I think we all dream small, against the big reality we live in.  I remember watching an episode of Seinfeld years ago, when Kramer retuned from a warehouse store with a can of tuna, the size of a coffee can.  It was a laughable joke, as the bargain wasn’t exactly thought through, when he had to eat it all in a matter of days.  I can relate to that both in life, as well as warehouse shopping.

One such realization came as I looked for aspirin at our local warehouse store, which was indeed there, double bottle, plastic blister packed for value.  Next to it though, was a huge single bottle – no not the tuna size, but darn close, containing nighttime aspirin or “PM” as it is well known.  Seriously, I could get 500 sleeping pills right next to the case of mouth wash and 136 count granola bars?  All the priorities in life right there for the taking!  I did the logical thing – I bought them all.

Since that purchase many, many months and pills ago, I have soothed my chronic pain at night, but I also deal with another chronic condition –  the reality of how short my day is between that first cup of tea around 9am and the little blue PM pill around midnight.  It started one day when I dropped the open bottle.  As I picked up the medication across my carpet, I couldn’t help but notice how many of those 500 were now gone.  The bargain to sleep now slapped me awake –  Where did all the time and my life go?

Maybe it is one of those grown up things we always knew was coming, like how fast summer vacation went by and then how it didn’t happen at all, as we punched the nine to five.  No different, than the gray hairs I see,  the slower pace of my faithful dog and the once infant grandchildren who now explain the remote to me.  I guess we get so caught up in the pace of life, we don’t pay attention to how fast it pours through the hours of our glass.

I’d like to believe we gain the necessary intelligence and experience in life, so that when we reach this realization point, we are in preparation to cross over, leave our human existence and attain something better.  But who am I kidding?  I haven’t seen Paris yet, I still want to wear 4 inch stiletto heels one more time and who knows maybe, just maybe the cob web draped refrain of Jackson Browne will again announce I am somebody’s baby.  I need more time!

However, just like the shelf life of tuna, the life we have, live and imagine is limited and if we don’t take it when it is fresh, it is never the same, and goes bad quickly – frankly sometimes it just ends up stinking!  So today, I may just walk down to get my tea in stiletto heels that don’t match my gray sweat pants, and when I answer the phone might have to  say “bonjour,” and instead of watching the clock  mark the time,  I’ll make some of my own.  We all need to shake our routine at some point, and see what we are missing, and if that means shaking our groove thing in the process, well so be it!  Yes, my friends know about arches in their shoes, having long forgotten the Archie’s swaying back and forth in front of a cartoon bandstand, but somewhere there is a beat beyond our hearts and we need to dance to it before it refrains down on us..