The Promise of A Day, Fulfilled

This could quite possibly be the most spectacular weekend in the entire recorded history of the world.

Everything is relative, baby. This past winter SUCKED. It hurt, it tortured, it mocked and taunted, it spit in our faces and made life almost.........unlivable.

It was one unbearable long, ass freezing hell.

Friday, Saturday and today...........................Supreme.

I responded by walking. Walked all three days. It feels exactly like I have been dead since October and now I am alive.

Oh my God I am responding as a parched plant to water, as a starving man to a steak, as a corpse to resurrection.

I walked out to fetch Carol's paper yesterday morning and I exulted. The birds were hammering me with their delicacy and their song, the buds were fit to burst, the sky was gorgeous blue, no clouds anywhere.

I was overwhelmed. Kept inhaling, looking, sniffing in the scent of pine. I looked like someone out of the Sound of Music at one point - I was turning in circles in my driveway looking at the tops of the trees, at the sky, searching for the birds who were serenading me.

I laughed out loud.

Later that day...............................................we reconnected with two deep, loving friends.

Ed and Joanne.

Haven't seen them in three years.

Finally got up off our asses and invited them over for barbecue, The Derby and friendship renewed.

We picked up right where we left off with easy flowing conversation and laughter. That is the absolute incontrovertible proof of true friendship.

What a magnificent visit. When you spend time with people in that way it is medicine for the soul. No bullshit, no agendas, no phoniness, no distractions.

Just purity.

Ed and I both tended bar at the legion. We were insane individually and even more so together.

We always volunteered to tend bar on membership renewal day. Because we volunteered and because of the twisted logic of the legion (not that we minded) we were allowed to drink as we worked.

In the booze closet in the room behind the bar we set up a bottle of Gentlemen Jack and a bottle of Crown Royal along with two shot glasses.

We got hammered over the course of the day. And sang behind the bar and danced behind the bar and joked behind the bar and laughed behind the bar.

The day became legendary. It was dubbed The Ed and Joe Show. We had T-shirts made and wore them behind the bar.

Have a lot of other great memories from the legion with Ed.

But it is the friendship that means something. Ed and Joanne are genuine people. Real.

Carol and I are comfortable around them and they with us. There is trust there. There is love. There is depth.

I started the day with beauty lifting my spirits, spent the next chunk of it with my cherished wife and the rest of it with Carol, Ed and Joanne.

It was a magnificent day from top to bottom from start to finish.

It was a day to be glad to be alive, to be glad to have a wife to enjoy it with, to be glad for friendship.

We were alive yesterday, baby and no negativity could have penetrated the feeling in any way, shape, form or manner.