A relentless tick, tick, tick

Sunrise occurs later and later. There is nothing new in that statement, if made anytime past late June, but it is an indication that the long cold winter is not so far away. We still have warm days ahead. We will be back into the eighties in just a few days. The night time lows tell a different story. Winter is indeed just around the corner. We are but a few weeks from Halloween and in quick succession we will have Thanksgiving and Christmas. Then we have the interminable months of January and February. I can look forward to complaining about my neighbors still burning their Christmas lights until April. There is that. The relentless calendar flips its pages.

Today is my youngest kid's birthday. He will be 24. That is hard to believe. Heck, he was playing Little League when I started this blog. He grew up too fast or I have been doing this too long. I suspect both are true.

Tomorrow is my middle kid's birthday. He will be 29. In some ways that is even harder to believe. It seems like yesterday that I was 29! Then I look in the mirror. I feel my joints squeak when I get off the couch. I look at the depressing collection of pill bottles in the cabinet. Time, you are an evil bitch.

Yeah, as the famous soap opera intones "like sands through the hourglass", the days go by at an an inexorable  pace. Did it feel that way to our ancient ancestors before clocks and watches and even sundials instilled authoritarian rule over time? Did caveman us drag himself from the cave, check his bare wrist and wonder when the ball game was supposed to start? Did he wake in the middle of the night glance at the empty shelf next to his bed and think about whether he had time for a quick snooze before work? Did he avoid a running series of arguments with his wife because without time, they were never actually late getting places?  Or did our ancient us look at the still waters of a pond and wander just who heck is that old guy in the reflection and when did my little boys grow up?