Today's Update

It's September second and that means it's time for my regularly scheduled depression to start kicking in. Every year for the last I don't know how many years, the end of summer has been occupied with getting one or more of the kids ready to move away to college. This process usually started about the time they moved back in in the previous spring. After squeezing them and their stuff back into the house, I usually had a two to three week reprieve where I could kid myself into thinking that things were "back to normal", and I guess they were.

But "normal" has come to mean getting ready for them to leave again in the fall, or leave whenever, and that's always in the back of my mind. At least it is when it's not in the front of my mind.

Helaina, though still at home temporarily, has shifted off of her summer work schedule to her regular schedule. This means she leaves for work before I get home and gets back from work after I've gone to bed. We manage to somewhat synchronize our schedules on the weekend- sort of, but it's awfully quiet around here in the evenings.

Rachael has moved to The Big City, with various degrees of success (if you define success as being happy, which I do), but she's adjusting. I've said more than once that I wouldn't mind the city if it wasn't for the people. But she's more of a people person than me and better equipped to deal with things like that (i.e.: people). She was able to visit for the long weekend, which was great. But like all long weekends, they never feel long enough.

The focus on Jake has been getting him ready to move away for grad school. In some ways, this has offered a fair amount of diversification for me beyond my typical straight forward, "they're getting ready to leave" anxiety. My time has largely been spent trying to secure him a car for when he leaves, securing housing for when he gets down there, and wondering when the heck he's going to get his bill. Dealing with each of these has been met with varying degrees of success.

The housing was the first to get straightened out, or at least secured, when his now present landlord finally got back to him with paperwork to sign- a full week before Jake was needing to move in. Up until then, this had caused no end of frustration- for Jake in having to listen to me ask over and over if the guy had sent the paperwork. At one point I told Jake that he needed to have a Plan B in case this guy didn't come through. Plan B apparently came to mean that I would fanatically surf around for other places for him to live, while he played League of Legends online. But, as mentioned, the guy came through, and Jake once again proved that I was being alarmist for no good reason.

Getting the car should have been the first thing to get straightened out, since we started looking back at the end of May. He ended up buying one at the beginning of July which seemed like a pretty good deal at the time- but surprisingly, it wasn't. After several returns to the dealer for various issues, it made one final return to the dealer yesterday- on the back of a tow truck. At least it lasted long enough for Jake to move in to his new apartment, which is where he is now, with my car.

And the bill, well, I guess that's all set. Jake texted me last night about it and the mechanics of processing his payment. This continues to seem like too good of a deal to me and I'm left to wonder what the financial equivalent of a tow truck looks like.

And that leaves Sam- my sidekick... when he lets me. Tonight, he helped me make hamburgers, which I cooked on the grill, along with some pastrami I found in the back of the refrigerator. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Later, we'll go for a walk.

Sam's been going for a lot of walks lately. When it hasn't been with me, it's been with a job coach he worked with this summer- mostly working on how to safely cross the street. I was struck by this a couple of weeks ago when Jake had cleaned his room and found his old Driver's Ed book, which he gave to Sam, in case Sam wants to learn how to drive. Maybe someday it will be Sam's car on the back of a tow truck.

I find some comfort in that thought. It fits in neatly with my current depression.