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What a Year… 2024

The content below is from Episode #188 of the Who’d a Thunk It? Podcast

RECOMMENDATION SEGMENT

  • This week I recommend you be grateful for what you have.
    • Family
    • Friends
    • Community

NOW FOR THE MAIN EVENT

  • Welp… it has been a full year since my last episode.
    • December of 2023 I published Episode #187 Beast of Jersey about a serial rapest from the UK. The VAST majority of the episode was just copied and pasted from another website. It was low effort and very little research was put in to it. This was a trend, a slippery slope the podcast seemed to be sliding down where I didn’t even try to paraphrase the words of others anymore. I simply was making disclaimers that I had copied and pasted from other sources. And that’s why I stopped making Who’d a Thunk It? episodes. They were becoming a chore and the quality of the pod was declining.
    • But as I checked back every once in a blue moon I noticed you folks, the Who’d a Thunkers never stopped listening. I was baffled. The podcast seems to have increased its listener base… even without me post or saying a single word.
    • So at the very least I thought I would create this episode to explain why I stopped making Who’d a Thunk It? episodes on a regular basis, to recap what has happened in my personal life in the year 2024, and just to check in with you guys.
  • In the summer of 2023 Shannon (my wife) and I found out we were going to be Parents.
    • Im not sure if already shared that on Who’d a Thunk It? of not, but because I knew we would have a lot less free time, that certainly factored in to ending the podcast.
    • We had baby showers and daiper parties. Our friends and family were so kind.
    • We decided to not know the gender of the baby until they were born.
    • Making room for the baby’s room we shuffled some things around in our house and by March of 2024 we turned one of our tool sheds into a home office space for Shannon to work from home.
  • Just 2 weeks later, on a Monday morning, Shannon had just left for work and I was logging on to my work computer to work from home, I heard a loud crack come from the back of the house. It sounded like thunder.
    • In my pajamas I quickly went to look out back to find the retaining wall behind our house had failed. The hill behind our house was crashing into our house and all the floor boards and walls were cracking loudly.
    • Not knowing what else to do I called 911 and asked for help. The fire department arrived and told me I had 60 seconds to grab what I could and vacate the home.
    • I grabbed my dog, my coffee, and a pair of pants. I couldn’t find the cat.
      • You never really know how ill-prepared you are until someone says you have one minute to grab whatever is most important to you.
    • Shannon cancelled all her appointments for the day and rushed home. In the pouring down rain I was told to wait at our local police station.
      • There a nice woman who works at the municipal building offered me a cigarette. I would end up bumming about 4 from her before the day was over.
    • The rest of that day consisted of us panicking, crying, talking to red cross, and going to Shannon’s parents house about 20 minutes away to try and sleep in my wife’s childhood bedroom with our dog who was dying from cancer.
      • Shannon was 8 months pregnant.
    • The next couple of days were a blur of countless phone calls to insurance, local aid, lawyers, politicians, family, and friends.
      • I started drinking heavily
      • It was 2 days later when we went back to the muddy field that was our house when I heard our cat. He came running out and jumped in my arms. It was the only joy Shannon and I felt that week, when we were reassured Beerus the farm cat was alive.
    • We quickly found out insurance was NOT going to offer any help. NONE. We tried to fight it. Even hired a public adjuster… but in the end, they didn’t help at all. NOTHING.
      • So I started a GoFundMe and for the first time in my life begged my family, friends, and community to help in anyway they could.
        • Even now, many months and tears later, I still get choked up thinking about how much kindness we were shown. People I hand’t spoke to in years, people we hardly knew, people we hadn’t even met were giving us money, daipers, clothes, etc.
        • When our neighbor (who turned out to help us so much more later on) unexpectedly handed me cash I broke down like a baby in my own drive way.
    • We ended up moving a lot of our stuff to Shannon’s childhood home under the same roof as my in-laws. People I had already considered family, but after this ordeal will forever hold a special place in my heart.
      • Then when an old friend from college offered us a place to stay for a very low rate with no binding lease agreement, we moved again to a completely different county.
    • Not long after we moved into my friends Duplex renting in the next county over, our dog Rorschach died.
      • He had been battling cancer in his eye. He was my best friend. He was my wife’s dog. Because I worked from home I spent virtually ever moment with him. We walked for hours every day, the whole neighborhood knew us as inseparable.
      • When Bubby died… that’s when all the difficult adult anxiety stuff with the house turned to dark feelings and I started seeing a therapist.
  • Our lives had become a bad blues song.
    • My 8-month pregnant wife and I lost our house, the dog died, then my job started layoffs… it was rough.

  • Then in the final days of May 2024, still living in my friends newly renovated duplex down in Washington county while we waited for the house to be fixed, our baby started to stir. Shannons was having contractions!
    • I drove Shannon to Magee Women’s Hospital in Pittsburgh and in the wee hours of the June 1st 2024 our lives changed forever.
    • After all the nurses were taking poles to guess if it was a boy or girl, just 10 minutes of pushing, we met Theodore Patrick Robert Carbaugh.
    • And Holy Shit. Let me tell you, that was a wild time.
    • It ain’t the 1950’s anymore. The dad doesn’t wait in the lounge with a cigar anymore. I was front-row-and-and-center for my son’s birth.
      • The act of birth is by far the most metal thing I have ever witnessed.
  • We were given so much in donations, but the extent of repairs needed… it was a struggle to find the right person for the job.
  • Even though my friend charged an insanely low rent, we couldn’t pay both rent and mortgage at the same time and we had to move back in our home.
    • Yes, the house was repaired, but we didn’t, and still don’t want to live here any longer. Mainly because it is too small for us now that we want to grow our family and a little traumatizing after everything.
  • There are so many more details about the house getting hit from that failed retaining wall I could share. and because I didn’t write them down here those details will likely be forgotten.
  • We are living in this, what we now call cursed house. We are trying to sell it. With clear consciousness mind you because the first couple years we lived here we LOVED it and we did repair it after all.
    • But for us personally, it just isn’t where we want to live anymore.
  • Baby Teddy is our lives now. We plan to have more kids and life is something to smile about. I think Shannon and I are more grateful people now.
    • Oh, and I quit drinking. I loved it so much and I still had a few brewskies on my birthday. But I needed to cut WAY back, for the Tedster if not for anything else.
    • Even though I only have 6 months under my belt, I love being a dad. I know Shannon loves being a mom.
  • since my last episode on 12-20-2023, my life has changed A LOT… but I don’t think I regret anything
  • 2024 was one hell of a year

CREDIT:

  • Kim and Tom
  • Neighbor Rob
  • Artie
  • TZ and Janay
  • Mom
  • Dad
  • Cas
  • Casey and Brendan
  • and the hundreds of people who helped
    • by helping us move any of all of the 3 times
    • by helping us financially so we could have home for our baby

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