It’s raining in New York.

All week, my life has played out like a perfect storm. Full of lightening, thunder, sunshine breaking through the clouds and even a rainbow. Unfortunately, when the rain stops, the thunder subsides, and the clouds roll back, the damage is still there. And clean up is hard. Sometimes impossible. 

Without going into great detail, this week I’ve dealt with family health care obstacles, paper work nightmares, countless hours on the phone with banks, my Blog Address expiring unexpectedly and a traffic ticket via those darn traffic light cameras. All when I went grocery shopping after the storm that wrecked Morgan Park in Glen Cove, the friendly Shop and Stop cashier rings up my bill. 

“That’ll be $66.66.”

Gulp. Just glad there are four sixes and not three.

The guy behind me in line said something like, “And I thought I was having a rough day.”

Then the next day, yesterday, two kids run into the kitchen: “Mommy, there’s a police man at the door.”

Great! Now what?!?

The good news he wasn’t a police officer, although he wore a white uniform with lots of patches and badges and drove a car that looked a lot like a cop car. The white four-door read, “Town of Oyster Bay.” Uh-oh, was all I could think. That letter I received on my door several months ago…It’s for real. I sort of hoped that if I forgot about it, so would the other guy. And it would go away. Not the case.

Several months ago, a neighbor complained about our zip-line. After some huffing and puffing, we blew the platform down. With a lot of work actually. In the snow. And the tears fell all around. Sigh.

But the same guy apparently also complained about our tree house. So now we have to gather paperwork, have an architect come by and draw up plans, and apply for permission to build a tree house. Since it’s already up and running, we will get rejected. Never thought our little fun backyard project would bring such turmoil. But then we can appeal the case and hopefully, the Town of Oyster Bay will nod and move on to more serious offenses. 

Because it’s just a little (well, not tiny in size) tree house after all. I’m sure there have more important cases to deal with over there in City Hall. 

Hubby and I went for a walk that night. We’re debating just cutting it down, lowering it a couple of feet, and moving it to the other side of the house. Days like this I wish I lived on a farm, with acres of land and no one around for miles to complain about what we do on our property. But I’m not a farm girl. I’m a suburbia girl with a heart for the city. 

And in the midst of the madness, we’ve had a lot of fun this week. I have two of my nephews with me, so we take up every seat in our Toyota Sequoia as we ventured over to Tobay Beach Sprinkler park and the sandy side of the south fork of Long Island. Had a blast watching the kids get all wet. Then sandy. Then wet and sandy. Then washing out all the sand. All worth those ginormous waves we jumped in. The two littlest stayed on the shore and played in the sand, with the occasional toe-dipping in waves that trailed all the way up to our chairs. 

When one wave flipped my oldest near the shore to a sand-eating nose dive, she was not happy. In fact, she refused to go back in for awhile, tears rolling down her face each time I asked her to. When we (hubby and I) finally coaxed her to try again, I took her out to the calmer area, just a few feet into the ocean with our boogie boards. We rode the top of the huge waves and enjoyed some mommy-daughter bonding. It wasn’t easy. For either of us. I don’t love pushing my kids when they’re sad and nervous. She didn’t want to go back in. Period. But we did. Together. And I’m glad she did. Because I want her to respect the ocean. But I don’t want her to fear it.

So this morning, when I heard the news of the Colorado movie theater shooting, all I could think was, not again. This is a scary world, and some storms pass through that cause such irreparable damage. Makes my heart break for all those hurting right now. And also makes me squeeze my girls a little tighter when I’m with them. Life is short. In the blink of an eye, a life is taken. Twelve last night. 

I’m not going to debate whether the country’s gun laws need to change. I don’t really care. But I do wonder what the state of mental, emotional, and spiritual health of our country and our world is. That random acts of violence seem to occur more and more. So scary. And so so sad.

A tree house crisis. A new blog address. A pile of paperwork. All a pain, but none of these even comes near to the tragedy of innocent lost lives. 

God be with the victims and their families on this sad occasion. And God be with our country and world. Praying for you. Praying for us all.