Retirement Chain of Choices

Recently I met some friends for dinner at Smokey Bones. It was a rare opportunity for me to enjoy ribs, since my husband doesn’t care for them. When barbecue is done right (and this was), it leaves you licking the sauce off your fingers. As I sucked my way from pinky to thumb, I was reminded of a classic radio commercial.

The old ad went something like this. A diner orders barbecued chicken. The waitress asks: Do you want a whole chicken or a half? Diner: A whole. Waitress: Do you want regular sauce or extra sauce? Diner: Extra. Waitress: Do you want a napkin or a Wash ‘N’ Dri? Diner: Wash ‘N’ Dri. Waitress (yells into the kitchen): One bird loaded, with soap and water to go. I think this ad is memorable not just because of the clever tag line, but also because of the build up of all the choices the diner is asked to make.

We face choices throughout our lives. Caffeine or decaf? Skim milk or whole milk? AM or FM? Democrat or Republican? As we move into our retirement, our choices change. It’s more like: dentures or implants? Bifocals or intraocular lenses? Hearing aid or blissful ignorance? Soup and salad or salad and soup?

Some of our choices get more complicated, so I’ve created a new retirement parlor game: Chain of Choices. The goal is to see who can build the longest chain with various choices retirees have to make. One person starts the chain with a single choice, and the next person has to use the second option in that pairing to begin a new choice pairing.

Let’s start with what someone who is retired might decide to wear (or not) when he gets up in the morning. Is it just PJs or a bathrobe? Bathrobe or ratty sweatshirt? Ratty sweatshirt or whatever isn’t in the laundry? Laundered clothes or commando? You get the idea.

Here’s another one: the way retirees could be forced out of bed in the morning. Instead of an alarm clock vs. a clock radio, choices might be ambient noise vs. sun in your eyes. Sun in your eyes or a cat that wants breakfast (and is climbing all over your head)? Cat that wants breakfast or cat that is being chased by the dog? Dog chasing cat or dog that needs to go out?

This can then morph into: dog that needs to be taken out vs. being able to travel whenever you want. Travel by air or wander by motor home? Motor home or Jazzy scooter? Jazzy or a walker? Walker or 3-footed cane? Footed cane or broken bones? Broken bones or stay planted in a lounge chair in perpetuity? Isn’t this fun?

Speaking of lounge chairs, another choice might have been: lounge chair with hassock vs. recliner with foot rest. Recliner or sofa? Sofa or on the floor with a pillow under your head? On the floor or on a yoga mat? Yoga mat or plush bath towel? In this example, we have somehow segued from relaxation to exercise. In our house, that’s going in the wrong direction.

Let’s try out the personal care arena (and observe how cleverly I move between variations of the same item). Will you choose a loofah or an oatmeal scrub? Oatmeal or Metamucil? Metamucil or prunes? Prune skin or deep moisturizer? Moisturizer or face mask? Face mask or sloughing mitt? Mitt or loofah? Notice that this has now created the ultimate prize in a chain of choices contest: The Chain Loop. The person who creates the loop is automatically the winner (mercifully ending the game).

Getting back to relaxation, the choice could be: put on music vs. watch a movie. Watch a movie or read a book? Read a book or write a book? Write a book or write a blog post? Write a post or have a glass of wine? We all know how this one turns out.

Kale Frenzy Finds Retirees

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you must be aware of the latest culinary craze. I’m talking about the kale frenzy. Everywhere you turn, kale is on the menu, in the grocery cart, on the plate or in the news. Once a lowly garnish, it’s now a main ingredient. As a follower of pop culture, I wanted to learn more about this bitter vegetable.

My search turned up all sorts of claims for this so-called miracle green that has been around for thousands of years. It can prevent cancer! It can lower your cholesterol! It will help you lose weight! Kale cigarettes relieve stress (and they’re legal)! If you plant it in decorative pots near your front door, your house will sell above the asking price! Enough of these outrageous claims. What does botany tell us this wonder food can offer retirees?

It’s a member of the Brassicacae family—also known as cruciferous vegetables—which includes broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower, among others. Its genus is brassica. I can see by your glazed-over eyes that this is TMI, so I won’t go into its species. (Remember the taxonomy mnemonic: King Phillip Came Over For Good Soup.)

Kale’s soar into the stratosphere of culinary popularity is likely due to the spate of spinach recalls that began in 2006, when a number of deaths and dozens of severe illnesses were traced to tainted shipments. Spinach recalls have become annual events, with the leafy green being cited for e. coli or salmonella contamination virtually every year from 2006 thru 2012, and now again in 2013. Last month, the death knell sounded for baby spinach.

At some point, a thinking person has to give up on spinach. It was a major contributor to my weight gain when that key ingredient in the pseudo-quiche was nowhere to be found, so I gave up on the South Beach Diet. Now I’ll try substituting kale, if I can locate the recipe. My stager cleared off my kitchen counters when we listed the house for sale, and the cookbooks wound up in a box somewhere in the basement.

Kale is touted on numerous websites where health information and recipes abound. WebMD.com calls it a “nutritional powerhouse.” The site tells us a cup of kale has 5 grams of fiber and contains more than 100% of the RDAs for the anti-oxidant vitamins A, C, and K. It’s also a good source of calcium, B6, magnesium and lutein (for eye health). All that in just 36 calories, presuming you steam it or eat it raw. Sauce it and all bets are off.

Now that we’re experts on the virtues of kale, let’s talk about what to do with it. Use it raw, steamed, braised, pickled or baked. Eat it on its own (salads); use it as an additive (soups or pastas) or a topping (pizza); chop and bake it into something less predictable (chips).

In the SunTimes.com, Leah Zeldes described kale as “the new bacon,” which sounds a tad extreme to me. I trust she did research to substantiate her report that “Bon Appetit named a kale salad its 2012 dish of the year,” and that the green stuff “stars in some 43,000 YouTube videos.” I’m not anal retentive enough to search YouTube to confirm her count.

The Baltimore Sun recipe for kale with pappardelle and sun-dried tomatoes sounds (and looks) yummy. (Thank you, John Houser III.) I’ve put kale and pine nuts on my shopping list, since many sites combine those ingredients in pastas, salads or snacks—all staples of retirees’ diets.

I have some ideas for using kale that haven’t made their way onto the Internet—yet. For example, mush the leaves into a gritty paste. Then use it to clean dentures. Or, in a nod to St. Patrick, add it to pale ale to make green beer. I’ll be testing ground kale as an insect repellent around my tomatoes. Likewise to deter the slugs that dine on my petunia blossoms in the dead of night. And the caterpillars that chow down on them in broad daylight.

It’s clear to me that kale will continue its rise as a darling of American cuisine. I’m going out on a limb to predict some consequences of this infatuation. Within three years, a celebrity will name her baby boy Kale. Seven years later, there will be five kids named Kale in every first grade class, and two of them will be girls. None of the kids will be named Spinach or Bacon. Bets anyone?

Acronyms Redux for Retirees

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As a lover of language, I like to keep up with the acronyms in our pop culture. I’m not referring here to the text abbreviations used primarily for Instant Messaging (IM) or Twitter. I’m talking about phrases used in daily conversation or mainstream media. Lately I’ve amused myself by rejiggering the words that make up some of the better-known acronyms, tweaking them into something especially appropriate for retirees.

Take for example the political term RINO. When I first heard it, I assumed it was spelled Rhino and referred to elected officials who had a thick hide. Turns out it stands for Republicans In Name Only. This acronym begs to be redefined as Retirees In Name Only. From what I’ve seen, it’s more of a truism than a nickname, since many retirees poke their noses into other people’s business as a way to fight boredom.

I’m guilty of this myself. If I’m in a retail store, I’m compelled to tidy up the racks of clothing and I’m tempted remerchandise them while I’m at it. That’s bad enough in and of itself, but then I have to find the owner or manager and lecture them on keeping their stock in order. If I’ve moved things around, I also explain why the way I’ve displayed the goods is superior to what they had done. I’m a RINO if ever there was one.

Another good example is the hot property YOLO. It stands for You Only Live Once. It has bored its way into pop lingo through the song “The Motto” and the promotion of that motto via a tattoo sported by tweenybopper heartthrob, Zac Efron. The Urban Dictionary defines it as The dumbass's excuse for something stupid that they did.

Wikipedia tells us it’s a motto similar to carpe diem, suggesting that people “should enjoy life, even if that entails taking risks.” That certainly sounds like a motto someone my age could live by. But since the youth culture now owns YOLO, I’m giving retirees a phrase that’s equally appropriate, but highly unlikely to be co-opted by trendy actors.

Our new motto shall be YODO—You Only Die Once. Think about it. We can engage in all sorts of risky behavior and when we’re called out on it by friends and family, being lectured to take care lest we get injured (or worse), we can holler out: “YODO! Deal with it.” Who are they kidding? It only matters to them because they don’t want to get stuck taking care of us if we get incapacitated doing something stupid. YODO, Baby, YODO.

Closely related to YODO is YOGOO—You Only Grow Old Once. Like YODO, YOGOO can be used to excuse a plethora of bad behavior. It’s more versatile than YODO, since YOGOO behavior doesn’t need to be risky, just offensive. It has the added benefit of sounding like something you’d call a person engaging in that type of activity.

Another term I uncovered—one that was new to me—is FOMO. It stands for Fear Of Missing Out and explains why people sit through poorly conceived movies, attend boring lectures and eat at restaurants that are popular but, well… lousy. They don’t want to miss out on something fashionable that they don’t appreciate but almost everyone else (for reasons unknown to anyone with a glimmer of intelligence or good taste) does.

The retirees’ version of FOMO is FOCO: Fear Of Checking Out. The older we get, the more we worry that we’re going to predecease our peers and, by extension, MO on a lot of good stuff. We wouldn’t want to ride off into the sunset the week before Ferran Adrià announces he’s decided to resurrect el Bulli within walking distance of our condo development. (Thank you, nephew Barry, for enabling me to sound so worldly.)

We also don’t want to CO until we've done everything on our bucket list. If we haven’t made that list yet (like yours truly), we’re in a precarious position. We could CO at anytime and not MO on anything we’d officially hoped to do. This is a good reason to make your own bucket list now. It gives you an incentive to live in a way that will keep you from C-ing O prematurely.

There are many more acronyms we could delve into. You might want to create a parlor game out of this. As for me, I’m redirecting my attention to putting together my bucket list.

Item one: Make this a very long list.

Item two: Do everything on it before I CO.

OK. That’s a good start. I’m ready for a break. And a nice glass of wine.

TGFI. (Thank God For Imbibing!)

Things Robots Should Not Do

Technology advances so rapidly and so pervasively that it’s a challenge for retirees to keep up. One example: robots are increasingly common in our lives, often in ways we aren’t aware of. I’m on board with letting these unmanned machines do more for us, especially mundane chores such as vacuuming and cleaning the litter box (as long as the cat isn’t in it). But there are some things that, in my opinion, they just should not do.

A recent New York Times article questioned robotic hysterectomies, based in part on a report in The Journal of the American Medical Association. Upon closer reading, I learned the article wasn’t so much questioning the use of robots to perform hysterectomies. It was noting that the outcomes were not more favorable than for laparoscopic ones, and therefore didn’t justify the considerable extra cost.

The last item on my list of things I’d welcome having a robot do is my hysterectomy. This got me thinking: What other procedures or chores would I not want to entrust to a pile of nuts, bolts, solenoids and sensors (or whatever stuff bots are made of)? It didn’t take me long to come up with a sizable list.

There’s no way I’d let an android clean out my earwax. For sure, I’d wind up looking like someone from a Steve Martin skit, but with a cotton swab sticking out from each side of my head instead of an arrow. Likewise, I would not recommend letting mechanical grabbers try to retrieve bellybutton lint. Well, not if you’re an innie anyway. The outies can decide for themselves.

Along similar lines, I really can’t picture a bot flossing my teeth. With all my caps and fillings, I have so many cracks and crevices that I have trouble getting around in my own mouth. A robo-flosser would surely get tied up in knots. I can see it running amok, trying to untangle its pincers, digging its back claws into my tongue. No thank you. I’ll keep doing my own flossing and my dental hygienist will keep thanking me for it.

My eyesight gets worse each year, making me feel like I’m becoming my mother. There’s an entire post in there somewhere, but right now I’m reminded that she had me do her eye makeup when she was older. She found it difficult to navigate the narrow space between her glasses and her eyelids, especially since everything is backwards in a mirror. If I wore eye shadow, I might let an android apply that. But there’s no way I’d let it put on mascara. I’m a blinker and I’d have raccoon eyes for certain.

Moving into a different arena, you’d have to be crazy to let some bionic dude fill out your Medicare forms. Or any health-related or government paperwork for that matter. You can bet that the software controlling it would get hacked by the Chinese or by a former Starbucks employee. Next thing you know, you’re thrown in jail—or committed to a mental hospital—while your assets are drained into an offshore account.

We’ve been hearing a lot about drones lately. Last week an Alitalia pilot reported seeing a small, black one below his plane as he was approaching JFK airport. The story hardly made a blip on the news. I thought a drone like that could be a good way to wash my upstairs windows. Then I remembered Google Earth’s cameras. It’s unnerving to think what a window-washing snoop might photograph once it removed the grime.

I suppose I could let a robot tidy up my sock drawer, but it would take a lot of programming to replicate the logic behind how I organize colors. It hardly seems worth the effort. When you consider all the downsides, there aren’t many things automatons should do in our daily lives. And there are plenty of things they most definitely should not do. Writing my blog is one of them. An electronic clone wouldn’t have my charm, my wit, my humor, my (fill in the blank).

I might trust one to open a bottle of wine for me once my post was written; but with my luck, the doppelganger would share my appreciation for the grape. The wine rack would be empty before I knew it. The bot would be careening around the house, corkscrew in claw, bumping into furniture and scaring the cat out of eight of his lives.

No. That’s one more thing robots should not do. I’ll open my wine myself. On that note…

When Popes Retire

Those of us in or near retirement know we make a lot of adjustments when we quit our day jobs. Imagine what it must be like for a pope. I’ve been looking into the changes Pope Benedict XVI will be facing now that he’s stepped down from the papacy.

His main title will be Pope Emeritus, which is a bit of a mouthful, so I propose we adopt the system that the media use to shorten names of celebrities. Let’s refer to him as Po-Em, which has the added appeal of having a lyrical quality.

He’ll still get to wear his white cassock, but he can’t wear those red shoes anymore. This would kill me. My husband’s wedding vows included a promise to start a company that made nothing but red shoes. Worse yet for the Po-Em, he won’t even get to wear black shoes. He’ll be wearing brown loafers. And not Italian loafers; ones made in Mexico. No word on what Gucci thinks about this sacrilege.

My secret source says the reason for giving up the red shoes is that there’s only one pair of them, so they have to be handed over to the new Pope. A consequence of this is that a little known criteria for papal eligibility is being able to wear a man’s size 10½ shoe. Keep an eye out for a flash of color under the Po-Em’s white cassock. I’m told he’ll be wearing red socks, since the rules say nothing about his hosiery.

He’ll also have to part with his fisherman’s signet ring, which will be destroyed with a silver hammer to prevent it from being used to authenticate documents. Just in case he changes his mind about those red shoes and decides to sign something as Pope again. Or some scoundrel (like his former butler) decides to do that for him.

The Po-Em will be living in Mater Ecclesiae, the small convent at the Vatican, where his quarters are being redone to accommodate the arrival of his copious library (which he gets to take with him). I don’t know about you, but when I think of convents or monasteries and libraries, I think of Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. It doesn’t leave me feeling all warm and fuzzy.

Another personal item the Po-Em gets to keep is his piano. I didn’t even know he played the piano, but apparently, he’s quite talented. There are several clips of him on YouTube, including one playing jazz. I fully expect to read about him riffing in his quarters with Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman, or having duets with Condoleeza Rice (Sec-State-Em), giving new meaning to the phrase “chamber music.”

As for what he’ll be doing in retirement (other than playing piano and reading), I’m told the Po-Em will be praying, studying and working on his book that is “almost finished.” (Where have we heard that before?) He’ll be free to move about, but he’s said he plans to live “hidden from the world.” Perhaps he’ll embark on a virtual book tour. I can see the HuffPo blurb: Po-Em reading on YouTube gets 1 million hits first hour.

Some of the juicier material has to do with personnel who surround the Po-Em. He’ll “continue to live with the four consecrated women who served him… while he was Pope.” (Thank you, world.time.com for this tasteful reportage.) These Memores Domini are not exactly the 72 Apsaras promised to devout Muslims after they die, but we can be pretty certain they’re all virgins. And the Po-Em doesn’t need to die to be “served” by them. Whatever that means.

One of the more interesting tidbits I uncovered about personnel is that his private secretary will stay on to serve the new pope, but he’ll live in the convent with the Po-Em. Talk about an unholy trinity. You just know that whenever the new Pope meets with his Priv-Sec, there’ll be an elephant in the room. Perfect fodder for another Eco best seller!

To those who think this post is in poor taste, mea culpa and lo siento. At least I’m not handicapping the “race” for pope (see the “Sweet Sistine” March Madness on ReligionNews.com). Add to that the recent elections for the Italian parliament, and I sound positively refined. Former comedian Beppe Grillo and his Five Star Government party (the Grillinos) made an unexpectedly strong showing.

So now Italy will have a clown in the government and a pachyderm in the Vatican. That country is becoming one monstrous circus. Come to think of it, this sounds more like a Fellini movie than an Eco novel. On that note, I’m digging out my feathered parade hat and opening a nice bottle of Chianti. Santé!