Six Oh

That's how old I am today. (Now you're supposed to stagger back and say "that can't be right, you don't look a day over forty.") If you have sixty of something you have a lot of them. Take aircraft carriers, for example. Sixty of those puppies would fill up your neighborhood and then some! Sixty diamonds is a lot of bling. But then sixty dollars might not be enough for a swell dinner with drinks and tip. Some days sixty years feels like an unfathomable number and sometimes I'm amazed that I've lived that long because it has gone so fast and been so fun. I can't believe all I've done with my life so far. I have a husband I wouldn't trade for anything, 2 grown children who couldn't be better who brought me 2 daughters-in-law I'm thrilled with. I got to stay home with the kids when they needed me (thanks, Durwood) and work part-time when my sanity needed that. We have traveled all over the world and SCUBA dived in 2 oceans to visit sharks and squid and teeny tiny shrimp, sometimes all in the same dive. I have writing friends and diving friends and knitting friends, not too many "normal" friends, a bunch of crazy relatives I wouldn't get rid of... and I feel like the luckiest 60-year-old on the planet. (God, sixty. I can't believe it.)

August 31--Johannes Vermeer, A Maid Asleep. Mariette wondered if the meal would ever end. Long ago the fruit and wine had been served with the small cheeses that came up from the country farm with Jan the stableman each week. Herr Vermeer, Papa's guest, seemed to have taken root in his chair over by the window in the weak late summer sun. He kept darting glances at Mariette so she kept her hands in her lap. She kept expecting Mama or Aunt Leda to clear her throat and lead the ladies out to the parlor leaving the men to their cigars and brandy but no one moved. She felt her eyes growing heavy and the drone of the voices sounded like bees in the fields as she nodded off.

Now I have to get dressed and go to work. Seems like today should be a national holiday, doesn't it? And there's a Packer football game in town so I don't even get taken out for my free Tony Roma's birthday ribs tonight. Quel domage.
--Barbara