The Finite Life

I’ve been thinking about life and how much time I have left on this earth a lot lately. Don’t get me wrong, I have no plans on dying any time soon and have no idea when I will die, I’ve just been thinking about the span of time between now and then. I’m at a point in life where I know that death will come in the not too distant future, depending on health and choices I make, maybe in the next forty years give or take.

We all go through different stages in our lives. Stage one when we’re young and know nothing about life and death, when life is long and death is a faraway abstract concept. Life is happy and safe while death is where everyone goes to heaven, even our dogs. Stage two when we’re just starting our adult lives, life is still long and we think about the here and now, with death remaining a faraway end to a life well lived. We start building a life with someone we love and begin making plans for retirement still a long way away. Stage three is when we hit our middle age; children are either grown or close to being adults themselves. This is when we start to consider death as a door around the corner but still faraway, just not as far. Retirement and a life of leisure is more on our minds than death.

Stage four is when we are of an age close to retirement, but not there yet. Depending on our health and career path we may have five to fifteen years before we may retire and ponder what we’ve accomplished and what we have left to accomplish. Stage five is when we are close to the end of life and we take stock of how we’ve lived our lives. There will be regrets and satisfaction of our past deeds.

I think I’m at stage four, I will be sixty this year, I don’t consider that to be old and if you ask Mitch he’ll tell you I certainly don’t act like a sixty year old. He constantly asks me, “How old are you?” Especially after I’ve done something a teenager would do, like drive the car into the puddles of water to make giant splashes. But now I look at what life I have left and wonder how long do I have? I picture my time left in my head as a finite number and try to figure out how long. Weird huh? I’m not trying to be depressing or am depressed I guess I just want an answer to an unanswerable question.

I think in my head that if I know how much time I have left then I will make a decision a certain way that would be different with a different time line. Screwy weird, I know. Yes I know these are the great unknowns of life and the time of death should have no bearing on the way you live your life and the choices you make, but in reality the suggestion or the hint of death plays a very real part of all our choices in life. I have decisions to make and wish I had the answer to the greatest riddle of all in order to make the right decision.

A Bit of Fiction for Today

It’s way too cold to outside today so I came up with a bit of fiction for the day. I hope you enjoy it.

The Myth the Legend the Truth

The story goes like this; a long time ago there was a story about this mythological creature. The creature was rumored to wander the streets at night searching for a mate worthy of the creature’s efforts. The creature had a keen sense of smell and could sniff out the slightest hint of fear. The creature was also blessed with the vision of a hawk and could see through the best lies. But most of all, the creature had the ability to touch a man’s soul and change it forever.

One night while on the quest for the perfect mate, the creature came upon a man standing alone at the edge of a cliff looking out over the vast void that dropped down into a deep gorge. The creature spoke to the man and asked three questions.

The first question was, “What has brought you to the void?”

The man looked at the creature, sucked in his breath at the terrifying figure and answered, “I came to search my soul and find forgiveness for my sins.”

The second question was, “Were your sins against another man?”

The man raised his gaze to the creature’s eyes, and with an eyes wide open stare answered, “No my sin was much worse. I lost faith in myself.”

The third and final question was, “How will you restore your faith in yourself?”

The man bowed his head, reached his hand toward the creature and answered, “I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m worthy of a second chance. Who will believe in me if I don’t believe in myself?”

The legend of the story is that the creature reached out and touched the man’s hand and gave him the strength to find forgiveness in himself, so he could become a man worthy of the creature. The truth of the story was much different.

What really happened was that the creature so incensed at the man and his whining she pushed him over the edge into void and watched with a smile on her face as he dropped a thousand feet to be crushed by the rocks below. She then turned and walked away without a hint of remorse. There were many more men to pick from and surely there was one that was worthy of her.

The Day After

Yesterday morning we woke up to about two inches of snow, nothing like the people in the north eastern part of the country have gotten and are still getting. Just enough snow to cause multiple car crashes and traffic problems. Surprisingly the morning walk was pretty uneventful, with Orso only acting like a puppy at the end of our walk. I let him off the leash and he took off like a rocket butt down running around in great big circles coming back to bash Charlie, so I let Charlie off the leash to retaliate. For once Charlie got into the spirit and ran around jinxing and jagging keeping Orso at bay. That lasted for about five minutes before Charlie got cold and decided it was time to go back inside and get his carrot.

The drive to work was slow, with most streets still snow packed. By the drive home though the main roads had been cleared and most of the side streets weren’t quite as bad. In our little berg, the mayor usually plows the roads and does a very good job of it giving most of us that false sense of security that all the roads are in as good condition as ours are. Surprise, when we leave the city to venture out on the major roads and highways, the conditions are abysmal at best sometimes. You could say we are quite spoiled.

This morning the roads were still in pretty good shape except for the patchy slick spots where the snow had melted and re-froze overnight. Those sneaky little patches always get me, even though I know they’re there lurking waiting for me, I try so hard to watch for them, but I get caught every time. I think they move.

The dogs and I started off on the walk this morning with no problems, surprisingly the roads were dry, no slick spots. We rounded the curve and walked up the hill and still had not encountered any icy patches and I did what I always do, I started relaxing and let my guard down. We topped the hill and started down the hill when I noticed the deer standing in the neighbor’s yard watching us. The dogs hadn’t seen or smelled him yet and just kept walking down the hill. The deer showed no intention of moving off just stood there watching and waiting for us to come closer. I should have stopped right then and there and turned around before the dogs realized what was at the bottom of the hill, but no I didn’t do that. It was like I was watching a train wreck about to happen and did nothing to change destiny.

I even spoke out loud to the deer and said, “Bud you can’t be there.” He still didn’t move. Halfway down the hill the dogs saw the deer, jerked on the leashes to let him know they knew he was there and I found the slick spot in the road. I went down so quickly and hard landing on my rear end. I sat there in the road with my legs straight out in front of me and the dogs looking at me wondering what I was doing sitting there when there was a walk to finish.

I really need to move to a warmer place.

Oh Poor Mitch

I really have to get Mitch out more. That in itself is a challenge, because Mitch is a man of routine. I mean serious routine. His day consists of, get up go to work, come home eat lunch, do whatever chores he does, like laundry or ironing, feed and walk the dogs, eat dinner and go to bed. He is also antisocial for the most part, a hermit, he is perfectly happy sequestered in the house never talking to another soul as long as he can. As a severe form of torture, I make him to go the grocery store with me on Saturday morning. I talk to everyone, store employees and total strangers alike, eliciting comments from Mitch like, “Is there anyone you don’t know or won’t talk to?” To which I just smile back at him with an evil look and say hello to someone else. To make matters worse, since I have taken him with me for so long, now the store employees now talk to him too. Even the former store manager would ask where my partner in crime was on the rare occasion he didn’t go with me.

Every time we go to the store I always ask him if there is anything he would like to eat for the week, and I always get the same response.

“No I’m good.”

Can you imagine how frustrating is to buy good food and a variety too, when I always get, “No I’m good.”? It makes me want to pull my hair out. I finally got him to admit he wanted Milky Way fun size candy bars to snack on during day and that only took three years. He treats himself like he doesn’t deserve anything special. You would think he had taken a vow of poverty. This morning at the grocery store there was a sale on Keebler/Kelloggs offering all of their cookies and crackers for sale at half price. I asked Mitch if he would like something different from what we normally buy since everything was on sale. He stood there staring at all of the choices with a blank look on his face. I picked up a couple of boxes of crackers that I wanted to try and looked back at him to see what he wanted. He just stood there.

I asked what was wrong and he said, “Back in the day there was only Saltines and if you wanted something exotic you bought Ritz and you were happy. There weren’t all of these choices then.”

To which I laughed out loud and said, “You also had toilets out back and not in the house, back in the day, but isn’t it much better today?”

That’s when he got indignant and said, “That’s a totally different genre, not the same at all.”

I just shook my head and looked at him waiting for him to choose something; he finally acquiesced and picked a box of flatbread crackers. This is one of the reasons I drink.

Sunday Snaps

It snowed overnight, about one to two inches, not much but it is wet heavy snowball snow. Orso was so excited that he ran around with his head down scooping up snow like a steam shovel. Goofy dog. But we had enough to grad my camera and take a few pictures.

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Orso hunting for frozen goose poop, gross

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Charlie hunting for field mice under the snow covered Johnson Grass

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He kept going farther and farther down the rabbit hole

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He backed out without anything. I’m not so sure that was a bad thing.