In college, and after college, I dated John Schmidt. Self-described BeanHead, John grew up in Indiana, leaving only to go to Caltech. If I recall correctly, he went to Tech because it was the school farthest away from his family (a hauntingly familiar theme amongst my exes). John's father died when John was in high school, an event which caused enormous relief to John, as his father was an overbearing man.

John would tell me stories of his youth. He rarely told me a story if it didn't have relevance to the situation at hand, and the relevance was usually some brilliant, awe-inspiring, soul-revealing lesson he had learned.

One of the first stories John told me was about his father. John was youngish, maybe ten, and was being yelled at by his father. I don't recall what John had done, but he thought what he had done was the right thing to do. His father disagreed, and was screaming at the top of his lungs at John, telling him what a bad person he was, how could he have done such a thing.

Some point during the scream fest, when John insisted what he had done was right (he might have been clocked for his response, I don't recall that either), he realized that his father didn't know all and that his father was wrong. Most importantly, John realized that, no, being older or bigger or louder didn't mean you were right, it just meant you were older or bigger or louder.

The event taught John to believe in himself, because he was right.

Another story John would tell me, on more than one occasion, was about his paper route.

He had a paper route for a number of years, and would get up in the cold, dark morning and deliver the paper in his neighborhood. One particular cold morning, he was trudging along on his route, it was dark, and snowing, and freaking cold. Cold, cold, cold. And wasn't he just the most miserable person in all the world. Here he was outside, delivering the newspapers, and his feet were frozen, and his toes hurt, and his fingers were pained, and woe, oh woe, is he.

At some point along this particular route, however, he realized that he had work to do, and complaining about what he was doing wasn't getting the job done any quicker, it wasn't making the load any lighter, and it sure as hell wasn't warming up his feet.

So he stopped complaining, and just did his job. Because at that point, there was nothing to be done about the cold - it was going to be cold, and the only way he was going to go home was by finishing his route. So he did.

For as long as I spent time with John, complaining was never his style. Probably because of that paper route.

John had a long sleeved, white cross-country shirt from high school. The shirt made it to college with John, but didn't make it much past - I kept the shirt when we broke up.

It's one of my favorite shirts. I still wear it. Frequently.

And when I do, I'm reminded that, in some situations in life, when things just plain suck, but there's no way to improve the situation, well, then, accept it and move on.

Because sometimes, sometimes, there's nothing to be done about it.

Well, it was raining five minutes ago. It's brilliantly sunny at this point.

When it started raining, Doyle commented, "You could totally do donuts in the parking lot with the S2000 in this weather!"

When I smiled, he lamented, "If only we didn't work two blocks from the Sunnyvale police department!"

Okay, so this really really really surprised me. Why it surprised me, I have no idea, but, hey, it did, so let's go with it.

I followed up on the issue du jour, and didn't get the response I had hoped for, but hey, such is life. You win some, you lose some, and along the way, you learn a lesson or two.

So, while learning today's lesson, several people called me when I was home sick this afternoon. The second sentence of each and every person was, "Are you okay?" (the first sentence being a greeting, of course).

All I can say is, "Wow!" I had no idea. I had no idea I was so bad at hiding when something is off or wrong. I had no idea that everyone could sense it so strongly. And I had no idea how big my support network is.

Thanks to everyone who called and wrote. You've made me feel more loved than I could have or would have expected. And you have absolutely no idea how much I needed the help.

Hugs!

Ah, I'm not supposed to be this humoured by an ultimate picture, but this one just cracks me up.

One of the great things about keeping a journal is that it provides a nice history of things important to me at a given time. I can look back through the various entries and be entertained, horrified, amused, or puzzled. All perfectly valid responses given the varied posts I make about the events in my life.

The theory goes if I keep this up, I'll have a nice chronology of my life, and will be able to laugh about most of this when I'm a crotchety old lady, sitting on the porch with my Crazy Cousin Kelly, cackling about something or other.

Assuming I'm sane enough to be able to read it.

Well, and that she's still game for that plan. Given she has a kid now, Gadi might think I'm just too crazy for her mom to hang out with. Or she might in 80 years.

The biggest problem with this plan, however, is that I don't write when I'm down. When things get rough, or I get overwhelmed, the first thing that gets chucked off the list is this, the writing, the purging of the thoughts, ideas, fears, feats, accomplishments, or events that humour me. Note the gap just last month, mid-October. I was writing a little bit, but wasn't finishing anything, and several people actually commented to me about it.

So, now, here I am in a similar place. Some of the issues I'm struggling with I'm surely not supposed to talk about, and sometimes I think I'm not supposed to have in the first place. But that reckons back to expectations, of which I have a huge long thought/post about.

Not talking about these issues is hard, because some of them deal directly with people, friends I'd desperately would like to talk to about the situation, but can't seem to do it. Not being able to solve a problem staring me in the face is incredibly frustrating. Not solving is isn't my style. Eh, people aren't my forte either, and those two are going hand-in-hand at the moment.

Ah, well. Vague enough to bore even myself, and accomplish little.