So. I've told you I'm a Cardinals fan? A BIG Cardinals fan? Well, wake me up from the nightmare. The Cardinals have turned into ... the Cubs. Please. Don't ask me to explain. It's too painful. You either understand or you don't.
I'm not sure what we did to offend the god of sports. But it must be something big. Because he (I'm sure the god of professional sports has to be a man) has turned against us in an epic way. Nobody could see the end of that game and think otherwise.
As an added bonus he threw in a home opener loss for the Blues tonight. And he collaborated with the gods of college sports to make Mizzou lose to Nebraska tonight. In a blinding rain. Yes it was a hat trick for this sports city.
Oh yeah. It's been raining. Buckets. I'm thinking an ark might be a good idea. And it's cold. I got out my Bunny slippers a month early.
And all of this capped off a week that was already bad. A week of unnecessary "emergencies" that weren't really emergencies. A week of unexpected events screwing up the schedule. A week that had more nights of bad sleep than nights of good sleep.
A week in which a bad thing happened that makes me ashamed to be whining about the loss by a baseball team or any of the other merely annoying things that have happened this week, much less complaining about rain. Or sleep.
I have (I think I've disclosed this) a fairly large extended family that is pretty close. We see each other regularly. Oh sure, some of us see each other more than others, but we do all see each other. Some of them I now see pretty often on Facebook where I didn't see them much before, especially the "younger cousins" (the kids of my first cousins).
One of my younger cousins married a really nice guy. (For some reason most of the people in my family are really good at picking significant others that the rest of us like. ) So now he, my cousin-in-law, is family. That's the way it works.
I don't know him very well. They moved to Texas after they got married. There was a big scare earlier this year when he was very sick - deathly ill. Lots of e-mails flying around. Lots of prayers and good thoughts going to Texas. And fortunately everything turned out all right. And now they've moved back to St. Louis. Which made everyone happy :)
So what is this leading up to?
On Monday morning, in the wee hours, the only sister of this very nice cousin-in-law of mine was murdered in a way that was bizarre and terrifying and ... horrible. I heard the news reports that morning and was shocked by them but I didn't realize who she was at first until messages were flying on Facebook and I finally put two and two together. One of those moments when you just feel sick to your stomach. I can only imagine how the people who really knew her felt when they heard. From what his wife and her sisters say, and what the 2500 people who showed up at her wake seemed to be saying, she was a lovely person and the world, and especially her family, is much worse without her.
That's how the week started.
A fund has been set up for her boys Sam (9) and Ben (7) who, by the way, were there when she was murdered. I can't EVEN imagine what they are feeling. Contributions can be made at any Bank of America branch nation-wide to The Gina Stallis Memorial Fund. I thought I'd do my part to spread that information. In situations like this there is so little a person can do.
I'm glad this week is over. I hope next week is better. And hopefully we'll figure out how to appease the gods of professional sports.
