Dearest Rachel –
I complained from time to time – even during this past week – that there isn’t that much going on around me to tell you about. But after a day like yesterday, which felt like a day of nothing going on (for the most part), maybe I’m just missing the truly unusual parts. Because I literally woke up this morning, wondering when I would tell you, and then realized all the weird things that happened yesterday that were just tiny little vignettes, none of which would’ve made much of a story in of themselves, but combined make for our rather interesting day, as long as I don’t just simply let them pass by unremarked on.
Let’s start with the fact that Kris was over yesterday, which is barely a once-in-a-month event, but has become in its own way routine enough to seem ordinary. It’s a thing that’s become so much a fact of life for us boys that I almost forget that it would be utterly alien to you to have someone over (let alone regularly) to clean the place; that being your responsibility to take care of, or you were failing at your wifely duties. Never mind that you’d made your task so impossibly large that it couldn’t be done without being overwhelmed, you couldn’t bring yourself to ask for the help you needed. Now that I have, though, it seems as normal as the sky
I still have my moments of clutter and litter, though, and we’ll get to that eventually, so don’t get the impression that my hands are clean even now. But I do like having the place kept mostly tidy and sanitary. Besides, I simply canNOT fold the contour sheet and put it away without help; I don’t know how you ever did (and I assume you did from time to time – I know you enlisted me to help you frequently, but not all the time).
In any event, I think I’ve mentioned to you about how she enjoys Asian food, but can’t get any of her family to go out to a place with her, so Daniel and I are more than happy to take her somewhere after she’s put in a full morning at the house. To be fair, we were actually wanting to introduce her to the Tijuanese place we’d discovered only a few months ago that took over the old 7-11, but apparently Mexican food doesn’t agree with her, so that was a washout. However, for once we had an almost immediate backup plan, in an Asian place a stone’s throw from our bank (which will become important later). So we suggested this place as an alternative, and she cheerfully agreed.
Now, Daniel and I had only been there once before, on a Sunday after church, so we were a little bit surprised yesterday to find out that the menu was very different (and much smaller) then the one we’d encountered on our first visit. Still, as long as Daniel could get his dan-dan noodles, he was happy, and Kris seemed perfectly satisfied with what she had ordered (indeed, she needed to bring half of it home as leftovers), so by and large, everything worked out just fine.
And since we were in the neighborhood, we decided to stop by the bank once we had seen her off from lunch. We’re still trying to get things sorted out regarding those HH bonds, and according to our attorney, we need to have a medallion embossed on certain documents by the bank in order to redeem them. However, on our first visit a week or so ago, they said we needed to present additional documentation showing that Daniel and I were heirs and beneficiaries; I thought that had been included in the original tranche of documentation, but a few days ago, I spotted a separate page or two that I had neglected to bring with on our last visit. So, when we were heading out to the Chinese place, I made sure to bring those pages, as well as the bonds themselves, since the bank also insisted on seeing those before applying the embossment.
However, since we had come unannounced, and the individuals we were working with on our last visit were at a different branch, the fellow who greeted us there at the bank apologetically stated that he couldn’t help us himself. He did make copies of the additional documentation, and told us that they would call us back about the matter, but “don’t call us, we’ll call you” has as much veracity as “the check is in the mail,” in business terms. Not that we expected much of the visit, but it is disappointing when a business accomplishes exactly as little as you expected of them.
This obviously wasn’t the end of the day, of course; this is barely after lunch, after all. And seeing as we had a free afternoon, we decided that it would be best to take care of our civic responsibility of voting, since the state allows us to do so as much as three weeks early like this. It saves us the trouble of potentially forgetting – not that that’s likely to happen, but why not take care of it when you think of it? Besides, it was a beautiful day yesterday, without even a cloud in the sky. Why not take advantage of such a day to walk down to the courthouse and take care of this?
I will say that the conversation to and from the courthouse was animated, at least on Daniel’s part. I would almost go so far as to say ‘surprisingly so,’ but no; politics tends to get his juices flowing. As for me, I’m far too much of a cynic to think that a ballot is going to accomplish anything, especially here in Cook County, the place that essentially codified the old half-joke “vote early and vote often” before it became commonplace nationwide. I’m not even saying that from GenX pessimism; the city and county have been under one-party rule for over a century. It predate my parents, for heavens’ sake.
I will say that, once confronted with the ballot, there are parts of it I don’t know what to do with. There are a host of judges standing for re-election to their individual posts, all of whom are running unopposed. Once upon a time, I used to make a point of marking yes to each of them, under the assumption that criminal caseloads were so backlogged that we needed all the judges we could get in office to process them. Nowadays, I hear about judges who literally say “I can do this all day; I’ve got nothing else on my docket” but to essentially legislate from the bench, or at the very least, block literally anything that either of the other branches of government try to do. In which case, I’ve completely flipped on the subject; “throw the bums out” applies as much to the judiciary as the legislature or the executives.
When I told Daniel about this on our way back, he apologized profusely for cancelling out my vote; I told him a.) he didn’t know how I was voting (which is the point, after all), and b.) he shouldn’t need to apologize for his own decisions, as long as they were backed up by rationale, which, if he still held my own old opinions, would be more the justifiable.
When we arrived back at the house (after making a quick detour for “dessert” of sorts – the drugstore on the nearest corner is already offering discounts on Halloween candy, where you buy one bag, you can get another for a dollar), I noticed some paper on the ground on the driveway turnaround. They looked, for all we could tell, like lottery tickets; small and fairly thin in size. Well, as I’ve said earlier, I prefer the place tidy, even if it’s not my mess to begin with, so I began to pick up these papers.
It turned out to be the HH bonds I’d taken with us to the bank earlier; somehow, they had come loose from the paperclip affixing them to the other documents the bankers had wanted to see, and had flown out onto the lawn… but had stayed there, untouched and all accounted for, throughout the entire time as we’d walked to the courthouse, voted, and returned on foot. I was more than a little embarrassed to discover this, but I did send a quiet prayer of thanks for not letting them scatter any further than they had (although given the trouble we’ve been having getting them redeemed ourselves, I can’t imagine some rando being able to do anything with them, even if they did pick them up).
And as long as I’m mentioning this, honey, I might as well thank you for having kept an eye on us – and them – as well. Still, it just goes to show that we could use any well wishes you could spare for the future.
