Ah, sense memories...

Don't ask me how it started, but The Kid and I just got done with a house-wide water-wing soccer tournament. I have no idea why, when or how the water wings found their way in to the living room. I just saw them on the floor while corralling The Kid toward the bath tub, and kicked one of them at The Kid to get his attention. He got a devilish look in his eye and kicked it back at me. Naturally, I kicked not one, but two water wings at The Kid. On my hardwood floor, those suckers can get to flying. It's kind of like they become little hovercrafts. Suddenly, a super-competitive new sport has been born. The Kid played through a stubbed toe, even, this Water Wing Soccer is not for sissies.

The best part of the whole thing? As the game made it's way back to my bath room, The Kid asked me to blow up one of the water wings more so he could take it in the bath with him. As I bit at the plastic-blower-upper-nozzle to blow some more air into the water wing, I could still totally taste the last pool we'd gone to, and for a quick second, I was transported to one week before Kindergarten started, when The Kid and I took a spur-of-the-moment vacation to the Hot Springs Pool at Glenwood Springs (if you've ever been there, you know what I mean about tasting the water, it's all sulphur-ish and mineral-y).

Last summer feels like a different age to me now. I've never been a worry wart. I've never had trouble sleeping. I've never found a gray hair. But in the last two months, I've turned into a complete wreck. My house is an embarrassing mess, I'm disgustingly behind at work, I've forgotten bills (literally, FORGOTTEN, not "forgotten" or claiming "willful blindness"). I've become wistful at the taste of sulphur on a water wing (and thus need therapy, clearly).

The Kid has gone into a spiral of violent outburts and aggression, while I can't say they weren't completely absent two months ago, but at least they didn't show up in my home. The Kid has uttered the words, "I hate school" and "Everyone hates me" and I know he means it. It's been dark, tough times.

But it all comes back to my favorite 4 letter word: DEAL. We can't go back, and can only continue on the path, complete the hard work. I subscribe devotedly (and knowingly, and tongue in cheekingly) to the idea from Candide on the view of our world:

...the old woman ventured one day to tell them:
"I would be glad to know which is worst, to be ravished a hundred times by Negro pirates, to have one buttock cut off, to run the gauntlet among the Bulgarians, to be whipped and hanged at an auto-da-fe, to be dissected, to be chained to an oar in a galley; and, in short, to experience all the miseries through which every one of us hath passed, or to remain here doing nothing?"
"This," said Candide, "is a grand question."

Indeed, this is the best of all possible worlds, because this is the one The Kid and I inhabit. Right?