I woke up this morning already in a bad way… After a regular morning shower I admitted to Emily I was having a particularly rough morning and needed a quick hearty serving of eggs and my vegan mozzarella cheese shreds to get energized enough to hammer out two Pokemon posts I’d set up to complete this morning. I succeeded, with one ballooning to over 1900 words and the other well over 1000. Satisfied with this production, I scheduled them out…

It was at this point I received a notification that a package was delivered to our PO box. Emily insisted she go and get it, despite having gone earlier that morning to drop off our mail in ballots for the November election; yes, I actually voted this year because they were mostly local elections, and those votes can actually matter to a much larger degree than national ones. Turns out it was worth her making a second trip, securing a second package we were waiting on, one that carried enough value that it was worth getting. 

The package I received was a book I felt I wasn’t up to starting the reading of today and as it would happen, the very first few pages overwhelmed me in their prophetic presence of subject matter. My eyes decided to go double vision on me; clearly, I’d pushed too hard to complete those articles earlier and I had to force myself to put the book down and deal with a more pressing domestic matter. 

Emily had received out of the blue a series of nasty insults from a longtime acquaintance, I would say friend, but friends don’t do this. These put her into a deep depression and learning the extent of these insults upset me so much I entirely skipped lunch. Emily ate some deli chicken, but I simply was unable to even think about eating. I insisted we go on a little back-roads adventure to get her mind off losing yet another long-term friendship. That didn’t go well either. 

There were a couple positives. Emily did get a 360 photo of Table Rock off Route 140 in Wallingford and some photos of abandoned farm equipment and property up on a hill in town. But the rest was a disaster. Some back roads in Vermont that are said to go through on Google no longer do. Locals would walk by us and, assuming you’ve made a wrong turn, they stop and give you the evil eye to let you know you don’t belong there. This happened twice within ten miles of our home.

On top of that we finally checked out a nearby wildlife preservation area that was supposedly open to the public. We arrive and see the main parking lot not only no longer existed but now was private property complete with posted signs and a house that couldn’t have been more than a year or two old. The other parking lot was torn up and covered in recent weed overgrowth with only a single occupied parking spot. Clearly, this set up meant it was permanently closed to the public. It was yet another let down on an already bad day. 

While we did get at least three photos out of the trip plus that 360 shot, those three came close to home and were more of a consolation prize for wasting so much time on nasty dead-end streets and now closed off once public nature areas. They are some neat subject matter, but now we were both in a worse mood…

Emily cooked up some excellent shrimp scampi which we both ate in full, but our stomachs were still unsettled. We had an evening discussing some difficult topics I won’t put in writing here, but suffice it to say I didn’t sleep well that night. Neither did Emily.

I have some more things to note from what was a difficult day, but right now I need to try and get a bit more rest before diving into organizing my thoughts any further…