The Ever-Changing Plan

 When my Grandma passed, she left each of us grandkids some inheritance money. With some of that money, Becky and I decided to purchase concert tickets to go see her absolute favorite (and a favorite of mine) Red Hot Chili Peppers since they were reunited with lead guitarist John Frusciante. We were extra excited when we found out that one of their opening bands are one of my favorite bands was The Strokes. I have always wanted to see them.

When we went on the site, we noticed that tickets in our regions were already sold out, and the tickets that were available had possible obstructions or were simply lousy seats. We would purchase the tickets in November, but there was one catch, we were seeing the bands in the city of Philadelphia. 

Why Philadelphia? My sister and her husband live there, and it would be a good chance to visit possibly while we were in town. The concert wasn't until September 2022, and we felt we had a good 10 months to prepare for such a date. 

Numerous things happened in between that time, and this upcoming September...

• My sister and husband announced the wonderful news at Christmas that they were expecting in August 2022, which was great news. 
• Russia invaded the Ukraine.
• Inflation & Gas prices started making life a bitch. 
• Our kitten Neptune that we got from my folks' property in November, started having having health problems in March 2022. 
• Plenty of vet appointments, new diet for the kitten.
• Airports have been horrendous, and looking for hotel, airline combinations were not looking good once we got to June.

So we made some changes to the plan, we didn't like the idea of driving into such a major city like Philadelphia, plus gun-shootings and violence going up also made that less desirable. We decided to kick the concert to the curb (sell the tickets), make plans to visit one of her best friends in West Virginia, and on the way down go to the Toledo Zoo, maybe make it down to Harper's Ferry (W.Va) or even Cumberland Gap much further down in east Tennessee. We started getting weary of Neptune's health, and decided to scratch, Harpers and the Gap, scratching a couple days, making trip shorter in which now I would be passing back through the Toledo area which now had me possibly going to the Glass City APBA Baseball Tournament. Asked the wife, and we decided to do that, while also visiting her friend Melissa, as planned.

Neptune's health gets dramatically worse. He was born with Cerebellar Hypoplasia, and over the past couple months started having seizures, and the vet also believed he probably had a brain tumor on top of that. So they gave us medication that he had to give him two times a day. With that, Becky decided to cancel visiting Melissa, because one of us had to stay to give him the medicine.

A couple weeks ago, we started the meds, at first it seemed to help, and noticed a sliver of improvement, but in a few days it goes to absolute bad. A week ago from today we decided that the next day we would say goodbye to 'Neppy', he was only 10 months old.

My wife decides that she won't let me go down to Glass City alone, and the two older cats, can do well with two nights alone. 

With all that, my sister was due any day now, and her due date was August 13th I believe. We found out on August 19th, that my soon-to-be niece kept breaching and twisting in my sister's stomach, so they decided to plan a C-Section on August 22nd.

So yesterday, my sister and her husband welcomed their beautiful daughter Vivian into the world, all 8 lbs and 12 ounces of her -- and that she would have my grandma's middle name for her middle name. My folks waited a long time to become grandparents, you would figure with four kids that their chances would be great. I was the oldest, but Becky and I weren't blessed to bring a child into the world, but my sister 9 years younger finally made the reality of my folks becoming grandparents a reality at the ages of 65 years young. 

So that's how this ever-changing plan resulted in my first APBA tournament appearance (coming this upcoming Saturday) in three years came to be. Lots has happened since my last tournament (which was also Glass City) with millions of motions in between, and it now all comes full circle. 

Oh, and believe me, this was all the short version.