Rant #3,545: Tough Enough

I am coming into a rough personal stretch as we enter October, but I know that I am going to get through it all with flying colors.

As you are reading this, I am having my car serviced.

Every time my car is in the shop, I have palpitations that the car technician is going to find something that needs to be taken care of right away, and it is going to cost me a lot of money.

Let's see how the tire bounces on that this time around.

Beyond that, we have the Jewish holidays coming up, first Rosh Hashanah this week and then Yom Kippur next week.

I do not go to synagogue anymore, but we all honor these holidays in our own way, and I do look inside myself during these holidays, and try to figure out where I have been and where I am going.

And as always, I will be fasting on Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar, next weekend.

Rosh Hashanah begins at sunset on October 2, and the two-day holiday ends at nightfall on October 4, and Yom Kippur begins at sunset on October 11 and ends when the shofar sounds on October 12.

More on each of these holidays in coming Rants.

Segmented in between those two sacred holidays is October 10, and this year, that date is the fifth anniversary of the day the company I worked for for more than 23 years went out of business.

The domino effect of that horrid day continues to reverberate in my and my family's lives, and suffice it to say that the past five years have been horrible, changing my life forever.

And toward the end of this month, on October 29, will mark the one-year anniversary of my first accident, when I tore my quad in my left leg in what I thought was the freakiest of accidents--

Little did I know that even a more freak accident would tear my quad again, and I subsequently went through two major operations to get my leg--and yes, my head--in a better spot.

(And later in October, I will be done with physical therapy, a twice-a-week grind which has helped me get back to as close as I was as possible.)

And a year ago, just as the first accident happened, my family and I were in the middle of vacating the house that I had called home for about 50 years.

The incidents leading up to that imbroglio will reverberate in my mind forever, but let's just say we had to do what we had to do.

So as Setember ends today and we move into October, the new month really doesn't produce many happy memories for me.

Looking back over the past year, I have personally been to hell and back several times, but through it all, here I am ...

Getting my car serviced.

I guess with all things considered, this is where I should be.

But I just think, and hope, that I could be in a better place, and that I didn't have to go through all of this to get there.