HAVE TO Reduction Reason #1

Life is short and too uncertain. This really hit home this morning when I received a phone call from the mom of one of D2's good friends. She called to thank us for helping C, D2's friend, get his drums to school for a talent show last night. It really was no big deal for us. C is a part time son here, just as D2 is at their house. We joke that we share our boys because they are almost always together and usually at one of the two houses.

But C's mom didn't sound very healthy this morning. I was aware that she had breast cancer at one point and D2 mentioned something this week that made me think she might have Congestive Heart Failure. His reaction to my questions indicated that he didn't know much about it - including what that would mean if it was true - so I left it alone. But it turns out that the alarm bells in my head were right. She has been told that she has 2-3 years left, but that is really just a guess. He heart function is pretty low. And she hasn't told her kids yet. She just wanted to let me know how grateful she is that C feels at home with us and asked, if anything happens to her, that we look after him.

In the face of news like that, very few things are making the HAVE TO cut today. The fact is that no matter what we plan for the future, there are no guarantees that we will see it. I'm not advocating a complete transformation from the ant/save for the future mentality to a grasshopper/just live for the day thought process. Once again, there needs to be a balance between the silly HAVE TOs and the actual requirements for life. It seems very odd to me that it takes a jolt like this to really get through to me. But, coming as this does in conjunction with a very unusual work week, it is more than enough to make me reconsider my own priorities.