How many are enough?

I had company on the weekend.  My brother drove up from Saskatoon for breakfast on Saturday.  Since there are no places open for breakfast, we opted for lunch at the absolutely fantastic Mundare Bakery.  

I lived half an hour away since 1992.  How did I not know this was here?  (Answer:  I never go anywhere) It is really the kind of place you should drive out to, to have lunch at on the weekend.  The soup.  The sausage rolls.  The ...everything.  Note to self:  Go early.  If you follow the link, the little fruit turnovers were already gone, and there was only a few loaves of the utterly divine Mundare bread left on the shelf.  I know from seeing the action, Friday afternoon on the mainstreet is a bit of a zoo.  Bakery to one side of the block, sausage factory store on the other. Seriously fine food.

Anyway, my company and I were talking about getting older and how different our life might be.  Our folks have made it hard.  Dad will be 90 next year and is still pretty active.  He still does little fixes here and there around the house for my brother and sisters, but he does pace himself.  He still finds it fun and likes to keep busy.  My mom, who is 8 years younger still cleans 2 condos.  She just let a third one go, in the fall.  It is hard to think of 75 as old seeing their example.  My brother just turned 60 and I am verging on 60 and what we really need, how we want to live plays into our thought processes a lot.  Mine perhaps started earlier than it might for many, but then I was rather forced into it. My brother is just starting to think of what he wants and needs.  It is good to start thinking earlier in life, rather than waiting till the whole thing is just too overwhelming to face.  After he left, our conversation stayed in my mind.  

I was sitting and knitting, finishing that sock, I was pondering socks and thinking about the sock repair bucket, 

and then the thought crossed my mind, 'What happens when I get too old to knit and repair my own socks?'  Losing the ability to knit is something I acknowledge and accept. It will happen, hopefully much, much later. 

But it made me wonder if I ought to be planning a basket full of plain socks for the time when it happens.  I don't think my need for warm feet is going to go away. 

If I knit sock yarn at 12 socks a year, I have sock yarn in the bin for 6 years worth of knitting.  If I repair socks regularly now, how many socks will be enough for future me?  

Maybe I ought to be torquing out the plain vanilla kind, just so I can do them faster and make a bigger pile for future me.  Yeah. NO.  I think older me is just going to have to take what comes as it comes.  I plan to be here for a long time if my stash says anything about me.

I think I want my epitaph to read 'Knit all her yarn'.  

And that is enough pondering for my day. Have a lovely one, all.