Hungry

I'm hungry. The last few weeks haven't been great for my checkbook. I don't know how we survived on my income from before. It's been tight, and we are still drastically under budget, groceries-wise. Then again, I'm hungry. I'm really hungry. So there's that.

Struggle

The last four days have been... interesting.

My aunt and sole survivor on my dad's side older than him, died on Saturday. No kids, just shirttail relatives, which means responsibility fell on my dad to take care of things. My bro and I took four days and helped him out. The first and last day was the journey: twelve hours to Green Valley, Arizona and back. My brother and each throwing about half the drive time behind the wheel. Dad didn't touch the steering wheel.

The second day was hard, going to my aunt's home, seeing her room, where she died, who was around, all that shit. We went through and gathered what we needed/wanted and then went to the funeral home to figure out paperwork and whatnot. We had to scramble to find appropriate documents, but then we got everything plugged in and processed as much as we could.

The third day was just tying up loose ends, and relaxing before the drive home.

We, my dad and my brother, had a bittersweet time.

Chess

This is probably the best analogy for life in a playable, shorter form. I try to make it a point to play chess with my daughter regularly. Sometimes we get busy and we don't get time. But I'm always impressed when she plays. Every time, she's better than she was the time before. It's been exciting to watch. I still beat her every time, but I have to pay a lot more attention than I did.