Uncle Dave's Blog

October 24th celebrated my 8th month of retirement, and it was a good month for me if you don’t count that I turned a year older on the 7th. I guess even that was good because I now qualify for Social Security.

I celebrated my birthday with a trip to Anaheim, to do 2 hours on a 737 flight simulator and spend a few days at Disneyland, and then on to San Diego to spend a few days with my sister Carol and my brother-in-law Alan. I drove for this trip, probably the last time I do that long of a drive, and the drive triggered in me a wave of nostalgia for what Highway 99 used to be when I was a kid.

What really brought this home to me was looking at the GPS as I drove. When I was a kid, 99 was one long, straight highway, passing through towns big and small along the way, encountering more than a few stop lights and even stop signs, passing motel after motel, and restaurant after restaurant. There were few, if any, fast food chains in those days, but one of them was Big Orange, with a building in the shape of an orange. I found this picture online. They’re all gone now I think.

Then 99 became a freeway, bypassing towns one by one. Here is what you see on the GPS now.

 

You can see where the highway used to go right through the town, and how 99 now goes around them, abandoning those motels and family-owned restaurants, some to become sleazy dives and others to disappear completely. Likewise, the little gas stations where you could fill up, get a cold soda, and have a man in a uniform check under the hood and clean your windshield have become shells of their old selves, two wobbly posts holding up an awning over gas pumps long ago removed.

I miss the simplicity of those days. Yeah, maybe the drive took a couple hours longer. Maybe you couldn’t be sure your car wouldn’t overheat going up the Grapevine. But it was more fun, for a kid anyway.

Gone now, but remembered on your GPS.

(This last picture shows what happens every time 99 needs to go over a main road that crosses it. Since the train tracks parallel 99, the freeway has to veer right or left enough to include on-ramps and off-ramps. You see it again and again when traveling along 99 in the valley.)

Retirement Is Like Summer Holidays All Year ‘Round!

Hahahah – bullshit! I just made that my title because it was so catchy.

Yesterday was my 7 month retirement anniversary.  In the last month I found myself visiting my old place of employment – Sears – on several occasions, once or twice because I was in the vicinity, and a couple of times when I actually bought something. It was great to see old friends – and easy to avoid an old enemy – but it was totally depressing to hear how the business is going, meaning that there isn’t a lot of it.

I bought something that earned me $200 points spread out over 6 months. I got September right away. I feel pretty good about October, November and December. Might just plan on writing that last $67 off.

So what I bought was a compound miter saw. With the plan of making stuff. I made a bench with it, bright red.

It weighs a freaking ton. I made it out of Douglas fir and it is still leaking sap. But it’s sturdy. VERY sturdy.

I have plans to make other things. No, really, I have plans of things to make.  Retired people are required to make stuff; it’s a rule or something.

I am finding it increasingly difficult to remain active. Don’t misunderstand that for boredom, but all of the things that I usually like to do involve sitting at a computer or watching TV or, more often, doing both at the same time. I try to do a half hour or so on the exercise bike – in fact, I am doing so as I type this. Whether this is helping or just checking a box when I visit the doctor is hard to say.

(I need a shave.)

Anyway, this leads up to my biggest retirement concern: I am gaining weight. It was inevitable, even though I am consuming a lot less fast food now that I am retired. Intellectually I know how to avoid this, but I have all the willpower of a 3 year-old locked overnight in a Baskin-Robbins. Ohhh, ice cream. Be right back!

LOL, just kidding. Kinda. I did have about 7 strawberries with whipped cream on…….ohhhhhh, maybe that is why I am getting fat!

Which is not going to get any better in October, when I take my second retirement vacation. To Anaheim to do my 737 flight simulator Christmas Gift.

And a few days at Disneyland followed by a few days with my sister Carol in San Diego. Won’t be any dieting on this trip!

I close with this. I am tired of summer. I have never been a huge fan of summer, and now that Autumn has arrived, it’s time for summer to go. Let’s have some cool nights and rainy days. Let’s have a little wind to knock the leaves off the trees. Let’s have Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas, holidays that I will be enjoying in full for the first time in many, many years.

See you in October!

Today marks my 6th month retirement anniversary. Some days it seems like I stopped working only yesterday. On most days it feels like I have been retired forever. As I write this I am listening to Pandora, something I never used to do. Right now it is playing a mix of all of my channels, which means that about every 4th song is a Christmas tune! I’m already in the mood for Halloween, Thanksgiving (and Black Friday, of course – J/K), and Christmas. What will Christmas be like? I can’t wait to find out. The last month has been annoyingly hot, keeping me from doing more than a couple of hours of work outside in the morning. The result is that I feel like I am not accomplishing anything. Are you supposed to accomplish things when you’re retired. I am probably selling myself short. While I have not gotten a lot done outside, I have been productive indoors, specifically working on my website, The Ferguson Recipes. I completely redesigned the layout, changing colors and images. I also re-wrote a lot of the underlying code to make it more efficient; I still have a lot of work to do on this. And my favorite accomplishment is that I was able to add pictures to the recipes. I went into Sears the other day. It was good to see so many friends, and I still found myself saying hello to customers. I am not optimistic for the company’s future, but I wish them all the best. So retirement is still fun. Now that the cool weather is back, I have started getting more done outside.  Can’t say I have gotten bored yet. I will keep you posted on that. DBF

It has been 5 months since I retired. Much has changed and much has remained the same.

The Death of a News Junky

Originally, this was going to be a separate post, but I have decided to include it with this month’s RetireDiary, since I procrastinated  in publishing it by itself.

For most of my adult life – hell, for that matter, most of my life, period – I have been a television news junky.

I didn’t go in the other room when my parents watched the news. I was right there with them, which in some cases was not a good thing as I often understood just enough of what I was seeing to be frightened by it or confused by it. The Cuban Missile Crisis scared the shit out of me; I was pretty sure we were all going to die in a nuclear blast. At 12 years old, it took me a day or so to understood the magnitude and horror of Kennedy being shot; my parents were staunch republicans, so wasn’t it good that he was no longer president?

I followed Kennedy’s funeral and, 5 years later, his brother’s. The moon landing, Watergate, 9/11 – I rabidly latched onto every bit of news, good and bad, as much as I could. With a college major in radio, television and film production, coverage of current events was always at the forefront.

In short, I was obsessed with news.  Not anymore.

These days, I find myself turning off the news, either moving to another channel or turning the TV off completely. I suppose it is a form of burying my head in the sand. There is nothing good in the news anymore, and even the daily horror that is on the screen and in the Internet rarely holds my interest. I find myself especially averse to news about politics and the presidency. It is so depressing to hear the hypocrisy of politicians and news commentators, that I have chosen to block them out of my life for the most part. Better to watch Bobby Flay barbecue a steak than watch Chris Cuomo barbecue a politician.

So I am done with it.

Other Retirement Observations and News

Last week I was able to enjoy my first post-retirement family vacation in Aptos. It didn’t really feel that much different, except that when I got home on Friday, I had to get out of my mind that I only had a couple of vacation days left before I went back to work. I used to have an “I’m still on vacation” attitude; I had to remind myself that it wasn’t just vacation time anymore. It’s retirement time!

For the first time since retirement, I am finding myself at a loss when it comes to making meals. Everything sounds boring to me, and cooking has become more of a chore than a challenge. I am hoping this will pass, maybe when the weather starts to cool off.

Which brings me to……the weather. It has been so damned hot, here, pretty much 100+ degrees every day for the last 2 or 3 weeks, with no end in sight. I have things I would like to do outside, but if I don’t get them done by about 10 in the morning, it is lost. (Right now it is 10:00 AM and 82 outside; supposed to get to 102 today.)

Anyway, just completed my application to start Social Security payments in October and getting ready to make plans for a vacation sometime in the fall. Other than that, just trudging my way through life.

Retirement is still worth it!

 

Today I foolishly weighed myself. Since retirement 4 months ago, I have gained 5 pounds. Not a lot, but it was bound to happen.

When I worked at The-Place-That-Will-Not-Be-Named, I was on my feet for at least 6 hours of my day. Some of those days were intense, especially in the last 5 months. 6 miles of walking in some days.  But in retirement, there is no way I can match that intensity in one day, let alone five out of every 7. Not only do I not want to spend my retirement walking around and going up and down stairs, I just can’t.

Some of my lack of exercise is offset by the reduction of fast food fat and carbs.  I have been doing at least 45 minutes on the exercise bike twice a day when I can, once a day when I have been working hard in the yard.

Other parts of my body are falling apart as well. My feet and ankles swell more than they used to, or maybe I am just noticing it more. And my right arm and hand are sore almost all the time. At first I thought the latter issue was because I have been lifting a lot of heavy things, but lately I have become convinced that it is actually from all the time I spend on my computer, especially lately as I have been working on my recipe site, www.fergusonrecipes.com.  Carpel tunnel or tennis elbow or something like that. Who knows.

Now that I have time to listen, I am amazed at how many birds there are around here. It is also amazing how fucking noisy those birds are. They have a whole lot of stuff to say and I guess no one is listening because they keep repeating it over and over!

Still filling my gas tank almost exactly once a month, about half as often as I did when I worked. Of course, this also means I haven’t driven any long distances, as in going on a trip. This will change next month with the family vacation and then again in October when I go to Anaheim for my 737 flight simulator adventure and Disneyland, follow by a visit to my sister in San Diego.

My main project in the back yard, replacing a dying redwood tree with a lawn and planting area is complete.

I have other future plans for the house. I need to replace my flooring, but I have been going back and forth about what and where. I think my Flooring Liquidators guys has disowned me. I need to clean the windows; I was going to pay someone but my windows are all easy to get to, so I can do this myself. I have made an agreement with someone to remove a palm tree in my back yard, one which is totally useless and which I should have gotten rid of 7 years ago; it’s gonna cost me probably 10 times what it would have then.

And then there’s the dirt and rocks.

The dirt, which is really mostly redwood mulch, is from the tree, of course. The pile of rocks that surround the base of the palm tree is from a fountain that was in the opposite corner of the back yard when I first moved in. It was falling apart so I removed it almost as soon as I moved in. The rocks in the foreground were mostly at the base of the redwood tree, but some of them were just around the yard as landscaping. There are probably a dozen more buried in the hedge along my back fence, and another dozen or so in my front yard. So I think I am going to build a fountain in one corner of my back lawn. Not only will this give me a use for the rocks, and the 12 tubes of construction adhesive which I inexplicably own, but it will also block off the sight of some rather ugly stuff in that corner. We shall see. Some of those rocks have to be moved with a hand truck!

Anyway, that’s all I have to report at the end of my 4th month of retirement. I am stunned it has only been that long; it seems like forever. We just passed the summer solstice so it is all downhill from here. July 4th, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, BLACK THURSDAY AND FRIDAY, and then Christmas, all of them will feel like firsts for me!

See ya!

I was planning on posting to this blog on the 24th of each month, the anniversary of my retirement. I am late for May, partly because on the 24th my great-niece graduated from 8th grade, and partly because I had to think about what I wanted to say. And I finally figured out that I wanted to talk about big things and little things that changed for me with retirement.

As I said, on the 24th of May I went to my great-niece’s 8th grade graduation. A big deal for her, of course, and I am so proud of her – Valedictorian, Academic Decathlon, humpty-eleven GPA all three years of middle school, etc. But it was a big deal for me, too, because I was there! Before my retirement, this was no sure thing. I might have been off, but I might have been working, too.

Several weekends in a row I have gone to my local Ace Hardware. I have shopped there plenty of times before, but never on weekends, because I was working. Guess what! They have caramel popcorn on Saturday and Sunday! A little thing that means a lot to me. I now go to Ace a lot on weekends.

And there is more.

I never used to sit on my back patio. There never seemed to be enough time, even on my days off, to enjoy my patio, because I had things that needed to get done. Yeah, I still have things to get done, but they don’t need to be done. So, on more than one occasion, I have sat out on the patio in the late morning, after working in the yard, listening to the birds and occasionally drifting off into a nap. What a miracle for me!

Not long after I retired I took the blackout curtains off of my bedroom and bathroom windows. Let the light come in; it won’t bother me! And I leave my bedroom window slightly open at night, just because I can. Yeah, I could before, but I never felt like it.

Same with opening windows and doors during the day. Before retirement, I never bothered, at least not as often, because I would always have to close them again to go do stuff. With retirement came the luxury of letting the breezes drift through the house, and with them the sounds of the world outside.

I used to have my lights on in the rooms I was in and sometimes the ones I wasn’t in, just because I didn’t feel like opening the blinds. Since retirement, I haven’t closed my kitchen or bedroom blinds in weeks. Even my office blinds stay open most of the day if I am home, so I don’t need to use the lights.

I am, as many of you probably know, a TV addict. I have at least one TV on most of the time, usually watching the news or home improvement shows, even if it is just background noise to something else I am doing. Or maybe I should say “had”. More and more since retirement, I have turned the TV off – it is off right now – and enjoy the silence. A welcome change to my life that I would not have anticipated in retirement.

I have been working in the yard, working to clean up the garage, working on organizing my house, working on putting some more pictures on the wall – yes, train pictures that have been sitting in storage since I moved. And I am not in a hurry to get any of it done, but I am loving every minute of it.

Much to my surprise, I don’t worry about anything now that I am retired. I don’t wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat wondering if this thing or that thing that I did at work will get me in trouble. I don’t worry about missing something. I don’t worry about money – as long as I don’t live past 81. As I said before, I don’t worry about getting something done today; I have tomorrow to do it. I don’t worry about a thing!

Although there must be many more things, the one last one I will mention is watching sports. I used to have this bad luck that the weekend I was off, if I had one, inevitably there was no sports on TV that I wanted to watch. Now, I can watch whatever I want, especially golf and football (when it comes on again). A little thing that is so meaningful to me.

In summary, all of the little things and big things add up to this:
retirement is the prize you win for surviving infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and middle age; in my case the first 65 years of my life.

 

Today, April 24th, 2018, marks 2 months since I retired. I am stunned that it has only been 2 months. It seems like it has already been a lifetime. I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. I am relieved that I am enjoying retirement so much, relieved that I have not yet become bored, and relieved that it looks like my money will hold out as long as I don’t go crazy with it. I guess that is all a good thing.

There are so many things I am loving about retirement. I love being able to say ‘Yes” to every invitation. I love being able to go somewhere and not worry about getting home early because I have to get up for work the next morning. I love being able to go to Friday morning yard sales; I keep forgetting to do this but I love knowing I can go if I want. I love binge watching, albeit slowly, the many TV shows I have recorded – I am two years behind on Big Bang Theory.

I have learned so many things about being retired that I never expected.

1)  Being retired means I have lost almost all concept of time, especially when it comes to days of the week. Like the Dowager Countess in Downton Abbey says, “What’s a weekend?” I do try to treat my weekends differently than my weekdays, if for no other reason than to keep myself sane. For example, I do not exercise on Saturday or Sunday – unless I missed a day during the week. I try not to do stuff I have to do on the weekends; I save the chores for weekdays. And, of course, weekends are meant for watching sports; golf now, football not soon enough, etc. Yet when it comes to weekdays, I sometimes lose track. I only know today is Tuesday because the gardeners came today.

2) My day patterns are totally changed. I get up at different times every day, but usually no later than 7. But I might not finish breakfast until 8:30 or 9, which never happened when I was working. This moves lunch to 1 or 2 or sometimes never, and dinner can be as early as 4:30 (if I didn’t have lunch) or as late as 7:30 or 8. And I don’t care. There is no rhythm to my day, which is just fine with me.

3) Some days I suffer from something I call “retirement guilt”. I don’t know if other retirees do this, but occasionally I feel guilty for doing something that I enjoy, like designing house plans on my computer, in stead of something that needs to be done, like….well, the list is endless. I have to remind myself that I didn’t retire to fix up my house; I retired to fix up my life!

4) I discovered after my first trip to Black Oak after I retired that retirees spend a lot of time in Native American casinos. White haired ladies and leather-handed old farmers who “can’t get this durned hearing aid to work! WHAT?” They arrive in buses in droves, and just by watching and listening to them you can tell that they are regulars. “Oh, that one never pays off, Martha!” “Hey, Hal, back again?” And then the cocktail waitress brings them their favorite drink without having to ask! I wonder if I really belong here with all these old people, and then realize that most of them are my age. More than that, I wonder how the hell they can afford to be here so often! I know I sure as heck can’t!

5) Speaking of money, a few days ago I did a little calculating and came up with some pleasant surprises. The first is related to food. 

Dining Out (mostly fast food, Starbucks** and vending machines):
Last Year Average $433 per month.
Since Retirement $125 per month.
Groceries:
Last Year Average $350 per month.
Since Retirement $500 per month*.Total Food Costs:
Last Year Average $783 per month.
Since Retirement $625 per month.Savings By Being Retired: 
$158 per month.
$1896 per year.

*Some of the $500 a month I have spent so far since retirement includes a rare trip to Costco where I bought a lot of staples – NO, not the things you put in staplers! Since I have only been retired for 2 months, that drove the average up. A more realistic grocery per month will probably be closer to $450 a month. 

** Starbucks has gone from $45 a month to about roughly $15 a month.

6) The second area I discovered savings in is travel mileage and, therefore, gas money. Although I did not have a horribly long commute when I was working – 9.2 miles according to Waze – I guess it all adds up. Prior to retiring I was filling my tank about once every 2 weeks. Since retiring, it has gone to once a month.

 

I am now a week and a half as a retiree. It still feels more like a vacation than anything else. I think it will not really sink in until I am able to enjoy  a family event that work would have interfered with: a party, a family vacation, working at the family cherry stand.

No, I’m not bored yet by any means. but I can see the potential. When you are working, your life patterns are pretty well planned out for you; go to work, get groceries on your way home, do laundry on your day off and fix things around the house. These events have created themselves out of necessity.

When you are retired, however, you have to create the events, and in some cases you are damn glad to have excuses to do stuff. Running out of laundry soap becomes an exiting  exciting trip to Walmart. Uh-oh, I need cheese; time to go to the grocery store, even though the ONLY thing I need is cheese that I might not actually use for a week. Anything just to have SOMETHING to do.

Eventually, once I am over my “I’m on vacation” state of mind, I will have to start doing all the things around the house that I have been planning on, and then maybe schedule a weekly matinée trip to the movies, which I did not do while working. Anything to keep myself active and keep from getting bored.

What to do, may be a question more difficult to answer than I expected.