Forced Perspective

Time to sweep away the confetti and move the extra chairs back to the kitchen. Pick up all those plastic cups and take out the recycling. The party is definitely over. The blog has turned three, and change is on the horizon. Not the kind of change that makes people's lives qualitatively different, but the kind of change that makes you remember when things were different.
The gas station up the street has finally caved in to the four dollar a gallon mark, while a few others in the neighborhood are clinging to the illusory "$3.99". I suppose you might want to believe that this is a change in the quality of life, but I can't see how paying more for something that we're not supposed to be using anyway changes anything but the quantity. Watching my son mull over which toy to buy last week, I had the same feeling. We had spent the weekend before clearing off shelf space for new things when the old things had only recently stopped being new. Should he get a Transformer, or a Bionicle? I confess that I have become numb to the differences between robot-type-action-figures-for-which-some-assembly-is-required. But I knew that for him, this was a great dilemma.
Please understand that I continue to live very close to the edge in my own private economy. I buy a tremendous amount of stuff I don't need: that jar of "Goober and Grape" for starters. I am presently fighting the suburban urge to re-sod my lawn. Looking out of the office window, it looks fine, but when you get out and roll around on it, you notice the bare patches and the weeds.
And that's what this feels like: Looking out the window at the last three years and seeing how things have changed, and how much they're still the same. I'm still here.