A New Year, A New Decade

Yesterday Barbara and I attended a matinee performance of these wonderful Chinese acrobats.  They were awesome!  I've never seen such flexibility, strength and balance.  The woman standing on one toe on the man's shoulder, above, was one highlight of the performance.  Another was a man doing hand stands on top of ten stacked chairs, his toes just barely missing the ceiling of the theater.  When it was over, our arms were tired from applauding so much!  Barbara had never seen anything like this before and she was awestruck, for sure. 

We then went down to the bay front for a walk, followed by a drink at Marina Jack's, a popular bar and restaurant right on the water.  We got to watch this large dinner boat, LaBarge, depart the harbor for an evening cruise.  That might be fun to do some time.  We were treated to a very nice sunset over the water, and I remembered taking a profile picture of Derick as a little boy with the setting sun behind him.  What a nice memory that is.

We left Jack's and went back to the Sierra home, where Luis fixed another wonderful meal of steaks on the grill, asparagus and baked potatoes.  What a feast!  Then we downloaded the first set of pictures from Barbara's new camera, which is just like mine, and that was fun.  I finished off the evening at the pool bar here in the park, which was packed.  A very nice British couple befriended me and I danced with the lady several times.  I promised myself to dance more this year and this decade! 

My life is so different now than it was 10 years ago that I feel like someone else.  As the decade began, I was living in Boone at the old farm house on Briarpatch Lane.  Zoe and I were in the process of separating and Pancho, my blue heeler/border collie, was my best and closest friend. He passed away about 3 years ago.  LaVerne and I had not yet met (we did so in 2002), and I was still doing some consulting work, though my business had started its' decline.  Golf and the New River were very large parts of my life then and took a lot of my free time, as did Pancho.   I only had one of my three grandchildren then, and didn't know, of course, that 3 more would arrive in the years to come.  Cigarettes were also a big part of my life then.  If I don't smoke before February 28, I will have been nicotine free for 5 years thanks to the Nicotine Anonymous program.  I was about 30 pounds lighter, had more pepper than salt in my hair, and my hearing was still good back then.  Now my left ear is at about 10% and declining, but the right one works pretty good with the help of an aid.  My hair is now the longest it has ever been, and it was last cut on April 27.  Still working on a pony tail!

Since I don't have my old calendar books with me, I may be a little off, date wise, on some of the above.  But it's pretty close.  Fact is, I could never have imagined then the life that I'm leading now.  So, it would be more than foolish to forecast the next decade, if I'm lucky enough to live that long.  I intend to keep saying the Serenity Prayer, often, and do my best to "live one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time."   With each passing day, time and my family become more precious to me.  And I hope this continues to be true.

Namaste...