I’ve been gratified to get some feedback on my blog lately. Keep those comments coming – I love the strokes. Though Shannon, I’m really pretty sure I never used the word “Hot” about my employee. It would be unseemly!

A co-worker of my husband’s committed suicide last week. It was hard on all who knew her, of course. Bob was pretty shook up. She left five children, aged 6 through 13. It’s hard to imagine the level of despair that makes a mother lose her judgment that badly. But I guess I’m glad I can’t imagine it. I don’t suppose it would be a good sign if I could.

On a brighter note, I had dinner with one of my oldest and dearest friends Monday night. We have this funny ritual we have established where we get together for a night out once every six months, usually around April and October. (Give or take a month.) We meet at a nice restaurant and have a long, leisurely dinner and visit. We alternate picking up the tab, so we’re each on the hook for one dinner a year. You can feel pretty comfortable with a more extravagant night out knowing it is only one time a year!

It’s fun to observe each other’s lives from that perspective. When you talk every six months, you edit out the minutia and talk about what’s big in your life. Isn’t a shame we can’t bring that same perspective to our own life while we’re living it? I’d love to know as I’m making my little minute by minute decisions which things aren’t going to matter at all and which ones would be worth re-telling in six months! But I don’t think it is at all obvious as I wander through life. Often the activities seem very important – but in retrospect, it is more often the relationships that do.

And on that note, I’m off to important moments in sawing logs!