My wife and I watched the animated film Up a few weeks ago. In the film an introverted boy named Carl meets an outgoing girl named Ellie. She has made an Adventure Book that lists all of the things she wants to do and see. Eventually Carl and Ellie get married. Throughout their marriage Ellie comes up with ideas for things that they should do and Carl always goes along with it. The whole time she maintains her Adventure Book.
When we saw that film I told my wife that it reminded me of us. My wife is the family social director. She comes up with adventures for us to have and I'm pretty much just the lucky guy who gets to go along for the ride. It never ceases to amaze me how my “Ellie” can turn an ordinary day into a fun adventure. Sometimes we travel a bit on our outings. We've walked the shores of all of the oceans that surround this continent and the Great Lakes as well. Together we've traveled through most of the major mountain ranges in the U.S., crossed a couple of deserts, panned for sapphires and rubies, spent time in ancient pueblos, seen the Old Man of the Mountains before it slid into oblivion, strolled through the House of Seven Gables, the Winchester Mystery House, Kit Carson's house in Taos and Andrew Jackson's house in Nashville and have seen and done a lot more things than I have space to mention here.
Sometimes, though, our adventures are a little closer to home. Take today for instance. It was the last day of the month. We had blown through most of our spending money and were kind of marking time until payday. We didn't have anything planned for today, though, so Ellie opened the Adventure Book and we set out to have a small change adventure.
We decided to eat breakfast at home because we had some quiche left from yesterday's lunch and we couldn't afford to get anything better than that if we ate breakfast out. Then we headed out to a thrift store where my wife likes to buy decorating material and I like to buy used books. I didn't buy anything but she was able to get an old birdcage for a few bucks that she planned to use as a garden ornament. It was such a beautiful morning that we didn't want to spend anymore time inside, so we headed to our favorite park for some free exercise and people-watching.
It was nearly noon when we finished walking the park and we were both starved by then. We had brought our trusty bag of coupon books along and decided to have lunch at the local Genghis Grill. Even though we used a BOGO coupon, that still took about half of our cash. The restaurant is in an open air mall so we took advantage of the nice weather to get in an after lunch stroll through the mall. Mostly we just window shopped but Ellie had a 30% off coupon from Kohl's and ten dollars in Kohl's Bucks so we stopped there and got about $18 worth of stuff for around $5. Our cash was dwindling, but we felt like we had gotten a good deal for our money so far.
We left the mall and went to the local library. We spent some time there just checking out the books. Ellie borrowed one, which didn't cost anything, and I bought three hardcovers from the used bookstore for a total of three dollars (they were having a buy one, get two free sale). None of the books was any older than 2003 and, when they were new, the total cost for them was about $75. You can't beat a deal like that.
With our last five bucks we bought two cups of coffee (BOGO) and two allegedly gourmet cupcakes (another BOGO) and chowed down on them while we sat on the square and watched the touristas oohing and ahing at overpriced stuff in the local shops.
It was a fun day that hardly cost anything and didn't take us any further than twelve miles from home. But that's what you can do when you have your own private Ellie and she has her very own private Adventure Book.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
Olde Folkes Week
I think this whole week should be declared a holiday just for retired people. I'm not sure what to call it, but the purpose would be to celebrate the end of spring break.
In our area this year it seems like every school district for miles around, including all of the colleges and universities, had spring break last week. So the parks, supermarkets, malls and everything else were even more crowded than they are on the weekends. My wife and I tried to walk the park last week, as we usually do, but there were so many joggers and bike riders on the trail that we got most of our exercise by jumping aside in order to keep from getting run over whenever we heard the crunch of gravel behind us. We thought maybe we should walk the mall instead, but that was even worse, so we just blew it off.
Things were just as bad at home. Apparently the tight economy meant that none of the folks on our street could afford to take the kids on vacation while they were out of school. So herds of the screaming little vandals were marauding in the street, and in our front yard, night and day. It seemed as though there were twice as many kids on our culdesac as there are during summer vacation. I think someone was importing them from another neighborhood. I tried to get some lawn work done out front one day but had so many kids hanging around asking what I was doing and offering to “help” that I gave up and put it off till spring break was over.
Now, don't get me wrong: I like kids, and unlike W. C. Fields, I don't even prefer them barbecued. My wife and I have grandkids and we enjoy it when they trek over the toll road and through the burbs to Grandma and Grandpa's house. We like to attend their school plays, choir programs, band concerts, and all of that stuff too. It's just that, when you are retired, you kind of get into the habit of having the world to yourself when school is in session and the parents are at work or the day spa or whatever. That's the time when retirees get to howl. OK, a lot of time the howling is a response to creaking joints and random shooting pains, but during the work day is when we seniors own the world. Like gray-bearded vampires we head back to the castle to chill out on the back patio as soon as the minivans and crossovers start lining up in front of the schools. Things are just too hectic during the weekend or when school and work are done for the day. We like the more relaxed pace of retiree time. Of course, it does get a little annoying trying to maneuver around all those motorized carts and walkers in the grocery aisles, but it's better than dodging rugrats in high gear.
So, yeah, I think the week after spring break should be officially declared Olde Folkes Week or something like that and we gray panthers should get a BOGO at our favorite lunch place. Works for me anyway.
In our area this year it seems like every school district for miles around, including all of the colleges and universities, had spring break last week. So the parks, supermarkets, malls and everything else were even more crowded than they are on the weekends. My wife and I tried to walk the park last week, as we usually do, but there were so many joggers and bike riders on the trail that we got most of our exercise by jumping aside in order to keep from getting run over whenever we heard the crunch of gravel behind us. We thought maybe we should walk the mall instead, but that was even worse, so we just blew it off.
Things were just as bad at home. Apparently the tight economy meant that none of the folks on our street could afford to take the kids on vacation while they were out of school. So herds of the screaming little vandals were marauding in the street, and in our front yard, night and day. It seemed as though there were twice as many kids on our culdesac as there are during summer vacation. I think someone was importing them from another neighborhood. I tried to get some lawn work done out front one day but had so many kids hanging around asking what I was doing and offering to “help” that I gave up and put it off till spring break was over.
Now, don't get me wrong: I like kids, and unlike W. C. Fields, I don't even prefer them barbecued. My wife and I have grandkids and we enjoy it when they trek over the toll road and through the burbs to Grandma and Grandpa's house. We like to attend their school plays, choir programs, band concerts, and all of that stuff too. It's just that, when you are retired, you kind of get into the habit of having the world to yourself when school is in session and the parents are at work or the day spa or whatever. That's the time when retirees get to howl. OK, a lot of time the howling is a response to creaking joints and random shooting pains, but during the work day is when we seniors own the world. Like gray-bearded vampires we head back to the castle to chill out on the back patio as soon as the minivans and crossovers start lining up in front of the schools. Things are just too hectic during the weekend or when school and work are done for the day. We like the more relaxed pace of retiree time. Of course, it does get a little annoying trying to maneuver around all those motorized carts and walkers in the grocery aisles, but it's better than dodging rugrats in high gear.
So, yeah, I think the week after spring break should be officially declared Olde Folkes Week or something like that and we gray panthers should get a BOGO at our favorite lunch place. Works for me anyway.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Time in a Bottle
It has been a fairly long time since I've written in this blog. I wish I had a good excuse for that. The fact is, though, that while I've done some productive things during that time, I've also pissed a lot of it away.
Time is a strange thing. I've heard it said that time is relative. I think that's true, but maybe not in the way that folks like Einstein and Hawking mean. It seems to me that time is relative to your age. The older you get, the faster time seems to fly by. You know how that works. When you are a kid in elementary school the hours until the last bell of the day rings seem to crawl by so slowly that it's like the clock has stopped. Then when you're in your twenties you think that, as in that old Rolling Stones song, time is on your side and life looks like it will go on forever.
When you are gray-bearded and creaky like I am the days fly by so fast you hardly notice their passage. Earlier this year I realized that I'm only ten years younger than my dad was when he died and now I feel like that old Jim Croce song: I wish that I could save time in a bottle.
The fact that the older you become the less time you have left, combined with the fact that the days seem to pass more quickly as you age, can put a lot of pressure on you. It seems that every week some well-known person who has accomplished a lot in life dies at a younger age than I am now, which makes me realize how much of my life I have already pissed away and how little time I have left to accomplish something. It's getting to the point where I can hardly enjoy falling asleep in front of the TV anymore.
When I retired I had all these plans about how I was going to spend my time. In the beginning I retired to the country so I had this idea that I would raise miniature cattle or buffalo or something. That was in between my career as a writer, some extensive traveling and my consulting business. It didn't take long to run into reality. That stuff was way too much work and, if I had wanted to work that hard, I wouldn't have retired in the first place. So I scaled back my goals and eventually adopted my dad's philosophy, which was that it was a good day if you just accomplished one thing. Of course, over time Dad's definition of an accomplishment was reduced to things like manually switching channels on the TV instead of using the remote. I'm trying to avoid going there, but sometimes I feel like I'm headed in that direction.
So I've kind of modified Dad's philosophy somewhat. I don't try to accomplish something everyday, but I do try to accomplish some things every week. The old girl and I try to exercise regularly. We don't belong to a gym and we don't do anything strenuous, but we walk for half an hour to an hour about three times a week or thereabouts. We still do most of our own work around the house. We don't have a maid service or lawn service come in to do the cleaning and maintenance, so we get some exercise that way. We pace ourselves a lot more than we did when we were younger though. When we were both working it seemed like we did everything on the weekend. So my wife would clean the house and wash the clothes every weekend and I would mow the lawn and do any other outside maintenance that had to be done. We don't have to cram all that into two days now that we're retired, so we spread it out over as much time as we need.
Lately I've been doing volunteer work as well. I might have mentioned in an earlier post that I had been working on a master gardener certification. I've finally reached that goal. To get there I had to take 65 hours of classes and do 50 hours of volunteer work. Now that I'm certified I need 15 hours of continuing education and 50 hours of volunteer work every year in order to maintain my certification so I have continued to volunteer for gardening projects in our area. That has allowed me to accomplish some things that I might otherwise not have done.
All of this has made me realize that accomplishing something with the years you have left doesn't mean that you have to perfect some life-saving operation or invent some way to feed all of the people of the world before you die. You can accomplish small things and experience the rewards of having done something positive with your time and still have a few minutes left over to play Freecell or fall asleep in front of the TV.
Time is a strange thing. I've heard it said that time is relative. I think that's true, but maybe not in the way that folks like Einstein and Hawking mean. It seems to me that time is relative to your age. The older you get, the faster time seems to fly by. You know how that works. When you are a kid in elementary school the hours until the last bell of the day rings seem to crawl by so slowly that it's like the clock has stopped. Then when you're in your twenties you think that, as in that old Rolling Stones song, time is on your side and life looks like it will go on forever.
When you are gray-bearded and creaky like I am the days fly by so fast you hardly notice their passage. Earlier this year I realized that I'm only ten years younger than my dad was when he died and now I feel like that old Jim Croce song: I wish that I could save time in a bottle.
The fact that the older you become the less time you have left, combined with the fact that the days seem to pass more quickly as you age, can put a lot of pressure on you. It seems that every week some well-known person who has accomplished a lot in life dies at a younger age than I am now, which makes me realize how much of my life I have already pissed away and how little time I have left to accomplish something. It's getting to the point where I can hardly enjoy falling asleep in front of the TV anymore.
When I retired I had all these plans about how I was going to spend my time. In the beginning I retired to the country so I had this idea that I would raise miniature cattle or buffalo or something. That was in between my career as a writer, some extensive traveling and my consulting business. It didn't take long to run into reality. That stuff was way too much work and, if I had wanted to work that hard, I wouldn't have retired in the first place. So I scaled back my goals and eventually adopted my dad's philosophy, which was that it was a good day if you just accomplished one thing. Of course, over time Dad's definition of an accomplishment was reduced to things like manually switching channels on the TV instead of using the remote. I'm trying to avoid going there, but sometimes I feel like I'm headed in that direction.
So I've kind of modified Dad's philosophy somewhat. I don't try to accomplish something everyday, but I do try to accomplish some things every week. The old girl and I try to exercise regularly. We don't belong to a gym and we don't do anything strenuous, but we walk for half an hour to an hour about three times a week or thereabouts. We still do most of our own work around the house. We don't have a maid service or lawn service come in to do the cleaning and maintenance, so we get some exercise that way. We pace ourselves a lot more than we did when we were younger though. When we were both working it seemed like we did everything on the weekend. So my wife would clean the house and wash the clothes every weekend and I would mow the lawn and do any other outside maintenance that had to be done. We don't have to cram all that into two days now that we're retired, so we spread it out over as much time as we need.
Lately I've been doing volunteer work as well. I might have mentioned in an earlier post that I had been working on a master gardener certification. I've finally reached that goal. To get there I had to take 65 hours of classes and do 50 hours of volunteer work. Now that I'm certified I need 15 hours of continuing education and 50 hours of volunteer work every year in order to maintain my certification so I have continued to volunteer for gardening projects in our area. That has allowed me to accomplish some things that I might otherwise not have done.
All of this has made me realize that accomplishing something with the years you have left doesn't mean that you have to perfect some life-saving operation or invent some way to feed all of the people of the world before you die. You can accomplish small things and experience the rewards of having done something positive with your time and still have a few minutes left over to play Freecell or fall asleep in front of the TV.
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