Today was an emotional shithouse.

The whole duck thing? Sure, I know they’re just ducks. But as the saying goes, you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. I knew I had some attachment to them (I knew the kids had a heavy attachment to them), but I guess I had more than I thought. Imagine someone walking into your home and taking your family pets away. I doubt you’d find that an enjoyable experience. I keep finding myself going to the front window, looking out on the lawn expecting to see the ducks there but now realizing there aren’t any. Seeing them throughout the day brought such joy to us; looking out the empty window just brings sadness. Feelings of betrayal, anger, sadness… on the one hand I feel kinda silly for feeling this way, but I didn’t ask to feel this way… it’s just how things are and I accept my feelings.

Then I try to get work done and the code rewrite I attempted just didn’t pan out; in fact, while on paper it should have been better, in reality it turned out exponentially worse (performance was abysmal). That’s two days of work down the tubes, but such is R&D. I had such high hopes. Alas.

But while most of the day went wrong, towards the end it got better.

The neighbor that I know called for the duck removal? He came by the house to check on the boys. He apologized for what he did. I wasn’t there, but Wife tells me that she saw genuine remorse in his eyes. I have to give him a lot of respect for coming by like he did. That took a lot of guts. While it doesn’t fix things, we’re all human, we all make mistakes, and if we don’t learn to forgive then well… what sort of person are we?

Then I capped off the day with a glass of 2007 Grape Creek Merlot and a Rocky Patel 1990 petit corona cigar. Sat with Wife in the backyard and watched the kiddos having a blast with their squirt guns and running through the slip and slide. Two does wandered into the greenbelt for their evening meal. We watched them, they watched us for quite a while. It was most peaceful and satisfying.