simple pleasures and complicated observations

It could be just my imagination, but I think life at Hell House may be starting to turn around. I’m almost afraid to say this out loud. This supremely ridiculous statement is being uttered by someone whose water heater just broke, as well as the compressor on the air conditioner (for the third time in five years), and who is currently sitting with an inoperable land line phone and a semi-useless television (hey, who needs video when you have audio, right?). That’s only the stuff that’s broken this year….the list of broken stuff still sitting around waiting for repair could fill a page.

So where does this irrational exuberance come from?

Some little things have gone right….I managed to add another rating to my pilot’s license (Instrument Ground Instructor)…an article I wrote may end up being published (for money, even!)....I’ve had at least six interviews to date this year (last year I only had two)….my female bullshit detector finally kicked in (you know that needed to happen!)…I haven’t set the oven on fire lately….small victories, all around.

Strange, unsettling things have happened, too, of course. In times of serious adversity, you find out the folks you thought were friends, really aren’t, and the ones you had no idea even noticed you come though in a pinch. The situation reminds me a lot of the reactions I’ve observed in my friends when, in my prior life, I suffered a death or divorce. Some people don’t know what to say or do, some laugh it off, some ignore it, some quietly go about helping you any way they can without making a big deal about it. Enlightening. People perpetually surprise me. I’ll remember them all.