Between work and home, the challenges have been significant the past few months.
Heaven and LinkFirst, regarding Heaven's situation -- it's over. I took her back to live with her mother this past Wednesday, and most of her belongings here are gone. It became clear to me that my help was in fact, not helping. After pushing back harder and harder against any guidance or direction I'd offered recently, she's obviously at a point in her life where she will only learn from her own experiences. Given the direction she's wanting to travel through life, those lessons will be undoubtedly be brutal. She's an intelligent, gifted young woman, so I have hope that she will in fact learn from her mistakes and not be doomed to continuously repeat them. Hopefully her story will ultimately turn out be one of the rare ones that end happily. Unfortunately the odds aren't in her favor.
Heaven's lived with me for for a total of 14 months over the last two years. This last time, what was supposed to be a short two-week stay turned into over ten months. It'll be different not having here around. I'll miss our talks about things like religion, politics, or history over dinner, or while driving. I'll miss movie nights at home. I'll miss picking her up from counseling. I'll even miss having to listen to rap music every time she got in the car. On the other hand, I won't miss the worrying. I won't miss lecturing. But most of all, I won't miss not trusting her.
For those of you that have been nice enough to ask about Link, no, he hasn't come back. No one has responded to our posters, and he didn't turn up at any animal shelters. Hopefully the little stinker just found a better place to live. That makes two cats gone in the past year. I think it's safe to say there won't be any cats in my near future.
As for work... well, let's just say that to characterize the events that have transpired since mid-April as disappointing would be adding an entirely new dimension to the word understatement. Mistakes were made, and many good people -- including one of my best friends -- were unfortunately caught up in the fallout. As a result, I can't even bury myself in my work for solace -- a first for me.
All in all, I'm not happy.
The timing and gravity of all that's gone on of late has brought me to a crossroads that I frankly didn't see coming. It's time to take a bit of time for myself and sort some things out. For some reason I feel the need to go back to Montana. Time to catch up with some old friends. Unfortunately, and for several reasons, I can't really take a true vacation right now. Instead I'll be going on a series of long drives for the next week or so. I'm not entirely sure what route I'll be taking, but I do know I'll end up in Montana -- sometime. I'll still need to get online each night to attend to business, but during the days I'll likely be in the car, out of cell phone range, enjoying the sights and sounds of the inland Pacific Northwest. Who knows, maybe I'll blog along the way.