Everything Happens in Intervals of ... How Many?

As the holidays approached, I learned that my brother-in-law, his girlfriend and their dog would be staying at my house for more than half of the vacation time that I was taking from work. Doesn't sound like much of a vacation, does it?

But it didn't get any easier.

The week before Christmas, my stepson was diagnosed with Mononucleosis.

Over the holiday break, we hosted my mother-in-law for a visit that culminated in a shouting match between my wife and her mother.

Shortly after the holidays, my three-year-old contracted Croup, a respiratory virus that caused the swelling of his throat, which made it difficult for him to breathe and caused a terrible-sounding cough.

Joey recovered, but Lukas caught the same ailment before it had fully faded from his older brother. Great news for dad. Two kids with a pretty bad respiratory illness.

Anything else? Sure. Last Thursday night, while all of the kids ate dinner calmly in the kitchen, my wife ran to the garage to get her phone from her car, only to stumble off the garage stairs. The result: a broken ankle. The actual break is in the fibula, the outer leg bone just above the ankle joint. Regardless, not good news for a high-stress dad and husband. Fuck, my wife later told me that she thought when I'd run out to the garage after hearing her scream that I was going to hit her. Not quite the nurturing nature of a spouse that one might wish for.

So my wife continues to recover, now with her left foot in a hot pink hard cast. And as a daycare provider, this isn't a perfect scenario for her. It certainly doesn't bode well for her to have to hobble around while chasing eight or ten kids, not just our own. Things have been rough the last few days, to say the least.

But it doesn't just end there. I got a call from her Tuesday night around 6:00pm, letting me know that her car had suffered a flat tire on the way home from work; a not-so-subtle reminder that we needed to have the tires on our SUV replaced soon anyway. Hell, what's another few hundred dollars?

So what's next?

Tonight (or early this morning, rather) I received some news even worse than I could have expected. An old friend from college is no longer with us. Honestly, it had been a long time since I'd spoken with him, but that doesn't really lessen the impact.

At the mere age of 33, which I'll reach next week, my friend Adam has passed.

Adam was a good egg. He was one of those guys who was smarter than most of us ever could wish to be, a scholarship student to one of the best public universities in the country. But he didn't necessarily know his place. What he did know, however, was how he wanted to be perceived by his friends. A junior college transfer student, Adam was glad to be the designated alcohol buyer for our group, knowing that was a role he could successfully fill. The year that most of us, as freshman, turned 19, Adam turned 21. He was simply glad to be part of our fraternity (not a fraternity in the gay college Greek sense), and we enjoyed each other's company.

But it wasn't just for that reason that we respected him as a friend. Adam was probably about 5'11" and maybe 140 pounds, but that guy would have taken on a University of Illinois lineman to stick up for one of his friends. And it's for that reason we'd all look back now and know that we'd have done the same for him.

Midway through my sophomore year, Adam visited my roommate and myself to let us know he wasn't coming back to UI. His grades had suffered, probably due to apathy. He didn't feel challenged by life, so I think my roommate and I felt a little responsible for not giving him more of a reason to continue with his education.

But that may not have been what he wanted anyway. We knew that Adam wasn't your everyday kind of guy, and it probably wasn't just an education he was looking for in Champaign, Illinois.

So it's a little tough to swallow right now knowing that he's no longer around. His friendship is not forgotten.