Hurry Up and Wait

Dearest Rachel –

Sometimes, the stories that I have planned to tell you have to be set aside. Not everything is urgent; not everything is time-sensitive.

But sometimes, things come up. And that basically sums up today. So any story having to do with the dating app will need to wait for another day.

I don’t know if I’ve told you about it, but late in the season, the furnace was starting to make quite a bit of noise, and Jan was noticing a rather pronounced smell of gas (although I wasn’t quite as aware of it as she seemed to be). She recommended a fellow who knew his stuff, but might take his time getting to the problem. Which, given the fact that it was spring, wasn’t that much of an issue at a time end after all, who needs a furnace running when spring and summer are next on the calendar? As long as we have it running by the time fall comes around, we should be good.

And he did come around eventually, and indicated that the furnace needed a new part – one that might take some time to order and receive. Again, we had all summer to get it, so I wasn’t worried. Do what you need to do, Roger.

And it’s at this point I ought to introduce Roger to you. I don’t know if HVAC systems has always been his line of work, but when I was a kid, he and his wife Gayle were the leaders of the church youth group. I still remember a contest they had organized for kids to memorize certain scripture passages and the like. At the time the contest ended, apparently I was the only one to actually achieve the goal, and they wound up taking me all on my own (on my birthday, no less!) to a Showbiz Pizza Place, One of the precursor companies what is now Chuck E. Cheese, and the inspiration for all those Five Nights at Freddy’s games that you always liked to watch Markiplier and Jack Septic Eye play. To be sure, my fascination with the place had nothing to do with either the pizza or the animatronics, but rather the video games themselves, and we played a number of them together that evening.

Of course, after we got married, I began dabbling around on the computer as soon as the Internet was a commercial thing, and got my hands on a copy of an open-source program called the Multi-Arcade Machine Emulator, or MAME for short. Through the space program, and a collection of thousands of ROMs, we were able to re-experience so many of those games from my childhood days of wandering through the mall arcades back in the day.

There’s at least one out there that we used to play together that could probably be a story all by itself. However, I’ve wandered away from today’s situation for long enough, I think.

In any event, it’s a little weird to be dealing with Roger in such a different capacity, to say nothing of these new circumstances. For all the time I knew him as a kid, he knew nothing of my grown-up life, and nothing of you.

But that’s just the way things are. People come and go into and out of one’s life; What’s weird is most likely the fact that some re-enter one’s life in totally unexpected ways at the most curious of times.

All that being said, the part that was on order for most of spring and all of summer finally arrived last week, and Roger actually contacted me to tell me that he could finish his work on the furnace. And as it’s the middle of October, I would say it’s none too soon. So after a little back-and-forth, we decided that he would come over today to install the part and make sure that everything was in working order in time for the cooling weather brought by fall and, eventually, winter.

So I informed my folks that I would not be in today, and made plans to spend the day at home. But first, a question came up with our attorneys, having to do with documentation for your estate. So I had to go over there with these documents, answer a few questions, sign a few forms, and hurry back just in case Roger showed up before I made it home (he was scheduled to be here sometime between 10 and 2). As I was driving home, I realized his past 10 in the morning, and decided to call him up, leave him a message, and let him know that I would be home soon, so he didn’t worry if there wasn’t anybody to answer the door.

And before you ask, no, Daniel wasn’t with me; when I left the house, though, he was asleep, so I wasn’t about to rely on him being awake by that hour.

Fortunately, by the time I did get home, there was no sign of Roger yet. equally fortunate, Daniel was up, and actually looking for the keys to your car, as he needed a new headphone for his MP3 player. After a little bit of searching, he managed to find it and had it out. I was pleased with him for taking the initiative on his own, and actually leaving the house for once.

Unfortunately, there was still no sign of Roger once Daniel found his keys and drove off. But when you have a four-hour window to deal with, you make an effort to be patient.

The good news is that I didn’t need to wait long. The bad news is that, shortly after Daniel headed out, I got a text from Roger. His previous appointment was running long, and would probably take all day. Could we reschedule for later this week?

Well.

It is the nice thing about being retired if there are no real upsets to your schedule. If you can go in to your office and do something, fine. If not, that’s okay too. If anyone could be understanding with the need to reschedule, it should be me. So, he’s coming over on Friday, and will let me know what time by tomorrow.

Meanwhile, it gives me the opportunity to do some work around the house (like laundry – and changing the bed linen to something warmer), a little bit of shopping that Daniel missed (he’s been telling me the other day that he’s run out of sprite, and didn’t think to pick it up while he was out), and visit Mom in hospital.

That’s right, she’s been dealing with some kind of bacterial infection due to an insect bite that she noticed on Monday, went into the walk-in clinic that evening, but it continued to bother her throughout Tuesday. This morning, after having no relief, she and dad contacted Lars, who instructed her to get to the ER, where they assigned her a hospital room. Hopefully, she’ll only have to stay overnight, but if it’s serious enough for that kind of observation, I should check in on her, as I’m otherwise at liberty for now.

So, that was my morning. How about yourself?