Coal calls me The Spare.

Which is an interesting title
      for a man who apparently
      is _not_ allowed

      to have a second of spare time.

First came Pittsburgh.

Ava and I,
    a Steelers game,
    one more road trip…

    before college
    started changing
    the shape of everything.

This time, you got the zoo.

Orca,
     Bubbles,
             Coal—

     with Mr. C
     presumably assisting
     in the management
     of the very animals
     he normally considers

     a violation of policy.

I suspect you did most of the work.

When you and B
     went off to Amsterdam,
                   Germany,
         and whatever else
    EU had planned for you,

 Coal and I took the shift.

He supervised.

I performed the duties of the position,
            occasionally reminding him
            that the burger department
   does not operate entirely on demand.

He disagreed. (naturally)

That's the thing about being "The Spare".

Sometimes it's me, sometimes it's you.

Sometimes it's just whoever
      has enough hands left
      to grab the leash

      before somebody
      decides to eat something
      that was never intended

      to be food.

And hands?

I haven't had
  a spare pair in months.

One project at work
    turned into four
    open-source projects,

    which is wonderful if you're software
    and a fairly questionable staffing decision

    if you're me.

Issues,
       pull requests,
            releases,

       things that needed fixing,

       things that needed fixing
       because I fixed something else—

       enough concurrency
       to keep a dozen processes busy

       and one human remarkably incapable
              of doing two things at once.

Then Orca had surgery.

Which meant
      full-time care,
      careful watching,
      and a small dog
      entirely convinced

      the recovery department
      should have been staffed

      much more generously.

And Ava—
    well,

    Ava was still here.

Until college
      started becoming
      a real place
      instead of something

      we talked about happening later.

I wasn't putting
       that time
    in a backlog.

Not for anything.

So the days got full.

And fuller.

And the part of me
    that usually gets quiet enough
    to notice a line

    kept getting called back into service.

No spare minutes.

No spare hands.

Not even a spare thought
    that didn't already have
    somebody's name on it.

Which brings us to Manhattan.

Where I'm waiting on Ava
           and preparing
     to bring Orcus home,

      because apparently
      a Purple Gladiator
      is more automobile

      than Manhattan wishes to negotiate with.

Nero's younger cousin
       has been politely informed

       that this island
       does not accommodate
       his personality.

So Buckhead it is.

Orcus will wait there
      until Ava needs him again.

Along with Bubbles,
      who has somehow
      acquired permanent residence

      and still considers
      every square foot
      of the place

      subject to feline review.

Spare me the litter box.

Seriously,
          that department's been assigned

                               to a robot.

Some of life's work
        really _can_
        be automated.

Thank God.

And now—

    spare me the excuses
    for the missing ramblings.

They're all true.

The work was real.

The days were full.

The dog needed me.

Ava needed me.

And there were things
    happening right in front of me
    that I wasn't willing to trade

    for an hour staring at a cursor.

But that's not quite
    the whole explanation.

I could still tell ya
        what happened.

Where we went.
Who watched whom.
Which road.
Which dog.
Which damn cat.

What I couldn't find
     was the space
     between the happening

     and understanding why it mattered.

The part where a day
    stops being a list
    of things accomplished

    and becomes something worth keeping.

Today,
      somewhere in Manhattan,
      waiting on my daughter,

      I finally found
      a little of that space.

Not an empty day.

Not even a free afternoon.

Just a moment
     that wasn't asking me

       to *solve* anything.

And wouldn't you know it—

         the first thing
   that wandered back in

                was Coal.

Calling me The Spare.

Which is funny,
      considering how much
      of this strange little life
      has been held together

      by people
      who weren't spare…

                 at all.

Orca got better.

I took Coal.

You took the zoo.

We kept the wheels turning.

Ava got to college.

The software kept running.

Somewhere—
          in all that living,
          the words waited their turn.

Spare me the idea
      that they were gone.

I just finally had
          a minute
to hear them again.