…I forgot about one other bit of working out the other day. My daughter is going on a 6 day hiking trip in Mt Zion, so I took her and her best friend for a 2 mile walk in their hiking boots to break them in.

And today I am on vacation, and woke up at 8:12 – and just made it to 8:30 power flow class. Ahhhh yum!

So, about that “Taking Turns” thing your eyes just skimmed over up there…

I think Brian and I take turns getting PMS’ed. Now, obviously he wouldn’t have hormonal fluctuations for the same reasons I do, but it seems like every-other month I have moody time, and in between he has moody time (sympathy induced?)

When one of us gets stressed, thoughts and conversations usually come back around to money. Sometimes it’s like Paul Revere (Oh geez, I almost typed Pierre Cardin) is riding down the street swinging a lantern, shouting, “The Future is coming! The Future is coming!” The future with daughters driving and needing money for college. The future with repairs on the house and minivan. The future with medical bills and hopefully kickass vacations.

So we try to balance: Living in the Moment with The Future is Coming. It’s not always easy.

Sadly, in April, we buried a dear friend. A woman I met as a mommy in my daughter’s class who quickly became a neighbor with an open door. Her future came and went all too soon. All those overtime hours away from her daughter… all that savings sitting in a bank… And my grandparents seem to be the same way – saving for The Future when they could be traveling the world or doting on Great Grandchildren who are already entering high school or paying for weddings as their grandchildren seem to be getting married one by one lately.

But we can’t just say F$^& The Future, right?! We have to maintain that balance of being prepared for it. I mean, I guess we could fill out every single one of those credit card apps we get in the mail each day and spend money right and left that we don’t have and not worry about it because we’ll be dead someday, but that doesn’t seem very realistic. It might be fun to make a movie about it though… and Donald Trump would applaud it. (Dude, fire your stylist and get a hairdresser.)

Over the weekend we were watching the Michael Douglas movie that was a sequel to Wall Street and he called us The NINJA Generation. No Income, No Job, No Assets. That was a new one to me! Cute and catchy, but awfully scary. And certainly not true of many of the people I know. Brian and I always seem to be recreating jobs for ourselves, so there is that…

So, what do you think of this ramble? How can one plan for the future and live in the moment? Is the secret simply to find what makes you happy? If I meditate long enough will it all be clear and these questions will just float away? Or is it this exact amount of searching that keeps life from becoming a bore?

While you chew on that, I’m going to take my vacation day and spend it with my husband and children, the 4 of us finding what will keep us happy in the moment, and probably spend some time discussing the future. And all the while, smiling.