Retirement, Take Twenty-One: Time--And Time Again

This blog has taken a mini-sabbatical this summer for reasons unexpected. First, Doodle The Cat died. A tree in the backyard keeled over--and this would not have been a problem had it not take down the internet and TV cable. The windshield on my car got dinged in Brattleboro at the end of two years of road work on the bypass from Route 9 to Route 7, and although the ding was initially small, it ended up being enough to merit complete replacement of the windshield. That at least was free, unlike the replacement iPhone I needed to get since the port where the phone recharges had somehow gotten damaged so the phone had problems charging. One of the bridges on my heavy duty backup glasses needed replacement and then repair. The weather has been cooler than usual for the most part but with a downside of regular monsoon-type rainy days, and the basement has been damp all summer even with the dehumidifier going like gangbusters.

At least lately the summer sun is up from 5.30 in the morning to 8.30 at night, which gives me  a lot of time to do things--or not. Someone told me as I was retiring that I would grow more sensitive to demands on my time, and lately that has been true, in part because my work is not just flextime but my entire LIFE is flextime. There are no more days of morning meetings, of hours dodging bullets and putting out fires followed by a two and a half hour meeting in the afternoon followed by a run to get an allergy shot before teaching a class at night after a fast Lean Cuisine microwaved for dinner. Strangely, these days any event that imposes itself on my time--whether I have plans for that time or not--seems to be more noteworthy and disruptive than such events used to when there was always always something that needed doing and when in many ways  I was juggling more than I am now. (My dental hygienist once gave me a Superwoman toothbrush. Let's just say I kept up pretty well with all I had to do.) These days--and I write this on Day 811 of my retirement--there isn't much reason to multitask or to plow through things to be done without much thinking. This is a pleasant change: I mean, who used to have time to think very much?

So these days interruptions seem to matter more. Somehow. But I still--as I did when I worked--begin every day by making a To-Do List. Buy groceries, pick a prescription and a sympathy card, go to lunch, pick up the book for book club, fertilize the plants, maybe go to the gym or the pool, pay bills, clean out the upstairs closet and haul the next load of stuff to Salvation Army. (Yes, I am still divesting.) Some tasks get carried over from one day (or week) to the next--and sometimes it feels as if I don't have to do them if I write them down. Far more than when I was at work, priorities sort themselves out every day. I have a new kind of flextime.

And so I am still celebrating that I  can choose what I do. And despite all the unexpected events that have occurred recently, other things have gone well. (Touch wood again and again.) My container lettuce flourished, and only recently have the local critters started munching on my Walmart tomatoes which are almost four feet tall. (The geraniums must also be unusually tasty this year.) Cats Moonbeam and Swishy have worked out a newish feline time-sharing routine since Doodle died, and they both got clean bills of health. And so did I. My retirement guy reminded me I am financially in good shape (almost without my doing much over the decades). I have started taking glucosamine chondroitin for my popping knees, and, placebo or not, at least one of my knees pops less. I have begun a water aerobics class one night a week in my off-and-on search for a sports-type activity besides walking (one knee still hurts) that I actually enjoy.

I had a lobster roll on the beach in Maine and fell asleep listening to an unusually high ride coming in.

I am only now realizing that in my retirement I no longer HAVE to get up at eight in the morning, almost willfully, because for the better part of forty years I got up at six. And I have started treating weekends as weekends, which is to say I can sleep even later if I am so inclined. I am still as organized as I was at work. I am  just...more time-flexible. And I have come to realize that the grow-up-some-and-get-educated-for-twenty-years followed by work-for-about-forty-years followed by however-many-years-of-retirement life cycle--so to speak--is proving to be a really good deal.

In the next few months I will get back to the tree guy, get typhoid pills, get the furnace serviced, paint an accent wall and the deck railing and maybe touch up the wrought iron on the front stoop. My list of books to read gets longer every day. I will get back to this blog and other writing projects in a more focused way.

At least until life interrupts.

At least I did get a summer pedicure. It seemed important at the time.

In the next few months I will attend a wedding and go to John Mayer and Paul McCartney concerts. I will meet John Cleese and later hear Chicago play (no doubt) their greatest hits. I will listen to podcasts, watch the latest Endeavour, Hinterland and Grantchester episodes; I have finally started The Wire. (I will go to my deathbed never having watched Game of Thrones and True Blood.) Book club will meet and my online class will start again.

Today after about a season's worth of rain already, the sun is out (well, off and on), and it is breezy enough that I could put on a light hoodie if I wanted to. The weather will get hot and steamy again, I know, before the real crispness of fall arrives.

I sit here in my Official Rocker that marked my retirement, just inside the screen door to the backyard deck. The screen keeps the bugs out and the cats in. I watch the shadows from the trees (they definitely do need trimming) on the lawn. All told, a nice evening after a nice day. There are arguments for no surprises--no dinged windshields in my life--but those will go unheard by the assorted gods, I suspect. "Man proposes, God disposes," someone wrote in the eighteenth century.  More recently, John Lennon said, "Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans."

Fair enough. But still.

A thought: I am going to add having another lobster roll before the snow flies to my To Do List. I like that idea. Let's hope it happens.

I was made for retirement, and I have things to do.



Copyright Sandra Engel
August 2017