Why worried? Dunno. Maybe because I'm moving. Certainly not moving back into the urban ghetto. Moving into another rural paradise... a garden apartment on top of the mountain.
Leaving behind my home for 26 years. Leaving behind just about everything left of Myrna. Which is a good thing. It's time to let it all go.
In a couple of months, I'll be getting un-Woodstuck!
The real estate agent told me to get rid of all the piles of stuff before he shows the house. So, my son-in-law towed the dumpster over, dropped it off in my driveway and I'm filling it up.
I've owned my house in Woodstock for 25 years. So, the junk is piled high.
Stuff I absolutely had to buy has been gathering dust under my bed for a decade or more. Guitar stomp boxes, computer cables, etc.
I have a couple of bookcases full of programming and software manuals that are obsolete. At least I made money reading those books.
Twelve years after Myrna's death, I'm finally throwing away the last of her affects and possessions. Her pics will be stowed away in boxes. Time to close the books on that chapter in my life. You can't mourn forever.
Well, you can, but what the hell good does it do?
I might put one of our couple pics up on the wall in my new in-law apartment.
I'll be cleaning out my closets and tossing all the clothing that doesn't fit me that I'll never wear again. Might drop that stuff off in the Goodwill box instead of dumping it.
I'm finally free from the pain of surgery and I can lift heavy objects again. Trying to slowly get back to my exercise regimen.
I'm deep cleaning the house as I toss stuff out. Lonely old widower that I am, I've fallen into the usual male trap of settling for superficial cleaning. My girlfriend nags me constantly on her weekend visits to adopt her standard of cleanliness, but lifelong habits are difficult to change.
The attic is the tough hack. Spiders take over any space not regularly swept clean and I don't go up in the attic often. Out here in the Catskills, spiders constantly threatened to take back any human encroachment on their territory. I routinely sweep the walls and ceilings of their webs.
That stuff in the attic is the really old junk. Some of it even predates buying my house. I don't know why I dragged that crap up there. Should have simply tossed it.
I'll still be living at my house for another 3 to 6 months. The real estate agent thinks my house will sell quickly. But, it still takes a while to go through the process of showing it and dealing with the legal and financial issues of selling.
My 2011 Ford Ranger pickup truck's odometer read 101,240 when I departed Woodstock last week for a cross country trip to Chicago. My bicycle was strapped to its rack.
I'm going to drive the damned thing until it dies! No car payment!
Next week, I go under the knife for exploratory surgery. The radiologist found a little spot on my CAT scan. Might be nothing. Might be cancer. I brought along my bicycle because I'm trying to get in the best possible shape for a quick recovery from my surgery.
My mom turns 90 this fall and my sister is also facing serious surgery. I wanted to take the trip home to see them while I can. It's a fact of life, now. Every time I see loved ones might be the last time.
I've always loved cross country driving. Myrna did too. Back when we owned the Ford Expedition, we routinely drove the big SUV to Chicago. I've driven just about all the major routes from the West to the East Coasts.
I took my time on the way to Chicago. Even stopped at Hazleton, PA, hometown of Joe Maddon, the Cubs' manager. (Hadn't really intended that. I was looking for a place to stretch my legs and...) Madden is a small town boy.
The return trip turned into a relentless sprint. Hadn't planned it that way. I'd spent a night at the Super 8 in Brookville, PA on my way to Chicago. (Brookville is about halfway between NYC and Chicago. Here's an interesting webpage that calculates the halfway point between any two cities.) The prospect of another night in a Super 8 didn't appeal to me on the way home.
A lot of time to think during the 10 hours or so of driving in each direction.
I stopped in Detroit to visit a Facebook friend and take in a Tiger's baseball game. Saw a Cubs' game at Wrigley, too.
I'm ready now to face the surgeon's knife.
This was probably my last major cross country drive. I'm old. My eyes don't work so well any more. I suspect that the next trip home to Illinois will be for a funeral, and that doesn't leave time for dawdling.
Back in the glory days when Myrna was still here, we drove to Chicago to sit in with A.C. Reed, the great bluesman, at Kingston Mines. Here's his tune about pickup trucks:
That was so long ago.
27 years ago, I flew out to Portland to fetch Myrna. We drove her old Dodge Dart all the way to Woodstock. What an adventure! Every day with Myrna was an adventure.
The odometer read 103,464 when I pulled into my driveway. 2,044 miles total!
Chat boards and weblogs really took off in the late 1990s, although the tech for them had existed since the early 70s. Those early chat boards tended to be pretty gentle places inhabited by computer geeks. By the late 90s, the furious arguments and name calling that we now associate with chat boards and weblogs had become standard.
After Myrna died in 2004, this internet chatting and arguing became a source (a mostly horrifically negative source) of companionship. There seems to be no topic to chat and argue about on a day to day basis except for politics.
So, I speak here as a sinner. It is only since I retired that I've mostly let go of ferocious internet arguments with long standing enemies. Why did I let go?
First, I wanted peace of mind. Fixating on the next argument with one's internet enemy leaves very little mental space for doing anything else. You just can't let that bastard who insulted you on some doofus weblog win!
Second, the reasons for intense fights on the internet faded away with each successive year of retirement. Political fighting is really a turf battle over who gets what, and my status in that regard is not going to change for the remainder of my life.
One of my most ferocious long term enemies was a hothead named Ritmo, who still continues to say the most awful shit he can imagine on Althouse's weblog. He, I think, originated the tactic of announcing in his opening comments that he considers himself a brilliant intellectual, so that anybody who disagrees with him is obviously an idiot.
"Go read a book!" is one of his favorite jibes.
Ritmo's quickly shifts tactics once he's challenged and loses ground. Then he resorts to the great internet atomic bomb... "You're a bigot!"
I particularly enjoyed baiting Ritmo and setting him off in a frenzy. For all his self-announced intellectualism, he flew off the handle and started raving with very little prodding.
Watching him explode was amusing, but even that got boring and took up too much energy I could spend doing something else, like playing music.
Another long term enemy was a former editor of Time Magazine who, inexplicably, loathed everything about Christianity but had a weak spot for Islam. And, this guy grew up near Springfield, Illinois. The editor was another manic bigot hunter. Every disagreement with him was one sort of bigotry or another.
I kept arguing with this guy for a long time out of sheer amazement that somebody that crazy could occupy such a prominent job. But, that got old, too.
One of my siblings even volunteered to be a fierce internet enemy. Her life has been destroyed by drug arrests, failure of her children and failure to figure out how to make a decent living. So, she needs a scapegoat. She's tried out various members of the family. I've tried everything I can do to shut off access to any of my websites, Facebook account or weblog. She's resorted to using fake names so that she can get through to rant at me about how I'm responsible for the mess of her life.
I take the Sabbath off from internet discussion now, partly to observe God's day, and partly to stop the long running arguments and name calling. It works, too. Say nothing. Don't respond. Don't be baited.
Pay attention to what's really important in one's own life.
Got some unexpected news from my visits to the hospital. I had three CAT scans of my entire body. The radiologist who read my scans found something quite alarming. I'm not going to go into detail about that for a while, but the message was pretty clear. My days of assuming that I'll be in good health are coming to an end.
I'm not panicking, nor am I depressed. I thought that I had another 10 to 15 years of good health ahead of me. Could be that I have considerably less.
I retired for a number of reasons. One was to have the time to contemplate my mortality and my relationship to God. Another was just to have my time to myself to do as I pleased. Then, grandkids came along and my daughter needed all the help she could find, so I volunteered for the part time job of babysitting the kids.
I have no complaints about either the quality or length of my life. My life was a preposterous adventure, full of excitement, fascinating people and romance. Who could ask for more?
The eternal questions, however, remain unanswered. Who will remember me when I am gone? What will become of my consciousness? Will I really be reunited with my loved ones, like my father and Myrna, when I move onto the next life? Is there really a next life or will my death simply be the end of the story?
I don't have any answers.
The only part of this process with which I'm pretty unhappy is the delivery of my body to the healthcare and nursing home businesses. Loss of dignity and autonomy... well, that's going to happen. We all fear and loathe that, but there appears to be nothing to be done about that short of committing suicide or hitting upon the luck to die suddenly in one's own bed. I'm not going to leave my children or grandchildren with a legacy of suicide. They don't need that.
How much disability can I tolerate? That question is also coming into sight. I guess that the answer is that I'll have to tolerate disability to the extent that I suffer it. There appears to be no way to avoid it.
My children and grandchildren will be the only ones to remember that I was here. I'll leave them a little bit of money... not enough to make a serious dent in their lives, but enough to help a bit. They aren't going to need much help, or so it appears now. What will they remember about me?
One legacy that I will leave is a family tradition of higher education. I am the first member of my extended family to graduate from a four year college, the University of Illinois. My grand-nephew will be enrolling at Illinois next fall and he will be the fourth generation of my family to do so. My entire extended family is now quite well educated and prosperous, and I'm proud of that legacy.
I'd like for my artistic work to survive, but that appears unlikely. In the time I have remaining, I'll attempt to place all of that work in a permanent site on the internet.
But, nothing is permanent, is it?
Every time some new health problem afflicts me, I've tried to adjust my diet to ameliorate the symptoms. Rosacea forced me to stop eating spicy foods. I started taking supplemental calcium and magnesium tablets to deal with muscle spasms caused by sciatica. And, now... what do I do about kidney stones?
The calcium and magnesium supplements have to go, because those elements form stones. So, what in the hell do I do about the muscle spasms? I guess I intensify my daily yoga workout.
My drinking days are over, thanks to rosacea. My face blows up and turns red after two glasses of wine. The discomfort and the damage to my vanity aren't worth it. With my late wife, Myrna, long gone, I no longer have a partner in crime anyway. My girlfriend is, alas, a lifelong teetotaler. What kind of trouble can you get in without drinking?
So, I'm involuntarily virtuous, too.
I've been trying to lose weight by concentrating on a mostly protein diet, so I've been buying these big jars of assorted nuts at Sam's Club, along with increasing the severity and length of my workouts. Guess what? Nuts are building blocks for kidney stones!
I'm headed, it appears, toward a nursing home diet.
I love to drink really strong coffee all day long. Grind my own just before I make it. Coffee is a diuretic, that is coffee makes you dehydrated. Which, of course, is implicated in the formation of kidney stones. So, I'm cutting the amount of coffee I drink in half and drinking a glass of water every hour. That's a lot of peeing!
One emergency visit during which I nearly flatlined, followed by two surgeries to remove the offending kidney stone certainly made an impression on me. I understand a little better those guys I know who had a heart attack and have modified their diets (not to mention their entire lives) in an attempt to avoid a repeat. I hate eating at their houses because they cook without fat or butter or salt, and the food is bland and tasteless.
They want to live to see their children grow up and get married. I want to live to be in the lives of my grandchildren.
At what point does life became more of a pain in the ass than it's worth?
I guess I'll be finding out soon.
I'm having second thoughts about selling my 2003 Harley-Davidson Road King Classic. It's an incredibly cheap second vehicle. Insurance is about $200 a year. License is only $20. And the yearly maintenance ranges from a couple hundred to a thousand dollars. Below, a pic of the old girl.
I'll admit that the damned thing scares the hell out of me. If barreling down the highway at 70 mph on a 700 pound projectile doesn't scare you, what would?
At the age of 66, I can't afford to take a serious fall. That's for sure. Even rolling over at slow speed can lead to serious leg and ankle injuries... and an old man heals slowly.
Every time I mount my iron horse, I say a prayer and perform the sign of the cross.
I put out a couple of ads, on craigslist and on Facebook, and immediately received substantial offers for the bike, sight unseen. Well, people did see the above pic. She is beautiful. One potential buyer quite accurately said "She's a beast!"
Don't really ride that much. In an eight month season, I ride from 1,000 to 1,500 miles. I ride mostly in lonely, isolated regions of the Catskill Mountains on days when everybody else is at work. Retirement gives me that option.
I've thought of towing the Harley along on my potential 420 Road Trip. My 2011 Ford Ranger pickup, however, is probably not up to the task. I should have bought the larger motor so that I could tow the bike. If I do make the trip out to Colorado over the summer, it would probably make far more sense to rent a Harley so that I could ride for a day out in the Rockies. Cost... about $200!
I didn't respond to any of the offers for my bike. That probably reflects my true state of mind.
Myrna was the one who really wanted to buy the Harley. She hated the pussification and faggotization of men. She was pushing me to express my inner machismo and she wanted to find a social milieu free from the Woodstock/leftist feminist bullshit.
She died within of year after we bought the bike.
I attend, maybe, one major biker event per year. Not much for group riding. That's really for the Vietnam vets who like to pretend that they are back on patrol in the jungle. They love the hand signals and organizing riders. Once you've been to one biker rally, you've been to all of them. My yearly day trip to Lake George for Americade is enough.
The Holy Grail of bikers is, of course, the yearly pilgrimage to Sturgis. I doubt that I'll ever go. My days of partying down may be over. Without Myrna, I don't have a partner for the wild life. And, what would I be missing? I've done it all.
If I keep the Harley, I'll use it for quiet, solitary rides in the mountains. Took a long time, but I enjoy being alone now.
I am a grumpy old man. In retirement, I'm slowly pushing all annoying and dislikable people out of my life. Not much tolerance left. And, I wasn't exactly fond of people to begin with. In fact I tend to agree that Hell is other people!
Mosaic of Hell, by Coppo di Marcovaldo (c. 1225 – c. 1276)
I never understood people who could muster the enthusiasm to play office politics in any profession. All I wanted to do was to do my work and go home.
When I was working for a publishing company in the 90s and 00s, a young gay man became my co-worker. (I'll call him "Ray.") Ray was obsessed with becoming a manager, and he imagined himself to be in a duel to the death with me over the position. There were only two of us in the multimedia department, so I was unsure of why we needed a manager. The title, however, was incredibly important to this guy and he lobbied intensely to win it.
Ray never seemed to notice that I had no interest in managing anybody. As I said, all I wanted was to do the work and go home at the closing bell.
His campaign for the position morphed into a relentless barrage of gossip, tattling and scolding directed at me. Ray cornered just about anybody he could find to relate his tales of my deficiencies on the job. He listened to my phone calls with my wife, and duly reported the content (as best as he could discern it) to the entire staff.
This amused and perplexed me, because this was entirely a one way battle. I was making a shitload of money, doing work that I mostly enjoyed, and having a hell of a lot of fun away from the job with my late wife, Myrna.
My antagonistic co-worker was (as I said) gay, and his entire working and social life was organized around his gaydom. He'd learned in college that bitching about his perceived persecution earned him points. (His father was a doctor who owned a huge estate!) HR in that era was determined to promote Diversity, and my competitor was all they had... the white son of a rich doctor became the de facto nigger of our department because of his gaydom. There were no blacks in our field, and I doubt whether there are any to this day. So, HR made do with what it had.
The one way battle raged on for a year and a half. Co-workers would often stop me to relate the latest awful gossip about me that Ray had spread around the office. My worst sins were being hetero, and being outspokenly anti-PC. During this era, everybody was obliged to bleat on endlessly about how concerned they were about gays, how delightfully wonderful gay theater and sex clubs were, etc. I showed no interest in such things, and I made it clear that I didn't regard gaydom as a form of sainthood. This was probably my greatest sin, according to my ambitious co-worker.
When he discovered that I was Catholic, Ray was aghast and he asked me during a meeting with about a dozen people present whether I attended church every Sunday.
"Well," I answered, "yes I do."
In the multimedia biz in those days, being openly religious was the kiss of death. Ray was zeroing in for the kill. He had exposed me as unfashionable.
Myrna had ambitions for me that I didn't share. She wanted me to join the great battle to be manager of one person. I declined, which infuriated her. I tried to tell her that there was always another job waiting for me, but that did not placate her. She wanted me to do battle for the sake of my honor, but I declined.
Everything changed pretty dramatically after 9/11. My antagonist and I watched the attack from our office windows. He softened a bit in recognition of our shared experience of incredible brutal tragedy.
Then the financial collapse in the aftermath of 9/11 brought the great one way battle to a conclusion. Ray's campaign to be a manager finally succeeded. But, irony of ironies, the department was dissolved in a reorganization, I was transferred to another department, and he became a manager with no personnel. But, his business card read "Manager!"
His campaign of vilification and gossip had succeeded, however. My new manager hated me from the beginning and never wanted me on her staff. The company bought me out with a bucket of money to prevent me from filing a lawsuit, and maybe because my CEO genuinely liked me, and I moved on to freelancing and contracting. Leaving seemed like a disappointment at the time, but I later was glad to have left. Being on staff at a company never agreed with me. I preferred to be on my own.
Precisely because of the hell of office politics.
The best thing about retirement is that I can just about entirely push the hell that is other people out of my life. I focus on the work that I want to do now without regard to bosses, office politics or marketability.
Life is good.
Tough week of babysitting, so the house is a mess. The grandkids' constant demands exhaust me emotionally more than physically. I have a great time with them, but when I come home after a day with them I need a nap. So, at 1:30 a.m., I'm up and trying to get the house in acceptable shape for the girlfriend.
My girlfriend keeps her own house incredibly clean. I have none of the 12 Habits of People Who Always Have A Clean Home.
Ah, for the days of wine and roses, back when Myrna and I were both making the Big Bucks in Manhattan. We spent the week in the apartment in the city and weekends and holidays in the cabin in Woodstock, and we paid other people to do all the dirty and unpleasant work.
The doorman took the deliveries and dealt with the service people in our Manhattan residence. The Life of Riley.
I'm just an old widower living happily out at the end of a dirt road in the woods in the mountains. I've got somewhere between a year to three years to continue enjoying that before the house sells and I move into a new in-law unit with the kids so that I can be available full time as Mr. Mom to the grandchildren.
Life is no longer exciting and challenging, as it was back in the day, but it is pleasant and gratifying.
The twins won't be babies much longer. They are approaching their first birthday, and they are eager to stand up on their own and walk. Morning and afternoon play sessions now include stints on the walker for both. Next fall, my toddler girl will be headed off to pre-school, so my babysitting demands will diminish. I'll miss her, but she needs to socialize with other kids, and I'll be able to focus more on the development of the twins with her gone for half the day.
The house really does need a full spring cleaning. It will go up for sale in a couple of months, so I'm going to have to keep it presentable for showing. Time also to start throwing away three decades worth of accumulated junk in the attic, closets and garage. The next moving day should be my last, except for that fateful move to the nursing home.
Retirement has been grand. I've had to slowly acclimate to the role. For the first year and a half, I kept thinking that I would go back to work. I worried about money a lot, and I felt like I should be accomplishing something, instead of just enjoying myself.
Slowly, I found things to do that brought me much more satisfaction than getting up and going to a job. Despite the fact that I did some very interesting and challenging work in fields that are quite often considered glamorous, I had "jobs," not a "career." I was a supportive tech worker. Never really wanted to be a manager. Too much work and too much stress.
Instead of struggling to make more money, I caved into retirement, and cut my bills and expenses down to the bare minimum. What a relief! Once the house is sold, I will have no bills, lifetime security at a modest level and the most minimal expenses.
Playing classical music, drawing and painting for my own satisfaction have gradually filled up my time. Spending time outdoors gardening and bicycling is joyful. I spent so many years in gray high rise office buildings.
And, of course, the grandkids really filled in all the other spaces.
The bathroom is clean and it's time to move on to the kitchen. If I'm lucky, the girlfriend will leave me a week's worth of meals.
God gave me everything I need.
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