Synchronicity

Last night, I realized that I hadn't visited with Russell in a while, so I set my alarm for an hour early with the intention of riding the train into DC with him. I usually take a later train these days, so he and I don't see as much of each other as we used to, and I know he feels the lack.

It turns out that he coincidentally walked over to his house before heading to the train station and picked up a notice from the housing inspector instructing him to perform some work on the house. Among other things, it classified his house as vacant and instructed him to board it up.

Kirk is almost finished pulling all of his stuff out of the house, and Russell was planning on moving back in within a week or two. He's waiting for Kirk to get all of his things; Russell doesn't want to see Kirk because he has a hard time controlling his hurt and anger and the two of them end up fighting most of the time. Lots of blame and recrimination.

Anyway, Russell really needed me this morning, so it was a stroke of luck that I was there at the right time. I helped him plan a list of things to do and sketched out a script for his phone call to the inspector. (When I have a difficult call to make, I always plan out what I'll be saying and do a few moments of scenario planning. For instance, how would I organize myself if I have to leave a message?)

These things were practical, but didn't really lift his mood, understandably, so I pulled his to do list over to me and sketched out Mr. Piggy, a little character that I draw for him sometimes.



Mr. Piggy is actually based on a little black and white pig puppet that I had owned since high school. About six months after Russell and I started dating, I broke up with him for a few months, and he petitioned for custody of the pig, which helped to console him until I made up my mind to return to him. So Mr. Piggy has a remarkable power to cheer Russell up, and even a quick sketch can do wonders.

I drew a sketch similar to the one above, then another of Mr. Piggy in a workman's outfit and finally one of him on the phone to the housing inspector, smiling. Obviously, things were going well in his world. Now Russell has those good wishes to take with him today.

We arrived in DC and headed to Metro Center, where he did some banking and we had a quick bite to eat. Then he had to run off, so I'm sitting here writing this while waiting for my bank to open. I have $1,723.12 in checks to deposit. Ka-ching, baby!

Housing Update

While I was standing in line at the bank, just a few minutes after I posted the previous entry, Russell called me. He had already spoken to the inspector, who said that the notice was a mistake. Apparently, there's some kind of confusion between the housing districts (Russell's house sits at the intersection of three) and several homes got notices.

The inspector told Russell that the notice had already been cancelled, but he needed to clean up the back yard as soon as possible.

This was fantastic news. Russell said that he was going to regard this as a warning -- a wake-up call -- and start putting a lot of effort into rehabilitating his house. He compared it to hitting rock-bottom when he was struggling with alcoholism and that his house had hit rock-bottom.

Whew!