A third

Today marks the 19th anniversary of this blog. Since I am 57, that means I've been at it now for a full third of my life. Or, if we accept the dubious proposition that my adulthood began at age 19 (there are arguments in favor of this -- that's about when my parents split up, signaling a clear end to my childhood if not my adolescence), I've been blogging for half of my adult life.

Rather than reflect on the evolution of the blog, which I've done before, let's focus on where I am today. Mary has been in Alaska for fully two weeks now and is due back late tomorrow. I'll be happy for her to get home. Judging from her credit card transactions, she was not consumed by a bear yesterday while photographing in the woods somewhere near Juneau and I'm grateful for that.

She's been gone a lot more than usual in the last year, first while her mother was fighting her last medical battle, then while her brother was, now on this photography trip, her first in a quarter century. So I've been alone at home a bunch. This has offered me greater than average freedom with regard to what I watch on TV and what I eat for dinner and has left me fully in control of a quiet (excepting neighbors and landscapers with leaf blowers) home during the day. This is all good, to a point, but the bloom goes off the rose quickly.

One of the themes of the last nineteen years has been me successfully trying to travel less for business, though even now I haven't fully gotten that balance right. Mary hasn't had that same fight. She's been on the other side, stuck at home taking care of kids, our very attention hungry cats and home while I was out earning money. It's unlikely that one trip will have exhausted her from the whole endeavor. Time will tell.