Too Many Doin's A-Transpirin'

I took Tuesday off to watch C run a 5k roadrace. They have a race just prior to the annual fair and rodeo parade here (hey, it's bigtime excitement.) She ran extraordinarily well - a 33:22 for 3.1 miles. That's less than 10:30 mile pace, which is pretty well flying for a 7 year old kid. I'm awfully proud of her. It's neat enough that she's doing this kind of stuff, but she genuinely enjoys it.
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That afternoon, I went to retrieve something from the back of my pickup and saw our neighbor to the south going out to get his mail. I gave him the standard guy-greeting nod and he returned the same. I thought at the time that he was looking pretty rough - hey, it happens.

Last night, we looked out the window and saw 2 police cars and at least 7 other vehicles parked right in front of their house. More cars were pulling in all the time, some practically parking in our yard. Okay, that's a little strange. We went out to the garage to snoop, and there were a LOT of people standing in their driveway. hiccup snuck across the street to visit with some other neighbors and pump them for info.

Turns out, the neighbor guy had been having a REALLY rough time. I had felt for some time that he was really outspending his income. Then, there was the strange "wife moves out one day, girlfriend moves in the next day" weekend. He had a couple of his vehicles repossessed last month, and lost his partnership in the business he started 2 years ago.

He committed suicide at his shop sometime late Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning. I don't know much more than that, but things are really complicated.

We didn't really know him all that well. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but he had no money sense whatsoever and definitely had an affinity for weird relationship situations. He had a 7 or 8 year old son.

It's been a weird month, and Friday the 13th approaches. Be afraid.