What Year is It?

It's that time of year when we find ourselves writing the date wrong. Yes, my goodness, we say it's 2008. John who writes on of my favorite blogs, Journal of a Writing Man, surprised himself by not fumbling the ball on this for 2008. I have found it to be the same for me. Of course, I use a bookkeeping program that keeps the date and now I use this blogging tool which quietly remembers it's a new year. Still, faced with a check to write, I did put 2008. So for some reason I'm not as confused as usual. Which is always good because I tend toward confusion and to avoid the inevitable entropy I struggle mightily, putting all appointments on a calendar, writing reminders on sticky notes placed on my monitor and noting things in a notebook.

Time does pass though and without some effort things fall into disarray. A once-new house loses paint and then the roof starts to wear through and stuff accumulates on the porch. And no this isn't our house before we started downsizing! No, in fact you can't find this house in the condition shown. This picture was taken in 2001. This house had a face lift with siding and a roof. And it's for sale. I didn't see the work done but it seemed to happen so quickly that my dog-walking friend and I theorize that they just covered what you see here.

Today I took my car to get maintenance and an inspection sticker. I asked the service writer to get it inspected. He looked down at the windshield and did a double take.

"Oh. I guess it is 2008."

"Yes."

We chatted amiably about the relentless passing of time. He then informed me that, normally, they recommend doing a bunch o' work and replacing belts, the water pump and such like after seven years. My turn to realize I've been driving this car a little over seven years. I drive so few miles that I swithered a bit about doing the work or waiting and so did my young friend the service writer who was waking up to the fact that it was 2008. In the end I decided to get the service. I feel sure it would be a couple of years before I'd pay the price for my penny-pinching but if I'm going to keep driving a seven-year-old car with a banged up bumper then it might as well be reliable. Our cars tend to get replaced after ten years, but I'm not so sure I will replace this one as I plan to drive less and less as time goes on.

And, if I replace this car after ten years it will be 2010 or 2011 before I do that. Doesn't that sound strange??