The Cold Hard Truth...

Home from a big sigh of a day...some heavy revelations and then some odd reactions and before you know it I'm spinning a little. I spent the entire last hour of work in the reception area hanging out with my good friend Barb just yapping about anything that wasn't what I saw earlier today. Barb makes me feel good, pretty much perpetually, so it's as good a spot as any to forget things. I tend to stop and yap a lot, and with a lot of people, in a lot of different places, and sometimes it's just yapping and then sometimes it's avoidance and distraction. Barb's always good for that. Hockey talk is light years, across galaxies and galaxies, better than some of this everyday stuff. I tell you...I just don't know how some of these kids manage. I just don't.

So now I'm propped up in a hammock with a lake view, a little chilly, but not near as chilly as the situations I found myself a part of today, and me and Chris Isaak are easing ourselves into the evening. Zo was in an odd mood when I got home and I tried my best to get on her good side but she was pre-occupied with whatever else tonight...funny, me too. So June and her are bathing, normally something I like to jump into (literally) and they're giving me some space, I think. It's funny to have an awareness of how other people see your needs. June gives me a lot...She usually bares the brunt of these work stories and they're typically of a world so unknown to her that I'm surprised she doesn't flinch more often...She just hangs tight, gives me a hug and smile, and sends me away with a book or some music...or this blog. It softens me up to a watery pile to talk about how much that hug and smile mean. My life was a lot easier in a press box. Gerard Gallant never sent me reeling into introspective evenings, and that's not a shot at Gerard, maybe he could have? That life also didn't mean as much to me as this one.

Sometimes the divide between those worlds is hard to explain, and there have been a few times I've needed to. That's been the best part of coming here, to this job and this place, most people never question me too much about why I do what I do...because they get it...I've had the odd editor tilt his head in confusion at this life. I remember sitting in the VIP lounge at the rink in Columbus with some Sports Illustrated guys and each one to a man didn't understand how I went to work each day and got kids into rehab or maybe helped a young Mom steer through the mess of Child Services to get her baby back and then walked into the Bluejackets dressing room with a pad of paper and a tape recorder like I owned the place. I dunno either...I just did...it's "how I do," as they say, and it's a life that's been pretty good to me, and no regrets...except for nights like these. After today a seat in Joe Louis Arena's closet of a press box would feel alright.

Wow, I need a sweater. I'm freezing.