Halloween

Today is my mother's birthday; she would have been 55. It's such a small number when you think about it. If you average my mother's and father's lifespans together you only get 52. If I hypothesized that that was to be the extent of my life as well, which is improbable but certainly not impossible, then the midpoint of my life will be reached by the age of 26. My sister is 24 now, two years short of that imaginary mark, and she tells me that she is very worried that she'll die at 40. I'm sure she does have that fear, but she was also trying to make the case for using as much of our inheritance as we want right now, since who knows if we'll be around for our retirement. She gets upset thinking that our mom saved and economized a lot, and was always working, and here all the fruits of her labor are left to us and not to her to enjoy. I pointed out that a., if Jen dies young and unmarried I get all her money, and b., if she dies and has children then she'll have provided for them just as well as our mother did for us, which is no mean thing. Perhaps the first option sounds cold, I meant it jokingly and she knew that, but she also knows that right now she would inherit all my money as well, so it goes both ways.

I do have to update the will which I created prior to going to Italy. Jen tells me that it was only valid because I had no estate to speak of; now my will would require an actual lawyer and witnesses, not just Rae, Heather and Sara signing their names. Also my mom was the executor and I left everything to her discretion, though I did have Jen and Rae as co-executors if she had predeceased me. I joked at lunch the other day that I would leave Sean as co-executor with Rae, but he pointed out, sensibly if a little less than romantically, that if we broke up for some reason, it would be really weird years down the line to have to go deal with his college girlfriend's will. ! Of course we both know that that's not how things are going to work out; the recent instability of my life has left me even more convinced that Sean and I can make it through anything if we're only willing to work at it. We haven't shied around long-term discussions for a really long time now, although it still becomes a little awkward to do so in front of others. Privately, though, we talk about what we want to future to be, and it's each other.

It was a beautiful day today, though Daylight Savings meant the day was much shorter. I'm in my empress costume as I type, for I'm shortly headed down to Barone for dinner with my friends and then out to see The Prestige (I hate Christian Bale! He's totally unattractive! There, I said it.) and then back here for a Halloween party.

I love this Yeats quote:

"I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;
Tread softly, for you tread on my dreams."