Friday night

It's an odd night here.
Part new phase of detoxing: Ken was sound asleep when I got home. Katie's gone so CBS News has a stand-in anchoring tonight.
Even the TV News anchor has changed.
The end of the week routine -- dinner out or sometimes a movie -- won't happen. Last week, we were headed to Sedona with Amanda here on a quick vacation from London. This week she's in Paris and we're deeper into detox. I played solitaire watching the news. This time of quiet and peace and solitude has arrived and it feels unwanted. Like a party to which you have not been invited.
And word comes again of possible lay-offs at work. People are weepy, anxious. We'd had a month or two of relative calm. As much calm as you can have in these economic times when you are employed in an industry that has been circling the drain for a while.
So, we all wait. Supposedly, the announcement of 10 percent layoffs is expected July 8.
I am tracking time mostly by remaining miligrams of oxycotin in Ken's blood stream. Now another factor has been added to this complicated equation.
My friend Margot is grieving the death of her sister. My friend Kathleen is grieving the end of her daughter's childhood. I am missing my father who watched the demise of the steel industry and wishing he were here to talk about the evaporation of the daily newspaper, the bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler -- something this man born in Kokomo, Indiana, City of Firsts (firsts being claim to the first automobile) would find as incomprehensible as Continental Steel closing.
I am deepening my once shallow knowledge of loss.