Savoring Small Pleasures

In preparation for retirement, I jettisoned many possessions. Some were more difficult to part with than others. If I had a do-over on my downsizing, I’d approach it differently. After several years in our condo, I’ve begun to accumulate “stuff” again. I realize this contradicts advice from experts and flies in the face of popular tidying up trends.

As part of my downsizing process, I went through multiple closets of clothes, shelves of books, and every nook and cranny in the kitchen and pantry. My collecting long ago jumped the shark to become hoarding. I managed to downsize my collections by getting rid of them in their totality. I couldn’t pick certain items to keep, because I would feel bad for the ones I would be getting rid of.

Not long after our move, I found myself looking for a particular garment that would have been perfect for a certain occasion (funeral, any one?), only to remember it had been donated. Ditto for some book that I hoped to reference. Then there were those cooking utensils, unused for twenty years of marriage, needed for a recipe Jagdish was concocting in our condo. This was further complicated by the fact that I’m still not sure where I stored things after the move, making me wonder whether an item survived the downsizing.

AARP the Magazine had an article by Suze Orman, the financial guru, wherein she provided seven guidelines for a “sunny” retirement. What caught my eye was number 6: Spend Wisely. Orman recommended setting up two buckets, one for needs and one for wants. Then you use each only for what it’s been set up to do. This presumes you’ve done a proper job of estimating your needs so that bucket is adequate. It also assumes that what you consider to be wants (rather than needs) doesn’t change over time. Good luck with that.

When Marie Kondo gives advice on tidying up, she tells us to get rid of the things that don’t bring us joy. She’s focused on folks long before their golden years. With my great purge well in my rear view, I realize that what warmed my heart when I was still working was sometimes different from what gives me pleasure in retirement.

This is partly because I now have time available for what used to be considered frivolous activities—wasted time back then. I’ve learned to savor small pleasures. Not simple pleasures—small pleasures. Little things that wouldn’t even have been on my radar when I was working. I’m discovering classic TV series like Monk that I never watched in their prime. I’m reading more. Many days I take afternoon naps without feeling guilty.

Here’s a shocker. I’ve become a fan of the Dollar Tree. I used to joke about people who shopped there. Now my husband and I are in one a few times each month. I discovered that they sell jigsaw puzzles, a hobby I enjoyed in my preteen years. At first, I bought them as stocking stuffers. Now I do about two puzzles a week myself. A small pleasure with a small price tag.

Then there’s EBay. I didn’t appreciate the appeal of buying there. I did, however, see it as a good place to sell items that brought me joy when I acquired them years ago but no longer give me even a tiny frisson of pleasure. While I was on the site, I did some searching of items for sale, to get a feeling for prices of things I planned to list. Since I was searching anyway, why not check out some Christmas ornaments?

I started thinking of the time doing this as “window shopping” and I could do it for hours. Eventually I started buying one or two ornaments now and then, but only when the prices were low. After all, I’m retired and on a budget. You can guess where this wound up for a person who has four Christmas trees, including two just for her cats. At first I felt a tad guilty about buying things I didn’t need just because I wanted them. But they made me happy. Opening the little shipping boxes was fun.

Suze Orman and Marie Kondo are wrong. Retirees should start their planning by making ample room in their lives—in their budgets, their homes and their schedules—for buying and doing the non-essential things they want. Small pleasures, not expensive ones. “Wasted” time, not productive tasks. Embracing clutter that is emotionally rewarding. If your retirement planning doesn’t allow for this, rejigger your plan. Expect to die sooner, if that’s what makes it work. At least you’ll go out happy! Don’t deprive yourself of small pleasures. Learn to savor them. They’re what will bring you joy.

Unplugging for A Trip

My husband and I are headed to India again next week, so this will be my last post before a hiatus of a month or more. I’m looking forward to the trip, but as with any protracted time away from home, there are considerable preparations involved. I can remember the days when the main question someone asked on the way to the airport was: “Did we unplug the iron?” These days, “unplugging” has a different meaning.

I’ll have infrequent access to the Internet, so I want to limit messages coming in to my email. To accomplish this, I’ll need to de-activate my electronic and social media contacts. Since Facebook sends me a message whenever a close friend posts something, everyone will now be coded as an acquaintance. I’ll contact those who email me directly with any frequency, asking them to remove me from their lists for a while.

Another important detail is medication. I just counted my blood pressure pills and I have enough to last until we get back. That’s a good thing, because my insurance won’t pay for an early refill.

Tomorrow I’ll take care of some of the more mundane preparations, like laundry and ironing. Once they’re washed, I’ll sequester my husband’s new underwear so they stay clean for the trip. He refuses to give up his old T-shirts. They’re full of holes, but he loves how soft they are. I’ll hide those somewhere before we start packing.

Monday, I’ll pay all the bills that will come due while we’re away. I’ll also have my final sax lesson before the trip. Tuesday we’ll head up to Providence for the day. I’ll get a haircut and Jagdish will finalize loose ends at the store. We want to get home to watch the Democratic debate on CNN. It’s a good thing it’s not like the Republican ones, with an undercard that starts early, or we’d never make it on time.

Wednesday is reserved for packing, since we’re leaving early Thursday morning. We usually head out with two large, empty suitcases that we bring back filled with goods for Jagdish’s store. This trip, two relatives have asked us to transport a suitcase for each of them, so we’ll probably nest those inside the larger ones, like Russian dolls.

It’s often a challenge to figure out how to cushion things, since we always bring some gifts and various items that family members can’t find in India. This trip, it’s Lysol Crisp Linen Air Freshener, Neutrogena Acne Wash and a few other personal articles.

Still to be scheduled: repositioning potted plants to areas that the lawn sprinkler can reach, coloring my gray roots (after my haircut, so I don’t waste the dye), bringing in the flag, and submitting written material that has deadlines while we’re away. That would be my monthly column in Rhode Island’s Prime Time and a bi-monthly news item in the Brown Alumni Magazine for my college class.

The iCal on my computer is filled with reminders of what needs to be done over the next few days before we leave, since I rely on it for everything in my life that’s important. Oh, who am I kidding. I rely on it for everything. Period.

I’ve been systematically removing the alarms for all the birthdays and anniversaries that will come up over the next three weeks. That includes my brother and his wife’s 24^th anniversary, which is the same day as Jagdish’s and my 25^th. It occurs to me that it would be great to send them a postcard from Agra. That prompts me to add another to-do for next week: print out address labels for those we’ve promised to send cards to.

As I deactivated all those reminders and prepared to re-classify my Facebook contacts, I had an awakening of sorts. There’s something empowering about cutting the electronic umbilical cord. Virtually all my communications for three weeks will be face-to-face and not electronic, just like in the “old days.” Who knows. I may enjoy it so much that I won’t bother to plug back in when I come home.

If you don’t hear from me by Thanksgiving, Happy Holidays!

Sax Appeal — Not Yet Ready for Carnegie Hall

I had my second sax lesson last Monday and I was pleased with the progress I had made. I don’t expect to be able to make the same report about my next lesson. The past six days have made me realize that scheduling ones activities in retirement is not any easier than scheduling them when working full time. Who would have thought?

We made a four-day trip to Vermont this week to spend time with my sister. This was decided on months ago. A one-day shift in the timing due to some change of plans on my sister’s end enabled me to keep my Monday lesson. I brought my saxophone with me to Vermont, but I practiced there only once, and briefly. The four days away were bracketed by two days of unanticipated family visits by in-laws. I got no practicing in on those days.

As I write this, it’s Saturday night and I’ve run out of steam. For those of you who have been able to follow this week's saga (and were interested enough to try), that means I’ve practiced about one half hour in the five days and six nights since my last lesson. That leaves me just a day and a half to catch up. The odds are not in my favor.

What’s worse is that my last lesson was on chromatics. Even the most popular sharps and flats use many of those side keys that challenge my stubby, arthritic hands. They’re also the notes for which I’ve completely forgotten the fingering. It’s like starting anew each time I pick up the instrument.

My inner niggler is telling me that I should be practicing right now. Another niggler is reminding me that this week’s blog will be at least a day late again even if I finish the draft now. Then there’s the iCal on my desktop Mac (on which I’m working). It has reminded me three times that my monthly newspaper column is due in two days, along with the bi-monthly news article for the Class Notes section in the Brown Alumni Magazine. I’m the Communications Chair for my class, so that task falls to me.

You can see where this is headed. I’m spending my Saturday night triaging the demands on my time. I want to ensure that no “patients” die on me if I give my sax extra hours before my Monday lesson. All the while my mind is replaying the old joke: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.” I know I need to practice more even to get to a community band. But I’ll need to improve enough to be able to play better pieces before I’ll enjoy putting in the time needed to get there. Remember Catch 22?

Speaking of bands, I have one other tidbit to share on my Sax Appeal journey. It happened a week ago tonight, when we were attending the Boston Pops concert at Tanglewood. One of the men in our entourage introduced himself, after he confirmed my name. “You’re the sax player, right?” “Not exactly,” said I. “I used to be, and I’m working on it again.” I asked how he’d heard about my attempts to reboot my horn skills. Apparently grapevines grow wild in condo communities.

Turns out he’s the recently installed band director for Wesleyan University, which is just 20 minutes away. This follows a career in directing and several attempts at retiring, which have all resulted in his going back to the podium again. He’s trying to get me to join his group. Apparently, though it carries the University’s name, it’s more of a community band. Some players are in high school and many are community members, as I would be.

This new director is trying to raise the level of his assemblage and has somehow concluded that I can help do that. (From his mouth to God’s ear.) I’m nowhere near ready to play on a team that carries the word “university” in its name. But it’s comforting to know that someone feels I might be an asset at some point. He knows of at least five groups in the area that I could probably join.

This has prompted me to revise that old joke. Now it’s: “How do you get to Wesleyan University? Practice, practice, practice.” But first I need to improve upon my schedule planning. And deal with that maddening Catch 22. Stay tuned.

Vacation Weekend

As I have done on a few other occasions, I’m taking a pass on posting an essay to my Retirement Sparks blog this week. I’m going to New Jersey for the weekend for a mini-reunion with my Green Pond summer friends. I'm also meeting with fellow committee members who are helping to plan a belated 50^th reunion for our high school class, Morris Hills Regional, in Rockaway, New Jersey.

Jagdish is staying back in Rhode Island to keep an eye on Luke, with the help of our neighbor cat-care lady. Luke gets fed four times a day now, and I’ll have the car, so we need to schedule store coverage and cat care carefully around this trip.

Some of you may be thinking: “Big whoop. So why didn’t you write the essay ahead of time and post it today instead of this lame message?” You don’t understand. Going away for three days takes a lot of planning at my age. Planning which doesn’t leave time for creative writing.

As a precaution, I need to change the litter in at least one of the boxes before I go; it can’t wait until Sunday when I return. But if I change it too early, Luke will reject it later on next week. I also had to try on at least six pairs of linen pants to see which ones fit. Based on the color, I needed to assess underwear status. Women readers will know that one should wear skin-tone panties under white slacks. Probably TMI, but fortunately both of my beige ones were in the clean pile.

I’m spending Friday night with my best friend from grammar school, whom I haven’t seen in who knows how many years (50?) Inherent in that is figuring out when to leave Providence so I don’t hit rush hour in any major metro areas. I also want to avoid getting stuck in gridlock on the Tappan Zee Bridge in the summer weekend exodus from Manhattan to the Catskills. I decided that four pm is a good time to leave. That should give me plenty of time for preparations and packing.

Just in case, I started this process Friday night. I stuffed a canvas tote bag full of paperwork and yearbooks and program ideas for our Saturday high school reunion meeting. This morning, when I dropped Jagdish off at his store, I picked out some little gifts for my friend’s grandchildren. Also something for her home. All of which I left on the store counter. Fortunately, I realized this at the wine store (see below) and circled back to get the forgotten bag on my way home.

Saturday night I’ll be at Ralph’s “harem” in Green Pond. As he did for the big October GP reunion two years ago, he’s invited a group of women for Italian food on Saturday night. We leave our husbands home. A few of us who come a distance stay over. Ralph’s family has their summer house on the market, so this will likely be our last mini-reunion at GP. Sad to consider, but at least we’ll have some good memories to keep us going.

We’ll be spending some time on the beach and that presents an entirely different preparation to-do list. Straw beach tote, sand shoes and beach towel. Check. New bathing suit. Check. The big shave. Check. Inspect and shave again. Check. (Definitely TMI.) New bathing suit cover-up. Check, thanks to Spectrum-India. Several bottles of red wine (for the evening, not the beach). Check and recheck. Ear plugs for me and also for my guestroom-mate. (We both snore a little.) Check and double check.

As you can see, I really had not time available to create one of my typically clever, funny and self-deprecating posts. Well, I’m uploading this, then off to change the litter and attack the beach prep list. (Read between the lines…)

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend as summer begins to wind down and the days get shorter. See you again next weekend.

Retirement Planning – Just Open the Darn Book!

A friend of mine who is about nine months ahead of me on the retirement timeline has been trying to decide when to stop working. He can afford to do it now, but as he told one of his colleagues, he doesn’t know yet what he wants to do with the next phase of his life. (He lost his wife about two years ago, so his long-held plans have changed.)

His feeling was, if he didn’t have a plan, why not keep working? The advice his colleague* gave him was simple, yet profound. He said: “You can’t start writing the next chapter of your life unless you’re willing to open the book.” I decided it would be a good idea to think about some of the headings on the pages of my life’s next chapter.

The first one is easy: Give away all the alarm clocks in the house and sleep in every morning. That would require some planning, though, because Lily would be walking all over me at some point, wanting her breakfast. I started a list: “Things to Buy for Next Chapter of My Life.” Then I wrote “Gravity-feed cat food dispenser.”

Another page should be: Read all the books that I bought and never had time to finish. Or even start. Of course, most of those books will have been sold or donated by the time we downsize for retirement. I add to the list: “Buy a Kindle." Or whatever electronic reading device du jour makes sense for a Mac lover. And then “Find out if Kindle comes with 3.25 magnifier.” I amend that to “Find out maximum Kindle magnifier number” and “Auto upgrades available?” By next year, I might be up to 3.5.

I title a page: Take up scrap-booking, or making greeting cards. (I have lots of supplies that I’ve collected over the years.) Somehow that sounds too crafty, not artsy enough for me. Maybe collage. Or book making. No, not the taking bets kind. The type where you bind your own books with handmade paper; it’s quite popular now. Although setting myself up as a bookie could be a way to supplement my retirement income. Hmmm…

Definitely: Start a vegetable and herb garden. Note to self: Do not plant anything in the catnip family; (that means no mint.) I tried growing catnip once, and the neighbor’s cat (an outdoor scamp) mowed it to ground level. He got so drunk that he trashed the entire herb bed. My own cats never saw so much as a leaf off the nepeta cataria.

This reminds me of how my father planted various fruit trees on our modest sized property in New Jersey. My favorite was the Carpathian walnut tree. (I am not joking.) My mother baked a lot of tea breads as gifts and many of them contained walnuts. Since those were pricey, my father decided to save money by planting the tree. He did not take into account the local squirrel population. Despite various attempts at curtailing their thievery (an entire post in itself), he was never able to harvest enough for more than one batch of bread. He eventually chopped the walnut tree down out of spite.

Perhaps: Volunteer at the Best Friends animal sanctuary in Utah. My friend, Sheryl, named them to receive contributions when she died. Their work is amazing and the DVDs they send tug at your heartstrings even more than that “Arms of an Angel” SPCA commercial. You know, the three-tissue anti-cruelty one with the dogs in cages and the Sarah McLachlan song in the background. If I went to Best Friends, I might never come back. Besides, I doubt I could bring Lily and Luke, and I can’t really picture Jagdish mucking horse stalls…

Suddenly I am inspired. I have the perfect heading for the next chapter of my life. Become a boutique wine maker. It brings together so many aspects of the other ideas. I can save money. I’ll have gifts to give. I’ll be a classic Virgo, working with the earth. And we all know what the best part of making my own wine will be. Santé!


*Credit to Michael Fine, even though he doesn’t know it.

Retirement Style—Serious vs. Light-Hearted

Retirement planning guides devote more pages to calculating how much you’ll need to lead the life you desire than to how to decide what that life is. I’ve stumbled upon a criterion to help in that decision. What style of retirement do you want—serious or light-hearted? For example: joining an investment club—serious; playing in a band—light-hearted.

We all hope for a certain amount of balance in our retirement, but the dominant style could influence where you live, how you find new friends and what activities fill your dance card. Actually, I think those last two items may be redundant…

This came to me as I was doing email triage—read, skim, toss (or more correctly, delete). Thank you, Time magazine, for creating these categories in your Briefing section. Various criteria get my email tossed, including sender unknown, a multi-megabyte attachment, or a subject line that elicits one of those yawns so gaping it cracks your jaw hinge. It occurred to me that what separates skim from read is frequently whether it’s serious or light-hearted. Simply put, I’d rather read the funny stuff than the ponderous.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ll ruminate as much as most folks on the important issues of our time. However, when it comes to a list of new emails that goes below the fold, I’ll opt for short and funny almost every time. This was driven home to me earlier this week.

One of my college friends has lived in Canada since graduation. We keep in touch via email. She forwards all sorts of messages, from humorous lists to lengthy diatribes against the U.S. government. I can’t quite figure out her political orientation (or perhaps more accurately, her husband’s, as I think he’s behind many of the missives.) They seem to be an amalgam of Michael Moore and right wing militia.

In any event, on the same day recently, she sent an email titled “Worth the Read” and another “Five Ways the Democrats Can Avoid a Catastrophe and Pull Off the Mother of All Upsets... a letter from Michael Moore.” I immediately tossed the catastrophe piece, but I opened “Worth the Read.” It was a list of twenty or so funny thoughts, the fourth of which was “There is great need for a sarcasm font.”

In my opinion, the need is beyond great. I could be essential to preserving society as we know it. As I read Item #4, I knew why I continue to open most of this friend’s email, even though much of it fails to get past skim. It’s because this friend, who early-retired quite a few years ago, still has a sense of humor. By the way, she plays in the community band, something she took up after she retired.

This led to an Oprah-like “aha!” moment. Very few of my friends seem to share my sense of humor. It wasn’t always so. Am I getting crazier in my old age? Or are they getting stodgier?

Another college friend emailed a group of us about career networking with young alumni. I followed the embedded link to learn about the program and landed on a page with a bar chart showing how many alumni in each decade participate. Our graduation decade, the sixties, wasn’t there. I replied-to-all that they must not be interested in old farts like us.

My expectation was to evoke similarly sarcastic comments. Perhaps: “Oh we’re there, but our numbers are so small, we’re just a flat line, not a bar.” I received two replies. One explained how important seniors are to the program, since we have valuable experience and we’re reaching a stage where we also have time to devote. The other was similarly serious. Looking back, I wish I’d had that sarcasm font for my comment.

I wonder what implications this has for my retirement. If I relocate where people are very serious, will I feel out of place? Will I have trouble making new friends? Or can I find folks with a sense of humor if I choose the right activities? Let me think a minute. If you’ve read my earlier posts, you know about my high school days as a band geek. My sister, who lives in Vermont where we’ll be moving, belongs to an investment club.

Perhaps her club would invest in a used saxophone so I can join the community band. (Insert sarcasm font here.)

Retirement Planning—Adjusting to New Schedules

I’ve never been a morning person. My preferred schedule is late to bed, late to rise, and I reach my creative peak around 2 am. Fortunately, my husband is also a night person. I need 8 to 9 hours of sleep to function at my best; Jagdish can make do on far fewer.

While my current job allows me some flexibility of start time, it’s not enough for me to follow an ideal schedule. One of the things I look forward to in retirement is following my natural circadian rhythm.

Yet, when it comes to retired people I know, most of them go to bed early and get up even earlier. I wonder if this is an inevitable change that comes with retirement. Will the evenings of inspired writing that I look forward to not come to be after all?

As preparation for this transition, should I be trying to get to bed a little earlier each week and to rise earlier, too? I’ve read that adjusting sleep patterns is similar to dealing with jet lag—do it gradually, an hour at a time. Once I stop working, will I crawl into bed at 10 pm, or even 9, too tired to log on to my computer? Is this schedule change the inevitable destiny for the retiree? I can’t bear to contemplate it.

A chilling thought occurs to me. We’re probably going to retire to a condo in a development focused on seniors. Is it possible that the membership rules in these communities specify a curfew? Lights out by 11 pm. I envision the block captain as he pedals silently through the carefully named streets on a Texas-sized three-wheeler. Around his neck is a whistle on a macramé lanyard made by an 88 year-old woman in the Wednesday morning craft club.

Stay up too late and he plasters a red sticker on your door that proclaims “Violation!” Oh the ignominy! Or worse yet, they have circuit breakers up stream and they just cut off your power. The only warning is three short blasts on the whistle, barely enough time to hit the “save” key. Of course, this is a ridiculous notion. Or is it? I have enough to worry about in my retirement planning without adding curfew police to the list.

As luck would have it, a news story in the latest “Brown in the Media” catches my eye. It reports on research showing that teenagers perform better when they are allowed to heed their “biological imperative.” That is to stay up until at least 11 pm and then get 8 or more hours of sleep.

These findings led to some experiments to accommodate this schedule by pushing back school start times an hour or so. The delayed starts corresponded with better grades and reduced obesity. (Apparently, teens deal with drowsiness by shoveling in extra sweets.)

No need to put this information in front of me twice. I have enough trouble controlling my weight without buying into a lifestyle change that feeds a junk food habit. If I have my druthers—and I certainly plan to have them after I retire—I’ll heed my biological imperative, which seems to be stuck at the teenage level. Late to bed, late to rise. That should help me retain a youthful vigor. Cue the music: “…forever young, I want to be forever young.”

Notes to self: Reconsider getting house instead of condo; buy blackout curtains.

Retirement Planning—Updating Technology

Even though I’m relatively tech-savvy, there’s a gap between what I know and what I do in practice. The gap is especially problematic when it comes to my computer setup. I’m quite computer literate, but my home set-up is as out of date as my knowledge is current.

I’m a Mac user, so the web browsers that work best on my equipment are Safari and that masterpiece from Mozilla, Firefox. Sadly, Facebook does not seem to share this infatuation, at least not for version 2.0, which I have. Although I can visit their site from home, I can’t post anything. I probably can’t do any of the other things Facebook offers, like poking and prodding and tickling or whatever all they have. Since I don’t know how these geegaws work anyway, I can live without them. Really I can.

However, other things that don’t work with my out-of-date browsers are important to me and will be even more so once I’m retired. I decided that upgrading my browser would be a productive step in my retirement planning. When I attempted to do this, I got caught in what I call the domino effect. It went something like this.

Me (via my internet connection): Hello, Mozilla website. I’m in dire need of a newer version of the web browser on my Mac. Mozilla: No problem. Click here and you can download Firefox version 3.6. I dutifully click there. Mozilla: Sorry, dude, but this browser only works on Mac Operating Systems of 10.4 or higher. Looks like you’ve got 10.3.9. Me: Well, can I get an older browser, but newer than the one I have? Mozilla: Dude, version 3.6 IS the oldest browser we still offer. You’ll need to upgrade your operating system to at least 10.4.

Ten minutes later I’m on the Apple site, looking for OS 10.4. Apple gives their OS versions big cat names, like Cheetah and Panther. Me (again via my internet connection): Hello, Apple website. I’d like to get a newer Panther for my Mac. Apple: You’ve got to be kidding me. We don’t have Panthers anymore. We keep operating systems on deck for maybe five years. The oldest upgrade we still offer is Tiger.

I’m good with this; after all, I have an adopted cat that looks like a tiger. Me: OK, gimme a Tiger. Apple: Love to do that for you, but the home you’re offering is not up to our standards for Tiger. I see you’re running on a PowerMac G5. (Suddenly I feel exposed, as the website probes me electronically. I’m glad I don’t have a video cam.) Apple again: You need to upgrade your hardware to something with a built in FireWire port. While you’re at it, you should just bite the bullet and get our newest operating system—Snow Leopard.

The crash you just heard was the sound of the last domino falling. In order to upgrade the browser, I need a newer operating system. To upgrade that, I need new equipment. Simply put, because I didn’t have the discipline to upgrade my software regularly (and mostly for free…), I’m now forced to upgrade everything at once. That whooshing sound is dollar bills flying out my window.

All of this has led me to increase the category for computer hardware/software in my retirement budget. More importantly, I’m committed to upgrading my software at least yearly so I don’t get caught in the domino effect again. I’m devastated to have missed out on Cheetah and Jaguar. I don’t care how lame the TV show is, I want to be first in line if Apple ever offers Cougars.

Retirement Budgeting --- Alcohol Really IS Medicinal

Picking up where I left off in last Saturday’s post: I had concluded that the cost of wine I drink alone will be categorized as “medical” in my retirement budget. My rationale was that it helps me deal with stress. It turns out, I’m on the cutting edge of medical thinking.

The September 20 issue of Time magazine reports on new research that suggests that alcohol consumption extends your life. You read me right. A 20-year study of 1,824 people showed that 69% of teetotalers died during the study, while only 41% of moderate drinkers did. (Heavy drinkers fell in between, with 60% dying.) Don’t panic. They were aged 55-65 when the study started.

These astonishing results led me to immediately increase my budgeted allocation for wine after I retire. The main reason I don’t drink more now is that I’m usually the driver. When we’re home more, I’ll be able to imbibe more. Knowing that it’s healthy is just added incentive, not to mention the possibility of a tax deduction.

Other ramifications of this study occurred to me as I read it a second time. The first was that I must get my husband on the vino wagon so that he’ll have a 28% greater chance of living longer, too. Jagdish has a bad reaction to the preservatives in most wines, especially so-called “affordable” ones. However, his system tolerates the pricier wines that we usually have at holiday dinners with my sister Barbara’s family. Since we’ll be living near them in retirement, I foresee many more opportunities to enjoy the good stuff.

This of course means revising my wine budget still higher, even more so because I’m not as likely to be drinking alone. This is probably good news, since the researchers surmised that the social interactions that usually accompany drinking are a factor in maintaining good health. Flash forward to visions of my brother-in-law, Bob, and me, relaxing in side-by-side lounge chairs, cradling our shared bottle of Barolo. Barbara and Jagdish are reading nearby, looking far more dignified and far less in their cups.

My husband, the non-drinker, was unexpectedly very interested in this study. “How do they define moderate?” he asked. The answer was a surprising 1 to 3 glasses per day. He followed this with “What size glass?” I said I assumed a typical size for the drink being consumed. Note to self: Buy larger wine glasses after retirement.

What had me scratching my head was the “per day” part. I would have guessed “per week.” If “1 to 3 glasses per day” is moderate, how much would I have to drink for it to be considered heavy?

The answer is immaterial. In order to afford even a moderate amount of good wine each day, I’ll have to let my hair go gray and give up professional haircuts altogether. This might be a sacrifice worth making, since I’m committed to improving my health after I retire. It also seems like the least I can do for my husband, my sister and my brother-in-law. I raise my wine glass: Alla famiglia!