The Lost Day

Waiting for the phone again.  Sunday is always my 'lost day' on the job I'm holding right now.  I usually get home sometime Saturday and my call window starts again at midnight so I can't get too far from the flagpole or I run the risk of getting caught short on sleep.  The train line-up on the computer is about as reliable as a horoscope or reading tea leaves so I gave up trying to out-fox the crew callers years ago.  The safest plan to avoid eyelids-of-steel is to just figure on going to bed early and hope for the best.  It's much like the NY Lottery;  "Hey, you never know..."

I conked pretty early anyway.  I managed to grab a couple hours of sleep after I got home Saturday morning then scooted out to run a vendor booth for our Tour de Cure team at a home-town 5K run.  Got it set up next to the local lake/pond/waterfowl LZ and all was well until, in typical fashion for this spring, the sky opened up.  Traffic by the booth dropped pretty substantially to say the least once the rain settled in.  Eventually, even the goose patrol holding forth on the pond couldn't take it and formed up in line astern to make for shore.

All was not completely lost as we got some folks interested and sold some raffle tickets before the deluge got serious and the wind started driving water sideways under the pop-up.  Wet and cold, we finally surrendered to the elements, folded the tents and vowed to fight again another day.  That led to an early crash into bed and a fitful rest wondering if and when I'll get called.

But back to this morning...

My younger son's birthday is today and as usual, I'll probably miss most of it.  As is so often the way, I'll just get settled into the day and the phone will go off with the a train to run.  My brood says they're used to it and it's all OK but I'm not and it's not.  I try to roll with the fable they tell me because it's the only way to get through it but it doesn't make me miss them less.  I was gone for my wife's birthday again this year and that one too is a hurt.  It comes down to the choices we make and these are awful hard.  Nobody ever said it would be an easy go when I signed up for this gig but knowing about it and living it are oftentimes different things. 

There'll be better days I know but in the meantime...I'll make the best of what we have and hope it's all worth it at the end of the line.