“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain” — CS Lewis

It matters because somewhere the story of my height became real.  The fact didn’t change, but what I believed did. 

Each item we choose to keep in a home is a decision of curation, a stewarding of stuff to create an environment.

I wonder if the focus is better spend on the lifetime part of the phrase rather than the once part.

I categorized the first speech from my dentist as a poor attempt at humor and the second as him being annoying.  By the third speech I was expectant and he delivered.  Round four was the hellfire and brimstone speech of wooden teeth and a lifetime of eating through a straw, which went over as poorly as you'd imagine.

But what about my wife and I?  Our natural rhythms differ by an hour or more, much like my grandmother's clock.  I'm up early and she stays up late.  My energy wanes as the day progresses while she has some well of vim and vigor that only appears when the Late, Late Show comes on.

When I was a kid, I would hang from the door frame trying to will my body to grow longer.  I did eventually grow taller but through no action of my own, despite the damage to the door frame. The doctors told me the best thing I could do to grow taller was sleep. 

So how do we know when we're now tall enough to take a mortgage?

I took some deep breaths and a lap around the house and even got another coffee -- the miracle elixir -- but nothing.  I couldn't get out of my funk.  I was stuck in a mood.