Today has seemed quite strange to me.  I can't say that the day was strange because it was a better then normal Sunday.  But I have felt strange.  I have felt tired but mostly I have felt distracted.  The thoughts that came to me last night at that open house I attended with Nicholas have had an almost haunting affect on me.  It seems that I am living this deal that Nicholas is going through in my dreams.  I wonder what my life would have been like if I had had such an opportunity presented to me when I was his age.  I haven't second guessed myself before and I'm not sure that that is what I am doing now, but it has got me thinking about something that I haven't thought about before.  Our decisions have such a permanent effect on us.  In a way it isn't fair and in that same way I know that we can recover from bad decisions, but questions are fair when trying to understand where we are, how we got there and what might the future hold for us.  But the thing at the heart of this distraction is to see that in a way I am at a very similar cross road in my life now.  Here we are, Sheila and me.  Our kids are raised and gone from the 'nest' and we wonder just what it is that we need to be doing now.  We wonder how much, if any, real influence we have on our family right now.  We have talked about a mission from the beginning, but our circumstances don't seem to make that a feasible option.  What is it that we should be doing, and is 'it' a drastic thing or just a bit of a tweak in our habits or lifestyle that needs to happen?  Maybe all of us have similar questions and not just Nicholas and us.  But I haven't seen it that way before the last little while. Does that sound something like a 'mid-life crisis'? If so I thought I had gotten over that in my 40's.  Whatever it is it weighs on my mind.  It isn't a bad thing to wonder about, but it sure is a distraction.