Last of Feb

Waking at 11:30 with that Brazilian pepper sauce burning a hole through me. It's snowing in earnest now. The morning commute should be an adventure. Here I am thinking there's not that much to complain about. You made contact then faded out again. I stayed my course. I've got shit to do. And so do you.

On the good foot

It's funny, but you seem to do better without help. At least it seems so, for now anyway. You've been there nearly six months. No one else you know has, or would have, stayed in your position. You started documenting in a "W" (wins) column as a means of combating despair. There are six items listed in that column so far. You'll call it forward motion. The scale is not so important.

Ninety nine problems but that ain't one

What was that? A night plagued with anxious dreams and/or sleeplessness. I can't remember much about the dreams now except that one involved finding out a girl I'd been sweet on had been dating all of my friends at the same time. Good thing I don't have any of those in real life. 

Mall

I went to the shopping plaza to purchase Jennifer's latest novel yesterday during my day off. I read the first twenty pages in the store and found the writing just about perfect - clean, polished, with a wonderful natural rhythm and flow. The plaza seemed full of mothers and daughters who looked very much like each other. I noticed this at least ten times. I walked through a furniture store imaging a new living room set until I realized it would take me several years to pay for it. Depressing. A sales person cornered me upon my arrival and offered her assistance. I'm just walking around, I told her. She seemed to accept that. After I'd completed a lap of the store, she approached me again. This sent me directly to the exit. I'd been thinking about buying a better pillow, but the hell with it. 

EAP

This morning it's an early rise and a couple hours drive to support some people who lost a coworker in a car accident. It's a strange thing to do in a store right in the middle of a working shift as ordinary life goes on around you. Try to stick as close to normal as you can. Talk to someone who can handle it. Stay proactive and moving forward, even if just a little. Don't let the world crush you.

Mended

Good unbroken sleep was necessary to heal the frayed edges caused by the almost entirely sleepless one the night before in which your mind was working on staffing ratios and the patient census. I appreciate that rest. Today, it's deeper into Boston to deal with what must be dealt with there. What this job will teach you, I think - if it's doesn't give you a heart attack (or maybe by giving you a heart attack) - is not to take things personally. To address a thing and then to move on. To let it go. Anger doesn't serve you anymore. Always such an easy thing to say. 

Half price

The owls seem to have ushered in a change. Visitations. Tension in my chest. Quickening within. Realization that your gallery of memories is moldering and will one day fade completely away. Your disappearing religion. I'd ask you to hold me tightly, but there is no you. 

Big Swiss

Almost accidentally, I found myself standing in front of the new fiction section in Barnes and Noble. It was the rendezvous point for meeting my ex-wife and our children to celebrate a birthday. Getting there was no easy feat with something glitching within my car's electrical system, no means to charge my dying phone, and persistent calls regarding nurses who won't come in for their scheduled shifts. 

There must have been more anxiety than just my own about because things seemed to become increasingly tense as each party arrived. Thankfully, the page came in informing us that our table was ready at the Red Robin a few doors down. As I was leaving, I turned to my left and saw your name on a book jacket right there beside me. Prominent and well-placed on the first set of shelves you encounter as you come in the door. I felt a thrill. That's quite a thing. You did it again. You sure did. 

Budget

After this one, you discover while writing the check, there's only one more payment to complete the annual cycle. The payments will resume again in June though. Rest assured. Anxiety, urgency, meaning and purpose. Insurance. You've got all kinds of it and maintaining it keeps you running. Better than not having it at all, a voice says. What if something happens? It gets you up and out the door and down the road harried and distracted and accelerating toward that something that's just bound to happen. Economy.

I wanted to touch you this way

 

When the owl appears

While I was driving to work this morning, just a minute after leaving my unheated home, an owl swooped out of the the trees and flew directly across my path at windshield level. I had just enough time to brake to avoid hitting it. 

Once I made it to work, the furnace man called and said he couldn't help me and that I was basically on my own. My desk phone rang. A local hospital was on fire. All the patients had to be evacuated. Fourteen or fifteen are coming your way even though you don't have the staff you need to take care of the ones you have. 

A text message came in while I was on the phone dealing with that informing me that an acquaintance of mine had been found dead outside a shelter this morning in another part of the state. He used to call me "Big Brother."  A good man who never really had a chance. He once told me that he wanted me to help him write a book on deinstitutionalizing the mind. 

Yeah, I'm definitely in a coma on some back ward after a collision with a semi in Kansas. This is just a long, weird, multi-phasic dream.

Many hours later I drove home. 

On the drive, I was thinking things have really gone south, sideways, pear-shaped. I couldn't remember how long ago it started heading that way. Then an owl swooped out of the trees and flew directly across my path at windshield level. I had just enough time to brake to avoid hitting it. 

I almost laughed.

It was 30 degrees. It started to rain just as I pulled into my driveway. The rain turned immediately to ice on the ground. I bowed a little. Thanks.

Focus on the task at hand

When you let your distractible brain run in distracted mode, you might find yourself using gasoline for a task that requires diesel fuel. When you realize your mistake, it's too late, you've committed yourself. So you sleep cold and have to figure out a solution in the morning. Your first reaction to the situation is frustration and rage, but you shut that down because it won't fix anything or get you out of it. There's no one else.  When I was a kid, I had the opportunity to learn from someone who knew how to do everything. Well, except how to teach and to be patient with a stepchild. I never liked the experience of learning from him, so I didn't. I still hate painting and maintenance and mechanical work of any kind because of that association. Until there is nowhere else to go and no choice but to think it through and do the work myself. I spent a lot of time getting there and made some missteps along the way but in the end I figured it out and removed the gasoline from the tank. 

Adjusting

Her eyes were wide and her chest was tight with anxiety. What had happened was a couple of teenagers ran a few steps toward the doors near her register. What she had seen was a replay of all those panicking people stampeding for the exits after a gunshot rang out last weekend. She doesn't think she wants to work at that register anymore.

The winds abate

The winds abated all at once an hour or so ago. It's 6 AM and minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit. This might be the coldest actual temperature I've ever seen in this town. Fairbanks routinely reached minus 40 when I lived there but this, here, is a rare thing. Something crazy and unusual about the way the front arrived last night. A howling invasion. Terrifying, really. 

Holy shit

The temperature dropped 22 degrees between work and home this evening. The weird western sky seemed hung with a long wide curtain of dust. The wind rose suddenly in the course of that hour - an unrelenting hammering, a supersonic steamroller, an elongated slash of continuous razoring. The trees are aching out there. I can here them right now.

Thanks be

The wind rose overnight and the temperature is due to plummet 30 degrees by this time tomorrow morning. Yes, I did allow the furnace to run out of oil - again. An annual event at this point. But I've learned how to get it up and running again. It took three attempts yesterday, but it's warm in here this morning. 

Son of a

You know what I think you forgot to do?, I think to myself waking up on this chillier than usual morning in my house on the verge of an extreme cold snap. You forgot to check the heating oil. 

Tuesday, late

Yes, you can love to do a thing and fail to do it well. The singers here are kind.