June then...June now: The blog is now four years old

June 1st 2006, four years ago was my first day to post in blogdom.
Being my "blogaversary" I gave some thought as to what to post today.

I revisited/considered my first week of posting, and realized that within that week's postings there was a post that needed to be revisited and updated.

The post was titled "75% rich and earworms." (How's that an interesting for a title???)

A few things had changed since in my life then.Other things have not.

I decided to repost the post today below, and note the changes in red.

It is going to be clear and hot today. (it was always hot back then...we lived in Houston at the time!) The cherry tomatoes are now chin height, (here in SLC they are ankle high) the fruit abundant but still green, (we have a few buds at least here) and leaf miners have arrived. (none here yet...)

They've marred the pristine beauty of some the plant's leaves with squiggly pale paths, evidence of their culinary travels. Now I have a decision to make: Research how to fight them, decide if the fight should be organic, chemical, manual (pluck the marred leaves) or just let things be. Something to mull.

Having something to mull, or ponder, is important to me. Like my poor plant, I am subject to squiggly invaders called "ear worms". I hear a song, or jingle, and it plays over and over and over again in my head, squiggling through my mind, bubbling up in moments of mental repose. Last week it was "Some where (pause, pause) beyond the sea (pause pause) my love's (pause pause) waiting for me...."

This thanks to Carnival cruise line current ad campaigns. Before that is was "I'd love to be cowgirl, but I'm afraid of cows. Moo, moo, moo how they scare me. " (Thanks to Gayle for that one!)

Imagine the troubled looks I have gotten in public places when the ear worm takes full control of my passive mind, and I begin singing aloud. Moo, moo, moo.....

To fight this pesty invader, and to avoid being carted off to the funny farm, I work at gathering ponderable thoughts. A recently gathered ponderable came from our local Houston newspaper columnist Scott Burns. He shared this:

"You know you are rich when more money won't change where you live, what you eat, what you drive, or who you sleep with."

I like what I eat just fine. I'm up two pounds this morning as proof! (and a few more since then.)
And I love sleeping with B. and our three cats. (Our sweet calico girl Tidbit died suddenly a year later.) I'd make no changes there. So that locks me into 50% rich.

I also love my 4Runner, mainly because I can shove huge items in the back, and also because it is high enough to get me out of Houston's oh so frequent floods. (Now I love my all wheel drive Subaru Forester that can get me out of SLC's oh so frequent snows!) That fact puts me at 75% rich.

Then it gets complicated. I love where I am living, but I know that if suddenly got a huge amount of cash, I would want to add several zip codes to my residential identity. And I don't love that I don't live near my family, and many of my friends. (I now live near at least one family member and much closer to the rest. I love it here! I would still like a condo in New Orleans too though, just for fun.)

So I ponder: If I am only 75% rich, (make that 90% now..10% off because the rest of the family is not in town) then what is the ONE place that I would want to move to, and never leave, that would make me 100% rich.

Scott Burns published that observation last Friday. Where I would live and never leave was ponder fodder for me for almost five days. Today I finally figured it out.

It's north, far north, and actually it has no zip code. Doesn't have days or nights either. Time is different there. I have read that a thousand years is like one day there. And everyone has mansions.

Someday I WILL move there. I've already signed the real estate contract guaranteeing me a space. But in the meantime, I'm plenty happy being just 75% (90%) rich.

PS: By the way, ear worms can also be controlled by singing "The Hallelujah Chorus".

Outloud.

With vigor.
I've tried it and it work!

So here I am, four years later and I am still quite homesick at times. I love it here, I love everywhere I've lived or visited in my life.

Still, yet...even on the best days when all around me is so beautiful I still remember this is just a "for now" place. I think I will be here for many many year, yet when I wrote that post four years ago, I thought I would be there in Houston for many more years as well.

Things change...my ultimate address remains the same.
How about you? Are you as rich as me? I hope so. I hope that one day we will meet outside of blogdom. In a place where we all will say that we are 100% rich and happy forever.