What th’ WHAT? The answer to writer’s block, I’m afraid. Trolling through the few images from the past month this is the one that was by far the most unusual. I confessed a few blog posts back (which at one time would have meant a few days and lately a few weeks) that I had pulled the guitar out of moth balls. I’m pulling lyrics and chords of the Internet. That’s the easy part. But remember chords and words at the same time–a bit more …
So: We started joking about “playing the back nine” when we turned 50. The half-century mark is no trivial milestone in our brief animation on Earth. After all, while it represents exactly HALF a century, actuarially speaking, the odds increase that it could be 100% of an entire lifetime. One of my best friends died a few years after we both celebrated the half-century mark. He was 52. He died with his boots on, literally. He was backpacking in Pisgah with a group of guys …
Totally opposed to my notion, nay my resolution–to use my time more wisely in the mornings, I once again found myself browsing at random by way of Google Earth. This is a lens on the planet through which I could gaze–and learn–for entire days if I (or she) let myself. Thankfully then I suppose it was a good thing that my old computer was sluggish touring the world through Google Earth. Unfortunately then I suppose it is not to my advantage that the new …
As a blogger over the years, I’ve generally avoided sharing the nuances of bodily state or machinations of marital war and peace. (If there are regular readers out there, even on a Friday, you’ll have already nailed me as a liar on both counts. There are even several pieces about the spousal unit in Slow Road and What We Hold in Our Hands. So sue me.) I don’t think, however, with the exception of the selfie from the dentist chair in the nitrous oxide …
So here we go, entering the Wonderful Water Park of Later Life, splashing and giggling down the slippery slope into the years of total immersion in Blessed Retirement. The faucet by which the hot tub of spendable dollars will fill is pretty much a known trickle in the absence of the monthly salary stream. The volume of outflows– the leaks, the sudden catastrophic emptying–OTOH is both a known and an unknown figure. We can calculate what we usually spend and what we usually owe …