The Off to College Moon
Wednesday gratefuls: Tom. Diane. Brother Mark’s Bangkok walks. Water Monitors. Cattle Egrets. Wild Neighbors in urban areas. Rebecca leaving for India and the Buddhist nunnery. Joanne. Her new book with two Buddhist therapists. Pain. Cranking it down without addiction. Whippets. Sight Hounds. And those who love and breed them. Dogs. Oh, OK. Dogs again.
Sparks of Joy and Awe: Sight Hounds
Kavannah: Friendship אַחֲוָה Achava (חֲבֵרוּת Chaverut: Partnership, camaraderie) (אַחְדוּת Achdut: Unity, solidarity, togetherness)
One brief shining: A few decades ago, maybe 4, a group of middle-aged men who knew each other somewhat well ate dinner together in an Indian restaurant in Minneapolis, joined by two other men who did not know each other, but had slight acquaintance with one or two of the others; might have been a poker night or a get together to watch the Vikings lose another big game, instead it was the beginning of 40 year plus bonds of friendship among the Woolly Mammoths, who surprisingly still live up to their motto: We’re not extinct yet.
Keep forgetting to post this. If you wanted to mail drugs worth $800 for a thirty day supply, how would you package them? Wegman’s is a compounding specialty pharmacy. Inside this colorful wrap sat my first doses of this round of Erleada. Clever, eh? And it gives the healthy message Ms. Thurston gave me in the first grade: Charles Paul, eat your vegetables. A twofer. Fun with cancer!
Had a session with my folks at Bond and Devick, financial advisors, RJ now for over thirty five years. They keep Kate’s IRA rollover steady. When the market goes up, you go up a little; when the market goes down, you go down a little. We’ve been with them since Penny Bond formed her firm, then hired RJ later on as her first employee. RJ just stepped down as owner/President, but keeps client contact and portfolio work. The IRA churns out what a 19th century British novel would refer to as a stipend and a nice one at that. With my Presbyterian pension and Social Security, I have more than adequate monthly cash. And. I will leave a tidy sum to my heirs: Ruth and Gabe, Seoah and my son. My heirs? That’s a weird phrase to write out loud.
The corpus has indeed gone up a little, down a little, always growing a bit but staying in the same basic range. Kate, always Kate, left me better off than she found me in so many ways, not the least financially. A shame that she didn’t get to enjoy the money she earned for longer. Thankfully, we had long ago passed the mark of mine and hers. We were together in all ways, no barriers between us. When she died, so did a part of me. A part now, in the way of the Soil, fertile ground for my new life after her death.
I suppose, come to consider it, that is the point of having heirs.