You may, those five of you who read this blog anyway, have noticed that posts have been a little light around here lately.   The problem has not so much been time to write, it’s been inclination to write.  Somehow, without my planning it this way, this blog has become a little bit of a time capsule.  I seem to spend a lot of time going back and analyzing the past.  In one sense this is great, because it has helped me figure out a lot of the reasons I do the things I do.  In another sense it’s not so great, because if I’m analyzing why I do what I do, I’m not actually doing.

I’ve known that for a while, but couldn’t figure out what to do about it, hence my extended silence here.  I found the answer to my dilemma yesterday.

I spent yesterday with my sister and her family.  My sister and I have a checkered relationship.  We’re two very different people and we have not always been close or gotten along well.  As we’ve gotten older, I’ve loosened up a bit and she’s grown up a bit and we’ve learned to appreciate our differences.   One of our main differences is this.  My sister has the confidence of ten lions, and has never met a fear she wouldn’t face.  I’m prety much the opposite.  I want to control everything so nothing bad will happen.  I’ve written blog posts about how well that’s been working for me so far.

As I talked to my sister about her adventures and watched her family, a loving husband and three beautiful kids, I realized that taking chances had worked out for her more often than not.  That isn’t to say that she hasn’t had her share of heartache and disappointment but, overall, she’s gotten the life she wanted.  I can’t say the same for myself.  There’s a lot of things I want that I don’t have, and I think what’s holding me back is fear.  It is rapidly becoming obvious that I need to change that.  Thus the 40 things challenge was born.

I will be 40 on February 5 of 2009.  Given that 2009 will be my 40 year, I’m setting myself a challenge.  During that year I’m going to do 40 things.  They’ll either be things that I’ve talked about doing, or things I’ve been too scared to do, or maybe some things that I haven’t even thought of yet.  The idea is to explore my options and to face my fears.  The goal is to make sure that life I have when I turn 41 is different than the life I had when I turned 40.

From now until the end of 2008 I’ll be making my list.  I’d love to have some suggestions as to what should be on the list.  I have some areas I want to explore, but it would be wonderful to have some input from others.  Please keep in mind this is about expanding my life, not endangering it.  I won’t be climbing a mountain or skydiving.  I’m also not interested, particularly in working on my professional life.  That’s chugging along fine.  What I need to do is work on my personal life, relationships and simply having fun.  Those are the areas I want my 40 things to impact.

So, that’s the plan, in a very brief nutshell.  From now until the end of the year I’ll be making my list and discussing my plan here.  I’ll also need to decide whether I should start on January 1 or on my birthday which is in February.  January would make more sense, but starting on my birthday has a nice kind of symmetry to it.   If anyone has any thoughts on that, I’d love to hear those too.

My maternal grandmother died tonight.  She was 98.

It’s hard to sum up what Grandma meant to me.  She loved to laugh and she loved silly practical jokes.  I can still remember playing euchre with her while she drank Hot Damn and laughed at the cards.  We’d mess up each other’s aura and she’d celebrate every trick and every win.  She was a fierce cardplayer and also loved bowling and golf.

She also loved learning.  For an intellectual kid who always felt like the odd one out in my family, Grandma was a godsend.  She always encouraged me in my latest interest.  I got bird books and rock collections and was encouraged to stand outside on the lawn on a snowy winters night and look at the moon.  Grandma always encouraged us to ask why and how and to not stop until we got the answer.

Grandma also loved nature.  She kept a list of weather sayings.  She loved seeing natural wonders like Yellowstone Park and the Teton Mountains.  I can remember her encouraging me to learn about nature, why animals did the things they did and what plants were good for you and which were to be avoided.  She loved the beauty that was all around us and she encouraged me to love it too.

She was also quite an artist.  I was the recipient of several of her paintings over the years.  All of her family have at least one.  She painted and drew and did woodburning.  Her love of art was a constant.  It shouldn’t be any surprise, given her love of nature, that most of what she painted were landscapes or animals.

I loved my Grandma.  In the past years I may not have done right by her, she slipped into senility and it was hard to see her like that.  I suppose I was selfish, I preferred to remember the laughing, artistic, sharp as a tack Grandma I’d known as a kid.   That’s my loss.  I believe, and I hope I’m right, that she knew I loved her and appreciated her.

Whenever I’d see Grandma in the last years I’d hug her and say “Hi Shorty”.  She’d always laugh and it kind of became our thing.   I guess, with one slight change, I should say it one last time.

Goodbye Shorty.  Thanks for everything.

On this Wednesday after the election I’m grateful that sometimes the American electorate gets it right.  I had a fear that somehow all the predictions would be wrong and that McCain/Palin would win and it would be at least four more years like those we’ve already endured.  I’m so glad my fears were groundless.

Last night, when I voted, I saw more high spirits and smiles than I’ve seen in connection with anything political in a long time.  People were feeling a sense of history, and a sense of hope that had been missing in politics for too long.  I’m realistic, I know that no one human can live up to all the expectations we have for him,  but I get the sense that he’s willing to try.  I also get the sense that Barack Obama believes that we all can be better than we are.  I hope he’s right.

Tonight, I’m just so grateful and pleased that things turned out as they did.

Congratulations, President Elect Obama.

What a marvelous, marvelous thing.