It feels very much like Monday. I'm back at work, back for the first time since last Wednesday afternoon, when I left early to take Heather to the doctor. The cup of coffee left on my desk had dried out, turning into a 1/4 " thick sludge. I had been monitoring my e-mail, so at least there weren't 100 unread messages, but I'm still feeling very uncentered. I don't know what I should be doing. I can't find a routine, a groove, something repetitive enough to occupy my brain. Thinking is painful. I wish I could have just stayed in bed, but that's no good either. I have to make the effort. I have to at least act like I'm functioning well. The problem with grief is that it is cumulative - each new heartache brings back memories of old heartaches, so that everything seems to well up at once, even things long settled in the heart. They all come back anew to haunt the soul.
There are certain things about Nashville which would drive a Baptist minister to drink - in public. One of these things is the entity known as NES. Whenever NES isn't out butchering trees, apparently they're arbitrarily turning off power to entire city blocks. Granted, we had a storm the other night. Granted, there were a lot of people without power, and there was a transformer damaged. But notifying Vanderbilt 15 minutes after you've already done it that there will be "intermittent" power outages, then leaving the power off for an hour and a half, just doesn't seem Kosher to me. Blakemore is very busy street, as is 21st. I know that the traffic lights on Blakemore between Natchez and 21st were out, no police presence, just reliance that folks driving in Nashville would know to treat the intersections as 4-way stops. Since I swear two-thirds of the population doesn't understand the concept of a 4-way stop, this was a bad idea. Meanwhile, back at the ranc...
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