A Burst Of Work

And so I woke up this morning and right away realized that this is the first Tuesday in a really long time that I am not driving to McDonald's first thing to get Johnnie his first breakfast. Yes Lisa and I made peace last night and then I know they will be at Coronado for the first part of this week, rain be damned. And it was already raining first thing this morning. It's going to be like that for most of the week I'm afraid. But that's ok... since I knew I am still working this week. Although it felt like a chunk of the office isn't even around, I still had all these things to finish up and do. Things to sign off on. Contracts and what not. I mean it is the end of the year coming up at the end of the week. Anyway, I did have plenty of stuff around the house to remind me of Johnnie, starting with his latest drawing that he posted on the wall. I was even looking through my YouTube Library to start cleaning it out and of course I would run into a couple of Johnnie just laughing. I remember thinking when I recorded them I did it exactly for days like this when he's not around and I wanted to think of him. That laugh of his makes me laugh. It made me laugh a lot this morning. And then I got to work. The thing was that I pretty much stayed in my pajamas for the bulk of the day. Didn't shower or anything, just waited until I was absolutely hungry before I even made myself something to eat for breakfast. And so with a late breakfast came a late lunch and I had all kinds of food leftover anyway. All that to say I never left the house for most of the day. Even when I was doing steps. I was perfectly happy doing it while watching something on TV. I realize I had a lot of reconciling to do in terms of evaluating the year, in terms of evaluating my finances. I mean after all, in another reality, I was supposed to have retired by Friday, living off dividends off of $1M in my IRA. But I'm not because of a tiny bit of uncertainty that crept into my head about the stock market. Even though we're in the middle of a Santa rally such as it were. I keep reminding myself that if worse came to worse, I have plenty of cash to live on for at least a year. That isn't something a lot of Americans can say right about now and so I am feeling good positive vibes about that.  And so by the time I ventured out, the sun was already going down (see pic). And it was already the end of the work day at 4:30 in the afternoon. It wasn't raining anymore. The sky was actually pretty. But it was cold. And I decided to venture out to a new place for dinner. It was a Chinese place called New Flavors which was off Centinela and Washington. I must have driven by this place all the time when I picked up Johnnie 4 years ago from Carmen's daycare. I chose to come here to pick up something I hadn't had since we were still living in Westwood. I remembered I used to enjoy shrimp egg foo young all the time from First Szechuan a mere steps from our penthouse apartment. Something about the memory of that food made me time travel back to Westwood. That place was one of my Happy Places. Johnnie was very much remembered there every time we came and I would sit in just so he could have face time with the servers. I didn't have the same expectations with this new place. After all I'm only picking up takeout. I was just hoping for some pretty good egg foo young. I posted a pic. As it were, it wasn't bad. It wasn't as good as the one from First Szechuan. But it was good enough. After what has it been... 5+ years? I immediately had a memory of those old flavors and all those times I would order this for takeout for myself. Tonight, this would be the play of the day. And helped make this Johnnie-less Tuesday tolerable. And best yet, I had plenty of food - so much food there would be enough for lunch tomorrow. Short work week halfway over.