Thursday, April 21, 2016

Pushing 60

I have officially begun my 60th year on the planet. Do I feel old? Well, it varies day-to-day, dependent more on the condition of my joints, which is often dependent on the weather, than on the calendar. But there is the sense that, if I am to do anything important with my life that I haven't already done, I'd better get on with it.

The day itself was mostly unremarkable. I did indulge in some time away from house chores and my usual writing projects to try to hammer out the details of the new family website and my artist site. It's still something of a mystery, but it's starting to make some sense, as much sense as computer programming ever really makes.

There was no big celebration, as everyone but me was away from home. Karen and Thomas at work of course, and the boys not only at school, but at sports after school. Which made for some interesting logistics, as we still have only the two cars.

Karen and I went out as soon as she came home, with the goal of a nice, relaxing birthday dinner. But we had to stop and leave William some dinner, because he was participating in back-to-back tennis matches in town, and wouldn't have a chance to eat at home until after 8:00.

Meanwhile Danny, who had a track meet in Gilford, about 40 minutes' drive from his school, was using the new family cell phone for the first time, and became enamored with the texting function. Which was sweet, but a bit intrusive on our little dinner for two. Plus the fact that I need to explain that we only get a limited number of text messages on that account per month. He'll get the hang of it.

Dinner was at the Seabird, which is always a pleasant place with good food, and of course the company was top-notch. We didn't get to linger after dinner, though, because Danny needed to be picked up and taken home for homework. And about twenty minutes after that, I had to go back into town to pick up William.

Between errands, Karen was showing me a program on Netflix about building a tiny house for a couple in Massachusetts. Have I mentioned that Karen and I are planning to build a much smaller home to retire to? Programs like this give us a lot of ideas on the best uses of space. The idea of scaling down might seem like a compromise to many, but we see it as a step forward, a chance to spend our time doing art and traveling instead of looking after a big house (and our house isn't even that big).

And then Karen and I turned it, because it was still a school night, and I get up at 5:30 in the morning on school days. Exciting, huh?

But there will be a dinner prepared by my boys on Sunday, and I'm very much looking forward to that.

And the entire year that follows.

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