Better

“There's something in the way she moves Or looks my way, or calls my name That seems to leave this troubled world behind If I'm feeling down and blue Or troubled by some foolish game She always seems to make me change my mind

And I feel fine anytime she's around me now She's around me now Almost all the time And if I'm well you can tell she's been with me now She's been with me now quite a long, long time And I feel fine"

-James Taylor

Everything's fine now, yesterday's funk long gone.

What the hell happened?

That was an odd one, not weepy and maudlin, just wanting to turn away from the world and sleep. I can't say I've encountered anything quite like it before. Maybe I was just really tired, or maybe I caught a touch of Peg's bug.

But I do know how it ended--miraculously, the OR was fat on anesthesia professionals, and apparently a little light on patients, and after a half-day Peg came home. I stopped pretending to work here at my desk when she walked through the door of the home office and hugged my neck. We napped, P for a couple hours while I started feeling better after only a few minutes.

It was a gorgeous fall day here in the Southern Tier, much as today promises to be. We decided to walk down the hill and check out the Farmers Market, just behind Centerway Square. The autumn yellows and oranges and browns are breathtaking as we enter the last few days before the leaves drop.

Finding the Farmers Market small and disappointing, with only a couple displays of actual farm products, we decided to walk Market Street in search of a late lunch. We'd had a disastrous experience at the Mexican place a few months ago, during which I poured our own drinks and grabbed our own silverware as the young man tasked with waiting tables for the first time in his life imploded into ineffectuality while his crusty uncle at the cash register played with his phone and did nothing to help. Maybe today would be better?

It was. I nursed a Negro Modelo, my late grandfather's favorite, and P and I split a plate of chile colorado and a tamale while we watched folks walk past the window (or, more accurately, they watched us up to our elbows in gustatory ecstasy). From there we walked across the street to the glassmaker's shop to check out some stained glass that caught P's fancy. The reconnaissance lasted longer than it otherwise might have, as we were waylaid by the owner, Joe from Pennsylvania, who is a master glassmaker and teacher at CMOG. A little round, a little scruffy, with thick, powerful hands, Joe talked us up about the unreliability of the Chinese stained glass supply chain (they break everything in shipping, apparently), the beveling techniques displayed in a window P considered buying, and his own experience restoring a 6,000 square foot house in rural Pennsylvania that was populated with "orbs", spirits of past occupants he'd seen with his own eyes. No kidding? We have those too.

Back up the hill, I worked a little although my heart wasn't really in it--how often do I have P at home when it's daylight outside? Chris came by and installed a few cabinet doors, and we pondered with some trepidation whether Tom would finish our front steps in time for the anesthesia department's Halloween Party tomorrow night.

My bet would be that our guests will need to arrive via the side door. This three day project has now hit two weeks. We did the math, P and I, and figured that poor Tom, who has a degree in engineering and an obsession with perfection bordering on the compulsive, is down to maybe six bucks an hour on his fixed-price contract.

Somewhere in there Josh, recently returned from his hero's journey into the bowels of NYC, took his leave and started driving toward his next stop in West Virginia. Burdened with a belly full of Mexican food, we elected to take a sunset walk around the block.

That's Little Joe peeking up through the houses on Walnut Street. I considered cropping the shot to get rid of the run down houses, yard junk, and Bills flag, but thought better of it. Once day I'll miss all this, miss being able to puff around the block in crisp fall air holding P's hand, making plans, always making plans.

Which continued when we arrived home and built a big fire in the living room, with me scouting hotels in Istanbul then building a string of stops around Ireland on the iPhone as P texted for travel advice from a resident at Guthrie who'd gone to school in Cork. Then after a bowl of soup we crawled in bed and I took P on a virtual tour of the Emerald Isle on the tablet, with all of my planned stops, before P fell dead asleep. I figured I'd do the same, but instead the hamster wheel between my ears ran wide open with thoughts and task lists related to the big push to turn Wyldswood into an event venue by year's end. Issac's going to get a hell of a setup when we croak.

So I guess the boomerang effect of the morning's despair and lethargy was a burst of optimism and energy, unfortunately when I should've been asleep. Feeling the effects a little this morning.

And I need to venture out into the 27 degree dawn here shortly. Peg's given me a long list of items needed for tomorrow's Costume Extravaganza that will have me dashing between Home Depot and Wegman's, I'm hoping all before my first call in ninety minutes. We're smoking an eighteen pound brisket, the star of the spread P's thought out for the evening, and that process starts with brining this morning before I place it on the smoker just before turning in tonight.

It's all pretty good, this life, and I've learned over nearly six decades that those frontal systems of depression always pass. So will this, I reckon. It's just one's attitude toward both experiences that makes the difference. I've been reminded of that lately by a dear friend to both of us who's going through some extremely difficult health issues these days, but always with a remarkable pluck and reflection we'd all do well to emulate. God speaks to us through folks like that, if we'd only listen.

"Every now and then the things I lean on lose their meaning And I find myself careening In places where I should not let me go She has the power to go where no one else can find me Yes and silently remind me Of the happiness and the good times that I know, but as I had got to know them

It isn't what she's got to say But how she thinks and where she's been To me, the words are nice, the way they sound I like to hear them best that way It doesn't much matter what they mean She says them mostly just to calm me down

And I feel fine anytime she's around me now She's around me now Almost all the time If I'm well you can tell she's been with me now She's been with me now quite a long, long time Yes and I feel fine"