Sabato

I slept in until about 8 this morning and watched some Italian IPTV after I blogged a bit about our trip planned for later in the year. I’ve been trying to get into the mindset.

Our friend offered to watch our kids for a couple hours, so we took her up on it so that me and my wife could go to the gym. We went for a swim. I tried to talk her into doing laps outside, but we only made it one lap before she was too cold, so we went back inside and soaked in the salty indoor pool and then hot tub.

I made a single serving friend named John who was in his 70s and seemed lonely, so we talked a bit. He spoke of his nearly 30 years at Intel as a project manager of some sort, how he tried to retire many times but it just wasn’t the right time and his job kept offering him more flexibility and money. He’d take summers off with his wife and go sailing around Norway and Sweden, spent a lot of time in Mexico, etc.

He’d recently had heart surgery and was trying to get back into being a little more active, and his doctor told him that exercising in the pool was good, low-impact activity.

It’s hard for me not to envision myself at the end of my life speaking similarly, having similar experiences. Not that I felt sorry for him; he had lived a good life. But with every sentence I imagined myself near the last 10% of my life and looking back and I imagined myself missing the time I am in now.

My kids are still so young but I don’t want the time to move any quicker right now. They are the loves of my life and I don’t even like being away from them. I hope that I am able to provide them a life they can look back on with fondness, to see me as someone they are proud of.

I am in a bit of a winter funk right now, but they bring me joy. We are heading out the door for a birthday party for some of my wife’s friends’ kids, at a recreation center. They’ve rented out the gym. Hopefully chasing around some kids will help shake off the blues. If not, I’ve got a date with the treadmill later.