Birthdays on Mondays are awkward and the kids only get Sundays off in a regular week. Granddaughter will be eight on Monday and not surprisingly the celebration will be on Sunday, the 12th. I’m not sure what they’re doing as last year she chose to take a few friends to a park that features climbing type activities. Not rock wall climbing, more like netting and ropes.

There will also no doubt be posts of “how have eight years gone by?”, the inevitable question as children enter new phases. The other day I heard a new song on the radio although I didn’t catch the name. It’s the same theme as the one several years ago, “Don’t Blink’, where the old man being interviewed on his 100th birthday gave that advise to express how quickly we move through life events. Like many of us when we’re kids, it is the, “I can’t wait until I’m old enough to…….” – whatever it may be. I have had those times in my life that do seem to drag on and there are most assuredly people in particular situations who need to “get through to be in a better place”. As one of the aging Babyboomers and with several friends now in their late seventies/early eighties, there is the tendency to look back at an event and be surprised to realize the number of years that passed since then. I have half-a-dozen standard topics I do talks for and one is “Refining Your Bucket List”. A point that I make is there are some items you might need to factor in age as a “resource”. The example I use is you always wanted to go white water rafting in the Grand Canyon and learn to grow orchids. For most people, learning about orchids in their eighties will be more practical than white water rafting at that point. Yes, I know there are a lot of very active seniors, but I am talking about the average person.