Retirement Benefits - Great Aunthood

This weekend I had a taste of one of the retirement benefits that I’ve been looking forward to—being the great aunt to my grandnieces and grandnephew. My nephew and his family came to Providence for his 25th reunion and I entertained the twins Saturday night.

The twins are closing in on 7 years old. It’s an age (I discovered) that comes with the energy and mobility of a toddler and the mental activity that at first blush equals that of a preteen. In actuality, their minds are not quite that well developed. I found this out playing hangman, where I soon learned to ask things like “Are you sure that’s the only ‘a’ in all those letters?” Or to point out, ever so gently, “The word ‘for’ is not spelled ‘faor.’”

I also learned that eight year olds are quite adaptable and they expect to make up their own rules. Hangman phrases can include punctuation, for example. If you left the dice for the Clue game home in Connecticut, you can roll an imaginary die. And by the way, no one will find it curious that you always roll a six.

Their visit also provided my first exposure to electronic games, specifically “Plants vs. Zombies.” I am massively impressed by the creativity exhibited in the design of this game. Here are some things I learned about plants and zombies. The newspaper zombie wears polka dot boxer shorts and he moves faster when he puts his paper down. When I learn this, I imagine him with his boxers around his ankles, reading the paper while on the throne. He puts the paper down when he’s done. No wonder he moves faster then.

The zombies with buckets on their heads are harder to kill. (Hmm… aren’t zombies dead already?) The seaweed plants entangle and drown the zombies. The winter melon plants need a melon pull icon in order to work, but the game warns you if you forget this. (So why doesn’t it just give you both in the first place?) There’s a Zamboni zombie and a disco dancing one with a red Afro that reminds me of Jimi Hendrix. He comes with a disclaimer that he’s not modeled after a real person. (As if.)

When I heard (before their visit) that my grandnephew was interested in geography, I put together a game with world maps and push pins. After seeing the electronic games, I thought, “They’ll never want to play my map one.” I was wrong. They took turns picking letters and then put pins in the countries that started with that letter. The person who found the most got a prize. I refereed, explaining the difference between cities and continents and countries. When we were done, they had me leave the pins so that in the morning they could show their parents what they’d done. My head was the size of a winter melon!

The only thing weighing on my mind other than enjoying my evening with them was that I had not yet written today’s blog post. I’m confident you’ll excuse the fact that this is not full of its usual sarcasm, and that it’s a bit sparse. I’m still on duty with the twins, though they’re in bed. Truth be told, I wish I were there already, too. Being a great Great Aunt is hard work, and you don’t dare have a glass of wine while you’re doing it. Come to think of it, their warm milk with honey is looking pretty good right now. Nighty nite!

Retirement Downsizing - Getting to Zero

Today was D-day on my plans to downsize and sell our house. I met with the first group of realtors that I’m interviewing to decide where I’ll list. Since I’ve been attending a lot of open houses in my area as part of my “intelligence gathering,” I knew that the current trend is to strip the house to the architectural equivalent of its underwear. Turns out, they really want it to be in its birthday suit.

I’ve been decluttering and packing and labeling for weeks. But unless you saw the house before I started, you’d have no idea how much has been removed. I’ve been operating on the “s - - t flows downhill” premise. That is, I started on the third floor and moved all of its excess down to the next level or lower. Eventually, everything deemed expendable found its way to the basement, where one room has been turned into what looks like a bomb shelter after the explosion.

Today’s tag team of realtors told me to keep on decluttering and to pack up all my dolls. I have an antique doll collection. Some are displayed in glass enclosed cases; some are posed in children’s and doll’s furniture. I got a reprieve on the ones that are encased. I assume that once the others have been packed away, there will be no reason to keep their empty furniture on display. (Joe, it looks like you were right after all.)

Part of the agents’ rationale for this is that I’m going to have to pack it all up when I move anyway. True. I’m also going to have to pack up my husband’s Jockey shorts, but that doesn’t mean I expect him to go commando for the next few months.

Perhaps it’s just the contrarian in me, but I don’t understand the psychology of convincing someone this is a house their family will want to make into their home by pretending the people living here now have not made it theirs. The open houses that are professionally staged appear sterile. Or, as I like to put it, they look like the house has had a lobotomy.

I’d much rather look at a house that has some warmth, that seems lived in. We’re not in ancient Sparta, after all. And I'd like it to have a little more personality than Jack Nicholson did at the end of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Besides, how many people really want to be able to roll a bowling ball down their kitchen counter top anyway?

Don’t get me wrong. I know you have to leave some things to the imagination. And I understand that pictures of our entire extended family can be a distraction. I packed them up long ago. Well, most of them. I have one picture of each of our closer relatives still on display. That adds to about a dozen, but they’re interspersed with other items on a wall full of built in bookcases.

I’m willing to pack up those family photos, too, if I’m forced to do so. But if you think I’m packing up the ones of my deceased cats, or rolling the custom made pottery jars with their ashes downhill to the basement bomb shelter, think again. There are some things that are just non-negotiable.

I’d sooner put away my wine rack, and you know how likely that is to happen. Speaking of which, I think it’s time to sit back with a nice glass of Italian red. After all, dear Scarlet, tomorrow is another day. And another real estate agent is coming in the morning. Can't wait.

Retirement Planning - Apocalypse Prep

As if I don’t have my hands full enough with retirement planning, I’ve just become aware of the chatter about the apocalypse happening this Saturday. (That would be today as I post this, but I’m writing it a few days earlier.)

Apparently some dude named Harold Camping has successfully prophesied some events using mathematical calculations that come from the Bible. Now it’s telling him that Jesus will return on Saturday and take only the chosen back with him before he pulls the plug on the rest of us.

I should mention that Camping predicted an earlier end date of September 1994. When we were all still here the next day, he explained that he’d made a math error. In my experience, one math error frequently leads to another. And another. And so on. Not wanting to bet the farm on this, in an effort to assess how real this prophecy might be, I Googled for related news items.

In the Huffington Post, I came across the Top 10 Signs the Apocalypse Is Upon Us, written by Dan Tynan and lifted from eSarcasm.com. This is a site and writer I had not been aware of. If you enjoy my style of writing, check out Dan’s article. Here’s just one of his signs: “Scientists discover Jupiter-sized ‘rogue planets’ rolling around the Milky Way like bowling balls in the back of a pickup. You just know one of them is really the Death Star.” Read all ten at http://www.esarcasm.com/21967/top-10-signs-the-apocalypse-is-upon-us/.

A number of sites have bucket lists of things to accomplish before the end of the world, including the venerable Time.com (written by Claire Suddath.) The Daily What has a flowchart to help you figure out whether you’ll be raptured or… It’s too painful for me to type the alternative. http://thedailywh.at/2011/05/19/this-x-that-69/

Even the Centers for Disease Control got into the act. Their post Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse (no joke) came out Monday and quickly overwhelmed their servers. Let’s hope they get them up again in time for us all to prepare.

Bucket lists and flowcharts aside, I have a handful of urgent decisions to make before midnight Saturday. The first one is: Will I continue to spell judgment without the middle ‘e’ the way I was taught in grammar school? Or will I cave in to the increasingly popular misspelling ‘judgement?’ If I make the wrong choice, I might not get invited to the rapture party. I wonder: Will the rapture be like a rave? Or more like a flash mob? Please, God, don’t let it be one big line dance.

Then there are more practical issues. I have a haircut scheduled Saturday morning. Should I keep it, so I don’t look like wild lady for eternity? Or is it a waste of money at this point? It’s not like I’ll be able to take the money with me, and even if I could, where would I spend it? On a related note, my roots are badly in need of coloring. I usually do that on the Sunday evening after the cut. Since I don’t know what time we’ll be called to judgment, perhaps I should dye my roots before the haircut this time.

Speaking of Sunday, which none of us will see, if the prophecy is correct, Sunday is the day I change the litter in the cats’ boxes. I should probably change it Saturday morning, just in case. I wouldn’t want to send them off into eternity with fouled facilities. I’m a better mother than that. Forced to choose, I’ll leave my roots gray and give them clean litter boxes. That alone should earn me a ticket to the rapture.

Slate magazine has an interactive feature where you can pick from 144 different scenarios of exactly how the apocalypse will come about. Some examples are loose nukes, space debris and The Matrix. If you’d like to review the full list, go to http://www.slate.com/id/2295187/. You can handicap favorites, but there will be small comfort in knowing you were right about how the lights went out.

Okay, rewind a few paragraphs in this post. After some additional searching, I’ve learned that the chosen will experience their rapture on Saturday on a rolling basis, at 6 PM local in each time zone. Those of us left behind (which will most certainly include me and very likely, many of you, dear readers,) will die off gradually due to various calamities that will occur from May 22 through October 21.

That’s the prophesied date of the real blow out Armageddon. It’s also the day after our anniversary, so my husband and I have a chance of making it to 21 years. Not quite silver, but we’ll take it. After all, one man’s Armageddon is another’s post-anniversary rapture. If you don’t believe me, just ask my husband.

Retirement Transitions - Times Are A-Changin

I expected that retirement would bring change. My hope was to control the changes that were inevitable and avoid others by planning carefully. It seems that the world is changing in ways that have nothing to do with my retirement. Has it been doing this right along, but I’m newly aware of it? Here are some examples.

You undoubtedly know that after 25 years on TV, Oprah Winfrey is beginning a new chapter in her life. Because I worked full time until my recent retirement, I saw very few of her shows, but it still weighs heavily that she’s going off the air. The musical chairs of morning show co-hosts and evening news anchors roll off my back. They’re reprising ones from just a handful of years ago. But life without a daily dose of Oprah? Unthinkable.

Then there’s Arnold and Maria splitting up. The fact that we’ve now learned why doesn’t minimize the jolt of hearing that yet another long-term marriage has bitten the dust. I have no strong opinions about them as individuals (except for my disgust for Ah-nold the Groper, assuming that was true,) but their separation still spiked my change meter.

This week’s Advertising Age has an article on all sorts of disconcerting changes to beer packaging. Some of you may be surprised that I would pay attention to this, being a baldly proclaimed wine lover. The truth is, there are times when nothing will do but a nice cold brewski.  I’m partial to Sam Adams, but I also enjoy Dos Equis, and I like to try local craft beers, but I’m not enthusiastic about the new packaging.

Take for example the Bud Light bottles that you can write on. Other than “Hands off my brewski!” I can’t imagine what I’d write on my beer. Certainly not anything that I’d expect to be reading later on. My eyesight is less than stellar at its best. After I’ve downed a few, I’d need someone to read my beer to me. Talk about demoralizing!

Heineken cans now feature raised ink that gives them texture and looks like condensation to make us think the beer is nice and cold. For me, the benefit would be that in a dimly lit bar, I wouldn’t have to squint to see which beer was mine. I could just grope for the one with the raised ink. Maybe that’s what Arnold was doing when he got a handful of… never mind.

Then there’s the home draft offered by Miller Lite. It comes with a carbon dioxide system that fits in your refrigerator and will stay fresh for thirty days. Thirty days would never do it for us. We once had half a six-pack in our fridge for more than five months. From the photo in Ad Age, home draft looks a lot like the wine-in-a-box that was introduced some years back. You just might be a redneck if you have home draft in your fridge.

Some craft beers offer variety packs. At first blush, that sounds like a good idea. Then I think about other samplers I’ve tried, like tea and cat food. Typically, at least a third of the varieties are losers. In my efforts to remember the keepers, I collect empties or labels that get sticky and smelly. “Honest, officer, that beer smell is not an open can that I’ve been drinking while driving. It’s empties from the sampler, so I know which ones are worth a six pack.” Yeah, right.

The last and most off-putting packaging change is something called “Canhole.” My first thought was: “If that’s supposed to be a euphemism, it’s worse than the slang it’s replacing.” Then I read the description. It’s cases of Keystone Light where a hole is cut out of the middle so people can toss in bags of beef jerky. Ad Age noted: “Midwesterners might know what cornhole is; the rest of the country… not so much.” Not so much indeed.

This led me to Google “cornhole” (AKA bean bag toss.) I turned up the website for The American Cornhole Association, established by a group of dedicated Cornholers from the west side of Cincinnati. (First prize one week; second prize three.) Wikipedia tells us that the cotton duck bags that get tossed are filled with feed corn. As you can see, Canhole makes the beer drinkers’ necks even redder by having them toss beef jerky.

This gives me new respect for my beverage of choice. Some might have offered wine in a box, and screw tops may now be available; but you’ll never see a case of wine jiggered so you can toss in beef jerky. The most redneck thing wine drinkers would be guilty of is spitting olive pits into empty bottles. And even then, they’d probably be artisanal olives.

Retirement Transitions - Sneaking Exercise

My first thought when the flier boldly titled "Renew" arrived in the mail was: “AARP has redeemed itself.” The mailing came hot on the heels of the bulletin with the sex video ad and was subtitled: “Easy Ways To Sneak Exercise into Your Day.”

On closer inspection, clarity and disappointment set in. The clarity was that the flier came not from AARP, but from my supplemental health care provider licensed to use their logo. The disappointment was that by the end of paragraph one, I was promised only a way to maintain my weight, not lose any. Since I’m now at my maximum weight ever, the last thing I want to do is maintain it. Searching for that glass half full (and hoping it will contain some red wine,) I read on.

The first tip was: “Bending and lifting keep your body in motion.” Unfortunately, my problem is not so much keeping my body in motion as it is getting it in motion in the first place. Furthermore, they recommended reaching higher as a way to increase calories burned. In my extensive experience, reaching higher is a reliable way for someone under 5 feet 2 inches to pull a muscle, thus making it even harder to overcome inertia for the next few days.

The flier also suggested hefting cans of beans a few times when unloading groceries, using them like hand weights. In our kitchen we use mostly fresh vegetables, but I assume canned soup would do. However, there are three sets of hand weights of varying poundage in the house. If I don’t heft them, it’s not likely I’ll be inspired to heft soup cans, other than to stretch too high to put them into the cupboard. If we’re talking wine bottles, that’s a whole different story. If I pull my back out pumping wine, I can just open a bottle and drink away the pain.

There was also a little trick for when you’re stuck in line at the bank (or the Social Security office.) “Boost your balance by standing on one foot, then the other.” I don’t know about you, but if I saw someone shifting from foot to foot, I’d figure they were desperate for a bathroom. That’s one of the problems that have not yet caught up with me in retirement. I have no desire to make folks think it has, but if it helped me move up in line, I might consider it.

The tips on sneaking exercise ended at the bottom of page one. Page two provided a safety check list. Halfway down it urged me to make sure that frequently used items are stored in cabinets within easy reach. I hate to be picky. Actually, that’s not true. I love being picky. It’s one of my more endearing traits. Just ask my husband.

Anyway, it seems to me that the “put it where it’s convenient” advice flies in the face of “find ways to reach even higher.” Are they deliberately trying to confuse me? Or is this a test to see if I’m paying attention? Maybe the “sneaky” in the headline wasn’t about the exercise after all. Maybe it was about the editor. If so, here’s a message for Sneakypants. “Put it where it’s not at all convenient.”

I should be more charitable. At least they didn’t have mid-afternoon quickies as one of the ways to sneak some exercise into my day. The contradictions probably weren’t intentional. Maybe they hired a cadre of retirees to write the articles and then some lazy, sloppy, not-yet-retired editor plopped them into the flier without taking time to read it as a unified piece.

If that’s the case, I have some advice for Sloppypants about proofing for continuity and clarity. (For those who missed last week’s post, it’s from the headline in the AARP sex video ad.) “It’s never too late to learn something new!”

Come to think of it, maybe pumping wine isn’t such a bad way to sneak some exercise after all. I’ll drink to that.

Retirement Issues - AARP Bulletin Items

This month’s AARP Bulletin came in today’s mail. The feature item on hearing caught my eye: “10 Things To Know About Improving It.” I’ve considered getting my hearing checked, so I decided to educate myself about the process.

It’s not that I’m concerned about my ability to hear others, but I get the sense that I may be speaking louder than necessary. I base this on the looks I sometimes get from those around me. Well, the looks and the fact that people who are all the way across the room often chime in on my conversations.

The article noted that hearing loss is linked to other health issues, in particular dementia and Alzheimer’s, according to a recent study by Johns Hopkins and the National Institute on Aging. (The risk of dementia is five times more for those with severe hearing loss, and double for those with mild loss.) This makes sense. If you don’t hear much of what's going on around you, the voices you’re listening to are probably in your head.

The summary of the six types of hearing aids seemed especially helpful. It provided a brief description of each one, the pros and cons of each, and the costs. I read about all six, and I have some bad news: there is no perfect type of hearing aid. With each one, you’ll have to give up something.

I hope James Dyson takes this on now that he has revolutionized the vacuum cleaner and the hand dryers in public loos. He’ll probably invent a hearing aid that also sucks out your ear wax and irrigates your sinuses.

Now for the really bad news. According to the article, Medicare doesn’t pay for hearing aids, and also not for most hearing tests. I find this shocking. Medicare pays for eye exams. Who decided that seeing is more essential to healthy living than hearing? Is it worse to walk into a lamppost you didn’t see? Or to be hit by a speeding car you didn’t hear coming? And let's not forget the increased risk of dementia.

One of my college classmates has had compromised hearing and sight for much of her adult life. I remember her saying once that if she had to choose between going completely blind or completely deaf, she’d keep her hearing. That surprised me, so I asked why. She said she felt hearing was more essential to social interaction. She was coming from a place of experience, so her words stayed with me.

Determined not to let the AARP Bulletin ruin my weekend, I leafed through the rest of the pages looking for some bright spot. It turned out to be an advertisement with vivid yellow background, a huge clump of Blackeyed Susans, and a couple in a gentle embrace. The woman was wearing a bright orange halter top and matching short orange sarong. You couldn’t get much brighter than this ad.

The headline read: “Sex. It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New.” (The line is trademarked, by the way, so don’t plan to use it as an icebreaker the next time you’re at a cocktail party.)

If the headline didn’t get my attention, the subheads certainly did. “See for Yourself on Discreet Home Video. Real people demonstrating real sexual techniques! Nothing is left to the imagination!”

I hate to burst their marketing bubble, but I’ve reached the age where I’d rather leave real sexual techniques to the imagination. Their “visual encyclopedia” sounds like way TMI for me.

As I tossed the bulletin into my recycling bin, I felt disappointed by the organization that is supposed to be looking out for me in my newly retired state.  I expected more from AARP. They left me feeling distinctly un-cheery.

A vision flashes through my head. I’m locked in a tender embrace with my husband, and I'm whispering sexual fantasies. From the other side of the wall that separates our new condo from the neighbors comes a male voice. “Hey, Buddy. It’s never too late to learn something new.”

Then I have an even more disturbing thought. Those sex tapes are probably covered by Medicare.

Retirement Downsizing - Getting Down to Nothing

As most of you know, the last few weeks have been focused on getting rid of 18 years of clutter in the house. You’ve probably heard me mention that it’s like the loaves and the fishes. As of last weekend, I wouldn’t say I was feeling smug, but I was definitely feeling satisfied that I was making progress. Then came Sunday.

Sunday is the big day for open houses. I go to a few each week to get a sense of what the competition will be for my house when it’s finally listed. An open house can also provide some ideas for staging. The two things any good real estate agent will likely tell me are: focus on curb appeal and get rid of the clutter.

Those who are in my house on any regular basis will attest that over the past few weeks I’ve made significant progress decluttering. But I’ll bet that any realtor worth her commission would ask me when I plan to start clearing out stuff. This was driven home to me in spades after I went through the houses that were open last weekend.

I came home and sank into a deep funk. The two houses most comparable to mine had not one thing on their kitchen counters. Nothing. The only reason you can’t write messages in the dust on my counters is that they’re so covered with stuff you can’t get at them.

I set about packing my cookbooks, which were gobbling up much of the counter real estate. Many of you are shocked that I own any cookbooks, given that I never cook. There’s a reason I don’t. My husband is so attached to his store that we rarely have dinner together. There’s not a lot of Joy of Cooking for One, no matter what Irma Rombauer says. Since I expect more family dinners once we downsize to Vermont, I’m keeping most of the cookbooks.

After the books were packed and I’d cleaned the aforementioned dust, I surveyed the counter. On a relative basis, it looked great, but it was a far cry from being clear. This propelled me into one of my philosophical musings. (Well, to be accurate, this plus a glass of Chianti Classico.)

The point of those pristine counters is to present a metaphorical tabula rasa to a potential buyer. The message is that the house is a clean slate, awaiting the new beginnings of your family, dear buyer. Just imagine what you could imprint onto this space!

While I can appreciate this from a marketing perspective, I still have to live in the house while it’s on the market. I must admit that, as I sit in the rooms that have been thinned out considerably, I feel a certain calm that my previously-cluttered style did not offer. I’m sure there’s some feng shui operating here.

After awhile, I begin to feel like a stranger in my own home. There is a difference between calming and comforting. My home has always been my cocoon. Pictures of extended family used to crowd the horizontal spaces in most rooms. These are now all packed away. It occurs to me that I’ve lost my visual “comfort food.”

This is somewhat surprising, when you consider that I used to look at the group photo of my aunts and think: “Please, God, don’t let me grow up to look like Aunt Lucrezia.” Now that she’s in a box in the basement, with other beloved relatives who have long ago shed their mortal coil, I miss her. She is, after all, family. My family.

Realtors will pressure you into getting rid of all evidence that you have a family, with little regard to what this might do to your psyche. Fie on them! They have me torn between aggressively pursuing the perfectly staged house and preserving at least some token evidence that this is still my home.

I guess there’s really only one way to solve this dilemma, and that’s to open another bottle of Chianti. Alla famiglia! (Especially Aunt Lucrezia.)