I'm constantly making plans, although i usually call them dreams. Most people plan. (Maybe animals do, too. We'll have to ask Koko someday.) We tend to think that since we were here yesterday and the days before that, we will be here tomorrow so why not think about what we'll do next? As a twelve step program suggests, daily action is the only form of permanence we can hope to attain. After planning for some years, 20, 30 or 40, it becomes a habit. As we accomplish one thing we move on to the next. This builds the illusion that we're in control, which we're not, as we discover once we're interrupted. We also discover that we were making more plans than we'd realized. Some plannings being long-ranging hobbies in and of themselves which can take months to dismantle.

I'm thinking about endings, which is what a person does once they've had 50 years of todays. I know things have to end someday and I don't want to get caught with my plans incomplete. I'd like to tidy everything up. Thing is, one can't really do that. I'm reading "Q is for Quarry" in which a character, thinking he has a terminal disease, shreds his family pictures, gives all his clothes to the Salvation Army, sells his car and quits paying rent. Then he's unpleasantly surprised. Something else is making a different plan for us—circumstances or God(dess)—take your pick.

Hmm. This isn't where I wanted to go. But here I am. My choices have gotten me here one day at a time. This morning I looked at my home-dyed curtains with sheer scarf valances. I thought about my cinder block walls that get very cold inside in the winter. I also thought about my unfinished interior decorating and the funky way everything in my home is just flung around. I looked at my dog (who needs a serious brushing). I decided to make fresh ground decaf, again. This morning I'm accepting that this is the way it is and this is the way it will be. Maybe someday the gutter people will figure out how to finish putting up the gutters around the oil line that snakes into my attic. Maybe someday the tree laying in my back yard will be reduced to fire wood and a fireplace mantle. Maybe someday my home insurance agent will call me back. (Tip: Don't choose Virginia Farm Bureau. I edited the tag line on the back of the bill-paying envelope to read "Serving Ourselves is What We Do Best.") Maybe someday the kitchen walls will get painted. Maybe someday I'll get my block walls insulated. Someday it will all get done. And if it doesn't, well, then it doesn't matter. It wasn't meant to be.

Unlike Sisyphus I'm not condemned to push that boulder up a mountain. I can stop at any time and accept that this is the way things are and just get on with it. An actor once said, "If I don't get the part, I just tell myself it wasn't meant to be." (or something like that) We arrive on earth at some arbitrary time and we leave in the same fashion. Things come and go. Sure we can plan and build and play . . . until we're interrupted. Until that larger farce in the universe changes our plans. And that's the way it is, for now.