Friday Filler – State of Despair Turns Into State of Joy

Patric

5 years ago

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Thank Grog It’s Firday,

So, we here on the West Coast know that you folks from colder climates are likely to make fun of all of the news of our “Snow-Ma-Geddon” (not to be confused with Rhiannon Giddens, the absolutely stunning folk/roots singer). Not sure why my mind jumped to that…but I have had so little sleep, and so much added stress this week, that my brain (what is left at this advanced age) is in free-fall (no…not the Tom Petty song). But, I digress…

This week, right in the final stages of planning our huge FUNdraiser for my Rotary club…and pulling 16-hour days, 7 days a week for the last 4 weeks, we got hit with what they are calling a “100 year snow event.” It was impressively insane…but, anyone my age remembers a handful of “snow events” bigger than this one. We did get almost 2 feet…really fast ( we got 4′ in 1969). And it was the kind of heavy, wet snow that breaks trees…and power poles…and all sorts of other stuff.

It’s the kind of snow that had all of the West Coast folks going, “Oh…isn’t it beautiful! I hope we get a Snow Day!” after a few hours, but then, “OH DEAR GOD…PLEASE LET IT MELT!! So they can turn the electricity and cable back on!” after three days of more snow…freezing rain…and biting wind.

And by Wednesday night…it was obvious…we had to postpone the event. So there were 225 people to be informed. Catering cancelled. Everything put on hold. And boxes and boxed of auction items stacked up in my family room.

But then…things got weirdly joyful.

First… more than half of the people responded with, “Thank God! I wasn’t going to be able to make it! I still don’t have power!” The other half said, “Thank you for making this tough decision…we’ll make it an even better when we do it in a few weeks!”

And the good news…we were completely done. Everything ready to go. So, now…we just have it locked and loaded, and ready to pull the trigger. My house is full to the brim with “Hooch.” (It is a SpeakEasy event). So…let it snow.

Then, when I finally got around to opening up the Mini-Event in TSTO, I realized it was indeed, “Mini.” But, immediately got the “YOU ARE FULL” warning again…DAMMITALLEA!

So….I stored a nine shrubs, so I could place the items that came with the first wave of this update… and just settled in for another few weeks of frustration.

But…just when I was ready to start shaping all of my water features into indecent gestures to EA, in protest of the stupid Item Limits…

BOOM!! They raised the item limits again Thursday morning!

Thursday morning… when I went to place my KEMs, I got this message.

WHAT??? Soooooo….just to be sure…I started placing a ton of stored fences to see what the new limit was…BOOM!!

So then I stored the fences…and thanked EA silently for a small reprieve…and started to relax a little more.

And then, I got the Sky Finger statue…which works great! No it doesn’t clear jobs…but it does a GREAT job of clearing buildings and rents and menus…which I long ago had grown tired of collecting every day. So cool. Maybe the wrong finger…but cool.

And, just when I thought nothing else could make my horrible-week-turned-joyful week even more joyful…

I got this message from my friend, Terri.

Hey Pat, I wanted to thank-you and Debbie and all of the prayer groups…got the best news today. The tumor has shrunk by at least half and in some cases the initial metastatic bits have disappeared .

It was such a significant reduction that there was no question of what type of surgery it will be (now scheduled for March 8th), it will be laparoscopic. So less invasive and less recovery time. Then in about 4 weeks after I’ll start the chemo again for three more treatments. The doctor was ecstatic with the results, almost as much as we are!!

Love you two and the awesome support you’ve shown.

So there’s that.

Maybe it was being exhausted. Maybe it was such an overwhelming sense of relief on so many levels…that I found myself doing an insane “happy dance” with tears of joy running down my face.

Perspective. Misery, stress and joy…all just pieces of the same perspective pie.

Sure…it was a hard week. We lost a ton of trees. We lost the gazebo to our hot tub. But, right after I got a sense of perspective from Terri’s note, a casual visitor stopped by to remind me of the beauty of this earth…in any sort of weather. Our fence was down…so, this casual friend needing “shelter from the storm” (not the Bob Dylan song), was there for hours…and let me feed her an apple without running (I tossed it her way, from our deck).

So, Item Limits? Come on. Thousands of people in Eugene won’t have power for a week or two. So…no. I’m not going to lose my sh@t over Item Limits.

Have a great weekend. And THANKS TO ALL WHO SENT TERRI HAPPY, HEALING VIBES! Her surgery is March 6th. Keep ’em coming!

Peace. Love. Hope. It’s all real…