Taking care of the mundane

The reality is that practically everyone's life is a lot of routine. A lot of our time is filled with work and minor responsibilities that are not that exciting.

This last weekend I drove up to see mom and make sure everything is okay. It would be better if mom lived closer instead of just over three hours away. I would like her to move closer however at this stage I do not expect her to suddenly become more accommodating. Regardless I try to make it up to see her as much as I can. It is one of those responsibilities you find yourself with as you get older. I took her out for breakfast and once we got back to her place I took care of a number of personal matters for her. My sister got her a new phone and a new electric kettle. The new phone got plugged in and I made sure that the old items were destined for the scrap heap as mom has a tendency to hang on to stuff. I took out all of her garbage to the bin on my way out. I will be back to see mom in July if not before.

I have a friend in the area. I stopped by his acreage to swap one car for another. The 2012 KIA Rondo was swapped for the 2003 Chev Impala. I need to get rid of the Impala sometime as I do not need it. The problem is that I like it. The gas gauge on the Impala does not work. I cannot be bothered to fix it so I keep track of how much gas I have in the tank by resetting the trip counter every time I get gas. The air-conditioning stopped working so I just roll down the windows. There are likely a few more issues to be discovered. Nevertheless I would rather run the Impala over the gravel roads during the summer months. I feel kind of guilty subjecting the KIA to the back roads of Alberta. I kind of consider the Impala disposable if something happens to it. The bigger leather seats and the 3.4l V6 just makes driving feel better and more comfortable.

I took my good buddy out for dinner. This was done as a thank you for letting me park a car at his place and it was recently his birthday not to mention that I drink a fair amount of his beer when I am in the neighbourhood. So we each had a ribeye steak with a healthy sized glass of wine and discussed the usual guy stuff. Sometimes you just have to spend some time catching up and maintaining friendships. A lot of times we do a lot of minor boring activities. That does not make them less important.