12,000 miles

My out-of-state and/or unplanned trips in 2008 took me 12,000 miles out of my way. Give or take a mile or two.

Good thing gas didn’t cost $4/gallon for too many weeks.

(I bet you thought that title was how many miles I ran this year, right? Heh.)

Really, though, all of those miles were necessary, and I would have paid the price of fuel no matter how high it went.

My husband retired a year ago. We had a couple good months with one pleasure trip we’d planned while he was still working. After that, between his mother, my father and, more recently, my good friend in Indiana, we’ve been praying hard for someone to recover from illness and injury.

Now we know what people mean when they say ‘retirement wasn’t what we expected.’

When you flub a shot in a friendly game of golf, you can take a mulligan – a do-over. I think I want to take a mulligan for 2008.