captainsblog | Sad, sad, happy. (Reply)

I didn't post after my first day back, somewhat out of just being tired from the trip (Sunday, I never even left the house for church, gym, anything), but my silence into yesterday was caused by a slight remaining hangover from that, by a rough first day back to work on Monday, and most of all by some more sadness from Emily's school. We'd had a fun Halloween hanging out with Emily and her Wonderlandian friends, and spent Sunday night just chilling and watching another marvelous movie we'd somehow missed- this one, Penelope starring Christina Ricci which we streamed on Netflix- when the phone rang.

It was instantly clear from the caller ID that it was yet another robocall from our school superintendent, who regularly rings every phone in the house every time there's a snow day, a budget vote she wants us to support, or a hangnail on the middle school janitor's left pinkie. Unfortunately, this one was more serious than any of those: another death of a student, this one, it eventually came out, to a heart condition aggravated by some combination of strep, pneumonia, and according to at least one news outlet, H1N1.

I found it hard imagining how Em and her friends must be feeling, going through all this just a few weeks after another death within that school community- a recent alum killed himself in October- and the total lack of any information on the call about who it was or what had happened (allegedly for "privacy" reasons, like the grapevine wouldn't have the name in the paper the next day) just panicked the kids all the more and they all spent most of Sunday night calling and texting each other trying to figure it all out.

It's hard, for me anyway, not to take a black-humor perspective on the whole business. In the twelve months right after our marriage, we lost Eleanor's father, both of his siblings, and my oldest sister, several of them almost exactly 30 days apart. It became a running joke in the house that we'd somehow joined the Death of the Month Club. These rather remote-to-me incidents no doubt played on similar emotions this year, as I went through an October that included the anniversary of Sandy's death, her wedding anniversary, and my late mother's birthday- all right before I turn 50 next Monday. That last one probably troubles me the least of all of them, though- at least I'm still turning something every year, still.

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Today, though, I felt much better, and I think it showed all around. Here are some of the relatively little things that helped:

* Having most of my contacts from clients and related parties be pleasant and supportive, rather than annoying like the majority of them were yesterday;

* Achieving one of Life's Little Victories- and in a hardware store, yet, not a place where I am accustomed to success: I found a perfect replacement for the pop-up thingy for our bathroom sink, which almost 50 years of hard water had rotted to the point where it no longer popped and had very little "up" left to it at all;

* Voting for the first time ever on a 21st century ballot- a paper one (and thus a paper trail, you Diebold Republafuckas) that gets scanned into an optical reader: the only downsides to it are (a) they still manage to bury the "propositions" that never get as much attention as the candidates (because the front of the ballot, of course, needs ten horizontal lines for all the wacko-fringe minor parties that this state insists on dividing the vote among) and (b) it'll only be a matter of time before the major parties start mailing out filled-in party-line ballots for the "convenience" of voters to bring with them;

* Getting in and out of my old gym (where I still have two weeks of membership left) without them being able to harass me about renewing anymore;

* Oh, and waking up to a Yankees loss is always a plus, and having a whole week ahead when the Bills will not lose doesn't hurt, either. (They're not playing this weekend.)

Yeah, it's dark at 5:00 now, but my windows are open. In November. In the dark. That's a happy maker, too:)