Aching Viscera[/color]
GandK wrote:That trip sounds blissful to me, Dave.
It really was, in a deep way that I don't completely have my head around yet, although things grow clearer as more time passes. I wish I knew off the top of my head how to post photos so folks could see them here. This time I got one or two that to me seem to have captured the moment pretty well. They might not mean much to anyone else (no different than words in that sense), but images can be the more efficient of the two.
News from Back Home
My mother continues to do better while bouncing back from the chemo (it's all relative, of course, she'll likely never be her old self 100%). She has another scan this week so we are all lifting our thoughts in our own way in the hope the news continues to be good. We had a scare with my sister. In a follow-up scan they identified what appeared to be "lesions" on her spleen, but have subsequently decided they are not as worrisome as first thought (but to be sure she's headed up to University Of Wisconsin next week for a more detailed assessment).
ERE Notes
I won't bother to do a full summary for May this late, I'll just wait until June and do sort of a 2-month financial update. The dominant feature of the time period is the trip up to the North Country, and the costs of that were spread across both months. In May I exceeded both my monthly spending target for the year (not unexpected, and the target is an average for the full year anyway, not an ongoing cap) and my post-ER monthly spending target. The latter was not expected. I'd hoped to stay easily below that but some higher-than-expected auto maintenance costs combined with general sloppiness kicked me over the threshold. May spending was $3,427 (preliminary estimate) versus the targets of $2,416 (2016 goal) and $3,355 (ER bogey). My YTD monthly spending average through 5/31 is below $2,300; so at least through that date I'm meeting my yearly goal.
Otherwise, things are creeping along with all the excitement of watching grass grow. But even the boring grind appears apt to pay off eventually. It's nearly time to think about going through my junk drawer to dig out a second comma--it may not be too much longer before one is required should I decide to write down my standard-definition net worth. To me, the standard net worth number is a neat curio but not a particularly valuable (IMO, it overstates one's situation, sometimes substantially). Nevertheless, it will mark an "achievement" of sorts that in 2008 I would have sworn I'd never reach without working to or beyond full retirement age (i.e., 15 or more years down the road until age 67+).
Inner Journey
Partway through my recent trip I was standing at the foot of a beaver dam I'd come across unexpectedly while hiking. It was an interesting perspective because the dam was built at the outlet of a small lake where the flow trickled down several feet below the base of the dam before making it's way on to the next lake (if the flow were greater I'd describe it as a small waterfall). With the height of the dam and the slope I stood several feet below the lake level. The resident beaver was agitated by my presence, although it did not sound the tail slap alarm. Instead it swam around and sort of chuffed/grunted at me. I watched it for a few minutes until I noticed I'd become absorbed by the beaver's behavior and let myself be turned into an all-you-can-eat buffet for an impressive cloud of mosquitoes, then I moved on.
As I was walking it occurred to me that what I like to call mindfulness is my default outlook while up there, and it takes effort to pull my awareness out of my surroundings back into the mundane world of "thinking". Once I made it back to Illinois, and more so when I finally drove back to the Southeast, it is mindfulness that I struggle to cultivate. The be-er takes a back seat to the thinker. I wonder if I'll ever be able to reverse that. Or worse yet, whether the thinker will someday cast the be-er out of the Northwoods. I think the latter will in many ways be the great battle of most of the rest of my life. If the thinker conquers the north, it's likely that it would take some convoluted reasoning for me to claim that ER was a success.
I always have a reluctance to return to work after time away. In the past it has usually been just a token feeling, perhaps more a result of social expectations than of true aversion. This time it's quite deep and visceral. The word "dread" would be an exaggeration,yet would fall short of hyperbole. In about 3 hours I have to go pick up my dog and once I have her home and settled, it's back to turning the crank and grinding the sausage. I wonder whether continuing that process is really the thing I should be doing right now. Ironically even the thinker wonders that, not just the subjugated be-er. I've never really had any serious doubts in the past that working was/is the prudent thing to do for the present time. Prior to the last several days my "serious" considerations have not been about if I should keep going, rather about how long I should keep going. It's not an exploding thunderhead epiphany, but something in the substructure has shifted. It will be interesting to see how I hold up after a day or two back in the fray.
And for those keeping score if you happen to be reading (you know who you are since I am about to use the image you coined) the golden-haired blueberry girl has yet to overtly appear. The lines are holding in the other great battle of the rest of my life!