rough rides

I’m chasing my shadow this week. Running in circles, attempting to do a great push forward, trying to keep spirits up as so many around me are having rough rides.

Not the roughest, but rough enough has been the ride of my occasional travel buddy, who has come down with something so benign and yet so perversely irritating as a sore tooth. To look at his face when his soul is crushed under the weight of pain is not easy. What can I say, pain is pain and I watch with pity, alternating with a tiny bit of a smile, as he works his way through an entire prescription of pain medication from early evening until the wee hours of the morning. Luckily, he is seen and treated by the time the little container is shaken dry and tossed aside.

Afterwards, he is without memory about what transpired. Pain? Eh, not a big deal. (Meaning: all gone!)

As between Ed and me, I would say I spend perhaps thirty times as much time in doctors’ offices and twenty times as many hours in dentists’ chairs as he does, but this only makes me understand how terrible it is to go through the ordeal of waiting rooms and scheduled meetings with people in white cloaks who are there to make you feel better. In the long run. So I sympathize.

But only so much. I am in the mad rush of another busy week with not one, not two, not three, but four nights of work ahead and that’s in addition to the work that envelopes the daytime hours.

What can I say. These are challenging times. At least I don’t force myself to sport it out on my commute to and from campus. Others do.



bare shin?


Come to think of it, maybe I should...