Things I Recognize in General

I spent an hour on the phone with Gary last night. He was surprisingly upbeat considering his dad just died. We made plans for breakfast with the boys this morning.

I’ve been around too long to not recognize what that was. The weird adrenaline thing that happens immediately after a loss where you are so desperate for everything to go back to normal that you don’t even allow yourself to feel the pain.

I know it is coming. I am somewhat hesitant to say I hope I am not here when it does. I really didn’t think I was going to get out of the Navy alive.

But. In this clan we are nothing if not persistent. Other than the ascending aortic aneurysm and the wrong aortic valve I am healthy as a horse. Clean eating and walking 5 miles a day can do that for you.

I do get depressed a bit this time of the years. It is always dark. People from away think of Maine like north Alaska. Nope. We don’t have a month of complete darkness. But good god don’t we have some dreariness.

Three weeks in the writing, I submitted my final paper for a class for a degree program I will never finish.

The paper is finished, and I just now realize I didn’t run it through grammarly. I was so fucking frustrated with the way the rubric was written. It was like five right handed monkeys were all simultaneously typing with their left hands. I would read, underline, write, go back and read. Storm out of the house in frustration. Read. Underline.

This is the second term where the final project rubric was a complete. Fucking. Utter. Goat. Rope.

I suppose this means I am done with academics.

Do you know how many times I have said that in this lifetime? Do you have a fucking clue?

Academics is like the fucking mafia. Every time you think you are out, they pull you back in again.