Garfield is the cat in the comic strips as well as many other places. I didn't like him too well at first, because I am a cat lover and Garfield does not have the traits that I admire in a cat. Well, he does have independence. And he can certainly take care of himself. But he doesn't seem very cuddly, even though you can buy a stuffed version of him that could be cuddled.

But recently his daily comic strip in the paper has caught my interest. I associate well with it. The running theme is that Garfield and his house-mate/owner find things are less than perfect in their home but they are perfectly happy about it. An example was that they found all their dishes were dirty so the man says that they will need to go buy some more dishes. Garfield agrees and adds for the readers the aside, "We're bachelors!" Another time they had no food in the house but Ramen noodles and pie. The man says, "Aren't we lucky?" and Garfield again lets us know that they are bachelors.

Obviously I am not a bachelor, but I find a real closeness to their remarks. My aside to the readers might be, "We're Middle Age Plus." Yes, some things that once seemed so important in the line of housework or activities no longer loom over my head. No, we are middle age plus.

Our son and daughter-in-law have built a nice new house near us. Everything sparkles and shines. I am very happy for them. It shows us what the wear and tear of 18 years living in the same house with no major redecorating has done to our house.

I look at the woodwork in the main bathroom and see that it would look much better with a new coat of paint, especially where the toes of shoes have hit against the cabinet under the basin. It could be repainted fairly easily, but we would have to move some stuff and spend some money that we might be able to use somewhere else. It's still very functional and very comfortable, and as I said, we are middle age plus.

One of my favorite scenes in a Jimmy Stewart, Bette Davis movie where they were contemplating a double suicide rather than go through Bette's character debilitating illness, involved a conversation between them and their daughter. The daughter was arguing that they should continue to live. One of her talking points was "Who's going to take care of all these things?" (She was pointing to an overcrowded kitchen.) The answer from the older couple was, "Then someone else can clean up this mess!" That might be a selfish idea, but it does have some appeal when you are middle age plus.

We seem to have reached the stage where if something is functional and comfortable, leave it alone. If the towels don't match in the racks, they still dry us just as well. If we use the same chipped Melmac dishes each day it doesn't matter. They still hold our food and fit in the dishwasher just fine.

If we want some finer dining on occasion, we can always go out to eat. If we do, then we sometimes get additions to our glassware. Those heavy-duty plastic glasses hold up for quite awhile and they stack nicely in the cupboard also.

Yes, stores like Home Depot don't tempt us very much. We might have to use the stuff we buy and that means work.