Punderings

This is offered – not as an excuse, but as an explanation – of why I’ve been so quiet lately. Some friends and perhaps fellow members have wondered why I haven’t spoken up or made known some positions recently.

In the past week or so, I’ve been dealing with a number of stressful situations including:

• Extended family member in rehab recovering from a heart attack
• Close family member with arm and wrist injuries
• Various minor but urgent miscellaneous legal issues
• Various questions from our home renovation contractor
• A cat at the emergency vet at 2AM
• Leaks in the roof
• No attic or basement (due to shuffling boxes for contractor)
• Flaky electricity in half our outlets
• No home internet for a while
• Reorg at work
• Cats making a mess and being upset at the rest of the stress in life

I do recognize that I’m incredibly lucky even give the aforementioned disaster a day of the past two weeks. I live in a country with free speech, and free and fair elections. I have a great job, own (some of) my own home, and have a wife and daughter more wonderful than I ever imagined. I don’t have any serious illnesses, and all of our cats are now in at least stable condition.

But the human condition is a relative one: one person’s exciting challenge is another person’s incipient ulcer. And we’re used to a certain pace or style of life – while I can handle most disasters as well as anyone, too many at once just doesn’t feel fair. Hence, a number of things I’ve wanted to do have been postponed for a while lately.

So I declare it the end of disaster week, and look forward to a disaster-free and very fun weekend with some family coming to visit. I just hope we have enough floor space left from all our storage reshuffling to find the spare bed!