I returned for day two of Appleseed, the weather was much cooler than the previous day’s 92F and I started of better than the first day, but it wasn’t to last. A series of misfires and failures to eject hampered my shooting; then as fatigue set in my shooting started coming apart like my golf game.

A few minutes cleaning my rifle’s fire control group of unburned powder and soot along with a bit of CLP returned my Marlin to reliable functioning, but my frustration and fatigue had gotten the best of me. Fat boys can only jump up and down so many times before we’re tuckered out.

I’ll spend some time dry fire practicing and will do another Appleseed Project event later. I may also use the AR-15 for the next event, I just have to watch for sales and stock up on ammo, or pick up a used Ruger 10/22 or Marlin 795. The format favors box magazine fed rifles, I wasted many precious seconds on reloads in the timed portions, then rushed checking my NPOA (Natural Point Of Aim) and my breathing became ragged as I had to roll over on my side to reach forward to open the Marlin 60‘s tubular magazine. Not that it is an excuse really, it just is what it is; a time and cadence killer.

The dude messed up my mirror!

Oh well, Keep Calm and Motor On … Like A BOSS!

Give @Motorwaymayhem_ a follow his videos are great 🌟🌟🌟 pic.twitter.com/8QGa4XYRJt

— Mrlego (@_mrlego_) May 6, 2017

It’s been 3-1/2 weeks since my dad was taken to the emergency room at Forsyth Medical Center. At first it was thought he had some sort of bug, he had gotten up at 2:00 AM throwing up and again around 10:00AM, but now he could barely walk.

A few hours and many tests later it was determined he had a bleed on his brain. He had a hemmoragic stroke and the pressure around the brain was high. He stayed in the ER for nearly a day as there were no rooms in the Neuro ICU. A week in Neuro ICU, then a week and a half or so on the Neuro floor before moving to Palliative Care.

And now, here we are at Hospice, going on day three. It’s 2:30AM and he has lived longer through this night than I expected. I’ve been mentally prepared that we were losing him for weeks now; or at least I thought I was, now I’m not so certain of any of my emotions.

But as I sit here listening to his breathing becoming more erratic with long periods of apnea followed by several ‘normal’ breaths; I have time to contemplate life and it’s brevity.

Around 5-1/2 weeks from conception a human heartbeat can be detected. It may beat a few weeks and stop due to a miscarriage or it may beat for more than a century without stopping. It baffles my mind that there are those that believe we are creatures of chance, formed from amino acids in some galactic explosion. I see the hands of a creator all over our lives and the world we live in. The balance is just too perfect to be a chance occurrence.

I’m not the first to ponder these things. The writer of Psalm 139 was thinking this when he wrote:

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my motherʼs womb.  I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.  My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.  Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.  How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them!

Psalm 139:13‭-‬17 NIV

My dad’s heart has beat for 76 years now. Whether it will beat one more day I cannot know for certain. But even in uncertain times I know a certain God; his creator, my creator. In him I place my trust.

Edit – He passed away the following evening.

In my last post I ended with the North Carolina weather mantra, “If you don’t like the weather, wait 24 hours”. Here we are 4 days later, it’s 69F all the snow is gone except piles in the corners of parking lots pushed up by plow trucks, Bobcats and tractors.

So I missed by 72 hours. So what?