• Category Archives Retirement

  • Clay. All Day.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Mid-Summer                                                      Waning Honey Flow Moon

    Turns out making cylinders is hard.  In clay.  Kate and I are rank beginners at this clay thing, but we are taking a class with others who aren’t.  This makes life difficult for the teacher and for us rank beginners.  Near the end of Day 2 today I think I got how to draw up the wall of a cylinder.  Light touch, right hand and left hand equal pressure for pressure, move up, relax and the lip, repeat.

    Kate’s arthritic thumbs gave out about 3 pm today.  Now that she has the new hips and the back fusion, her pain load is less, but the arthritis moves around, finding new joints to bug.  The hands have been less bothersome up till now because the hips and the back were worse.  Now though…  She also wears out after about four hours.  She did the other day (did I write this already?) how surprised she is at the effect major surgery has on her stamina.

    We’re both having fun though, trying out new modes of expression, learning new things together.


    Aging Art and Culture Retirement 📎and tagged

  • Changes Comin’

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Mid-Summer                                                            Waxing Honey Flow Moon

    Mark and I transplanted hemerocallis (daylily) from the tiered gardens in the back to a front bed defined by a bur oak now in its 17th year and a Norway pine equally old.  What we’re 06-28-10_earlyliliesdoing is gradually filling in spots on our grounds that seem to always require weeding, maintenance with plants that are hardy, go it alone types.  The hemerocallis, like the hosta, receive scorn from landscape designers and permaculture folks, but like all God’s creatures, they too have a place.  And their place is to grow in those places you don’t want to have to worry or fuss about.  As we get older, we plan to retire more and more beds to this kind of planting, reducing the ongoing work until we have only some vegetables in a raised bed or two and the orchard.  The rest will be in asiatic lilies, hemerocallis, hosta, bugbane, grasses, ferns, bulbs like tulips and daffodils, monkshod and various shrubs.

    We don’t want to nor do we need to get there all of a sudden.  We still love the bees, the vegetable garden, the orchard and the perennials, but realistically there will come a time when weeding, planting and transplanting will no longer be fun, but will turn into chores.  At that point we want to have grounds that correspond to our willingness and ability to care for them.

    Kate’s retirement has brought up a lot of these questions.  We love her retirement and the success she’s shown in recovering from her recent, second, hip replacement.  That means a lot of things that were too painful in the past, like long car rides and train trips, may become more possible.   So, we’re not shuttling back into the shell until the end, just trying to be realistic about life’s changes that are ahead and inevitable.


    Aging Family Garden Retirement 📎and tagged

  • And, She’s Off…

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Mid-Summer                                                    Waxing Honey Flow Moon

    Kate now moves short distances without her walker, without wincing.  Her color is great and her recovery seems, to me, faster than last time.  Just checked.  She walked without a walker about 5 days post-op last time, so she’s right on schedule.  She has always done surgery well, knows how to recover, how to push herself, when to rest.

    I’m up a little slower today after a busy time since last Thursday when Kate went in for her surgery.  Decided to change my exercise routine (again) to one hour, but including time for resistance work, which I unwisely abandoned some time ago.  My back ouching means I need to get back at it.

    Today is a garden, bee day, once I get exercise done.


    Aging Family Retirement 📎and tagged

  • Adding One More

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                       Waxing Bee Hiving Moon

    Played space invaders again this morning.  My ophthalmologist insists on calling it a visual field.  It tests peripheral vision, a clue to advancing glaucoma.  I have already been treated with laser holes for narrow angle glaucoma, but now, in a not surprising development, my pressures have inched up past high normal, so I’m adding another drug to my list.  These bodies definitely have a sell-by date and mine is beginning to turn brown like the lettuce in an old batch.

    In addition, to add insult to the diagnosis, my ophthalmologist, whom I’ve seen for twenty years or so, has decided to retire.  This is my last visit with her.  So, not only does the body begin to retire from its functions, so do the folks who take care of it.  My dentist retired two years ago; my internist left three years ago.  Pretty soon I’ll be the only one left.

    Sculpture.  Here’s a peculiar lacunae.  I bought the Grove Dictionary of Art on sale.  It’s 30+ thick volumes of wonderful information.  But.  It has no sculpture section.  Strange.  Lots of stuff on individual sculptors, traditions, sculptures, but no general article.

    Just finished the legcom call, now into Oceanaire for a birthday dinner with Mark.


    Aging Art and Culture Health Retirement 📎and tagged

  • A Busy Week Ahead

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                              Waxing Bee Hiving Moon

     

    Business meeting this am.  Looked at our IRA and Vanguard balances.  Both healthy thanks to good planning and the recent surge in the market.  Theses glances at our assets won’t be as much fun when the market heads south again, as it will.  Right now though they’re cheering.  I read an interesting article on whether it was better to start retirement when the market  was strong or when it was undervalued.  The consensus was that undervalued was better. I can’t recall why, but I imagine it had to do with a feeling of lack followed by a feeling of abundance rather than the reverse.  The latter could lead to too quick a draw-down on accounts, leaving less money near the end of life.  Ah, well.  We’re well under the recommended minimum per year withdrawal from the IRA so far and we plan to keep it that way.

    Started three varieties of tomatoes this morning:  Roma, Black Krim and a yellow variety.  At the same time I started kale and chard, one variety each.  They go under the lights now and wait just before the last frost (May 15 or so), kale and chard, and until after the last frost, the tomatoes.  Wetting the potting soil resembles playing with mud, an early childhood memory trip.

    We checked calendars.  This week’s a heavy one for me with political, artistic and bee-keeping meetings, plus a birthday dinner out for brother Mark at the Oceanaire.


    Garden Retirement 📎and tagged

  • Boomers Crashing on the Beach

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                        Waning Bloodroot Moon

    “The only source of knowledge is experience.” -Albert Einstein

    I’m not sure I completely agree with Einstein, since I would give abstract thought the potential for creating knowledge, too; but, it is true that without experience the thinker has none of the material necessary for understanding.  This leads to an interesting observation about life at any point.  As we remove ourselves from experience, whether by depression, illness or again, our capacity to develop new knowledge grows weaker.  We can fall prey to narrow perspectives, prejudices, knowledge built on weak foundations.

    The silver tsunami, baby boomers crashing on the beach of old age with considerable force, runs the risk of making our politics out of balance.  That is, if the aging who have been active in the world pull back and reduce themselves to voting what seems to be in their self interest, those of us in that number might find ourselves on the sharp end of political reprisal.  Read Susan Jacoby’s fine book, Never Say Die: The Myth and Marketing of the New Old Age.  She outlines the case for intergenerational struggle if we don’t extend health care coverage to all citizens through a program similar in scope and kind to medicare.  With a smaller number of workers supporting an increasing number of seniors, remember tsunami waves keep coming, in this case for 25 years +, national health insurance will be critical to assuring the successful retirement of all those workers we need.  Absent a way to see their ways through to their own retirement these younger workers may rebel against the burden of carrying us on their backs.

    Jacoby’s book has several other pertinent perspectives, among them reminding us to prepare for old old age, now sometime after 80, when 50% of those in that age bracket have Alzheimers.  50%!  And the rest of us will likely have some other debilitating condition or another.  A good read.  An important one.


    Aging Health Politics Retirement 📎and tagged

  • Ovid and Me

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                               Waning Bloodroot Moon

    The Latin work has gone past difficult learning, though there is still that, too, into a different, almost ecstatic place.  Reading the words of another language and making sense, poetry, from them still seems magical to me.  I’m really doing it.  The closest analogy is my first set of glasses that corrected my far vision.  All of a sudden I saw individual stars in the sky.  william-turner-ancient-italy-ovid-banishedThe moment was extraordinary.  What had been a fuzzy, blurred night sky became black velvet set with bright points of light.

    Now it appears I will finish Diana and Actaeon before the Titian show closes on May 1st and I might make my way through Diana and Callisto, too.  I’m enjoying translating the different stories, so I think I’ll move on to Medea, Pentheus and other discrete stories rather than try the full frontal assault I had planned, start with Book I, verse 1 and soldier through to the last verse of Book XVI.

    Another idea that seems possible now is to investigate the Latin texts behind other objects in the museum:  Theseus and the Centaur at the Lapith wedding,  Ganymede and the Eagle,  Lucretia,  Germanicus.  I’m sure there are other objects that have particular Latin texts behind them.  I have no particular reason for doing this except to deepen my knowledge of mythology and of the specific objects in our collection with Latin connections.

    Taking up a new intellectual challenge later in life is not only possible, it’s exhilarating.


    Aging Humanities Myth and Story Retirement Writing 📎and tagged

  • Mind/Body

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Spring                                                                Waning Bloodroot Moon

    The yard!  The yard!  If Tattoo had been here this winter, he’d have gotten pretty excited about this dreary muddy mess now more visible than not.  The mountain of snow over which I could not see as I degaraged my Celica has melted to foothill levels, allowing me sights not seen for two + months.  Yippee.

    Business meeting this morning and we acknowledged both the new tax burden and our wisdom in saving adequately to deal with it.  This transition year into the retired life has had surprises, mostly pleasant ones, but this one caught us up short, at least at first.  We have enough money to pay the taxes and still go on with our cruise.  I’m glad because I’ve already got that Panama hat picked out.

    I’ve entered a new phase of physical activity, one with not only aerobic and resistance work, but also with body movement exercise like the Tai Chi and the Body Flow class at the Y.  It feels different, maybe better.  The better aspect comes with the more body friendly Tai Chi, yoga and pilates.  Aerobic and resistance are necessary to retain muscle mass and heart/circulatory system health, but the others work the body in a way designed to calm, loosen, stretch.  The Tai Chi, too, has a strong element, as does yoga, of the Eastern mystical.  Yoga as taught here has lost much of that, but the Tai Chi world remains rooted in the ancient Taoist traditions of China.


    Aging Asia Faith and Spirituality Family Retirement 📎and tagged

  • This is life.

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                            Waning Bridgit Moon

    Sunday night Kate and I went to St. Anthony Main, overlooking the Mississippi and St. Anthony Falls, for a Roots Music festival put on by KBEM, a local jazz station.  While we ate at the Aster Cafe and listened to a small group, Kate looked up at me and said, “Ah, the life of the retiree.”

    I understood what she meant.  Free at last.  But….

    I had another reaction too, “Yes, I know what you mean.  But, really.  This is life.  Not retired life, but life itself.”

    In that moment I realized the category mistake everyone makes when speaking of retirement.  It is seen as special, different, unique, something to be fussed over and transitioned into when really it’s just life, life continuing.  Not different, not special, not unique, not to be fussed over.

    Or, to say the same thing another way.  It is different, special, unique, to be fussed over because it is your life, your life, your one and only special and true life.  We have to want our life and lead our life before we work, while we work and after we work.  We do vacate the workplace, but we do not retire from our lives.

    In fact, the fuss is too often that we’ve left our lives up to others.  Our boss, our clients, our patients, our corporation or agency.  The past times and activities that seem so necessary, but are really only the ideas of others.

    So, the problem and the promise lies not within the change in our work, but with the change in ourselves.  If we have known what our life is, if  we have chosen activities and friends for their intrinsic value not their external rewards, well, then, on with your life.  If not, the issue is not the transition, but the need for self-examination, for honesty with the you that you bring to life as  you grow older.  No one else can do this work for you.  It’s up to you.


    Aging Faith and Spirituality Health Humanities Retirement 📎and tagged

  • Nix Still Comes Down

    Posted on by Charles Comment

    Imbolc                                                                      Waning Bridgit Moon

    Boy did we get the snow.  Don’t know how much, but it sure piled up in the driveway.  Up to the top of my Sorels when I retrieved the paper.

    Business meeting this morning.  Still reconnoitering retirement finances.  They look good right now, real good in fact.  The recent market up tick has made our IRA look strong and has helped our savings fund, too.  Even so, we need to get comfortable with the income, outgo realities of this new reality.  We will.

    Need to go out and do some digging, find our sidewalk.  I’m sure it’s still there.  Somewhere.


    Retirement Weather +Climate 📎and tagged