Routines Routines

I know I know, I really wanted to get back to routine today. Much as I would like to pin that on Johnnie and how it benefits him mostly, that isn't true. It benefits me too as I very much prefer routine. You might even term that as b-o-r-i-n-g. I don't care. And so I was very comfortable with Johnnie getting breakfast at McDonald's drive-thru, eating it with Coyote Peterson, AND then out the door by 7:40 to get to the line to get in. Hey if anything, we are NEVER late. And we wouldn't be today. Those things that happened to Lisa on Monday isn't something I tolerate, let alone allow to happen. The result is Johnnie walking in with Brooklyn AND her sister Bailey while it was still a bit foggy out. See the mist on the pic. And the drop-off itself took all of a few minutes and I'm home by 7:51, doing steps early because I never know how the day is going to go. Actually, today I do know. We have another Town Hall tomorrow morning - for the FRB this time and I have to have yet another presentation for all of 5 minutes. Still, I do already have my material all down, all I have to do is finalize it. And I have all day to do that. In the meantime, I do realize that today is the last day of November. Can you believe Christmas is about 3 weeks away? And we have just one more month until the end of the year? I gave myself a soft target of the end of the year to decide if I want to retire or not. Am I comfortable with the amount of money I have already amassed to retire on for the rest of my life? The thing was I wanted to have over $1M combined in all of my 401K accounts in order to do that comfortably in my mind. Right now, I'm at about $835K and so if that is the deciding factor, then I can't retire on 12/31. Of course, If I can add $170K before then, well... I am also reminding myself that I have another $78K in cash already stashed off, which should carry me for a year if worse came to worse. Now to turn THAT into something much larger... Can I do a BHAG and turn that 50x into $3.5M? After taxes I'm left with a cool $2.1M. And YES I CAN retire off of that for sure LOL. Ahh, numbers dancing in my head. 

I chilled for the rest of the morning after meeting with my team for the first time in more than a week. By then the morning mist had given way to the warm sun though the ground was still visibly wet. And I even went to barbecue the chicken I bought this past weekend. It was then that I realized that of all the meats, I didn't like the way I barbecued chicken! Steak-fine. Pork chops-great. Italian sausage-fantastic. But chicken? Maybe I just don't do it well. Or I simply prefer something else. I did eat it for lunch, the chicken that I grilled and I ate it alonside soba noddles to make it Asian-like. But I was left with dissatisfaction, and later on for dinner, I made it up by making myself impromptu pot roast. That's because Johnnie requested penne pasta with chicken noodle broth. AND since we were at Ralphs anyway, asked for some chicken wings. He ate 2 of those to augment his chicken noodle dinner. And then I bought pre-made pot roast and augmented THAT with celery and carrots. Perfectly fine roast over rice. By then I had also given Claire a bath, which I did after lunch. I had it in my mind that she was going to try to sleep next to Johnnie since he had already decided he was going to start sleeping on the couch instead of on the same bed with me. And that is perfectly fine. Look at him doing just that. He even asked to go to sleep early, which meant he had HAD a pretty good day. After all, it was also basketball day today and he was excited to tell me that most of his friends from last session was in this session as well. And so with that, he was probably already tired. Tired enough to go to sleep by 8:30!! Wow. Seeing him sleeping softly like that tells me that all is good in the world. And there is nothing I could ever worry about in my work world that Johnnie's well-being could not overcome. As it was I had nothing to worry about. So much so that it was so early I decided to keep binging on the Blacklist. Binging through Season 8 until almost midnight. Watching Raymond Redidngton blur the lines of morality and ethics choices and a code of conduct. Watching Liz infuriatingly keep trying to get answers. I think about Johnnie and his curiosity. Does HE have all the answers he needs about himself and his birth parents? I hope so. I sure do. For now, coming home from a fun day at school is enough. Enough for him. Enough for me.