endless summer

Oh my christ it's October already.

Yeah, so it was July the last time I posted here. I took a week off work at the end of the month because it's our anniversary. We went to Point Clark to go swim and the beach was closed on account of heavy rains and pollution. We went to Canada's Wonderland and rode some moderately thrilling thrill rides. The log ride there - I've been on log rides at pretty much every amusement park, and this particular log ride is one hundred percent designed to soak everybody. So if you're doing that ride, make sure you have a change of clothes, or it's the last ride of the day. Got a little bike riding in, went to Turkey Point on Lake Erie which might be the nicest beach around.

Early August I did a streaming thing on Twitch that got my Twitch channel suspended for copyright violations. I think it was some of the anime OPs. Used to be Twitch didn't care about this kind of thing, but they do now. The prospect of not having somewhere to stream the NYE Anime Hell caught me off guard and made me a lot more anxious than I was expecting. I guess it's become a bigger part of my year than I was thinking it was going to be. I did a trial again the next night eliminating the anime OPs and once I got into an episode of Fist Of The North Star, wham, I got suspended again.

Mike and Prairie came to town the next week to see a TFC game and they stayed over, we did some antiquing and they brought their paddle boards and we did some paddling. On the way back from antiquing my engine light came on.

The next week I put my car in the shop. New front brakes and a new muffler happened for $1000. The engine light stayed on, the code was cylinder #2 misfiring, either the coil or the spark plug. Also, with the muffler fixed, the loud sound of the wheel bearing that was dying was clearly audible.

So the next week I put the car BACK in the shop. $700 later I have a new wheel bearing and a new coil and the car is running like a champ. Also my dad died. He'd been slowly going downhill for months, and then the last month was a much faster downhill. We got a call when we were out in the sticks that they'd found him on the floor in the morning, and he refused the paramedics when they wanted to take him to the hospital. That was Saturday August 29. Early Sunday morning he passed.

The other thing I'd been doing all August was being the hype guy and email coordinator for the zine show Grafficker Alley. I was posting on the socials, answering emails, going through submissions, passing along info between the website guy and the facility guy and the table rental agency, stapling flyers to message boards downtown, and I'd even put together a new zine for the show. Grafficker Alley was happening September 12. That's when Dad's memorial service was.

I had to turn everything over to Michele and Donald and the rest of the crew, and buy tickets out of Buffalo on Frontier for the 11th - that's right, we were flying on 9/11 - so we'd be there in Atlanta. The week before was a blur of arranging time off, going to a Minuk family wedding, buying new shoes at the last minute for that wedding, packing, making sure the car was going to get us to Buffalo, etc. Which it did.

The Frontier flight was fine. We landed in Atlanta right when a thunderstorm hit and we spent 90 minutes sitting on the tarmac waiting for things to start moving again so our gate could be cleared so we could deplane. My brother picked us up and we found out that (a) that tree across the street we'd all suspected was going to fall and take out power to the block had done just that on Wednesday, and (b) the garage door had come off its track so they couldn't close the garage door, and (c) the valve supplying water to the upstairs toilet had failed and a cascade of water had surged out the bathroom and through the floor into the downstairs, flooding the basement laundry area, the clothes in the basement laundry area, and the decades old carpet.

The power had been restored to the house, but the main water had been turned off while they fixed the toilet line. The knob at the toilet itself hadn't been turned in decades. My sister and BIL were at the house trying to mitigate what they could, fans were blowing and carpet was being carpet-knifed away.

That carpet had the ghost of cat pee from cats that had been dead for thirty years. It was vile.

The service was the next day. It rained like CRAZY Saturday morning. I mean hurricane type rain, just an absolute downpour. I was convinced we'd be needing a canoe to get to the service. It slacked off around noon, however. We were there on time, we went over what was going to happen, and then we got sequestered in the "family waiting room" where, I mean, it's a space for families to process grief in private, but the Merrill family has never been a dramatic, demonstrative, gushing emotional parade. We're like "yup, it happened, we're dealing." But everyone at the church was great, everyone knew my parents and loved them, everyone knew Dad had been on that path and that he was in a better place now. The sun came out when it was over and we spent another hour in the fellowship hall making conversation with everyone who'd come.

Afterwards, we went back home and ripped out more old carpet. I think there had been some thoughts of the house staying in the family, but after the past month of repairs, suddenly the idea of letting another family have some time on Ann Road seemed attractive.

Sunday we did some goofy local shopping and went through some boxes of old family photos, and then we packed for our early Monday flight. I took one of Dad's old suitcases and used it for dirty clothes and belts and ties and some old family photos and some menko cards that I'd bought from a guy in California and had shipped to Smyrna because it was way cheaper than shipping to Canada. Also, Sunday is when I started to feel like I was getting sick. Shain had been wheezy for a few days already, and I thought I was going to dodge that bullet, but I was not.

Monday we got up, Jason got us to the airport, we got onto our flight, I checked my suitcase and put Dad's in the carry on bin, we flew to Buffalo, I got the suitcase out of the carry on bin, we got in the car, did a little Buffalo shopping, ate at probably the nicest Arby's I'd ever been in, and then drove home.

That night I opened Dad's suitcase and it wasn't Dad's suitcase, it was somebody else's suitcase, with THEIR dirty clothes and some Buffalo Bills jerseys and a pair of cowboy boots. There's no ID on the suitcase. There's no ID on MY suitcase either. I just grabbed it out of Dad's old room and packed it, it's carry-on, you never think of needing ID on your purse or your backpack or your laptop bag or your carry on bag, right?

So. That's Monday. In between coughing and wheezing I filled out the "lost item" form on Frontier's website. Then went to bed.

I had Tuesday off as part of my bereavement leave, and it would have been nice to have the day to relax and recover, but instead I was fretting about that bag.

Wednesday I was still too sick to go to work, so I called in and used another one of my bereavement days. We get five if a parent dies, I figure I'm entitled. I also called the Buffalo airport and got the number of Frontier's baggage office there. I then spoke to Shirley at Frontier's baggage office and told her the situation, described the bag, described what was in my bag, described what was in the stranger's bag, gave her my number, asked her to please call me if anything turns up.

Thursday I went to work. Friday I went to work. Work had been slow before I left but suddenly got super busy so I had a lot to occupy my time with. Friday night I left work to go home, and usually Fridays are like, you know, it's the weekend so I feel good, but I was just stressed out about that suitcase and my photos and my menko cards. I spent some of that Sunday night in Atlanta going through them and separating them out, lots of cards from all kinds of late 1960s and early 1970s Japanese anime and live action properties, exactly my kind of thing, to lose those cards into the void was a blow.

Saturday morning the phone rang, it was Shirley from Frontier. "Mr. Merrill, I think we have your bag."

We got showered and out the door, we sat in traffic getting to Hamilton, we sat in traffic past Hamilton, we crossed the border at Ft. Erie and got to the airport. Shirley was there, she'd been on the phone with our baggage twin, they were on their way. When he arrived we put both bags next to each other and they were identical. What happened was his son had taken that suitcase to Houston to see the Bills play. Their flight was Houston to Atlanta to Buffalo, they were behind us on the flight. He'd taken my bag, I'd taken his bag. For whatever reason, he hadn't checked what was in that suitcase until Thursday. He was glad to get his Bills jerseys and boots back, we were glad to get our bag back, Shirley was glad to finally go home because we'd kept her an hour late at the airport. God bless you Shirley.

We didn't stick around Buffalo this time, it was back across the border. We got some old school Chinese food in St. Catherines and then drove home. I was sick for another week. Yeah, I tested for COVID, but that was negative. Just a good solid head cold.

Since then it's been a busy couple of weeks at work. We are going back down to Atlanta in November for AWA and Thanksgiving and to load up the car with whatever we can take out of the Smyrna house. I haven't lived there for thirty years, but... it's the childhood home. I always want it to be there for me to return to. Intellectually I know it should be lived in by another family, let another generation of kids run around the yard and catch snakes and poison ivy in the back yard, but it's still hard to let go.