Carpe Dime. Seize the ... Dime!

You have to eat a black-eyed pea

To have good luck all year.

But if you get the hidden dime

You get more luck, my dear!

Our friends brought over a black-eyed-pea salad on New Year's Eve...complete with lucky dime stirred into it. Southerners know and follow this tradition; Mom sure did. We had black-eyed peas and cornbread every new year. Not always with a dime, though. Maybe that's why things went wrong....

But this year, I got the dime! I was the last to scoop out salad, and there it was. My bright and shining sign that this year will be different. This year, I'll accomplish things. This year I'll....oh, I know! Get too thin and too rich. Can't wait!

When you're young, you don't really realize that "the first day of the rest of my life" really means "the beginning of the end." I'm wondering how I'll live the rest of my life now that I see the end in sight. Some people say not to think about it, but so far, it's hard not to, when the time left is shorter than the time here.

"Such a long, long time to be gone

And a short time to be here."

The Grateful Dead

I still feel like I'm climbing up, though, not sliding down a hill. In fact, I think the end will be the peak. The toppermost of the poppermost. And it'll happen when it happens, but even so, it'll be too damn soon for me.

So I'm all carpe dime this year; y'all go ahead and carpe diem. That's good too.