The Fantastic Rise of the Bunny Lion

Last week was bad. Perhaps one of the worst weeks in recent memory. On Monday I learned that Radar magazine had folded. This was bad for two reasons: 1.) I know people who work there and it sucks to lose your job and 2.) I was working on a feature for Radar that I was nearly done writing when my editor emailed me saying, "I guess you haven't heard," and then sent the following link. Then, that night when I arrived home, Ethan and I where playing in the living room. All of a sudden he had a terrified look on his face, then started projectile vomiting everywhere. After giving him a bath, then cleaning up vomit for about an hour, he puked again.

On Tuesday, life continued spiraling toward Shitville. I received a phone call from the human resources representative at a company I had been interviewing with. The company seemed impressed with my work and I had gone on multiple rounds of interviews. However, during the the phone call, I learned that, due to the economy, the new positions at this company were no longer being created. When I arrived home that night, Michelle informed me that she felt horrible. It appeared the same virus that Ethan had the night before had cycled through to her.

Wednesday things seemed to be looking up. My editor at SPIN sent me the PDF of my feature that will appear in the December 08 issue. The story turned out really well and I had a brief moment of satisfaction. I also felt good because, as of last Wednesday, I'd been cycling five miles each morning before work for almost a month and was finally starting to build up some endurance and feel stronger from the excercise. When I stepped on the scale that morning, I also noticed I had lost nearly 10 pounds.

Fast forward to Thursday evening and now I started to feel sick. My muscles ached and my stomach felt like, well, I was about to projectile vomit. The vomit never arrived, but the feeling never went away either. When I got in to work on Friday morning (I drove a press car to work), I discovered that the back tire on my Honda was flat. The real bitch being that I just bought all-new tires two weeks prior. Fuck me. So I swapped out the flat for my spare, then tossed the tire in my Chevy Traverse press car and had Firestone fix it (luckily I bought road hazards on the new tires). The whole time I'm doing all this running around, I'm feeling dizzy, nauseous, and sore—like someone beat the shit out of me with a pillowcase full of old doorknobs. I arrived at work at 6 a.m. on Friday so that I could get home early so that Michelle and I could take Ethan out to his cousins' for Halloween that night. By the time I got home I could barely move, so we rethought our plans. We ended up trick-or-treating in our own neighborhood so that I could be in close proximity to a puke recepticle and comfortable place to passout if necessary.

Seeing Ethan is his lion costume though, and the look of joy on his face as neighbors dropped candy bar after candy bar into his pumpkin bucket, made everything seem okay. Despite feeling hungover from sickness, all the bad news that preceded our trick-or-treat adventure disappeared as I watched him gleefully run from door to door. Sometimes it takes photos to remind me not to dwell on all the negativity that life throws at me. Today, as I looked at my Flickr account, I realized last week's bullshit was inconsequential considering the fun we had during Ethan's Halloween adventure (and the fun we have each day together). Michelle and I are lucky to have such a happy and healthy son. The conversations I have with Ethan are becoming more entertaining and ridiculous by the day. I hope we always have ridiculous conversations and that I can always make him as happy as he makes me.