Been Meaning to Wryte...

Last month, I told myself I was going to post on July 1st to wryport on the first six months of wrytirement. That it is three weeks past this "deadline" is a perfect example of what being without a rigid schedule is like for me. I'll do it later...tomorrow...next week...next month...never...

One exception, with this blazing hot weather, I have been walking Frankie around our subdivision first thing in the morning, which is approximately 8:00 a.m. for us. We do the mile of main road, inlets, and cul-de-sacs, plus add another third of a mile crossing over into an adjoining subdivision. Speaking of exercise, I also suffer through 40 minutes on my recumbent bike every day, pedaling close to eight miles without leaving the basement. This is supposedly the equivalent of nearly16,000 steps. No wonder I'm drenched in sweat when the fun 40 minutes end. 

After it sat motionless for several years, I started using the bike again in April. During the months of April and May, following a near starvation (for me) diet, I lost about ten pounds. While this sounds good--and I'm not saying it's not--the truth is that a holiday weight gain added to a few Covid pounds had me in a very tubby situation. Thus, I'm at a "normal" (for me) weight and I don't have to buy new clothes after all!

Yes, I had many home improvement and decluttering projects on my wrytirement list. While I have completed some, others seem to be ongoingly stuck in the mud. In April, Mr. W brought down a number of boxes and several large items from the garage attic, many of which had been placed there when we moved into this house 32 years ago. Did we really believe that McDonaldland, Pizza Hut, and Care Bear collectible glasses were going to be so valuable in the future that we squirreled away two dusty, automotive-filmed cartons full of them? UHG... The only thing we should have collected and saved was our money! 

Ditto regarding Avon beer steins and Hallmark ornaments. And don't get me started on Beanie Babies, although most of those (more than 100) were from my mom. It is hard to let go of things that you'd think would be "worth something," but are not. 

Pathetically, I have no new hobbies or activities to report yet, unless watching Jeopardy every day at 4:30 p.m. counts. Occasionally, I correctly answer the final Jeopardy question. Whoo-hoo! If it weren't for history, geography, classical composers, Greek mythology, astronomy, Dutch artists, WW II heroes, the U.S. Constitution, current musical artists, international organizations, and similar categories, I could possibly get a lot more correct answers throughout the show and final Jeopardy. Just sayin'

One thing I was not expecting about retirement was that time would go by so fast. For not doing anything of significance, I can't believe how fast the weeks have flown by, a lot faster than when I was working. Thus, I conclude and recommend, if you want your life to seem longer, work in an office.  

Something I was expecting was that not working would cure my insomnia, but it hasn't. Still have nights when I can't get to sleep or stay asleep. The good news is that Frankie and I are available for a 5:00 p.m. nap, right after Jeopardy... 

Office Wear in the Days of Yore (Kidding Me)

Last night, I participated in a text exchange with a group of dear friends from Our First Real Job after college. It didn't start as a conversation reminiscing about what we wore to the office back in the olden days, but that's how it ended. 

Due to the pandemic and technology, two of them are working strictly from home where the dress code is business casual from the waist up and anything goes from the waist down, beyond the eye of the digital camera. One friend remarked on how she started her career in suits with skirts, slacks, and blazers, and she will end it in sweatpants. 

Forty years ago, if you wore sweatpants to work, you were a gym teacher!

The torture--I mean "memory"--of wearing a business suit, especially a skirted one, is seared into my brain. An itchy wool or synthetic-blend exterior with a slick taffeta lining. The slightly gritty sound made by pulling up the skirt over my pantyhose-clad legs. An all-around tuck of the tails of a polyester blouse, followed by a sharp suck-in of breath to button the waistband in the back. Finally, a swish of the zipper to create pure misery and suffering, only to be amplified by squeezing my arms into a taffeta-lined blazer. Needed a lot of anti-perspirant in those days, plus a good dry cleaner to get rid of the pit stains. 

Dressed in that office armor, no wonder my hot flashes actually started in my twenties! It was Steam City, even in the winter. Also, deformities in my feet can be traced back to stuffing them into high-heeled pumps, the crippling footwear of those years of yore. I can remember arriving home and sitting on the edge of the bed, extracting my poor swollen toes from shoe prison, then my varicose-vein wrapped legs from the pinch of pantyhose. Some days that included peeling a hardened spot of White-Out which had been hastily applied to curtail an under-the-skirt stocking run.   

Did we women really have to do all that to show the men that we were to be taken seriously in the business world? I haven't even mentioned hair and makeup!  Bags, jewelry, and other accessories! It was costly and frustrating to shop for all of that stuff, and it was a daily challenge to put ourselves together and wear something different than the day before. By Friday, it was just plain exhausting to me. Casual Fridays had not been invented yet, but even if they had been, some skank would have dialed it up to make sure the rest of us had to remain in costume.  

Men got away with looking the same. It might have been a different food-stained tie a couple of times a week, but basically the same shirt, pants, jacket, and, most enviably, comfortable flat shoes. Also, a monthly haircut (for those that had hair). Don't get me started on the inequities then or now. 

If my last job would have been work-at-home in sweatpants, I believe I would have stuck with it for a while longer. Although I did not have that option, I'm happy for all the women who are getting a break from the tyranny of what-to-wear, head to toe, to the office. Enjoy those sweatpants and flip-flops! 

And I'm sorry you have to see men who are working from home in their stained polo shirts.... Not mentioning any names.

Photographs and Memwrylies

I have spent the last few weeks scouring through scores of boxes stored across several bedroom closets and in our "cellar," as Dan calls it. In less than a week, he and Carlene will have a cellar of their own as the closing date on their home approaches.

My advice to them is not to keep things in boxes in their cellar. If these items are not useful enough to be unpacked and given an accessible place in your home, you don't need them! The only exception would be seasonal decor, photographs, and precious keepsakes, whatever those might be.

Mr. W and I will be assisting in their move, as will Carlene's parents. Dan is in for a surprise because I have a small pile of boxes that contain stuff that he left behind. Now that he will own a home with an ample cellar, these boxes are "on the truck" to be moved to his place. While I got rid of all of his trophies and awards (with his permission) last year, I did not send his school yearbooks to a landfill grave. Also, I saved a selection of his sports jerseys--in different sizes and from a variety of teams--that he may want to share with his offspring, if mentioning this does not jinx his chance to have offspring. Stick a needle in my eye.

Also, he has some collectible metal trucks and cars that were gifted to him that may someday be worth something. Of course, he was not allowed to play with them, so they are in perfect condition for him to show to his offspring and not allow them to play with them. Cross my heart and hope to die.

In addition to sorting through Dan's remaining stuff, I have made great strides in sorting through my stuff. Just today I took four boxes of paperback books and one box of home decor to my favorite charity thrift store. I've been averaging four to five boxes/bags of donations each week for the past month, mostly clothing and accessories. 

The most difficult category of stuff to make decisions about is photography. For example, I inherited my parents' wedding album when my mom moved into the memory care facility. A professional photographer took beautiful black and white photos of that special day and they are arranged in a large cream-colored album. It's lovely to turn the gold-cornered pages; my parents looked like movie stars from that era. I recognize the faces of my deceased grandparents and many great aunts and uncles, also those of aunts, uncles, and second cousins still alive. 

OK, so what's next for this history book? My brothers don't want it or it would not have been placed in my pile to take away from our mom's move. Dan won't want it. I have no doubt that he will similarly not want the expensive gold-cornered album from Mr. W and my wedding. In addition to that, the abbreviated version of our wedding is commemorated in a parents' album that naturally became my possession when my mom moved. So there is another album that Dan won't want. 

I also have photos from both sets of my grandparents' weddings, which would have occurred in the mid-1930's. The main photo of my mom's parents is 11" x 14" and it is a black and white photo to which color was added by hand. It is amazing, but what about its fate? My heart is heavy to realize that it will decay in a landfill with coffee grounds, diapers, moldy cottage cheese, and worse, sooner or later. It's just a matter of who sends it on its way.    

Perhaps I should write "in case of fire, throw in" on the covers of the albums and on the boxes that contain loose photos of days gone by. Maybe I should burn them myself, which I am considering. Seems like cremation is a more dignified option. 

From more current times, I have a collection of albums that I painstakingly put together of Dan's life from ultrasound womb photo to college graduation photo. I am likely deluding myself that his offspring will enjoy curling up with me someday and seeing the adventures of their father when he was their ages.

Stick another needle in my eye.

Groundhog Day is a Wryly Good Holiday

Happy Groundhog Day! My favorite holiday as it involves no extra work from women to celebrate it.  

There was an adorable groundhog family that lived in the side of a hill on the common ground of our subdivision during the summer. On our walks, Franker and I would frequently see the dad foraging around. Sometimes Mrs. Groundhog would appear at the entrance of the den, seemingly nudging Mr. G out, out, OUT.

I got it Mrs. G! Taking care of two babies, she didn't need the big lug underclaw as well. There were a few times that we saw all four of them enjoying a picnic on the hillside. Franker would go psycho, such was his strong instinct to chase and scatter the happy family. 

We have not seen them for quite a while because they are hibernating. They spend summer and fall stuffing themselves and napping in the sun, gaining fat to survive the cold months during which they snooze off the excess weight. Man, groundhogs are lucky!!! I can't imagine the joy of sleeping soundly through the winter months then waking up in March in shape to wear a swimsuit.

Wrytirement is going well, I think. No, I have not accomplished anything particularly impressive, but I've done some small projects here and there. Bags and boxes of unneeded stuff have been donated or disposed of; it will all add up to eventual success in the war against clutter.  

I admit that I do a lot of loafing, something for which I seem to have a knack. Not having to be on a schedule is wonderful! I do not miss the office AT ALL. My wryplacement has contacted me a couple of times with questions (for which I agreed to be accessible) and my former boss has contacted me about meeting for lunch in the future. Sure, sure, let me check my calendar....

Last week we received the news that an offer Dan and Carlene made on a house was accepted. They have been scouring the real estate listings, visiting open houses, and touring homes for sale with their agent for several months, trying to run ahead of the rising interest rates boulder. Their original target area was the zip code in which they currently live and several adjacent zip codes, a chunk of the metropolitan area that is highly desirable due to central location, a relatively urban-ish lifestyle, and historical affluence. It is crowded with original small neighborhood homes in their elder years and recent McMansions built after mercilessly tearing down elder homes. 

As they were each raised in the suburbs, the urban-ish experience has been different and attractive to our young couple. They enjoy walking to a nearby park and to restaurants and other attractions near the home they are renting. Dan somewhat snootily told Mr. W and me that they didn't want to live in a county subdivision such as the ones where they lived for their childhoods. They were seeking a location with more diversity and culture. They understood that for what they could afford, it would not be a spacious home, but that was fine because they are not into having a lot of "stuff" like we are.

The more they shopped these zip codes, the more they realized how nearly impossible it was to find a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home in decent shape, with a two-car garage (or a garage at all), priced under $400k. The asking price had to start somewhat below that amount to cast a wide net for passionate competition to incite multiple offers and push the final bid to at least $450k. 

Hey, nobody ever said a central location with diversity, culture, and limited square footage for their self-proclaimed minimalistic lifestyle was going to be reasonably priced.

Thus, they expanded their acceptable region and--you guessed it--they will be the owners of a four-bedroom, three-bathroom ranch, with a two-car garage, near the subdivision pool, in the county. Carlene was happy to learn that the pool has a swim team, as she grew up swimming on a local swim team in her parents' subdivision. Dan's first job was lifeguarding at our subdivision pool; he could walk to work. How convenient was that?

Welcome back to your childhood you two! The boring old suburbs, where the groundhog families live and multiply, will be happy to see you!  

Wryly Wreally Wrytired

So here I am--it is me--really retired. I just permanently linked out of linked in. Good-bye cruel working world!!

Fortunately, I remembered the password to my account or I might have lived into perpetuity on that site. Once the novelty of it wore off back in '09, I maintained it only through alerts to my personal email account. 

Will it send an alert to my contacts that I have checked out? Unsure of that, however, totally sure that no one will miss me. 

I will admit to having a hard time letting go of the office or, more accurately, letting go of the perceived need of the office for me. With my last official day being identified as December 23rd, I went into a frenzy around December 10th, clearing my office for my wryplacement and updating a binder of information about the job. There were several 4:00 a.m. mornings when I sat at this very keyboard and compulsively typed out instructions for how to do this, that, and many other things. What a geek.

My wryplacement started on December 16th and I trained half-days with her until December 22nd. On December 23rd, I was prepared to wrap it up, but there was a power outage that forced closure of the building and the 23rd was tacked on to the Christmas vacation that was to start on the 24th and end on January 4th. This twist turned out to be very good for me as my emotions were wound a bit tight regarding my "last day," with which I had a joy/dread relationship. 

I coolly returned on Friday, January 7th to finish up a few items with my wryplacement and to turn in my prison pass and purchase card, which was more of a symbolic gesture considering my access to the building and to company credit card purchases could have been cut off without relinquishing plastic cards.  

It is odd to think that my office email account is directing senders to a new person. I received and sent so many email messages, it was like a living organism that challenged and reflected my knowledge and personality. (No, I have not been drinking.) Isn't that deep?

Now what?