The Will

There are activities in life that you really just don't want to do.  These activities vary from person to person of course as we all have our likes and dislikes.  There are some tasks though that I think no one really wants to do.  Doing these tasks requires us to face up to our mortality.  The time has come for me to complete one of those tasks.  I really need to write a will.  This is something that I have put off for a very long time.  Once you become a parent you have the responsibility to ensure your child is taken of regardless of what happens to you.  Writing a will is part of ensuring that your child can be taken care if you were to die.

On January 30th I will be going through my 3rd surgery in 3 years that will require me to be anesthetized with general anesthetic.  I always think general anesthetic is risky to a small degree. The first surgery happened in March of 2009 when I required emergency surgery due to an abscessed tooth that lead to a massive infection in my neck.  I remember driving myself to the hospital for that surgery kicking myself because I didn't have my "affairs" in order.  I told myself then that I would get things taken care of and write a will.  Stupidly I did not fulfill my promise to myself and let things go.  This past October when I had surgery for my broken leg, I remember sitting there in the pre-op area cursing at myself because I still didn't have a will written.  I kept thinking "What if I don't wake up from the general anesthetic - what is going to happen to Zack".  Now that I have yet another surgery scheduled for 2 weeks from tomorrow I am going to ensure that I get a will written.

I tend to only think of writing a will when I am going through something that makes me consciously think about "what happens if...".  Situations like surgery, international trips for work (when I am going alone and Zack is staying home), getting caught on the side of a mountain during a major thunderstorm and other occasions where something scares the crap out of me all make think I need to write a will.  Besides writing a will I need to ensure I have documented where all my important financial accounts are and how to access them.  In this day and age when you do so many of your financial transactions online, you really need to do something to document your account numbers and how you access the account.  If not, the people you leave behind could be high and dry when it comes to retrieving your money.

On top of financial matters, I have written so much stuff on this blog and other places I want Zack and my family to know what my passwords are so that they can retrieve everything.  Furthermore I don't think anyone is even aware of all the writing and family history research I have done over the years.  I don't want all of this information to be lost if I have a bad day and get hit by a falling piece of space junk while I am outside.

Tomorrow evening I will begin work on my will.  My intention is to use the online service offered by LegalZoom.  They used to offer wills for $75 - but that was several years ago, I am sure their prices have gone up.  There will also be complexity to the will as there will be the need to set up trusts and things like that so Zack is financial taken care of, but also so that he couldn't do something crazy with the money before he really knows what he is doing.  Therefore I am sure it will cost more than $75 dollars but it should still be reasonable priced.

Let me be clear about one thing - just because I am writing a will and saying this stuff it doesn't mean that I think I am going to have problems with my back surgery.  On the contrary, I think it will go marvelously, I am just owning up to something I have to do that all adults should do!

Today was kind of another "wasted" day.  Since I can't do much where my back doesn't hurt, we frequently end up staying home.  I call today "wasted" because it was such a wonderful day outside and I can't go out for a hike or a even a decent walk.  I got plenty of work done around the house today but it would have been so much nicer to be out for a walk instead.

Since there were two football games on today, I turned them on so I could at least listen to them while I did stuff around the house.  There were plenty of clothes washed and folded, bills paid and mail gone through.  So a lot was accomplished while I listened to/watched the football games.

This evening we went out to dinner with Tim, Celinde, Cole and Celinde's parents.  Nancy did not come as she still is not feeling well.  I can't really figure it out with her.  She is telling me she doesn't feel well, but she is still spending most of her time out and about at Cranbrook.  She is also telling me she doesn't like it there but yet she spends most of her time socializing.  So I really don't know what the story is.  Regardless she didn't want to come to dinner with us at Maggiano's.  We went to dinner tonight because Cole had a birthday party to go to last night and Tim and Celinde went out to a show.  So we did the family B-day get together today instead of on my actual birthday.

(Celinde's parents Bill and Doerga, Celinde and my brother Tim)

(Cole and Zack at dinner)

(Me with the plate of unbelievably tasty lemon cookies from Maggiano's)

After dinner we headed over to Tim and Celinde's for a cookie cake and so that they could give me a present that they had gotten.  The present wasn't too much of a surprise since Tim had asked me what I wanted.  They got me a remote controlled model airplane.  It is one that I have to finish building and buy and put an engine into it.  Deciding upon the type of engine to use will be the first key thing - I can either use a gasoline or electric engine.  I'll need to read up on the differences and decide what kind to go with.  But it will be fun building it and then taking it out to fly.  I probably won't be flying it until April once the weather warms and the model airplane airfields aren't covered in snow.

We are back home now for the evening.  I am going to sit down and watch some TV with Zack before he has to head to bed.  He already had his Ability tablet for the evening so I know he will be getting sleepy soon!

On another note, I have started to track what country visitors to this blog come from.  I started doing this yesterday evening and I can review the last 500 visitors to the blog.  This took me from January 14 back to January 10.  I can review this information via the counter that I have embedded on the blog.  It keeps track of where (country and city) people are located who read the blog, their IP addresses and what time they access the blog.  The absolutely amazing thing is in the 4 day span from January 10th to January 14th I had visitors from over 29 countries (30 if you include the USA).  I don't know but I think that is pretty darn amazing!  I remember when I first started the blog I personally knew everyone who read the blog.  I could figure who blog to each IP address that accessed the blog.  Now it is absolutely impossible to figure that out.  On average the blog is getting between 100 and 120 hits per day.  Just my subscription base to the blog is over 130 people - there are 90+ people subscribed through blogger's notification service and then another 40 or so subscribed through the Feedblitz e-mail notification service.  The bottom line is the blog is starting to get busy (lol - I don't mean get busy like that!).  It's going to be interesting to track all the different countries people who read this thing come from.

I hope everyone had a great weekend!

Thanks and peace to all! ~J.