Winter Hours

Deer voyeur, Feb 2012

Before turning in, I wanted to share a few thoughts.

It's been a tough week. More like a tough month. Or a tough season. Not to whine, but here's the weird thing about The Valley... People think Winter is the hardest season. It's not. Winter is wonderful here. Spring, however, sucks. Especially March. We have a phenomemon here called "Winter Hours" which means "Everything's Closed." And it lasts until Memorial Day.

The anniversary of what happened this time last year has been weighing on me. It was preceded by a Winter with 100 consecutive days of rain, lasting well into March. Then it went down as follows: April 20, lost job; April 21, Happy Birthday!; April 25, found out Fritz had cancer; May 4, he was gone; May 5, moved to a new apartment. I call it the Black Fortnight.

However, things went better after that. Much better. Got a sane job that went well. The next apartment was great. I eventually had to move out here because I couldn't afford both rent and mortgage, but that went fairly well most of the time--with many hills and hollows.

It gives me comfort and hope to know that things can turn around so dramatically--but also I need to remember that it hasn't all gone steadily uphill--and it will continue to go up and down.

I must admit I've felt very isolated. Be that as it may, I'm going into Seattle this weekend to spend time with friends for my birthday, then the second week of May I'll be starting a new job and will be in town much more often.

Sometimes I wonder if I drive myself to extreme peculiarity by trying to make sense of it all. Some things make no sense. I don't believe God causes adversity to torment us, but he wants us to trust Him in the face of adversity. He created a physical world where--raining hellfire, shit, piss, and corruption--things can go wrong. Things fall apart, they fall down, they burn up, we can get hurt--and so can our feelings, even when something bad hasn't actually happened. But wonderful things can happen too. These possibilities were built into the world from the very beginning.

What keeps me going is a desire to move on. There are people to meet and places to see. I hope, when I get settled, to adopt a dog. Fritz would have wanted that. Actually, he wouldn't have--he would have viciously chased the other dog away and eaten his food. But he'd want me to move on and enjoy life, because he sure could enjoy life. He went for the gusto.

Not sure why I said this, I just had to say it.