It is fair to report that the events following my trip to
Ireland were life altering, and not in a wonderful way. Upon my arrival back home in regaled
my roommate in my many adventures, and shared my hilarious travel woes with my
family, but there was a lurking underneath, I was still unemployed, and I had
my “A” race, the Tucson marathon as rapidly approaching.
In the mean time, my five best friends from college, my crazy roommates, came to visit and
celebrate Halloween weekend with me. It started off as hysterical as ever, but there was a disturbance in
the force. My friend Susie
had gotten married the previous July, and even though we were all invited to
the wedding, I was the only one she asked to be a Bridesmaid. Gulp. The fact is that Susie met her husband Ben days befor we
began our Senior year at CU, and even through he was a great guy, and everything
I could hope for Susie, she began to drift more in his
direction than on the wave with my friends. I was not innocent in that I did not feel off that Susie
was spending a lot of time with Ben, and that time encroached on our precious
“girl” time, but she and I dealt with it on our own and we moved on. However, my other friends never made
their peace with Susie, and when graduation came and went there went the lines
of communication. In truth is that Susie and I had always been
close, and I have always considered her my best friend, but the girl code
stands firm, and feelings were hurt when I was included and others were
excluded. Fast forward a few months we were all back together
again doing what we did best; drinking lots of cheap beer, dressing up like
attention hungry teenagers, and screaming and laughing our way through as every bar in our path. It
almost felt like the good old days again, almost. Then when the buzzes wore off, and the hangovers hung on,
the reality of our fractured friendship blared in our bloodshot eyes to see,
the past was in the past, and we were growing up, and moving on.
The night they left for the airport while
loading up my car a few of us noticed a burning ember smell in the air, but did
not think much of it, and off we went on the quick drive to LAX.
Not long after I arrived back in my apartment I was chatting
with my roommate and her visiting uncle when my former boss and current
neighbor came raging up our staircase and knocked on our door yelling, "Fire!
Fire!” We did not panic, but it
was surreal, like the next two minutes were in complete slow motion. My boss, Shannon, still one of my
idols, grabbed my computer, even though I did not think it was that important, and launched us out of our front door and into the
safety of the street. When I
turned to see where the fire was coming from, flames were licking out of the
unit above ours, our landlord’s unit, and I realized that burning smell I whiffed
just an hour earlier was the start of an electrical fire in their walls. We ended up staying at my parent’s
house that night, and even though there was only water damage to our apartment,
the writing was on the wall, first my roommate’s rent check bounced, and our landlord decided to take our apartment while hers was being
rebuilt, so I took the opportunity to find a place of my own.
I had lined up a short lived dream job
for a few weeks, but it didn't last, which made my stress
levels soar to a Mock Twelve intensity.
My parents were great, but they did not bail me out. I just made my lean dollars last, and
searched and searched for jobs, all the while running hard every day hoping
that the Tucson marathon would be the light at the end of this dim tunnel and my qualifying ticket for Boston.
No comments:
Post a Comment