Sucking the Marrow Out of Retirement (05/21/2026)

It has been more than a month since I have written here and updated the world on what I have been up to. I am not planning to stop or disappear from the written word or the world, but these past five to six weeks have been absolutely jam-packed with excitement or activity.

It all started out with the delivery of our new travel trailer or camper: an airstream (model, World Traveler). We got a Ford F-150 the week before, so we had something to tow the airstream with. I drove the airstream home with a friend and backed up into our driveway in the dark. It was all successful. But we had applied for a loan to pay for all this, and that was the stressful part; all the hoops we had to jump through. We can afford all these purchases, but a loan made sense from an investment strategy.

Our neighborhood had a community wide yard sale three days after parking the trailer in our driveway. On a whim, I put a for sale sign on our camper van, and to our surprise we got an offer on the van that we could not refuse. Next was getting the van ready, emptying it. But we also needed to outfit our new rig. On top of that, my wife took off for California to visit the family. Followed by an exciting board meeting at our UU church (of which I am the president) where we decided to follow our principle and spend around $80,000 to put solar on the roof of our church. That weekend we had our annual cluster meeting where all the local UU churches come together. This was followed by a trip to the airport to pick up my wife. Subsequently, we needed to get ready for our shake-down cruise, our first (weekend) camping trip with the new camper, to figure things out. Mixed in to all of this is managing the church contracts for solar and another meeting or two. And here they tell you that life gets slower when you retire.

The word life, reminds me of a YouTube clip I watched where someone old stated something like “I don’t know how much longer I have to live, but I want to make the best of it: I am going to make sure that I use and enjoy the remaining time to the best of my ability.” This reminds me of the words Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden: “Suck out all the marrow of life,” or “when I came to die, discover I had not lived.” I have noticed that you become more aware of your mortality when you grow older. “How much time do I have left” has been going through my head. It hasn’t stopped us from buying the camper; currently I am planning a three-to-four-week trip through the Canadian maritime. I hope to do this early in September. But first an off-grid trip to The Peaks of Otter campground on the Blue Ridge parkway to celebrate our 49th anniversary. Interesting fact, Thomas Jefferson thought that the Peaks of Otter were the tallest mountains in the entire USA.

So yes, life sometimes gets in the way of writing my blog posts, which are a form of diary for myself as well as an update to the rest of the world. I promise I will keep doing this as long as I can; but maybe not that frequent.

The airstream arrived in our driveway!  We are still debating where to place it.

Camping in Westmoreland State Park.  We decided to cook our first meal outside, which we will probably do with more.  It was just very pleasant to be there with the dogs.  Westmoreland is one of our favorite parks.  We have stayed here at least three other times in the cabins.  This is our first time camping. 

Our first meal in the new camper.  We cooked steak, fried potatoes with onions and peas.

I am older than I have ever been (04/21/2024)

I am 70 years old, going on 71, the oldest I have ever been, at least when you do not believe in reincarnation. Otherwise in a previous life I could have been a turtle, elephant or some other creature that outlives humans. That is of course also assuming that these animals did not meet an untimely death as the result of poachers or worse some millionaire schmuck who killed me on safari.

Crap, I am not getting any younger, just older and older, but as the cliché goes, “it beats the alternative.” A lot of elderly like me joke about it, like “hey, I woke up this morning, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” or “I checked the obituaries this morning and I wasn't in it.” But seriously, I am at the point that the obituaries of celebrities are my favorite part in the newspaper. I want to see how old they were when they died and what the cause was of their demise.

Our church has what are called fellowship circles, where a group of six to eight folks get together and exchange their feeling over a specific topic. It is meant to be personal and a way of getting to know each other a bit better and create friendships. Since it is a Unitarian Church, the character of God is never brought up; we don’t pray or talk about religion, maybe with the exception of bashing it. Believers in God, Christ, Allah, Buddha, humanists and even atheists are all welcome in the Unitarian Church.

My circle is held in the afternoon and as a logical result it consists of retired folks, everyone is in their late sixties and seventies. The topic of the day this past week was spring and reawakening of nature after the winter torpor. Maybe not surprising, but when my wife asked me when I got home how the meeting was, my answer was that we discussed old age, mortality, and our anxiety about getting older. It was somewhat amazing how we got there, but it seems that I am not the only one struggling with the impending decline. Now here they say that human bonds, friendships and fellowship are the prerequisite to living longer. I hope that talking about death contributes to aging gracefully and gives us a few more extra quality years.

This week we also met a neighbor of ours at a party at one of our local breweries. We had not seen her in some time, and she let us know why. Her husband, a retired NASA scientist was diagnosed of coming down with Alzheimer. He is in his mid-70s and they have been at neurologists trying to find a way of slowing down the decline. Another (male) friend was there and he told me he has osteoporosis. He is 75 years-old, very skinny and a retired NASA scientist. I read somewhere that the 70-ies are supposed to be the “go-go” years, the 80-ies the “slow-go” years, while at your 90th birthday you enter the “no-go” decade. I better get going, I've got nine more years of fun ahead of me.

This old man and his wife!

Getting old sucks! (12/7/2023)

Getting old sucks! It really does! The past weeks have been menacing, period. Here I thought that retirement was easy street but forget it. I feel more stressed now than when I was working. Let me explain.

For one, multitasking is getting more difficult to do. Then there is making decisions, it seems that all the decisions I have made lately are rash decisions that come back to bite me in the behind; in other words, I seem to make the wrong ones or maybe costly ones. I feel more stressed out, compared to when I was working, and of late more anxious. Having read that anxiety may be an early warning sign of a pending heart attack does not help., it heightens the anxious feeling. Having joints that hurt more and more is another of my symptoms of getting old. Finally, there are the peeing issues at night when my full bladder wakes me up or first thing in the morning. It seems that I need to take the dogs for a walk (after coffee, the newspaper and breakfast) before the dam breaks. I can come up with a few more reasons why getting old sucks, we’ll find out by the end of this post (if I don’t croak from that heart attack first).

The details please! Except for the urinating issue, I have been detailed enough on that subject in the previous paragraph.

What happened in the past few weeks? It is mostly a combination of things. The news on things like the war in Israel; the state of our climate; the rating that our current president is getting even though he and his government are doing good work; we can go on. Reading the obituaries of famous people like Sandra Day O’Connor, Mel Brooks, or even Kissinger doesn’t help. These all contribute to my state-of-mind. Guess I am feeling my mortality. On top of that everything seems to go wrong in our home.

I mentioned that we had work done on our crawl space. We needed to get this done after we discovered that our toilet leaked all over our floor when we flushed. We had known that this would most likely happen since the builders of our home had made a huge structural mistake (in 1970). As part of this work, we had the entire powder room taken out and decided that we were going to put it back together by ourselves. This was going to be our first item of business when we returned from our trip in October. Deciding what materials to use and how to install everything took us some time, but I decided to work on it maybe an hour or two each day. Then we were able to borrow a wood splitter from friends to finally split the huge amount of wood that had been in our back yard since March. In other words, another week or so of no bathroom work. I think there is a saying about hell being paved over with good intentions.

In the meantime, we decided to throw a dinner party for friends and finally to make good on an item we sold at our church auction, a pizza dinner for four. We need to heat our pizza stone to 500 degrees (F) to successfully bake pizza in our stove. Lo and behold, here we notice that the glass in the interior of our stove had burst. Quick order a new glass so that this (YouTube) do-it-your-self guy can replace it. Once I got what I thought was the correct glass, we had problems. First the door did not come off the way YouTube told me it should. I found a work around, but then the glass did not fit, and we cannot find a replacement. Time to buy a new stove and postpone the party until the stove was delivered.

We decided that we wanted an induction stove to replace our gas stove. We had read that gas stoves fume off gases that are bad for the lungs, especially lungs of asthmatics. Well Donna is asthmatic and after some research we decided to check out LG. We found a nice one on sale at Lowes, or so we thought. After some good research we went for it; however, these rookie non-gas/glass top cooks bought an electric stove instead of an induction stove. We found that out after the installers had put it in and we briefly turned it on. We asked the installers to wait for us to figure it out, but they took off with our old stove, never to be seen again. Here we had a new stove we did not want. The weekend before we had bought some new steel pots and gave away some of our favorite aluminum pots and pans; aluminum does not work on induction. We spent almost the entire rest of the day wanting to return our new stove and looking for a replacement. Naturally we had already canceled the pizza dinner. We were now envisioning having to postpone the new date that we had agreed on since we expected to have to wait for the next stove.

It gets worse and worse, don’t worry. For a new stove to fit, I had to widen the opening in the countertop by maybe a half inch. I bought a diamond blade for my circular saw and went to work. I installed a guide for my saw, but halfway through it slipped and now my cut wasn’t even. Panic and disgust not only from me but also from the wife (“look what you have done to the resale value of our home” … honestly, I thought we were going to live here for at least another 10 years and by then the new owners would want a new countertop). We can and will fix that with spacers in between the top and the new stove. However, another week of powder room fix up lost. We finally received our induction stove, and we are happy for now.

For months I had planned a trip to the Winter Silhouette (bonsai) Show in Kannapolis, NC. Should I stay or should I go? I had booked a campsite in the Salisbury area. By Friday noon I got the assurance that it was OK for me to go on my solo trip even though Lowes was picking up the stove that we did not use as a return. I had a great time at the show on Saturday and around 5 pm I went to look for my spot.

Next issue. The camping was closed, gated up and what looked like, no way to get in. I had told them in my reservation that I would be late, especially since the website said that the office would close at 5. What to do, but to find a motel room. Finally, after checking in and dinner during a call with my wife she encouraged me to check my voice mail (about the stove removal). I had turned my phone off during the show. Well, there was also a message from the camping giving me the secret number to one of the padlocks on the gate (the gold one). Damn or better fuck, here I wasted another chunk of money on something I did not have to. I had my eyes on a bonsai that was for sale at the show, but it cost as much as my room and that Thai dinner I had (I was planning to make macaroni and cheese from a pack that night).

I went camping the next night and it was nice and relaxing. It brought down the anxiety level, but I just cannot look back at these days wanting to complain about old age. I know this is a long post, but as my wife tells me, I need to take time to relax and take it the way it comes (and express myself … sorry Madona).

Our busted stove

Enlarging the slide-in opening

Relaxed after a night of camping, ready to take on the world again

Best if show bonsai (American hornbeam)

Another favorite, a bald cypress

Too Old to Rock 'n' Roll: Too Young to Die (4/1/2022)

I am starting to wonder if I am getting obsessed by getting old. Or maybe I am getting obsessed by changing. Who knows? In my latest post I lament about getting older and more sentimental and I even quote one of the blogs I wrote entitled “The old man and the woods” which is purely autobiographic. I write how “Old age is not for sissies” and about mortality. I am sure that I can probably find more when I start combing through my posts.

Am I really obsessed by it or just more aware of it? I really don’t know. For one, I know that I am getting slower. When I walk what I consider a decent pace, I get passed by folks and I rarely pass people. Yes, my knees are not in the best of shape, but that is probably also age related. I am faster than my brother-in-law who is a year older than I am, but he had a hip replacement. I am faster than my 95 year old father-in-law, surprise. We always joke that it is essential that you only need to be faster than the grim reaper, well I have this feeling our top speeds are slowly getting closer.

The other reason probably is that there isn’t a day that I am not reminded about retiring. We either talk about it at home (most of the time it is the topic de-jour), or someone asks me about it (when are you retiring, or aren’t you retired yet?) or tells me about their retirement. It is tough to think you are at the end of your career and feel you are slowly being sidelined, put on a dead-end track. While they tell you that they still value your contribution when you volunteer, they seem to pass you over when it comes to career choices.

Getting old comes with something else, something my wife pointed out, to my chagrin. She told me the other day that in addition to getting old: “You are no debonair!” Man that bugged the hell out of me! Not that desperately want to be super suave and well-groomed, but inside I sometimes feel like I am somewhat sophisticated, just a little bit. Can old men still be suave without looking creepy?

In the old days, I needed to be well dressed, groomed and wear formal clothes and a tie to work. This is not required working for the state; I have put in my dues, and the worst thing that could happen is that they could fire me for not following the dress-code, early retirement at 68!

Actually, my preference right now would be to retire and buy a piece of land of 10 to 20 acres. I would love to restore it to its pre-historic or pre-settlement condition. However, I would like to have an acre of two somewhere on that property to have a homestead. Of course there would be walking trails and the homestead would need to be as sustainable as possible, hopefully off the grid. I would not look like a debonair but more like a (old) rugged (unshaven) woodsman. I could even be a nudist on that property (weather permitting). I would still like to be able to care for my bonsai, have my wine cellar and a good beer collection.

A man can dream can’t he? But for one, the funds are lacking. What will come from all this? I have no idea, all I know is that I am getting a haircut tomorrow to look a little more civilized (debonair like?).

By the way, today’s writing kind of reminds me of the tune by Jethro Tull: Too Old to Rock ‘n’ Roll: Too Young to Die. Part of the Lyrics go like this:

The old Rocker wore his hair too long,

wore his trouser cuffs too tight.

Unfashionable to the end --- drank his ale too light.

Death's head belt buckle --- yesterday's dreams ---

the transport caf' prophet of doom.

Ringing no change in his double-sewn seams

in his post-war-babe gloom.

….

So the old Rocker gets out his bike

to make a ton before he takes his leave.

Up on the A1 by Scotch Corner

just like it used to be.

And as he flies --- tears in his eyes ---

his wind-whipped words echo the final take

and he hits the trunk road doing around 120

with no room left to brake.

And he was too old to Rock'n'Roll but he was too young to die.

No, you're never too old to Rock'n'Roll if you're too young to die.

Don’t worry, I am far from being depressed. I love life and still have fun. But a man can think sometimes: “am I too old to rock ‘n’ roll?” Nah! I am definitely too young to die!

Walking along the abandoned road in the woods behind our home. I do not need to be worried about being passed by other walkers.  Not many folks use these trails and here I am "forest bathing." These are my meditative walk with Jasper, my hound; taking up the sights, sounds and smells of nature that sustain me.  

Welcome to my brain, or on mortality (7/1/2019)

I sometimes feel the pressure of having to write and keeping my readers somehow updated with my thinking and my feelings. The problem is that at times, I just sit there and have very little to say. But then I am reminded of that article or blog I read once that said, even if you do not have to say anything keep writing, because practice makes perfect; moreover, who knows, something profound may come pouring out (so there may be hope). I wrote about that or about writing in general before <here>, <here>, <here> and <here>.

I have been in a funk since all the things that happened in May. Yes, I am slowly digging myself out of the hole, but hitting another landmark birthday recently (on that same day, my birthday, my father-in-law had a heart attack, he is OK), and now having a horrible backache with the pain shooting down my legs and actually numbing my toes does not really help either. You heard the saying “two steps forward, one step back,” or is it “one step forward, two steps back?” I just hope it is the former, not the latter. Interesting fact here the “f” in former stands for first (now get your mind out of the gutter) and the “l” in latter stands for last of the two choices. I had to look this up and here I learned something today.

However, the pain in my back was so bad that I actually begged my wife to kill me. Thank goodness, we do not own a weapon that could easily accomplish such a task. Moreover, while I would be out of my misery, her misery would just begin after a mercy killing like that. But all the sudden I realize that here we have hit a number of issues in this short essay including euthanasia, writing, gun control, sickness, depression; I could really be off to the races with any of these subjects. I could even combine them. I guess that is why the advice was to just start writing and see where you end up.

Sitting at the doctor’s office with this wonderful back of mine, I was confronted with my mortality. There were only three other folks in the waiting room. On one side of me was a young woman, who I overheard, thanks to my newly acquired hearing aids (a sign of old age and lots of rock music), was telling the receptionist that she was born in 1997. A quick calculation told me that she must be 22 or 23, a fresh young green leaf (she did not look ill). Across from me was an older couple, much older than I am, the woman of the couple could hardly walk in, complaining that she was burning up and very sick. She looked like a leaf ready to fall off the tree. This past week I am not sure where I was in the season of leaf development.

One wonders so now and then: at what stage of life are you, and from what angle will the wind blow and how hard will it blow and can you hang on?

Also in the waiting room, I was threatened with a 2013 article in BizNews that had the following headline: “Retire at 55 and live to 80; work till you’re 65 and die at 67. Startling new data shows how work pounds older bodies.” I guess, I already (for the first time in all these years) admitted to being old in this post. Actually, I just turned 66 and if you are a regular reader, you know that I am not retired. Does this mean I have less than a year to live? I hope not. However, if these posts stop all the sudden, you know what happened to me: my time was up. 

Honestly, my mortality does not keep me awake at night. What keeps me up lately are my back and things I am working on at work, like course design. But, death is not one of them. I know it is going to end one of these days, and hopefully I have at least 20 more years. I would like to leave a legacy, with my teaching, my thinking, my writing, and maybe with some of my photographs (sorry, I am not wealthy). I know that I cannot take anything with me; moreover, when I am dead, I am dead. I do not believe in an afterlife, a heaven or a hell. I believe that we better create our heaven here on earth, and leave a livable heavenly earth behind for our children and grandchildren, something a lot of folks seem to forget. One thing is for sure, the earth's environment might be ruined if we don't do anything about it quickly. We cannot just sit, lean back any longer, take a wait and see attitude, wondering what will happen.

Reading the book "Braiding Sweetgrass" by Robin Wall Kimmerer, I came to an interesting passage comparing the Judeo-Christian "Eve" and the Native American "Skywoman." Both are seen as the founding mothers of their respective religions. While Skywoman was sent to plant it and tend to it, creating a wonderful environment for her descendants. Eve, on the other hand, was sent in exile from the Garden of Eden for eating from the forbidden fruit, the fruit of knowledge. I never looked at it that way, I always thought of it more like the attitude of Francis Bacon and man's dominance over the natural world. Instead, according to Kimmerer, for Judeo-Christians it is more like who gives a crap about this world, I want to go back to the Garden of Eden or maybe that's called heaven. Who cares if we fuck up this world, this is exile country, we don’t belong here. An interesting view on religion and environmentalism, isn’t it?

Oh well, here we are back to one of the subjects dear to my heart: protecting the world, the environment, for that 22 or 23 year old "green leaf" in the doctor's office, so she can enjoy it for another 60 years, and for her children after that. But at times it is so hard to see that we are making any headway (two steps back). Having a president who claims we have the best climate and best environment in the world, knowing all too well that the air quality has deteriorated over the past two years thanks to his policies and the EPA turning back environmental regulations.

All I can say my friends is: welcome to my brain (if you ever want to send me a hat to protect it: size extra-large) and my often non-linear way of thinking. This is how I sometimes connect the dots, especially when it is somewhat clouded by muscle relaxants, my mortality and the mortality of others around me.  If you wonder about the time you wasted on reading this blog, don't worry, the next one will be more on subject.

Here we go again, but now too close for comfort (6/3/2019)

Well, it happened again, another mass shooting. I have written about a few of them in the past, <here> and <here>. However, this time, it hit much closer to home. 

The killing did not only occur in the city of Virginia Beach, a town approximately 30 to 40 miles from where I live.  I used to work in that city and interact with the folks in the department in which it happened. If that is not bad enough, after working there I moved to the state and six (6) of the persons that were killed were taught by me, or at least attended workshops that I presented. When I saw their faces in photographs in the newspaper, I recognized them instantly. Then came their names and stories. 

Do you want to know what drove me completely crazy? The killer and I were colleagues at the same company 17 to 15 years ago. He contacted me in 2013 to provide two workshops for his city department, which I gladly did. In other words, it really hit much closer to home than some of the other killings in the past. I remember so well, it rained cats and dogs on one of those days that I did one of those workshops. 

Here I feel selfish for being distraught about what happened in Virginia Beach. I should not be demanding the attention. Those poor 12 victims, the wounded and their families should be getting it! I simply cannot help it, but it is different when it hits so close to home. I am numb, angry, depressed, sad and more. I mourn the event, but I am sure I’ll get over it. It has been a crazy May 2019. This month, two friends died way before their time and another 56-year-old friend was diagnosed with stage 4 inoperable colon cancer that had spread throughout her body. That was before May 31, 2019 a date that will be etched in history. 

I think that we can be angry when things like this happen in Las Vegas, Florida, California, Vermont or elsewhere. We can yell, scream for gun control in many of those cases as I have done in my blogs. However, it seems to me that this is not a case where we automatically need to yell “gun control.” While we do not have a complete reason for the current killing, I have my speculations, which I’ll keep private (absolutely none of them justify the killing and are probably all wrong).

The only thing I will try to tell every one of you who read this short blog post: 

1. Nothing, absolutely nothing is worth killing anyone over and getting yourself killed over,
2. If you have psychological issues, GET HELP! Again, it is not worth being killed over or going to jail for, and 
3. Getting killed or suicide is not even a solution; you are hurting the people you leave behind (my father and a close friend killed themselves, so I speak from experience) 

In the end, lets just be tolerant of and nice to each other.  Live and let live folks, that should be our mantra.