And yet I hardly ever do. Except to think about how rough I have it, before slapping myself (figuratively) and giving thanks for how easy I have it. Really. So we can't afford nice cars, the two we have are paid for. Sure, they're not new or 100% reliable, but they're ours. We don't have nice house, it's falling down all around us. But we have sort of have a house, as long as we can afford the mortgage. Which is more than a whole bunch of people right now. We don't have great jobs, but we have jobs and we're not slinging burgers or calling people at dinner time. We can't afford an awesome day care for the boys, but we can send them to a middle-of-the-road place that the oldest one seems to like.
We have each other, all 4 of us, and that counts for just about everything I can think of. The boys are growing. . . slowly, but they're growing. Monkey #1 is still sharp as a tack, but he can't jump and he hates grass. Well, he hates walking on grass. Uneven surfaces still throw him off so he won't walk in the grass at all if he can help it. He's not even two and he's already a city-boy. One of these days maybe I'll be able to change him a bit and get some dirt under his little nails. But it won't be any time soon! Monkey #2 is cooing and babbling and he just managed to roll over from his back to his tummy. Of course, in that situation he had an assist from gravity, but it still counts. I already think that Monkey #2 is going to be the physical one, the leap-first sort of kid. Not Monkey #1, not at all. He's still an observer first and foremost. I hope that once they're older they'll rub off on each other and even things up. But I doubt it. My brother and I have a similar split, except the age portion of it is reversed. He's the one that likes to work the details out before hand, and I tend to leap in blindly. When we work together that works out, a man to do the details and one to do big-picture thinking. Although we never did manage to change one another, I hope that my boys will influence each other more strongly in positive ways. Yeah, I know, if wishes were fishes and all.
Anyway, the title of the post refers to the passing a a co-worker of mine, today. He was not an old guy. He even still had two kids in elementary school. But he had an accident at home and that was it, he's gone. I've known him for ten years and it's just not sunken in yet how something like that could happen to me also. And then what would my family do? Or what if my wife passed? What would I do? Sure, we have a little bit of insurance, but not much at all. Certainly not enough to pay off the house or hire someone to watch the kids all the time. We don't even have a will made out. That's probably step #1 right there. No point in dwelling on possibilities, I need to focus on what I can do to prepare for eventualities. But even more immediate in today's world, what if I get canned?
The company I work for us up for sale, and you just can't tell what's going to happen in a situation such as that. It could be good, but it may be bad. I actually went through this last year, since the plant I work at was sold, but I got to keep my job and the new employers are good to us all. Not "here's a great big pile of money and 8 weeks vacation" nice, but we all kept our jobs and they've pretty much left us alone to keep the place running. The company where my wife works was just purchased by another company and they let go of about 10% of their workforce, but fortunately she wasn't one of the ones they let go. So, that brings me back to the beginning, giving thanks.
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