Enter the Black Swan

Thank you to those who showed up to support me for the birthday party. It ended up turning out quite well. I was more a mess before the party than I was during it, and I promptly fell asleep afterward from the exhaustion of actually socializing with the other parents. Imagine that! Sunday I turned my attention to other things. The grocery shopping. And the flu. In a most positive and un-alarming manner, I was able to review basic good hygiene and illness prevention with the children. And I bought extra non-perishables and other supplies in case of a quarantine. I think I will organize my list and pump up the volume a bit on that. May is about disaster preparedness for us anyway because of hurricane season which begins June 1st. This will be a bit different because I will also be visiting the medical supply store at some point in the next couple of days for masks and gloves just in case the situation gets out of hand. Of course I will leave them in the trunk and sneak them into the house when the husband and children are sleeping and I will hide them so as not to scare anyone. Hopefully the whole thing will blow over and won't be so bad. At least I'm not freaking out the way I was with the whole anthrax in the post office thing. I may have been in need of a tinfoil hat for that one! (And I must say that Lawyerchik has a most fabulous sense of humor. That is the funniest title for a blog post I have EVER seen. I still laugh when I think about it. Thank you for that, Lawyerchik!)

And the stock market? Whoa, buddy! What a battle between the bulls and the bears last week! I'm still holding my short ETF 'cause I think we're gonna crash soon. I assumed the bank stress tests and the idea of the gov diluting share prices by converting bailout to equities would cause what is known as a 'Black Swan' event. I still see a Black Swan, but now I'm not sure if it's a swan... or a swine. I suppose historians will be the ones to call it. In any case, I'm doing okay with this stuff. Recession, a possible threat to the body (disease)... We're playing on my home turf now. While others are freaking out, I'm in my natural habitat. I know what to do here. Birthday parties scare me more than pandemics and worldwide financial collapse. A little twisted, eh? Tell you what. Come see me if you need to feel better when the facts of the world's present day reality are frightening and surreal, and I'll come looking for you when I need to feel better because I'm confused when they aren't. Deal? It sounds like a perfect relationship to me.
:-)

Yeah, I'm at my best when things are at their worst. I'm the perfect person to have around in the event of a real emergency. Especially if it effects other people besides just me. Is this because of my uncanny ability to save the actual terror for later (sometimes much later), or is it because of the things I have lived through? I don't know. But I don't think it's a coincidence that one of the last things my father wanted from me when he was dying was the assurance that I understood exactly how to build the perfect fallout shelter to protect my family from a nuclear attack. He spent his entire adult life working like a dog to protect United States citizens from dire threats. I very deeply appreciate that, but I wish he had started with himself.



(And special thanks, Xmichra. I really enjoyed your comment on the dream symbols and I couldn't agree more.)