Well earned

I'm going on VACATION next week. I have EARNED this vacation. So earned it.

I've had a hard spring. I'm hoping that this trip will be cathartic as well as serve as a bookend to this long, icky trudge through this past spring.

It started with my birthday trip. It ended on an icky note. Although it was one of those "trips of a lifetime" adventures, I ended going home wondering what had hit me. My traveling companion and I had a tiff unlike anything we've ever had. I cried while driving home and spend a week or so licking my wounded ego and deciding how exactly I was going to deal with it.

Before I got my chance, my friend announced that she'd been having an affair (at least one) for a couple of years and that she was abandoning her child and husband for her boyfriend. She was angry that the people who know her best didn't immediately embrace this move. As a friend said, she can't spend literally years telling us what a slacker and alcoholic he is and then expect us to embrace their relationship.

I decided that my role was to be the honest friend. The friend she has always said that she appreciated because I could cut to the central issue of a matter and be honest. That wasn't appreciated. Not at all.

I find myself pondering how it is that things and the person I would have previously bet my own life on how much I KNEW her could be utterly the opposite of what I knew. I've had to wrap my brain about the fact that things I knew in my gut weren't reality at all. Talk about turning your life upside down.

On top of all this personal angst, I have worried about the economy like everyone else. I've worried not just about keeping my own job, but also insuring that ESK kept her job too. That's a lot of pressure.

But, it appears that we are going to end the fiscal year with two nickels to rub together. We survived this far.

And, today I was reminded that I have a comfortable home filled with music. I have a deeply satisfying relationship with the Phenom. And, I have friends all over the place . . . and friendships in various stages of development. I may never truly replace the friend I lost this year, but I'm not without sources of love and support and sympathetic ears.

I guess the balance sheet totals at the bottom. There were losses, but also gains.