The Friday before

It's Friday, and a week of re-immersion is complete. It's been an intense few days, both because of the re-entry into the world of work, the planning and prep for next week and the fact that both kids were home much of the week.

It was great having Matt here, and a total pleasure to hang out and talk with him all week. He's got serious trepidation about returning to school and more specifically about starting at a new school. Just hoping that once he gets there and finds the rhythm he'll be fine. He left yesterday for DC to see some friends and will be back here Sunday or Monday. He'll head to school later in the week, though he may delay it a day because he wants to be here while I'm in the hospital.

It's supposed to rain all weekend, which both Nick and I would welcome. We both want a quiet, easy, obligation and chore-free weekend, and all of that is significantly easier to do if there isn't beautiful weather beckoning us. It'll be the last weekend of normalcy for a while. It's already raining, thanks to Hurricane Danny (though in a sign of diminishing manhood he may be reduced from a hurricane to a tropical storm. Must be a blow.)

We're now within the window when I have to start making changes. In the next day I have to stop taking my beloved Aleve, and I've already given up Excedrin. I did a bit of spine surgery clothes shopping during lunch yesterday. Picked up loose, soft loungewear from the Gap for while I'm in the hospital and then home. I'll also get some Nicotine gum should the urge to smoke arise while I'm at Lenox Hill. Unlikely that I'll be able to do there what I did at the Montreal airport: sneak into a handicapped bathroom and cadge a smoke. I actually did that a couple of times at the airport that day. The first cigarette was because I really needed it. The second was just to see if I could continue to get away with it. The final one, which I barely finished, was just my way of flipping the airport the bird.

I heard from the divorce lawyer's office and apparently there's a delay for no reason beyond the system's massive inefficiency. The messages said that there's a single judge in the Queens systems who handles uncontested divorces, and her workload is backed up through the fall.

One judge? Only one? And it's uncontested divorces that are delayed, not complicated contested ones? 

Unbelievable. They're warning me now that it might not be finalized til 1/2010. They said that an emergency affidavit could help, if I can get info from my accountant to show the tax implications of delaying the divorce.

It's astonishing.