December 13: Happy Things

It was hard to be happy today. I had a terrible day at work due to terrible adult behavior. The whole day was long and drawn out and I even had a meeting that could have been an email with a powerpoint attachment.

But I came home and a friend came over and our little dogs played together while we talked and I felt the day's frustrations melt away a little bit. We laughed and talked and had a couple of beers and split a pizza and I felt young.

I don't have a lot of friends anymore since the divorce, and I have very few close friends. Besides Maggie, I have my sisters. And that's about it these days. It's a lonely December and I am finding myself 44 years old and needing to use friendship-building skills from my 20s. When it was easy. Because I had young children and scout troops and, hell, I helped build a school from scratch and I lived on a block of people I could count on and loved my parish.

I'm on my own now, like a pioneer heading west or an immigrant taking a boat across the ocean. It's really hard. My job is hard, grueling and brutal most days. I have obligations to my children and I am wrapping up grad school this week, which is awesome but it took real time to do this. Time that I didn't use to build and rebuild relationships.

So Maggie sitting on my couch talking about Christmas presents she hasn't bought yet and each of us sharing worries about our kids, it was what I needed most today.

And I was lucky to have it happen.