lately

There are no children at home, not anymore, not really. The cat sits on my lap. He is not a lap cat but has been very needy lately. We all miss Ron (the deceased). While outside the cicadas are thick and loud in the early afternoon, the late morning. It has been warm here, in mid-Missouri. Unseasonably warm, then again, it is early June and summer is beginning to roll through.

Last night Dylan dropped by with Grant, they dug around the refrigerator, popped some pop-tarts, had a snack. They had been at the gym working out. Dylan feels special because Grant's parents gave him a card and some cash for graduation. He carried in the card earlier in the day, looking down at it, smiling.  It was nice of them to think of him, it made him feel special and isn't that funny? That as a parent you can do something and yes, it is appreciated, but as a non-parent that same sort of gesture can mean so much.

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The banker today suggested that sooner rather than later would be the time to buy a house. She cited statistics and made suggestions. We talked about my nearly non-existent retirement funds, the need to pay a house off in fifteen years, the need to save, the need to make preparation, all factors being equal and taking into account that I will still be alive in fifteen years, or twenty, or thirty. The problem is that there are just no houses, right now, that I want to stay in, forever. (Or as a guy I know said to me a few months back, "A house is just a coffin with walls". Ni-ice. I told him to keep his opinion to himself, in so many words)...

It seems that with life one can always think, possibly even say, that maybe I should have gone this direction rather than that, maybe I should have done this rather than that.  For what purpose? 'We make the best choices we can given the information we have on hand at the time', a man told me a few years ago. All things considered, I'd say on that point, he was right.

"Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God." Corrie Ten Boom