What man decided to create a game called "hearts" in which the queen of spades costs you 13 points and hearts cost you one point each when they are taken in a trick?

And who decided to call the cards that you took in a single play a "trick"? 

After spending a week being soundly defeated at the game of hearts, I think it is time to reconfigure the scorekeeping. 

I think you should earn points for every heart, lose points for having to capture a spade (it's a garden implement after all), should subtract points for every club (clubs are places for idle men to go and waste time), and get double points for each diamond.

Now we have a game where we women can take control and win. Oh and the King of Hearts is wild. He can be paired with any Queen to gain an extra 10 points.

High points win, and she who has the most diamonds gets an extra serving of chocolate. Now we're talking.

One hour doesn't sound like all that much until you lose it. Just think what you could do with one more hour per day.

You could take a walk.

You could drive to the beach (for me it takes just about an hour to get to Half Moon Bay from Pleasanton, CA)  

You could watch two more episodes of Jerry Seinfeld.

You could plant some trees.

You could do another load of clothes, another round of dishes, and maybe do the ironing.

You could write two or three thank you notes to special people.

Call your Mom.

Hug your kids.

Play with the dog and sip some hot tea.

You could boil one bag of brown rice and have 10 extra minutes to make gravy to go on it.

You could start a book or read a magazine from cover to cover.

You could take a hot bath and soak until the water gets cold. 

So why not pretend you have an extra hour every day and use it to do something that makes you feel good?

That's my son's balance in his checking account. That's after he received his bi-weekly allowance for college. It is deposited automatically in his account. He says he checked online and there was money - he doesn't know what happened. Apparently the nerdy accounting gene is recessive.

I remember being in college. I had a babysitting job that paid for my living expenses. Room and board and food were all pretty much covered during the week - I had only to survive on the weekends.

Those weekends lasted forever sometimes. Did you know peanut butter and frosted flakes can keep you going for at least a week? We all survived that way in college. Maybe I'll send him a jar of peanut butter and some frosted flakes. But times have changed- I'll send him cocoa pebbles instead.

Time to reset the calendar. To adjust to a new set of numbers when we write out the date.

Fortunately, we don't actually write out the date on documents much these days. The bank fills out deposit slips for us - we must not be doing them properly or maybe the bank is trying to show us that they really are "full service".  We pay our bills online and the dates are set up way in advance. When we create a document, we can select "date" and MS Word will automatically fill that in for us. If we forget what day it is we can just click on the handy clock/calendar on the right hand corner of our computer screen.

I wonder if anyone has studied how long it takes an individual to reset their mental awareness of the numerical year. I know it takes six months to adjust to a new job, does it take half that time to adjust to a new year?

And how much longer will calendars be relevant? My daughter wears a watch with numbers on it not to tell time - it is purely decoration. She looks at her cell phone if she wants to know the time - no need to figure out that complicated system of the big hand and the little hand.

What will become of calendars? Will they be replaced by a series of mental reminder tags implanted into various devices? The toothbrush will remind us to go to the dentist, the hairbrush will beep when we are scheduled for a haircut, the fridge will prompt us to replace the milk, and we will get e-mail reminders when anything else is required. Or maybe Twitter will become the text based calendar tool in 2009.

Who knows what new shortcuts will be born in 2009? Or is it 2008? 

The holidays bring everyone home again.

We have adapted to being just 2 and now we are 4. And they have adapted to being 1 and 1 - on their own with no curfews and no rules. With no one asking when they will be home, where are they going, will they be safe? And yet we still fit together.

The beds have been re-arranged to fit around the desk. The closets don't store their clothes any more -  but the floor remembers that feeling of their piled up clothes and is happy.  And the refrigerator expands happily to hold the food that they still crave, while the couch makes room for their sleepy heads, and the dog still curls up next to their warm bodies. And we will laugh and argue over the same old things and remember the same old stories and be a family again.

And we are grateful to be a family such as this and to have so many blessings.

The doctor tells you in 20 years you will need neck surgery.  He's replaced a vertabra in your neck and added a metal plate as a result of a car accident, and you are doing great. But there's that picture of the future he's planted in your head. 

Your former life was about trusting your body. You could make it do anything you wanted. And now, an expert has told you that you can't trust it anymore. Avoid anything that involves up or down motion.  Don't carry heavy things.

So what happens? You begin acting like the surgery is every day of your life. You let the expert hold you back. You limit your choices and you feel like you have already aged by those 20 years. You focus on what you've lost and not on all that you have gained. The pre- and post-event differences become all too real.

The only future that any of us have is today. Right now. If we don't live that way every single day then we will have wasted today and every day between now and that 20 years. No one, not even an expert Doctor (who made miracles happen) can tell you how to live your life or can take away the joy of experiencing every special moment.

To a man 27 years my senior.  That's right.  We got married when I was 24 so that means that as of June 24, I have now been married half of my life. Yikes. That sounds so finite. 

Sure there have been sacrifices.  He has had to put up with my rushing through the good stuff, missing out on some of the best moments with our children, impatiently trying to get somewhere, while he savored and appreciated every moment. 

And there were times when being a caregiver got old. But he didn't complain when he had to come home from work at lunch time to give me shots and hook up my IV during one turbulent pregnancy. 

And the travel got old.  But he has been the steady source of unwavering support through all of those job changes and long-distance commutes. He has smiled as I followed my every whim, never questioned my outings with friends, never complained about my terrible housekeeping skills, and never openly wondered what I was thinking when I made this decision or that.  And he has always complimented my cooking.  Even burnt toast. He claims that he really likes burnt food. 

He is a coffee drinker and I prefer Diet Coke.  That sort of sums it up.  It is hard to gulp down your coffee while running on to the next thing.  Diet Cokes are made for gulping and going. 

And now it seems that my Diet Cokes are becoming more hot tea, his cups of coffee are finding cups with lids and we are meeting in the middle more often.  We are taking the time to remember what it was that made us think this crazy relationship would actually survive and we are enjoying it. 

In case you're wondering about the maximum amount of gas that you can put it an automobile in one fillup, it appears to be $75. 

I discoverd this handy tidbit while driving a U-haul truck from Northern California to San Diego.  The first time I went to fill up the truck, I just turned on the pump and got back in the truck while it filled the tank. I really didn't want to look while the tally climbed into the hundreds.   Eventually, I heard the click, removed the pump, and resumed my journey south.  That's when I noticed the gauge was not sitting on "F".  I was afraid there was something wrong with the gauge until I pulled in for my next fillup.  This time I paid attention and as the total price neared $75, the pump began stopping. Then I noticed a small sign on the pump that said "In an effort to keep the cost of gas low (yes it really said that!!) we have limited each purchase to $75.  Feel free to begin a second transaction if you exceed that amount."

I am dying to know how the $75 cutoff saves them money.  All that know is that I had to load up 3 times at the $75 limit plus one more $60 fillup to reach my destination.  I don't know how those truckers do it.

The day she graduates from high school.  The nest will be empty. 

What are two parents supposed to do with themselves now?  What will we do with those hours that used to be reserved for handling the crisis of the day?  For calling school to address her absence?  For waking her up and then waking her up again?  How will we replace those moments when we could solve a problem?  When we received a special hug?  When we found her lost object?  When we watched her tiny body in a pink leotard parade across the stage? 

For 18 years we have watched her come and go.  We have seen her learn and we have seen her try and fail.  We have watched her win and watched her triumph over challenges.  We have been proud and we have been disappointed.  Now we will be doing that from afar.

This last year has been a special one as we have had more time together.  It has made as all stronger and more able to handle the coming separation.  But it won't be easy.