Inch Eighty-One: The 500th Post

This is my 500th post since starting this blog in 2009. At the rate I am now writing (approximately one post a week), it would take me almost ten years to double that number.

I'll be blunt. The likelihood of me having ten years left are slim to none given the cancer. Mostly none. So unless I speed up my rate of writing (also an unlikely prospect), chances are I will never hit that elusive 1000 mark.

But 500 is nothing to sneeze at. It's a nice solid number, a nice benchmark.

Faced with the prospect of the 500th post, I am not sure I have much to say. I am writing this out, as I usually do, by longhand. It is Friday night of Labor Day weekend. Thanks to the miracle of scheduling publication, I will upload and set this post to run sometime next week (probably Monday), as well as set my 501st post to run the following week.

I don't usually frontload posts to run, especially two weeks out, but I have good reason to rely on that crutch right now. Come Tuesday in the wee hours of the morning, Warren will drop me off at the airport so I can catch a plane to Portland. I am heading out to see Alise, Ben, Sam, old friends, and other dear family members, but most especially I am headed out to see this young lady:

Ramona just turned three on September 1. She loves books and imaginative play and "The Wizard of Oz"(the real deal), going so far to ask me if I liked "the windy part" (the tornado). I cannot wait to join the enchanted circle of her life. Faced with so much richness, I do not want to be tethered to a computer while I am away.

Rosh Hashanah begins while I will be out there, and I plan to usher in the New Year with a meal for the people I love. I will be baking pies, and I will help Ramona bake her very first pies in small tins.

After all, she is three now. It is high time.

I can't wait.