Birthday Greetings

Happy Birthday, Mother. We may still make it over there later this evening to see you, but we must avoid to the admin folks who would have left for the day.

Guess we have sorta mucked everything up, haven't we? We were, at least for twenty years, hanging onto that long-time City job, a great job but also one that had finally gotten to us. But, alas, we were not taking some of the steps necessary to get healthy--stopping the booze at work (after, to be fair, fair warning), dealing with the gambling bug, catching up at our house, dealing with getting mother situated. Then the move upstairs at WMD cracked our routine. Basic cable TV from the conference room ended. Oh, how we loved coming down and watching Gunsmoke and TCM on weekends. Could've turned the move into a blessing if we had just made the adjustment to a more normal and accepted workplace modus vivendi. Blowing the 60K from the second refi. Blowing another 50K borrowed from deferred comp in early 2007. On tilt with on-line poker. Familiar faces retiring. Situation with mother and sister feeling like the breaking point. The DUI. 10th anniversary of brother's leap from the parking garage my office window looked out at for ten years. Staying on 4th floor at 777 another week or so this past April might have been well-advised. Another week to continue staying away from old habits, clear my head. Maybe figure a way to do family medical and hit the road and clear our head. No guarantees that job would still be there, but it would have been worth a try. Get more bang for that three hundred co-payment buck. Good luck, by the way, trying to collect that baby. There was just some mental health work to be done and we didn't do it. We are still not doing it. Is there still time? Best piece of advice we've gotten in the last few months is to just "give yourself a chance." A very wise lady said that, and we thank her. We wonder if typing these words is therapeutic? At a minimum it gives one a chance to write and type a little. And get's us over to a library for a change.