Don't scare me. I poop easily.

I normally write my posts after dinner, and sometimes in installments throughout the day. Today I'm writing early afternoon because by 7:30 we plan to be on the road. That's when Pam gets off work, and I'll be out in the parking lot to pick her up, teardrop in tow.

Except for a few little things (including her dog) the Kia is loaded up and ready. We've got our clothes, a few household items, and the tools I'll use between now and Tuesday afternoon when we'll head for home. Pam has to be back at work next Thursday, so I think if we leave a little after lunch on Tuesday we'll hit L.A. in the middle of the night again and be home early evening Wednesday.

In between we'll get as much work done as we feel like. I think we'll take an afternoon to drive the hour out to the coast and have dinner in Forence and maybe walk the beach. It stays light there quite a bit longer than here and weather should be near perfect.

Some misc. thoughts in no particular order....

Cancer is big money. The number of ads on TV for cancer centers is proof of that. But for someone dying of that terrible disease and their family it's not about dollars, but an indescribable sadness. That profit plays even a small part in that dynamic feels all wrong.

Why can't I get my body to take a mid-day nap longer than 30 minutes? I thought laying down on the bed would extend that, but it didn't.

My sister and her husband were in their early 20's when they were killed in the crash of their private plane in early January of '71. They lived in Holland, MI where he was a youth pastor, and I was a Junior at a Bible college 30 miles away in Grand Rapids. After memorial services in Seattle (our hometown), Bruce, WI (Don's hometown) and Grand Rapids (they were both alums) it was time to go through their things and close down the place they rented, an apartment above a residence.

I'll never forget going into that place with my parents and Don's parents, the first time that door had been opened since they'd left a couple of weeks earlier. It was as though they'd shut the door behind them an hour earlier to run to the store. In fact, they'd been in WI at his folks' for the New Year's holiday. They went down on their flight back to Holland in a freak storm.

To my mother's dismay, the bed was unmade and dishes were in the sink. Laundry waited to be washed and trash emptied. My mother is something of a neatnik, and even at 92 you can walk into their unit any hour of the day or night and find everything looking just so, beautifully decorated and all in order. So the relative disarray of Don & Kathy's place was what most people would call normal, but by Mrs. MacDonald's standards was a bit of a mess.

Why does this come to mind? Because we're leaving town for nearly a week, and life being the uncertain thing that it is, I've been busy. The dishes are washed and put away, the sink empty. The bed is made (our morning routine under any circumstance), the trash out, and the countertops relatively clear of stuff. Laundry is done and things generally picked up.

If we go off a cliff on our way down the Shasta summit or run afoul of a semi on I-10 it won't be my folks or Pam's mother who enter our house to deal with what's left behind (which will be everything). But since that day in January 43 years ago I can't help but think of that possibility and act accordingly.

Is that morbid?