Update on Retirement Life

What does retirement mean?

• Not having to get up in the morning and the freedom to stay up until 1 or 3 a.m. if desired!
• Playing each day by ear
• And here's the sad part - losing parents if they're still with you before retirement.
• Lots of learning going on in this new lifestyle

Here it is 5 months into retirement and I feel like so much has happened! Big adjustments going on and most of them good and for the better.

Have a garden and have been harvesting it - it truly is a garden of plenty! Too many zucchini and cucumbers. Waiting for tomatoes to ripen - the stems are loaded!

Learning how to can vegetables and freeze fruits. Plan on doing more baking this winter - zucchini bread, peach cobblers, gonna try some pies. 

Spouse's dad passed away a month ago. Lots of family "stuff" going on - thankfully Dave's sister has a good head on her shoulders and is taking control of estate. And we are building a great relationship through the process.

Oh Nutz! The joys (??) of retiring

Thought I was going to retire with no fan-fare at all - just go out to lunch with my 2 co-workers on my team and David, my husband, my last day of work.
But no, my supervisor has asked my co-worker if he would check with me about having lunch with our pod fellow workers (only about 10) in the pod catered by Wegmans.

Gee whiz - it got me all teary eyed and here I sit being the woman that I am and crying!

I told him I need to let him know my answer tomorrow.

My hesitation is because I don't want to cry in front of everyone!!!!

I have loved my work for the entire 20 years I've been here. The organization and staff have supported me through all my life crises - being a single parent, having to take my unruly teenager to court for a PINS petition, being caregiver for my father who had Dementia, and most recently being a newly wed at the age of 58 for the first time in my life!

How can I ever express to them how much that has truly meant to me? WITHOUT breaking down and crying!

Writing Thank You cards - ends in argument and hurt feelings!

The husband retired from his job and the company gave him a retirement party.

Because of the large amount of gift money he received he wanted to write thank you cards to each company building's employees.

Cards were purchased and he settled down to write something in the cards while watching tv in the evening. He asked the wife for help. Because she was watching a program she was a bit short in her reply and suggested that he practice writing something on scrap paper. He didn't like that response. So she finally looked at what he was doing - he had written a couple words and started to print the third word (which was the point where he asked her to help).

She ended up writing a complete sentence "Thank you for your contributions to my retirement gift". He then took the three cards and wrote the sentence in each - without showing his work to the wife (The wife believes now this his way of hiding his hurt and anger.)

The husband felt bad enough about the difficulty he had that, in a little while, he brought the subject up for discussion. He said he hasn't had to write things out for quite a few years. He relies now on typing text in Facebook comments and emails. He pointed out those places identify words that might be misspelled at which time he will either use the suggested spelling or ask the wife how to spell it correctly.

This was so difficult to talk about that his voice cracked.

It's so difficult to acknowledge that you can't do something - that you don't have a skill that  hampers your abilities to accomplish a task!

So the wife talked about how everyone has different skills and together married people can fill the gaps of each others skills. She pointed out how clean the house is now that he is retired!! And all the good work he is doing to fix up their retirement home.

This has been just one glimpse into the world of our marriage.

Getting a new camera

One of the reasons we fell in love was our mutual love of photography. 

It was amazing the first time we were just out for a country ride together and the husband said suddenly "Pull over and stop the car". He jumped out and took out his small digital camera and snapped a pitcure of the beautiful landscape of the hills.

She broke out in laughter. When he returned to the car she was still laughing and finally got the words out - "That's exactly what I do very often - stop the car to take pictures of the landscapes - especially hills and the sky!"

And here's a side note - they also had the same small stuffed animal on the dashboards of their cars - hers was facing her and his was facing towards the front of the car.

Much of our courting time was spent in a car, driving the countryside and periodically stopping to take pictures.

By the time we got married one camera was dropped and one was lost. And within the first three years of marriage two stopped working correctly!

We thankfully had our smartphones which had excellent camera functioning. We promised each other that with our next year's income refund we would purchase a more sophisticated (more zoom capacity) camera. This was the year both of us would be retired and we planned on doing many more day trips, perhaps some traveling out West and taking tons more pictures.

When the husband retired the company gave him a send-off party. More than 200 employees contributed more than #350 to a gift of money. Totally unexpected money!!

The wife (Research Queen) tried doing research on a good camera however became overwhelmed with information. (Yes, she actually was overwhelmed with all the information and choices out there!).

So we headed to an expert - the local Photography/Camera supply house. We explained our need and our past experiences. Fortunately the expert directed us to a Nikon CoolPix with 42X zoom which was the best possible solution - in more ways than one!

After the wife got it setup for use and both she and her husband had taken some initial pictures our difference in IQs became evident. The husband has trouble remembering where or how --

• to switch between shooting pictures and displaying pictures taken is located
• to change to various Scene modes and how to switch scene modes
• to delete pictures

I'm sure with practice he will learn and remember most of the above.

In the meantime the wife has found the online manual and begun to print out pages of information which she wants to learn more about. She will likely sit with the camera to explore the features and practice using the various features (which include working with different shutter speeds and aperture values).

The wife became aware of these differences while taking pictures in the car while husband was driving. She used the two different Scene modes and compared the pictures taken in those modes vs the ones taken in Auto mode. When he said he just wanted to "take pictures" she realized that this will be a process of learning for him. He will first need to get used to taking pictures just using the AUTO mode and learning to switch between shooting and display modes, and deleting pictures. Then she can teach about the various  Scene modes.

Each of us learns at our own rate AND depending on our interests.

Our Story

This is the story of being married to someone who is of a lesser IQ.

There's no easy or more sensitive manner I can think of at the moment to explain our situation.

The wife attended college and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. She up until recently held a professional position in the career of office technology for the last 20 years. She earns a salary in the above $60,000/year range.

The husband attended special education program in high school (during the 1960s) and graduated with a HS diploma. He has worked as an employee in hardware stores, a health home care aide and a cleaner in manufacturing companies. His last year earnings (before retirement) were $15,000/year. He has been a volunteer firefighter for more than 35 years, changing fire departments each time he moved. In case you are not familiar with volunteer firefighting - the volunteers receive the same training as do professional firefighters - they just don't go to a professional school for firefighting. Training for volunteers is done on their own free time and usually 1 - 3 times a week before they are certified into various classes (Interior, Fire Police, etc).

The wife had never married and had never lived with anyone other than her parents as a child and again with her parent as an adult. Yet she had a child. She raised a son as a single parent throughout both their lives. The son is now a young professional living across the continent (in Seattle, WA) working in the information technology field. He now earns above $45,000/year.

The husband had married right out of high school and remained married for 20 years until the relationship became verbally abusive and resulted in a divorce.

These two people met at the ages of 59 and 58 and fell in love.

This is their story about how they have grown together in their marriage. It is a story of conquering verbal abusiveness, learning to manage anger, learning to live with another adult, learning to accept each other and each other's differences. Which has NOT been easy!!

Changing life

Interesting how I no longer look at technology or education magazines. My interests and favorite magazines are now: Eating Well, Clean Eating and Mother Earth News.

Guess that reflects the changing direction of my life - towards simplicity!

Preparing for Retirement

Be prepared for change, change and more change.
Then be prepared to wait!

Sadly, I announced my plan to retire from work almost 5 months in advance. I had informed work informally of one date and then we had to postpone that date!

In a way it worked out nicely for my employer since they had time to find someone to replace me and has given me plenty of time to train this person. However I certainly wish I'd done this differently. Now it seems I have time to kill while on the job - so I'm researching alot and blogging more than I used to.

However it feels like I'm living that old adage - hurry up -- and wait! Just a bit of tension here.

Gee, am I going to make it through the winter? We've got alot going on with my husband's family - elder care, Alzheimers, etc. And we're anticipating the polar vortex over the next few days.

Hunting seems to be keeping my husband busy. Plus he's now counting the days til he retires (he's retiring before me - at the end of December). That's going to be interesting! How will he keep busy??!! I bet he'll be snowplowing everyone's driveway in the park - ha-ha!