What a day. Exhausting. Weird.

I left Louisville this morning in a blinding rainstorm. I wanted rain and I got it. I drove with both hands clutched on the wheel all the way to Midway, half way between Frankfort and Lexington. After that it was just a drizzle and semi-slick roads.

Arriving in Ashland, I was happy to take Dad and Phyllis on their big day out, visiting CVS, PNC Bank, her beauty salon, his old-school racist barber (another story there), a CBD shop (!!) to get something different for Phyllis’ shoulder pain, and a tired old Italian place in Ironton where they enjoy eating some of the worst spaghetti ever. If that’s not love I don’t know what is.

Duty fulfilled, the real trials of the day started on the way back to Louisville that afternoon. For some unfathomable reason, authorities shut down I-64W – closed the entire highway, about 8 miles from the point where it crosses the KY River. Shut. It. Down. I spent 90 minutes making my way a few feet at a time to a little gravel road just east of the river that I knew would take me to the opposite freeway direction. I made that janky traverse, went east, vectored through Frankfort and drove the back roads to Shelbyville. On a good day I can get from Ashland to Louisville in 2.5 hours. This trip took about 4 hours. Not a tragedy, but patience-sapping. A test of resilience.

Once I got back on the freeway at Shelbyville I received the next Twosday surprise. I got word that an old friend, my best friend during the early 80s, is in Cleveland Clinic with a bad case of esophageal cancer. He’s suffering. He was my best friend in the years right after college, and I’ve never forgotten him. We only touch base once every year or two of late, but now…one of the best people I know is in a hellish state. And there’s nothing we can do for him.

I made my way on to the Galt house, poured a glass of wine and sat down to consider the perversity of the Universe, given today. I relaxed a bit, and then noticed that a large bat was flying around in our little house. Figures. Not a cute little bat, but a big Dracula-sized fucker. It flew back and forth from the kitchen to the TV room, looking for a place to roost. I jumped up, closed the doors to keep it from making its way upstairs to our vaulted-ceiling bedroom, and chased the damn thing for a while. It finally found its way out the front door into the night. It probably picked up a dog down the road.

That brings me to now. Not the day I hoped I’d have, but my Ohio friend’s illness makes all my little problems of today quite trivial. I’ll keep that in mind.