Wednesday, the kids arrive. An early Christmas of sorts, celebrating a landmark birthday. The boy, lavish in ordering the biggest Charcuterie they had, we dine, drink a bottle of wine, catch up. From there to a pub, then another, more, mutually roasting us and then finally back to the apartment where we drink even more and discuss terrible childhoods and even worse childhood vacations "CHARACTER BUILDING" I tell them and thump my cane on the floor.
Thursday morning they're off, back to their separate lives, and I'm keyed up the whole time, never sober, I took an extra day off work for this and so Saturday begin the slow recovery.
You can have too much of a good thing, and this is something that needs to be recovered from if I'm to have any hopes of getting to my next birthday, and - the reminders of mortality, how many years left, and how many will be productive, and time to reign in a few of my vices, but it's hard this, lowering the anxious vibration. And time to start saving for next summer's jeep, the neighbour cash loans, she's repaid none of it, all of it with promises but it's getting on time and I think she's got it figured out. She'd better have, because if I have to say it...