Atypical Typical Weekend

What a weekend.  Most of it was fine and pretty typical.  But there were a couple key things that made it a bit beyond the ordinary.

I spent most of the week fighting off cold germs from Craig being sick the previous week and Jacob following suit after that.  His cold kept him out of school for three days.  I could feel the sniffles coming on, but with work stuff and a couple important weekend events, I was taking Zicam and doing my darnedest to battle it back.  Luckily I did--just some minor sniffles by Saturday.  It ramped up a notch by Monday but seems to be just a minor annoyance for now.  Let's hope it stays that way since I have a busy week and a couple long work days coming up on Friday and Saturday.  Anyway, back to the weekend itself... 

This past Friday my plan was to cut out of work early (but on time considering when I start work in the morning) so I could leave for Buffalo by 5pm and get to my high school friend Pat's funeral home viewing by 6pm.  Well, it turned out I had a major unexpected work project pop up and I needed about 15 extra minutes to get that done before I could close up shop for the day.  Then I had to clean up, change, and finish packing, and then I sort of forgot to build in time for food and gas.  I ended up just getting a bagel and iced coffee as Tim Hortons was the only convenient place on my route.  I didn't know exactly how my evening would play out and I didn't want to smell like grease, so that was the happy medium.  And I forgot to get gas before I hopped on the highway, but luckily had enough to get there fine.

As I mentioned, I realized after Pat passed away that I was going to be in town the day after the viewing, so I figured I might as well come in the night before and go.  That idea was solidified further once I found out his childhood best friend Josh was coming into town, who was also a good friend of mine who I'd been trying to see in person for years. Well, because of the extra hold-ups at home, I missed him at the funeral home by less than five minutes.  Ugh, foiled again--we can just never seem to meet up.  I did pay my respects to Pat's parents, sister, and wife.  It felt a little odd considering I was so far removed from his present life, but I explained that we were good friends in high school and since I was already coming into town it felt like a good opportunity to pay my respects.  I think they appreciated the little conversations--his dad knows my dad, and his sister seemed to vaguely remember me, and his wife appreciated a little story I told about his lackluster message in my one yearbook.  My heart just goes out to all of them--it's just so unfair.  Did I mention his daughter and wife have cancer too?  His wife seems good as hers was caught early, and his daughter is only about six weeks away from being done with treatment.  It's so scary to think of recurrence, and I have to say, the pictures of them with their matching bald heads were bittersweet knowing he won't be around to commiserate with her if it happens again.  But it's good she's doing well so far.  But to know his wife is on her own now is so hard.  Seeing the pictures and knowing that vibrant, awesome guy is gone just seems surreal and horribly unfair.  I didn't run into anyone else I knew, and it sounds like maybe not many high school people came aside from a few of his swim teammates.  So that ended up being much less of an interesting stop than I was hoping.

I was bummed that I missed Josh, especially since we'd been trying to meet up for years in and around him being in town visiting family and his alma mater, which just happens to be U of R.  He was supposed to come in for his 20th reunion, but that was 2020 and got canceled due to COVID.  I messaged him to let him know that if he could carve out time for a drink or coffee or whatever, I was open until early Saturday afternoon.  And sure enough, after the memorial service on Saturday, he sent me a message.  After debating locations and food options, he just decided to come over to my parents' house.  We immediately set off on a walk and probably walked a solid hour or more, followed by more time on the porch.  We talked about everything, from high school memories, Pat's cancer, people we've seen since we graduated, other friends we've lost touch with, U of R stuff, life with kids, career paths, and more.  It was really amazing.  It was shocking how quickly we just settled back in, although I have to say that seeing this 40-something doctor instead of a goofy yet intellectual teenager was something to behold.  I realized in looking at yearbook messages that I didn't really know Josh until sometime during sophomore year, after I met Pat, and his message to me that year said something to the effect of, "I don't know you that well yet, but hopefully we'll become better friends in the next couple years."  Sure enough, we did.  By senior year we had been in a class or two together and had lunch together daily with a whole group of friends.  I have great memories from those lunches--talking about the show ER, rehashing funny Friends' Chandler Bing quotes, making fun (nicely) of our tablemate Mike--and he will always be memorable as the first email I got when I went to college, which started a fun back-and-forth for a chunk of freshman year.  I had little crushes on him over various periods of time, but come to find out he considered himself very immature in that area and would have had no idea how to even manage those things, so I guess I can't take any unrequited flirting personally!  We talked through so many things and got caught up on all of those life events we only had glimpses of through social media, how we ended up where we did, and sort of marveling at where the time has gone.  We bonded over how life experience (Pat's illness for him, the pandemic for me) fundamentally changed our perspectives on travel with our families, but also how traveling with kids can be less than ideal.  He told his daughter once that he may love sushi and cheese platters, but not together, and kids and travel can be much the same.  Agreed.  Despite being a household of two doctors, his kids go to less-than-ideal San Francisco public schools, so we definitely could compare notes on urban education challenges.  Ultimately we are very different people living different lives, but the friendship just settled back in so nicely.  Time flew (nearly three hours) and suddenly we had blown past my target time to leave for my family reunion.  But it was worth every second and any amount of lateness because catching up with an old friend like that is priceless.  I think it all just felt a bit surreal, but it also felt nice to fill in so many blanks and get some perspective on how far we've come.  It was pretty incredible, but hopefully it won't be another 25+ years next time.  I can't quite put into words what it all meant to me, but I can tell you that I was on quite a high after that, to the point I forgot again to get gas and realized it just in time en route!  Oh, and later my mother had to tell me how good looking he was, and imagine her delight when I added that he was a doctor as well!  But of course I subsequently squashed it all by mentioning he's married with kids.  Ha.

The family reunion was nice--it was 45 minutes away at a gorgeous park, and while my generation was not well represented, I had a great time with my parents and my dad's siblings and cousins.  I took a nice winding backroads route home with a few touches of fall leaves, some crazy rain clouds, and a lovely sunset.  Back to my boys and back to a generally typical rest of the weekend.  Sunday involved the usual errands and house tasks, including finally working up the guts to use the Liquid Nails on the bathroom towel bar repair from Jacob's Hercules moment.  I had groceries to shop for, Kohl's Cash to use, and bushes to trim.  I fought the urge to take a nap.  So, yeah, typical.  

But Sunday night also involved another round of Jacob's medical anxiety ramping up. He had a cold that caused him to miss three days of school last week, and while he's feeling a bit better, he mentioned he's having stomach pains almost every time he eats, which has seemed to ramp up over the last couple months.  Ever since he had the cold last week he's had back pain too, and apparently it's pretty uncomfortable.  I initially assumed the back pain may have come from spending the better part of three days on the couch doing very little, but the fact he's been up and around and it was still hanging in there was worrying.  Especially since my friend that just passed away had back pain as his first symptom of stomach cancer...and clearly we already have stomach things happening on top of it, so that didn't really help where my brain went.  I know that's a leap, but with everything that's been going on, I'm not willing to completely discount it.  It's been a long three months of ongoing issues at this point.  We've run the gamut from him developing lactose intolerance (but maybe it's all foods that are bugging him?), to ulcers (he's been so nervous and already has the reflux thing going on), to some stealth glutening (but what is causing it?), to some other sort of random inflammation or maybe even small intestine bacterial overgrowth like I had years back.  I suppose any of those are possible.  And maybe the back pain really is just that he's out of alignment from so much couch time?  Who knows.  Of course, the challenge is to figure out how to go about getting him properly checked.  His main doctor can only really do so much and we've gotten so much "wait and see" from them that I'm not sure how we push this further.  We could find a GI doctor, but how long would it take to get him scoped between new patient onboarding and normal scheduling?  ERs drive me nuts, but it also seems like the quickest way to get one doctor looking at all of the data and get all the imaging and bloodwork we might need in one shot.  It just feels like you have doctors looking at things in isolation and not necessarily looking at the full picture, and I'm not sure how else to get more eyes on everything at once, in a relatively short period of time.  So, we're back on that roller coaster again, which really sort of killed the buzz from an otherwise decent weekend.  As of today the plan is to re-run his bloodwork, including his Celiac levels, and have him stick with Omeprazole (for reflux--also an ulcer treatment) for a couple weeks, and then regroup and likely see a GI for an endoscopy, particularly if things don't improve.  If he has any other symptoms or anything gets worse, we should go to the ER.  He seemed a bit better Monday and Tuesday, so let's hope he's on the upswing.  Of course, then he ended up spraining his ankle in a basketball game on Tuesday, so it's literally always something.

So, onward through the week we go.  Doctor's appointments for Jacob, baseball and school pictures for Carter, Craig is off to Utica for the box lacrosse world championships, and lots of work for me because my big reunion/homecoming weekend is coming up and stealing one of my weekend days.  It can be energizing while I'm there, but the Monday hangover is always brutal.  How did I ever work with short or non-existent weekends when I was in sports?  Oh yeah, I was 20+ years younger!  So, probably not a lot of exciting weekend antics this weekend, but October is coming and I'm hoping for some positive excitement to spice up our fall in the weeks ahead!