Well, it's no secret that either next year or the following year, I'm going somewhere else for a job. I have been looking at the job listings, which are just getting started (I have about 11 to apply for so far, but in 2008 I applied for about 400 positions). There is a listing at the U of A in Fayetteville, but I am not qualified for it so it would be pointless to even waste the paper sending my curriculum vitae.
I would love to be back in Fayetteville though, eating ceviche at El Camino Real with Loretta, Scott, and Ty. Ty is their baby boy born, I love this part, on June 4, 2007. The thing is, that was my 45th birthday. It was the Monday morning after the DC, a scheduled C-section, and we were there that afternoon to hold his little newborn self. When Loretta told me his name was going to be Ty, I said Tyler, or Tyrone, or what, and she said just Ty. I said, because their last name is Woods, how about Ger for a middle name?
That's me. Always a joker. Tomorrow I'll post my favorite picture in the world. It's on my work computer, but it's Kimberly holding Ty when he's about four months old. Of course, when people see that picture they say oh, your daughter has a baby? That's how good the picture is. It looks like they were posing in a studio. But Loretta was out with Scott and we lived down the road, and we got to have him all the time that summer.
When we moved to Pennsylvania, Ty was 14 months old and he played in my empty living room while Mike Wisdom and Ian Smith and Allan Bonner loaded boxes in a 28-foot U-Haul and me and his mother were upstairs shampooing carpet. I wanted to go have lunch with everyone but we ended up on the road and all the way to Ft. Leonardwood, Missouri, before nightfall.
I have a favorite picture of Ty that Thea sent from a BBQ get together and he's wearing cowboy boots. I've been looking through my pictures lately and thinking about moving again and wondering about the future. We have girls here we love and a few boys. I wonder if I will be writing about Lana from the standpoint of missing her in a few years when I have gone elsewhere. I'd miss her red hair - I can always find her during the meeting just by looking for that splash of color.
Birthdays are meaningless from a celebratory standpoint, and there is no good reason to laud a person just for being born. I hate shows like "Clean House" and "Hoarders" where people get all that help cleaning and decorating when they have already proven themselves lousy at keeping up with a house. Why reward them? That's what birthdays are - rewards for being born, as if anybody had a hand in it. Doesn't every kid tell his/her parents at some point: I didn't ask to be born? My answer for that was now that you're here, take responsibility for making the most of the opportunity. Life is a beautiful gift.
Still, it is good to take stock of one's life. Voltaire said the unexamined worth is not worth living. Of course, we are supposed to know the truth and it will make us free, and to keep on making sure of the most important things. All good philosophies merely echo a truth found in God's word. Why not the date of one's birth? I think about Ty when that day rolls around each year. I think about him being a million years old someday and I will be 1,000,045 but surely we won't count that many? I don't know. Whatever we are doing, I'll just be happy to be there doing it.
And the earth will still take 365.25 days to orbit the sun, and me and Loretta are still going to be having chocolate cream pie. Yeah, we'll probably still have to make coconut cream pie for Scott.
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