Category: Simple Pleasures

Is it me, or is there a hint of joy in the air? Call me crazy, but it’s kind of fun not to be so pessimistic about the election. And it’s always a bonus when ignorant sound bites turn into humorous t-shirts.

I mentioned I’ve been out and about more than usual. The big reveal is that I was on jury duty for the better part of a month. We finished our deliberations yesterday, and I am free again. They said we can now talk about the case, but I’m done. I’ll just say it was a criminal case featuring child pornography, kinky sex and other details I’d prefer to forget.

Aside from the case itself, hanging around the courthouse is no picnic. We had a lot of downtime waiting for things to get going, and the slice of life that paraded past was grim at best. One woman in a cute orange outfit and chains saw us piling into the jury room and yelled, “You’re all going to hell!”

The whole experience made me appreciate the pleasures of being ordinary. And grateful for my privileged and drama-free retirement. When’s my tee time? What’s for dinner? No interactions with the police so far. My sex life may be boring, but I’m grateful 12 jurors, three alternates and a gallery full of spectators will never have to hear about it.

So, after a brief pause to admire my life choices, I return to the bubble. I’ve sort of kept up with my strengthening exercises, but it has been hit or miss, and I’m happy to get back to my mindless routine. I went to the driving range and hit some balls. Swimming tomorrow. Pizza. Maybe a movie.

Just ordinary stuff.

I haven’t been to the mall in years, but I needed either white shorts or a white skort for a golf thing where teams like to wear matching outfits. The things I do to be sociable.

It’s a Hawaiian theme, and my sister said you aren’t going to wear a plastic lei are you? I said, oh, yes I am. She howled and wants a picture. Fat chance that.

The mall was a complete waste of time. Call me crazy, but I would think this is the peak of white shorts season. They were nowhere to be found. A couple of white skorts were on display, but they looked short enough to display your hoo-hah.

Home I came for a meeting with Dr. Amazon. I guess we brought this on ourselves, but it seems you really do have to go online for anything. I bought four skorts in different styles and sizes. All on Prime, so I was thinking I could send back the ones I don’t want or all of them if need be.

Panic shopping this week is not my idea of fun. Still, I know this is not a bad problem in the hierarchy of problems.

Good news … one of the skorts arrived this morning, and it fits!!! And it’s a little longer, so no hoo-hah action. The event is Wednesday, and I’m relieved that monkey is off my back. The others arrive tomorrow, so we’ll see if I like any of them better.

Our club is hosting this event, so it’s a big deal, and we all have jobs (in addition to playing). One of mine is to sell mulligans at the welcome table. My sister said, you? Handling money? Geez, so I stumbled a bit with geometry, but I can make change. Oh, and build a retirement portfolio, if that counts.

I’m still struggling with time management. I know important worker bees cannot understand how retirees can be busy, but it’s true. We just have different priorities. My priorities are food and fitness, but chores keep messing with my mojo.

We have someone coming next week to do the windows and screens, inside and out, but they don’t do plantation shutters. I decided to bite the bullet and do it myself. Instead of going after it like a maniac, as I might have done in my 30s, I made a list of all the rooms with shutters and am committed to doing one or two rooms a day. Then I check them off the list because it feels good to check things off the list.

My strengthening exercises take about an hour, and I’m whipped when I’m done. I missed some swim time because I just couldn’t muster the energy to go after completing the exercises. What I’ve learned is that I need to do the exercises early so I can have recovery time if I want to play later in the afternoon. On golf days, I just do a few of the core exercises when I get home.

I’ve been neglecting my art, and I miss the creative process, so I need to make time for that. Then there’s food. Yesterday I made a double batch of my favorite juice – celery, apples, black grapes, spinach and lime. I freeze them in 4-ounce bottles. Also, a batch of peanut butter cookies for the freezer. Indulgent, but healthier than store-bought!

Oh, and bread. I’ve been feeding my sourdough starter for a few days, and he’s ready to go. I’ll make the dough later and let it rise overnight. Then it does a second rise tomorrow morning in the banneton. I suspect it will go in the oven around 10.  

The question is what to have with it. Good bread will not go to waste at our house, but I like to pair a fresh loaf with something special. We have some fabulous beef stew in the freezer, but it doesn’t really feel like beef stew season. Although our air conditioning always feels like Ice Station Zebra to me, so stew could work.

BLTs with farmers market tomatoes would be yum, but I don’t think they’re ready yet. Minestrone or some other kind of veggie soup would be good. See? This stuff takes time.

Not that I’m complaining. I feel fortunate to be alive and able to enjoy the simple pleasures of retirement. It took me a long time to figure out how to manage my work life, so I guess it’s no surprise it takes a few years to manage life after work. All in all, not a bad problem to have.

I never thought I’d say this about retirement, but in some ways, time is harder to manage than money.

In the cosmic sense, you think, how much time do I have left on the planet? Another 20 years? Is this how I want to spend it? For the most part, I’d say yes, but then I wonder what I might be missing.

Mostly I avoid thinking about the cosmos as it applies to me. I have a good life and try to enjoy the time that has been given. Still, I’m wondering if I need a time calibration on the simple pleasures of day-to-day life.

I mean, I’ll get up early for golf if I have to, but that’s about it. I’m a fan of the slow start, which means a leisurely breakfast and a slew of puzzles from the New York Times. By the way, I’m loving the new game, Strands.

Then there are chores, exercise, reading, writing, streaming shows, travel, art and the art of food – browsing recipes, shopping for ingredients, preparing meals and enjoying the results! I’m sure the young and busy with their families and jobs and all that are thinking, oh, wah, how hard can it be?

Well, true, it’s not that it’s hard. It’s just that we older folks know the clock is ticking, and it goes back to that cosmic thing. Could I be doing this differently? The big thing for me is setting aside more time to write. Not only for blog posts but also because writers write. It helps me think.

I’ve been reading a lot, but I’d like to try more challenging material. I saw a paperback of All Quiet on the Western Front in our stash, and I barely remember it from high school. And other than one class in college, I’ve never taken to Shakespeare, although it might be time. I’ll need to be upright for that.

Snuggly reading under the covers is better suited for a good who-done-it.

Now that I think about it, I’m doing OK, but maybe a little less golf and a little more in the way of intellectual pursuits. Not that golf doesn’t fry your brain – just in a different way. Anyway, as I was thinking about how I live and spend my time as I age, I started a random list of questions I should probably work through. See what you think.

• How much sleep is too much sleep? Do you have to stop at 10?
• Why is everything better with butter?
• Amazon or Spotify? Do I care what Neil Young thinks?
• What counts as one glass of wine?
• Acorn or BritBox?
• Is it Friday or was that yesterday?
• If you get up to pee three times in a night, does an angel get its wings?
• What’s so bad about a gluten-rich diet?
• Why is it always about the knees?
• If I can gain five pounds in a week, why can’t I lose five pounds in a week?
• How many Law & Order reruns can I watch? Am I wrong to love Lenny?
• Kale. OK, but why?
• Peeps. Crap candy or nature’s miracle?

There are more, but we’ll stop here so you can get back to the important things you were doing with your time.

Last year was my fifth year of retirement, and I’m pleased to report I’m getting better at accomplishing very little. In 2023, I read a lot of crime fiction, wrote a bunch of blog posts, took a few road trips, watched a couple dozen shows on TV, walked, stretched, swam, cooked and ate delicious food. Dabbled at art.

I’d say it was a fine year. As a recovering over-achiever, it feels good to enjoy simple pleasures and chill. I don’t really like to keep count, as my last job was all about metrics gone wild. That said, you may be interested to learn I also enjoyed 21 blissful hours of full-body massage and about 100 rounds of golf.

Now for a “deep dive” into retirement math.

At an average of 4.5 hours per round, that’s 450 hours of golf. If one assumes a 40-hour work week, 450 hours converts to 11.25 weeks of golf, and that is the equivalent of playing golf for more than two months of the year!

My massages added up to $1,960. However, I don’t dye my hair, so let’s deduct $125 per month from massage expenditures. That leaves us at $460, which a working person such as myself might have spent on makeup, shoes, dry cleaning or even Botox. So, let’s just wipe the slate clean and accept that in retirement math, my massages are free.

There might be something to metrics after all. Seriously, I don’t think I’m playing enough golf.

The weather has been beautiful, and I’ve been taking full advantage. No job and plenty of time to play! Between golf, walking and swimming, it’s hard to make room for my indoors stuff such as reading, cooking and art. Just so you know, hunting through recipes eats up a lot of time.

I’m not complaining. This is not a bad problem to have. I’m always puzzled when people think we don’t do anything in retirement. Best I can tell, most of us have plenty to keep us amused, and I like to think there’s always room for more.

Or is there?

We used to enjoy camping. Sometimes in a tent and sometimes in a small trailer. But shortly after I retired, we got rid of both and have been hoteling it ever since.

Maybe it was the nice weather or perhaps a bit of folly, but I started daydreaming about peaceful quality time in the wilderness with my loving husband of 44 years and asked him if he still thought about camping. He said yes, and I was pleased, but be forewarned, it goes downhill from here.

We’re car campers and like a somewhat boxy tent we can stand up in with plenty of room for a queen-sized air mattress. I refuse to leave the tent at night to pee, so I have this thing called a luggable loo. It’s a five-gallon bucket with a toilet seat. You buy liners with gel that dries everything up and then dispose of it in the morning.

It works great, but Dale is quite fussy about the location of my loo. It can’t be in the main part of the tent, and not all tents have two rooms. Our old one was perfect, but when it wore out, we couldn’t find a suitable replacement. I’ve been looking since the beginning of the pandemic and finally found a tent at REI that I thought would work.

Last weekend, we headed over to REI and bought it.

On the way home, I said, “I’m kind of excited.” He said, “I guess.”

I’m like, what? I spent years looking for a tent, and that’s the best you can cough up?

I willed myself to relax, figuring he’d get with the program soon enough. However, I said, let’s not take it out of the bag until we’re absolutely positively sure we want to camp. It’s OK if we don’t. We just need to be honest with each other. We left it on the dining room table with the receipt in case it has to go back.

After a couple of days, I asked him what he thought about the whole idea. He finally confessed he does want to camp, but he doesn’t want to give up hotels, either. Well, that’s easy enough. I assured him we can do both. However, I said don’t take the tent out of the bag just yet.

I began to research locations and asked him if he had any preferences. Mountains? Beach? He said whatever. Not exactly the big bold clue I was looking for. I was on my own.

The way I figured it, we had a cold winter and the snow is starting to melt, so I thought June was too early for the mountains. The beach was perfect. These northern California beaches are beautiful and kind of cold, but it’s not like we’re out frolicking in the water, and you don’t have to worry about bears or snow.

I presented him with a list of beaches, and he said, “The beach? It’s pretty damp this time of year. We won’t enjoy being in a tent.”

After I accused him of being Big Bird – the one who waits while all the work is being done and then comes in and craps all over everything, I realized he’s probably right. I said I need more time to think.

Um, don’t take the tent out of the bag just yet.

So, the tent was $599. If we camp three times a year, we’ve pretty much recouped our costs if you compare it to a hotel room. I could probably find ideal tent camping spots for each of the summer months – July, August and September. Nothing wrong with being fair-weather campers.

We get outside in nature. We change our routine. We eat great camping food. We snuggle in our zip-together sleeping bags. All is good.

I’m thinking we will keep the tent. And we will find some lovely places to camp with reasonably predictable weather. As I continue to research options, I explained all this to Dale, who happily agreed. I’m feeling pretty good about the whole thing, but I said, let’s think about this for a few more days. Give Big Bird time to reveal his true thoughts.

Lord, what we do for relationships. I think it gets harder as we age, but that’s me. Anyway, we have reached consensus. I see camping in our future, but just so you know, the tent is still in the bag.