A former co-worker's husband died suddenly yesterday, apparently of a blood clot. He was in his early 40s, no serious health problems, and they have two preschoolers. I'm floored - I can't imagine what she's going through right now. My husband's death was hell on earth but it was the end of a long, horrible illness, not a sudden shock. Life is just so random at times - we like to pretend we are in control, but the longer I live the more I see that this is a happy delusion we create for ourselves, one that can be taken away at any time.

So we do what we can to get through each day as best we can, and for me this means focusing on the little things, because I can't do a damn thing about the Big Things but I CAN change the catbox and watch my diet and weed the backyard. The more the little things are in order, the less the big things bother me. I don't look as far into the future as I used to, because my old future was taken away and the new future is still an unknown. So I focus on the things I can do about it right now, like making myself look and feel better, and the rest will be what it will be. "It is what it is," became my mantra in the past few years - sometimes I'm really pissed at "what it is," but I have learned in the hardest ways that being pissed at reality has remarkably little effect upon it. Reality doesn't really give a shit, and it's a waste of your time and resources to rant against it.

Enough of that - if I'm going to be pissed at reality today, my targets will be Barnes & Noble and the company that still owes me Boss's Christmas gift. Today is Thursday - if my packages don't show up in today's mail, tomorrow nasty phonecalls must be made.

The problem with girls' night out (which is now coed, it seems - fine by me) is that it feels like a weekend activity, so Thursday morning comes as a bit of a letdown. You mean there's two more work days left this week? Damn. It's supposed to turn chilly and rainy again this weekend, apparently I brought down a curse of rain of every weekend with my bold statement about getting the yard done by early March. I'm thinking a weekend of movies and knitting may be in the cards here - I've never seen any part of the LOTR trilogy so I've rented the first two movies. Saturday afternoon/evening, my ass will be forming a molecular bond with the couch. I really want to get my pending projects done.