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The sun rises on a new day even after a relentless series of bad events and reversals of fortune.  I spent most of the last three days going back and forth to the hospital.  I can’t tell you who is in the hospital, or even what kind of hospital.  It is not me this time.  And there is a stigma that goes with this kind of hospital stay that can darken the rest of your life.  People generally accept that cancer and heart attacks are not a punishment for bad behavior.  They seem to think, however, that depression is somehow a matter of poor choices and immoral practices.

Treating depression is not voodoo or a matter of opinion.  It is science.  Swiftly improving and ever-more-complex science.  And nobody is dead or dying.  So I am going to get my family through this awful thing.

Besides, I am Mickey.  How do you permanently bring down a purple-furred mouse-man with a goofy grin?  Of course, the relentless pounding of multiple misfortunes is a start.  Still, there has to be a joke I can tell or a song I can sing that will solve it all.

Yesterday I got a call from the high school to come and get my daughter.  She was in the nurse’s office with a fever.  Last night her temperature went up to 102 degrees.  We were just short of taking her to the emergency room when her fever broke.  Today we go to the doctor.  Life has a tendency to kick you in the teeth every other day.  I am beginning to feel rather toothless.  So how do I bite back?  I will have to discover the answer to write about at a later time.

Ah, me… just when things are going fine, it all turns to worry and badness yet again.  Internet scammers won’t leave me alone.  Facebook friends of friends of friends spotted me as an easy mark, a liberal who believes in helping others.  So they become Facebook friends with me as an impoverished youth in Ethiopia begging me to send money so starving brothers and sisters can eat… but Facebook ends up deleting the account due to repeated fraud. I didn’t give them any money, but I wasted a lot of time listening to lies on messenger.

Yesterday was the last day of Spring Break.  Today both the Princess and I woke up feeling ill.  She misses another day for too many times.  After the flu leveled her in January, she will struggle to pass her sophomore year of high school.  I have to struggle with chest pain and worry about going to the doctor and ending up with another huge hospital bill.  And of course, illness prevents earning extra bucks from Uber.  The chest pain is probably the result of acid reflux that woke me in the night after eating enchiladas too late in the evening yesterday.  I hope that is what it is.  I can’t afford more than that.  And yes, I know acid reflux can be a sign of onset of a heart attack.

So I am resting today and getting very little done.  I hope I can still be alive to feel better tomorrow.

One of the fascinating features of a table-top role-playing game is the freedom it gives you to go where you could never go in real life.  In Dungeons and Dragons we have taken the campaign under the waves among the water-breathers.

Of course, it is a little daunting to venture into a place where you cannot even breathe.  But this is fantasy we are talking about.  So, the solution is… magic.  A feet-to-fins spell can make you into a mer-person.  You can not only swim with the fish, you can be one.

Nemo the water-breathing sea-elf is modeling how fantasy technology can aid with the adventure.  Unable to breathe out of the water, Nemo has been able to adventure in the surface world by wearing a sealed sea helmet that provides the water he needs to breathe and keep him properly hydrated.  Such a helmet, with an air-producing spell inside it instead of water-making can be used for air-breathers under the sea.

Under the sea things are different in fundamental ways.  You don’t walk or tun, you swim.  You don’t ride a horse, you are pulled through the water by a hippocanthus.  You are not stuck to a two-dimensional plane.  You can move easily through the water up and down as well as right and left, forward and back.

Sea captain Elora Bynam, gnome aquamancer, can take air-breathers where they want to go in her submarine.  She knows the undersea kingdoms as well as any air-breather in all of the lands.

And, of course, there have to be villains.  The arch-lich Orco is a good example (that is, good example of something evil).

This former Mer-king has been infested with dark magic since his death and re-animation.  He holds sway now in the evil kingdom of Black Reef.  Elora can take you there for a price.

But we had fun playing underwater campaigns in D & D.  We spent weeks  searching drowned ruins.  We even found a sea ghost.  Charlotte is a little girl drowned by evil pirates and changed into a ghost.  She is bound to a magic jar and can serve as a guide through places where no living being dares go alone.

So we have spent all this game time in the depths of exotic seas.  And the ironic thing is, we didn’t even get a little bit wet.