Late Night Trail of Football Tears

I had a great weekend completely bankrupted by last night’s heartbreaking loss to the Giants by the Patriots.  Buddy and I journeyed up to my hometown to spend the weekend with one of my best friends and to watch the Super Bowl together.  The plan was to watch the game, celebrate a Patriots’ win, and then drive in to work from my friend’s house on Monday morning.  Of course the Giants had other ideas.  We had a great weekend up to that point.  Another one of my best friends joined us for the interminable pre-game and we had an enjoyable time poking fun at each other.  The game itself should have gone the Patriots way, Brady threw a very catchable pass to his best receiver, Welker, that would have salted the game away only to see it bounce off his hands.  The Giants, to their credit, made the plays required to win the game, but this still hurt, a lot. I have tried to move myself away from caring too much about sports but for some reason I was just tied in knots after the game.  I’d had a few beers during the game, the whole reason I planned on spending the night there and driving home on Monday morning.  Usually this helps me go right to sleep.  I tossed and turned for more than an hour.  I just couldn’t get the disappointment and bone deep sadness of the game out of my mind.  I kept getting up and walking downstairs which of course interested Buddy, who is always ready for a late night adventure.  I became concerned that my nocturnal wanderings would wake up my host who had an early morning requirement at his own job.  Since I was not getting any sleep anyways and my wife wasn’t around to tell me what a stupid idea it was, I decided to load up the car and head home, an hour and a half away.  I tried to be as quiet as possible but folding up a steel dog cage is not something easily done on the sly.  Buddy was extremely excited, as always, and immediately jumped into the car.  The drive on the New England back roads was lonely through the cold night but it fit my mood.  Buddy, who usually sleeps through long car rides, stayed up for the whole trip.  I’d like to think it was because he knew I needed companionship but in reality he forgot to pee before enthusiastically jumping in the car.  We listened to movie music and had the roads to ourselves.  I arrived at the empty house at 2am, still unable to sleep.  There are some extremely strange TV programs on in the wee hours of the morning. I finally got a couple hours of sleep but haven’t been able to shake the malaise inflicted by the results of a stupid football game.  Sad.