, successes, failures and works in progress are the remnants left in the memories of those of us who lived in the year 2014.

Those  who did not live through 2014 left us with love, with memories and with an impact on our lives that will forever shape our lives.

2014 has been no better or worse than any other years. It's just a year. It had no power to create the triumphs and tragedies that filled it's 365 days. It just was.

At it's end, like every years end we will either sit and reflect on it's good & bad days and be thankful for the good or stew on the bad and we will proceed with cautionary measures into the great unknown of 2015. ("Cautionary measures" is a term used by the World's Greatest Janitor-Wally Zahn- which is again another story I may get to someday-Thanks for everything Wally!).

Good, bad, in between life's a big ruckus.

As long as you don't let it pass you by.