Sigh. That’s about all I can do or say. It’s been that kind of a day. Sleep did not come easily or comfortably last night so the day started out like that. I got it together and was soon on the train after the usual hug & kiss from Bill as well as the recitation of the checklist before I left the apartment.

I knew what I was getting myself into at work. Schlomo and his supervisor were bound to be in. As stressed out as I may have been last week, the temperature was definitely going to be higher this week. And it was.

You see, where I work, it’s an office a block and a half from where the Twin Towers stood, where we help people who are suffering the effects of being at or near ground zero during and after 9/11. This is why I am respectful to these clients that come into the office. Most of the time they have appointments but not always.

Still, each person gets treated like an adult, with respect. It doesn’t get seen that way. If a client is difficult and they sometimes are, it does not make it easy to treat them with respect but still, it is what they get. And if a young twenty-something mishears or misunderstands something, then it is too bad for me since the young twenty-something’s father is the supervisor’s supervisor. There’s no way I can win.

So his father came back to the office today and the young twenty-something is due back tomorrow, as blissfully oblivious as he was before he left. Or maybe not. Perhaps he had a road to Damascus transition and will be repentant. I know, that ain’t gonna happen.

On my lunchtime stroll around Tribeca, I decided to walk over to West St and add some more steps to my counter, but once I started in that direction I had changed my mind and walked down Greenwich Street instead.

I just had to check to make sure it was Greenwich Street and not Greenwich Avenue. I still can’t get them straight after all these years.

And as I walked down Greenwich Street I looked up and saw the World Trade Center and thought to myself that I was glad I was not down in this part of Manhattan 23 years ago. It was bad enough watching from Midtown back then and having seen a few documentaries on that tragedy, I know the area fairly well, at least well enough to identify some locations where interviews were made and footage was shot.

I suppose it is a confluence of what I am feeling. The depression of the job situation, the presidential campaign, the state of the world, and death. Death is always there. I’m in no rush to meet death not at all but I know that one moment you might be here and the next moment you might not. It all harkens back to Mother’s Day in 1991.

That’s why I freak out a bit when Bill who is generally an endless font of words suddenly gets silent. Bill understands that freak out.

My last freak out of the day. Some people still do not know how to wear a mask properly. The majority of people that I see wearing masks these days wear them below their nostrils and only over their mouths (sometimes).

I don’t understand it, and I joke to myself that they are more than likely mouth breathers, but there I go again… It’s simple enough to understand how to wear a mask, they’ve had 4 years!