Joy . . . or, not

Cooked seven personal pizzas.  The last one, which came out of the oven just past 9:00, was mine. The last bite of the first half was in my mouth when my stomach started flip-flopping and I began sweating. I can't remember the last time I spat out food.  I want to go to bed, but dare not lay down until my stomach has a chance to work on its contents.

Recent pageview zip codes

We're visiting Indiana, including Alexandria, 46001; Noblesville, 46060; and Rossville, 46065. I've physically passed closest to the last of these, on my way to and from Chicago.

Update: Thorntown, 46071. I've definitely driven through this one.

'Nother update: Whitestown, 46075. Have driven through this one, too.

Not being able to exercise . . .

. . .  messes with my emotional equilibrium.

We've never been natural partners, exactly,

but we've always had an uneasy truce, based on a mutual agreement that unilateral decisions and putting each other on the spot are bad for us.

So tonight we have our seventh grandchild over to spend the night with our third and fourth. We also had an ice cream social for her and the other kids in the sacramental prep programs, to which the whole family was invited.  Afterward, g-ma took the other younger grandkids and their mom home. When she got back to our house at 8, she decided that #7 needed to go to bed due to her waking up extraordinarily early today.

Ok: so why didn't she just take her home then? Of course the girl didn't want to go to bed; she was expecting at least a little more time with her cousins.

A little while later, #5 called about spending the night tomorrow. G-ma answered the phone and listened to her, and instead of supplying our standard reply of, "Let me check and I'll call you back," so that we could each openly discuss our own opinion, she says before handing me the phone, "It's okay with me; here, ask grandpa."

I didn't want this, but I couldn't exactly say so now.

And, dear reader, if you're ever wondering why your marriage partner seems upset, the best way to get them to share it with you probably isn't to ask, "What's your problem?" This is especially true if they're too resigned to the status quo to properly yell at you as you deserve for your lack of respect for their feelings, as evidenced by the insensitive phrasing and tone of your query.

Thank you, love

It was very thoughtful of you to make me cornbread to have with my leftover chili. I wouldn't have enjoyed it nearly as much without it as I will with it.

Different experiences of suicide

Or: why I'm pretty sure I'd never do it, no matter how hard life gets. I am blessed with a fundamental trust in God that would have to be completely overwhelmed by despair to reach that point. 

Last week I stumbled across an in-depth story about a middle-aged man who was randomly murdered, while out for a run, by a mentally ill man who'd been a running back at a well known university and had dropped out due issues stemming from his mental illness. This article focused on the difficulties institutions (educational, professional) face dealing with mental illness. He and his wife had no children, and I saw in a related article that she was so devastated by his death that she took her own life a week later. 

I was pretty irritated by the journalist who acknowledge the tragedy this woman had experienced but nonetheless branded her suicide as selfish. This strikes me as an easy way to dismiss those who succumb to their depression and to prop ourselves up at their expense. Maybe she (the journalist) was just invoking an important defense against depression in her own life, but I couldn't make myself read her article after seeing the headline. Perhaps she went on to investigate whether the distraught widow had had a history of issues with depression, and her husband's senseless murder had simply pushed her over an edge at which she had previously managed to maintain a troubled equilibrium. (This causes me to reflect on how stable my own equilibrium might really be, which is probably not a bad thing to consider for a guy who won't get a semicolon tattoo at least partly because his mother always insisted, "Don't write a check with your mouth that your ass can't cash.")

We have a friend who was ten years old when she discovered her grandmother, who lived in her home, dead by suicide. We've never really talked about what that was like for her; I would never ask her directly and she hasn't shared beyond these simple circumstances. But I often think of how important it is for my own grandchildren to know that they bring me joy and hope, or rather, to never have to face the question of why they didn't. My bride, too, would be devastated by my passing should I ever become so low as to disregard the difference her love makes in my life.

My dad's self-inflicted death was not as traumatic for me, though I'm certain that was at least in part because mom hid the details of his death behind the technical code phrase "cerebral hemorrhage," not revealing to me that it was a suicide until over a year later. When he died, the hardest thing for me about my dad's demise was my certainty that the reasons my prayers for him weren't answered were my own fault. Perhaps knowing sooner that he'd killed himself might have alleviated that concern, but I'm not at all certain of that.

I've long felt that the only semi-considerate way to commit suicide is to make it appear accidental. Fortunately - and, on re-reading prior to publishing this post, I take it as a positive sign that I didn't consider putting the prefix "un" on that adverb - I have learned that it is very difficult to set up an "accident" such that it is certain to a) be interpreted as such, b) result in death, and c) not physically or emotionally traumatize someone else.

Life is a precious gift.  But I understand all too well how easy it is to be overwhelmed by it. 

After all,

even a piss-poor, unhealthy reason (say, out of consideration for others) is better than deciding that you don't have one at all. So, best to stockpile a few for darker days.