Bite Size with Big Robb: 001

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Bite size.

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Welcome to another episode of chewing the fat. I am your host Big Robb. Today's going to be a little bit different. I'm calling this a bite size episode. First, I want to say thank you so much to everyone that's been supporting this podcast. Your words of encouragement, the reviews that you've been giving, the ratings. I really appreciate that. It means so much to me. Also, all the folks that

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Like the Brune's, thank you so much. Also Nick, thank you so much for the coffee. I really appreciate that. It means a lot to me when I get those little notifications and stuff like that. So I just wanna say I appreciate you for coming along with me on this journey. You know, it was a long time coming for me to get to this point. But I don't regret a minute at all. I regret more the time that it took me to get to this point.

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Thank you for appreciating what I'm doing, for finding some commonality, for seeing the purpose of this and that we all have these things that we go through and we're more like than we want to admit. I had guests lined up, it didn't work out, and I have other episodes ready to come that I've already got some things recorded and I could have moved those, but I thought I'd take this moment to talk to you guys.

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Because I had some stuff happen over the past few weeks, that just really affected me, and I consider us friends. As I told Ryan last week, I don't wanna pull any punches. I forgot to press the record button last week. I'm not gonna sugar coat that, I messed up. But I figured, let you get to know me a little bit more, and let you know kind of a peek behind the curtain at what's going on here.

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And I posted this on my personal Instagram on August 30th. My rescue Boston Terrier, Sarah, she passed away. She was my buddy, she was my traveling companion. She just brought me so much joy. She loved on me and I was better for having her in my life. And I don't know if your dog people

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people, pet people. I'm definitely a dog person. I'm a rescue dog person. And Sarah actually came to us after my wife's mom passed away. So we've had Sarah for only about, I think, five years now. And she was just, she just became my buddy. She didn't like me at first. When she was, when she was my mother-in-law's dog. She did not like me.

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would hide from me, but once she came here, came to live with us, she decided I was her person. Maybe she just realized that I needed her. So it's been tough. And if you have fur babies, you understand that loss. There are times when I come out of the studio here at the house and I'll go around the corner and I'm just expecting to see her laying on the end of the couch or something and she's just not there anymore.

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Boston Terriers are very short snouted and so they snore a lot and just I didn't even realize how comforting just those little snorts and snuffles and snores really were to me. So that's been just kind of hitting me now that we're like two weeks since Sarah's gone. You know it's one of these things where she had had some stuff going on with her liver. We

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She actually had part of her liver removed. We had surgery about six months ago for that and just recovered great. Just was doing fine. And then, you know, like the day before she passed, she just wasn't eating great. She was still playing. She was playing with her little sister Maggie. But I could tell that something just wasn't right. Like I said, she wasn't eating. She was playing.

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But something wasn't right. She seemed to be having trouble breathing and we had set up an appointment to take her to the vet to get her looked at. Like on Wednesday was the soonest that they could see her. But like I said, nothing else was going wrong that we could tell. She was doing okay. All the outside stuff was fine. But I took a nap with her and she was,

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She was around 13 years old. She was a rescue dog. Originally she was in a puppy mill, rescued from that. So she's had some stuff in her life. But I could tell just something wasn't right. We had a discussion, I don't know if you talk to your dogs like this, but we laid down and took a nap. As we're laying down, trying to calm down, I was just patting her.

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I told her, I said, it's okay. It's okay.

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I don't want you to hurt. I don't want you to be in pain. I don't want you to hang on because you think I need you here. I do need you, but I don't want you to be in pain because of me. I would never want that. And I love you. And if you need to go, it's okay. I'll be okay. I will miss you.

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and I will love you, but I will be okay." And we took a great nap for about 20 or 30 minutes. We decided to go and get a hamburger. Again, she was my travel buddy. She jumped in the car, and I just got her plain beef patty. And she ate that. Ate that great. So, came back, put her in crate to go

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grocery shopping and while we're out grocery shopping, my youngest son Jeremy called and said, I think something's wrong with Sarah, come home. And he had come through the living room and said she didn't stir, which was not like her any look. And she was just laying there. And when we got home, sure enough, she looked like she just laid down and went. So I'd like to think that it wasn't

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And she went on her own terms. That's kind of how she operated. Like I said, she didn't like me to begin with, but she decided that she did. And so I think about her and I miss her and I know I'll see her again someday. I know she'll be waiting for me on that rainbow bridge when it's my time.

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It just hit me this week. Those are some of those down times that I have. It really hit me hard over the weekend. As you know, I like to do stuff with the theater. I love to perform. I love to entertain, to bring joy to others. I just got into a bad headspace and I couldn't get out of it.

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And there was an audition this past weekend for the Christmas show, Elf, that the Augusta Players is gonna be doing. And I love Christmas and I love doing Christmas shows. Again, that's like that gift I like to give to the community. And I just could not do it. I was not, I tried to prepare. I tried to think of something to sing for my audition.

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and I was looking at songs and looking at words and I just could not get out of where my head was. I was just down and I didn't feel that I could give my best and Scott Seidel, the director at Augusta Players, he deserves much better than what I could have given at that time. And it was hard. It was hard once

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you know, Saturday passed and then they had more auditions on Sunday and Sunday had passed and I didn't go. I didn't go to my happy place. I didn't go to where that second family is that brings joy to me and energy to me. And I realized though that I was in that place that I hadn't prepared. I had let myself not prepare.

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And I let myself not experience some of the joy that I would have gotten from being in that show for the holidays. I'm much better now. I unfortunately missed that opportunity. That's what happens sometimes when you're in those places. Even if it's something that you love to do and you let yourself just stay down.

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and those opportunities pass you by and that's that's the real robber of that is that it robs that joy it robs the opportunity of that joy in doing what you really love to do but I say all that to say when you have those down days and you realize you have those down days no you're not alone there are other

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Maybe going through the same stuff, maybe going through different stuff, but it's just as weighty on them. It's weighing them down and stopping them from truly living and feeling alive. So take courage in that, knowing that you are not alone. And there are other people out there that want that.

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to see you succeed. And they're hoping that you want to see them succeed too, and that it takes us all coming together and rallying around each other.

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It's it's it's hard, but we're all in it together No one is alone and You know, I'm rooting for you if you ever want to reach out to me, please You go to the website chewing the fat br.com I'm on Instagram. You can send me a message on the website There's even a little microphone button if you want to live leave me a voice message You can do that

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You can leave a voicemail on the website if you want to just look for the little gray microphone on there But reach out to me. My my email is on there chewingthefatBR at gmail if you want to email me if you just Need some encouragement I'm here. I'm rooting for you. I'm rooting for us all To get through this

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with some joy and some life and some great memories and short-faced snoring dogs that just light you up with love.

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Thank you so much for being here and indulging me in this bite size episode. If you do want to support the podcast as well, I appreciate you buying me a coffee at ChewingTheFatBR.com. But until next week, I look forward when we can sit a spell, stay positive, and chew the fat.