Well I have hit 100 postings on my blog, to some that may seem inconsequential but to me it is HUGE!

I do not remember exactly when I got on Facebook. I was on My Space first but never did anything with it, seemed too hard. Once on Facebook for a little while, I started hooking up with old friends, new friends, and even people I did not know and I thought how cool is this medium? It was not long before one day I was looking in my bowl of oatmeal and realized I had something to say. I posted my first oratory on Facebook as a note and received such a huge amount of feedback I decided one day to start a dedicated blog to act as my soapbox. Because that first one was about all the people involved with me getting my oatmeal and the complexity of the situation revolving around the 780 billion dollar stimulus, I decided to call my blog Mr. Oatmeal’s Oratories. When I first started I had no real plan, I thought it might be a political site, maybe a current events site or maybe a follow up to other more biased sites. Well finally I decided, after reading many blogs, that I wanted my blog to be something else altogether. I wanted something that was not divisive, non-political and fun to read, not really something that support could be gathered for.



Once I decided what my site was going to be called and what I was going to talk about, I decided something else that folks have derided me for; not to put a counter and not track at all the people who come and visit. My site was going to be my sometimes daily and sometimes weekly catharsis. A way to deal with my issues or comments on something I found funny, absurd or just stupid. Well that initial thought seems to have proven out just as I had planned. I have blogged about everything from oatmeal to bus stops to sunrises, to my Mom’s death to the ridiculousness of a 5-dollar foot long. I have had supportive comments left on blogs and have seen mean hate filled bile as well. I guess it is true that you can’t please everyone all the time. That never bothered me because they were not for them, they were for me and they always will be for me. I am glad people follow, I am glad people enjoy and I am also glad there are people who hate it, I want to cover all my bases right. I have a few in there that are political, but only when the topic is raised to a level that it concerns me enough to write about. Since I consider myself politically agnostic, I think they are all dumbasses (except my Sister) so as such I find that those types of blogs are the easiest targets. Everything we hear is someone’s opinion and everything we see, a perspective, not an absolute truth – which there is no such thing, by the way.



So what will #100 be about? It is going to be dedicated to my BEAUTIFUL Bride, who has helped me proof them all by listening to me read them. That is no small task for I have such a monotone voice and an awful habit of writing run on sentences. She has endured my anal retentiveness, pig headedness, dumbassedness, and all the other issues that I have for a long time. Today, September 22nd, is 19 years married but we tried each other out for a couple of years before that, seems to have worked out better for me, she was a great catch for me. We have been through all types of adventures, some good, some bad and some I can’t and won’t even tell ya about. She has been my best friend through all of it and I love her so much that it is making me cry thinking about her right now. I remember falling in love with her, slowly over time because of the bizarre nature of the early stages of our relationship. Neither of us would use the “L” word. We had actually lived together for nearly two years before we said the word “Love” in relationship to each other. Funny, looking back, but the anti-relationship (as we called it) removed the pressure of a real relationship and allowed our love to blossom unfettered by artificial bonds of a normal couple.



We got to know each other in a profound way, no pressure and able to openly discuss ANYTHING from leaving the lid off the toothpaste to not performing the maintenance on the vehicles. I would not trade what we have for anything in the world and believe whole-heartedly that the anti-relationship is the way to get started. With all the pressure of a relationship removed, it allowed the flowers of our love to bloom like we soaked the seeds in Miracle Grow. Over the years we have endured good times, hardships and great times and ya know what, through it all, our love has never faltered, not once and I can brag that we have never fought with each other or even yelled at each other in 22 years of hanging out together. She is still my BEST friend and I value her opinions above anyone else. She continues to be the GREAT woman behind the mediocre man. We often joke about how lucky we were to find each other as no one else would have either one of us. I know I am still getting the better end of the deal – she could most assuredly have done better than me.



She worries lately that she is not contributing like she used to. She is not able to work since she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. That has to be one of the cruelest diseases. Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, is a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in mood, energy, activity levels. It also presents challenges to the basic ability to carry out the simplest of day-to-day tasks. Her symptoms have at times been severe and debilitating. They are so much different from the normal ups and downs that everyone goes through in their life and throughout their normal days. Luckily, bipolar disorder can be treated and we finally have found a great doctor who has helped us a lot. There are still the challenges of medication changes, for those who take Psychotropic medications you know. Her symptoms were not easy to spot, they seemed like a wide variety of separate issues. It took a number of years and an even larger number of doctors to recognize that all the symptoms were part of a larger problem. Bipolar disorder is a long-term illness and we will have to carefully manage it for the rest of our lives. Some days I wish I could take the symptoms away, suffering through bouts of mania at the same time you are dealing with real depression is a living hell of the worse kind and it rips my heart out to see her suffer as she sometimes does.



She sometimes questions why I am still here with her, she is goober – she is my best friend, my confidante, my lover and I can’t imagine abandoning my friend when she needs me the most just because she was afflicted with a horrible disorder. That does not change the fact she is my best friend and wife and we work through issues together as a team. Some research shows that of the 17,000,000 people officially diagnosed with Bipolar disorder more than half will end a relationship with their significant others – staggering when you think about it. Why aren’t the numbers the same for cancer patients, I honestly believe it is because of the wide spread ignorance of psychotropic disorders and our inability to talk openly and honestly about it.



I am the luckiest man alive and I LOVE MY BRIDE!!