A Day to Forget

In my opinion August 31st is always the worst day of the year.  That is because it is the day that my brother died.  I don't ever like to remember that day.  It was the saddest day of my life and changed our family forever.  For that reason I have never commemorated the day and never will.  If it was my choice I would take it out of the year and make August a 30 day month instead.  Since I can't change the date on the calendar, over the years I have learned to ignore the day.  It has worked so well that usually I don't even remember it is the 31st.  

Today was one of those days.  I began my morning meeting with our pest control guy.  We had a yellow jackets nest in the ground that we needed taken care of and also wanted to ask him about the carpenter ants in a cluster of trees by the garage.  I was glad to hear that he could rid our yard of both pests and didn't think that we'd lose any of our trees from the damage that originally attracted the ants.  

The next item on my agenda was opening our home to the piano tuner.  Even though we hadn't played the piano as much as we had in the past, it had been over a year since he had been here and we wanted to keep it up-to-date.  While he was working I took a long walk through our neighborhood.  It was so nice to be outside without the oppressive heat.  It also gave me a chance to catch up with Meg about her busy schedule this week.

I spent the rest of the afternoon finishing our 2020 photo album.  It was definitely different than the ones that I had made in years past.  Although we had made the most of the year, we just were't able to do as much because of the pandemic.  Therefore, I hadn't taken as many pictures.  Thankfully, the ones that I had taken were perfect for the album.  It was strange, however, to look at the pictures from January to early March of 2020 knowing that during that time period we had no idea that we would soon go into a lockdown that would change the trajectory of the rest of the year.  

Tonight's activity revolved around Cameron's tennis match against Prairie Heights.  Their team had started off strong this season, but it was a match that Bethany felt that they could win.  Much like last night, Cameron began the match a little slow and soon found himself down 4-0.  He rallied at that point and ended up winning seven of the next sixteen games.  It wasn't quite enough to win a set as he lost a close second one 7-5, but we were impressed none the less.  Cameron was once again pitted against a veteran #1 singles players and he matched up well.  We know that a win is on his mind and feel that he is closer than ever.  The nice part was that after his match he could hang out with his team and cheer Noah on to a win at #2 singles.  That gave the team the advantage they needed to finally earn their first win as both doubles courts were victorious as well.  All in all it was a productive August 31st that made forgetting the significance of the date a lot easier.