Twelve weeks, four days

"Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on yesterdays."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

I feel like the focal point in my posts always revolve around time. My commute is 53 minutes in the morning and a roll-of-the-dice on arrival to 40 North Dock Side. A good trip home from mom & dad's takes just under 85 minutes. Under three minutes with gear donned will get you on the engine. Over two hours on the front nine is the equivalent of an appendectomy with no anesthetics.

Maybe it comes with age. Maybe it comes with fatherhood. Maybe it's a combination.

Time is my most precious commodity. When and if there's a run on the banks, five cars deep at the gas station, or bread lines in the suburbs; I'll be holding my son with my dog by my side and taking the batteries out of the clock.

On one hand, I love nothing more than idling in my recliner, watching a ball game and putting off the next chore that will need repeated in a day anyway. On the other, I look to my best dog friend Lucy and realize that she's aging seven times as quickly as I, and I'll spring to action, tackling the next item on our daily docket.

I've always been an emotional fellow. Shed tears over the little things (i.e. leaving Miami Valley Hospital after Reid was dismissed, watching a slide show with just the right (wrong) music, a three-legged-dog, etc.).

Just this morning, I loaded Reid's laundry into the wash and I realized that if this wasn't the last time I ran some of these through, it was probably close to the last. The cute PJ's and little burp rags will soon be replaced with husky jeans and bulky hoodies.

Someday his skinny butt will get barked at for not pulling his fair share around the house. Someday he'll call mom from college, wanting to know how to get pen ink out of his khaki's. Someday that same kid will be staring into his kid's wash and wondering the same things that his old man did.

It's amazing what a load of laundry can do to a man.

dad