Sebastian is losing weight and I am starting to come to terms with the fact that he is getting older. He tends to do more sitting and staring into space than running and being active. I’m not sure I’m ready for him to be old, but I’ve had him for nearly ten years now. Has it really been that long? Somewhere I have pictures of him as a kitten – a tiny little white rat curled into my college roommate’s lap – all white fur and pink toes. It doesn’t seem that so long has passed and yet it has. Rebecca hasn’t aged – or at least visibly. She’s always been the grouchy old lady – ever since she became an adult she’s been this way so there’ve been no behavior changes to signal the onset of age. Or perhaps it’s simply been more gradual – who knows. In a strange way, I am more prepared for Rebecca to die than for Sebastian. It’s not that I’ll miss her any less – it’s just that I can somehow separate it – and it’s a shock to see the visibility of age in the one who always seemed somehow not quite in this plane of reality.

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The house is so close now. I realized that now that it’s March, there’s only about six weeks left. We were tasked to go out and look at some things this evening, so we did, dutifully, wandering around by flashlight. Half the time we’re out there it’s by flashlight, parking a car so the headlights shine into the house and then stumbling through the dark. It was easier to illuminate the house from outside when the walls weren’t covered, but now that the sheetrock and insulation are in place we can’t simply pass through the walls. We must go through doors, as it will eventually be. It’s an odd feeling, to be suddenly ‘confined’ to what is normal as opposed to the open framework that’s been there for so many weeks now, and even odder to realize that sooner than we know it, we’ll be living there.

We’ve both agreed we’d rather pay the extra price (although the amount does make me wince) for the Corian countertops in the kitchen. It’s better this way – we won’t regret it. The only question that remains is, of course, how much more will come – little bits here and there, little extras to pay, more decisions to make, and more hindsight revelations to uncover.