Jeff Wolfe:  

My story? Well as I grew up our family moved 11 times in 18 years. I got used to making friends fast and saying goodbye. That's probably what led me to this site. I'd like to reconnect with some of those old friends. After high school I went to Montana State University to play football and get a degree. Well I played some football and I got an education, just not a degree. I credit that to a great lack of maturity. After the white-water rafting, skiing, winter camping, hot-potting and a number of bar crawls, the fun ran out and so did my scholarship! I came back to Minnesota a humbled drunk. I got a job and continued my self-destructive ways. After many hours in bars and some hours behind bars, I was introduced to a woman who changed my life. We eventually got married and had three children. I had quit drinking and using - family life was my new passion. I went back to school and got a two year accounting degree and spent about five years in the field, eventually getting a four year degree. But my wife's career in computer programming took off quickly and we needed to make a huge decision. With both of us working, our preschool age children would be raised by some stranger in daycare. That was not acceptable, so I gave up my career and stayed home to be the house-husband (Mr.Mom). This role reversal seemed to work fine for awhile. I liked to cook and shopping didn't seem like a chore, but cleaning wasn't my strong suite. She began to do more and more of my duties which led to a few arguments. Long story short - guys should not be house husbands. Well we made it 10 years into our marriage before we divorced. Now I had to enter the workforce again. I started to realize how easy I really had things in my old life. I worked a in-house security gig at a major Twin Cities hotel for a couple years. This boring job, the new friends I had or the depression I probably was in all led to some bad decisions on my part. I started drinking and using again. Although I was trying to be a good father, getting my kids every w/e and I had joint custody, but my partying took center stage. I eventually lost that job in hotel security and without going into details, I committed a couple major crimes downtown (property crimes). I was facing some serious time. I had been locked up before but never for more than a couple days or a long weekend, this was kinda scary now. But with a good lawyer and a merciful judge I only got 2 years of probation. During the above situation I landed a warehouse job at a company called Target. I've been there since 1999 and I love the work. I'm not using my formal education but life has lead me here so there must be a reason unknown to me that I drive a forklift for a living. Things are going too good, something always happens when I start to enjoy my life and relax a bit. And that something happened on May 26th in 2005. I was on the way to a dental appointment when my daughter called me crying and said I had to come over. Well a police officer eventually got on the phone and informed me that my ex-wife had died in a motorcycle accident. That was a shock, like someone just knock the wind out of you. A lot of thoughts flashed through my mind but the main one was that my our three kids are all coming home from school, our daughter was the first one home, and our two boys would be home soon, they will all need me there. It's been over three years now since her death and the tears are still flowing as I write this. It's just so sad that she won't be around for all of our kids achievements in life and that my kids won't have their mother to turn to in times of need or share a laugh in times of joy. And I feel for her parents, what it must be like to lose a child, I can only imagine. This world lost a very good, strong, caring soul. But we must all carry on, and we have. Now the single parent of three teenagers, with one in college at the University of Minnesota and two in high school, I am very busy and more than ever before involved in my kids lives. Well I certainly didn't set out to w...Expand for more