The decade ends and?

The decade ends in less than 24 hours. So what? We measure off time in neat and tidy increments that exist only in our creation of them. Millenia, centuries, decades, years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds, nanoseconds. Time chopped in order to be measured and then discussed. And all of this created by us for our discussion. Does our dog know of time? Not even days or nights seem to matter to him. At midnight he might want to play as much as he does at noon. He dozes in the sun with the same alacrity as he does in the dark. Does he mark his years in ways other than the grey on his chin? Perhaps he knows of seasons. Seasons are independent of our timekeeping. The equinoxes and solstices happen of their own accord but the date of winter is open. When does weather's winter begin? The first killing frost? The first dusting of snow? Or must it be at least half of an inch and then stay on the ground past mid-day? What of summer? What marks the beginning of summer? Not the coming of green, that's for spring. Not the return of the robin for that too is spring. When then summer? The first time the temperature rises above 90? But then, temperature is another one of our ways of measuring by increments.
In all this I've been remarkably impersonal. My blog speaks little of me and mainly of what? Time and it's measurements. Perhaps it is because right now I feel old. I've been on my hands and knees all day wrestling with a laminate floor. The joints and muscles ache and I don't relish tomorrow's long drive to my sister-in-law's New Year's Eve party. Four hours there. A celebration. Four hours back. It has become part of the tradition. Repeat an event three times and it becomes a tradition. Some traditions are put upon me and I merely accept them. Or put up with them. As as midwesterner I've the talent of putting up with a remarkable number of things. Put up with and go along instead of making waves, rocking the boat, causing the discomfort of breaking the status quo.
My decade? The last or the future. Right now I sit at the midpoint between, having only past and future, lacking the present. The last decade brought many changes and shifts in life plans. Where I began is a far cry from where I ended. Somewhere, ten years ago, I was a Lutheran pastor serving congregations in western Iowa and I thought myself content. That was an illusion. Now I've returned to what I once was, only different: writer, student, teacher, occassional pastor, almost as if the past two decades didn't happen. My body tells me that right now. Ten years past, and more are in the future. I feel melancholy.

Short on words

I've run out of words and more words are needed. The garden is frozen over and no more are sprouting. I want my words to be like the zucchini, an overabundance; words that must be plucked early before they grow to sesquipedalian proportions. But now, with the hard freeze even the daughty kale has given up to lie limp in frosted decline. I need spring to come in the next two days or I shall be forced to use hot-house words--tasteless, bland, only suitable for packaging.