Retirement: A Full-Time Job

Link to Forbes Article

(Photo Details:  Pizza party awaiting guests)

Just a quick note before my in-laws arrive for a couple days--kicking things of tonight with pizza by the fire.  

I wanted to post a link to the Forbes article I was interviewed for, How Two Couples Fund Their Fun in Early Retirement.  

I enjoyed reading about the other couple, David and Sally.  Especially to get introduced to his great blog.  He pubishes many of the financial details I don't publish here.  So for those of you for whom that is valuable, check him out:  I Retired Young, What I do and What it Costs.  I will certainly add him to my blogroll when I get a free moment after entertaining guests.

David and Sally have a 12-month, 14-country vacation on their bucket list.  Katherine Love asked me what was on my bucket list and I came up empty.  I have no bucket list.  I don't know if that makes me boring.  But I feel like I've had so many great experiences in my life, I want for nothing.  I know there's more fun on the horizon, but there's nothing I can think of that I just have to do.  And as you know, I'm sick of traveling, so I am content, even excited, to read about a 14-country trip.  I just don't have the energy or desire to actually go on one!  I wonder, will I even hit 14 countries over the next 30 years?

Now I'm just sounding old.  

With that I will sign off.  I've gotta go clean the house now.

 

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Related Posts:

    What's on Your Bucket List?

    Happy Eating Pizza at Home

    Happiness is Cheaper in Retirement

 

Are Any of You Still Out There?

(Photo Details:  What have I been up to?  You're looking at her, my new baby.)

I don’t think I’ve ever gone this long without writing a blog post, nearly seven months!  To be honest, I have drafted a few blog posts about retirement that have bored me so much during the editing that I decided against posting them at all.  I also wrote a few political blog posts since the election that I knew I would never post, just to vent a little.  I spared you all on both counts.

Over the last several months, I have received emails from many of you, wondering what’s up-- wondering whether I will ever blog again.  And many of these emails have gone unanswered because a) writing what’s up could well have just been a blog post, and b) I wasn’t really sure whether I would blog again.  This much I’ve learned in retirement:  I have no idea what I’ll be interested in doing in the future.  I only know what I’m interested in right now.  And that has changed many times over the last nine years of my retirement--as I’m sure it will in the future too.

There is one question I am frequently asked in your emails, and it’s the one that has inspired me to check in with you all today.

Are you OK?

That’s just the sweetest question, and I really wanted you all to know I more than ok.  I’m healthy, happy, and still enjoying retirement more and more with each passing year.  In fact, I’d probably be posting more frequently if I were not ok—at least then there’d be some interesting challenge or thought-provoking issue to share.  

Are you going to close your blog?

The other frequent question I get is whether I have quit blogging all together.  I don’t think I will ever want to just ditch the blog entirely.  I like having the possibility of returning to it if I am inspired to write.  Because who knows?  But right now I am pretty consumed with making music.

As you know I started taking jazz piano lessons a few years ago.  Then last fall I enrolled in a jazz piano class at the local city college that met three times a week.  It was so great I took it again in the spring.   And I took private voice lessons on top of that.

Last month, I spent an intense week at jazz camp, followed by a summer school course in jazz improvisation.  And now I’m taking a jazz singing class with a friend.  I’ve been working on the goal of accompanying myself on the piano while singing.  It is so hard but SOOOO much fun.  I’m even making significant progress on the stage-fright thing!  As our friend Tom recently commented after hearing how well Doug plays the guitar now, “You really CAN teach an old dog new tricks!”

That’s the most amazing thing to me.  Oh, and that whole practice-makes-perfect thing.  (Well I will quibble with “perfect” part, but it certainly guarantees improvement!)

Have you been off traveling a lot?

We have a big biking trip planned later this summer to Italy, which I am looking forward to.  We also went to New York earlier this year, and have done a bunch of short trips, Portland, Seattle, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Scottsdale--and San Diego is coming up soon.  So now that I write that all down, I guess we have been traveling a lot over my seven-month blogcation!

Maybe that’s why I’m so sick of traveling right now.  While I always enjoy myself on our trips, I hate the hassle of flying (many of you can relate), and I miss both my kitty cat and my piano when I’m gone.  I’m threatening no trips in 2018.  I’d like to make 2018 the year of the staycation.  Avoid the hassles and also recoup the chunk of change I spent on a new piano a couple of weeks ago (pictured above—that is actually two years’ worth of vacation budget.  Maybe should stay put through 2019 too . . .)

What do you think about this last election?

I did answer that email privately.  You all know what I think—and many of you don’t want me to write what I think--I know.  I will admit, the effect this election has had on the stock market has been amazing to my retirement spreadsheet.  The increase has added five years of living expenses to my nest egg.  A huge consolation prize.  And I’ve been steadily rebalancing to keep my 60/40 stock to bond allocation in check.  Meaning that I have taken much of that gain off the table as the market has risen.  (This might be a good idea for a near-term blog post if my inspiration keeps up:  What my advice would be to those considering retiring right now, into a stock market at record highs.  I have plenty to say about that from personal experience!)

I miss you!

Well that’s of course my favorite email.  So thank you for those.  I miss you too, which of course is my fault.  If I actually posted more often, I wouldn’t have to miss you!

And finally, I apologize to those of you whose emails I have not returned over the last seven months.  I will try to catch up.  Also to those journalists’ requests for interviews that have gone unanswered.  My heart just wasn’t in it.  (Although, coming up for air last week, I did do an interview which I will post a link to when it becomes available.)

Thanks to those of you who are still out there!

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Related Posts:

            Postcard from Retirement

            Improvising Retirement

            Where am I Going to Find 10,000 Hours?

 

 

Postcard from Retirement

(Photo Details:  The relaxing part of our bike trip in Indonesia on the island of Lombok-May 2016)

It’s always hard to write a post after such a long absence.   Even when I’m not blogging, I think about blogging all the time.  Both for the writing part and for the interaction part--I always miss the interaction part the most.

But there are only so many hours in a day, even when you are retired!  So I just thought I’d send you a little postcard from retirement to tell you that I miss you, and let you know what I’ve been up to.  You already know that I haven’t been blogging (other than just thinking about blogging, which I guess doesn’t really count.)

Piano

As many of you know, learning to play jazz piano was something I had always pictured doing when I retired.  I didn’t get around to starting until five years into my retirement.  Better late than never, right?  But I’m deep into it now.  Besides taking weekly private lessons, I am now taking a jazz piano class at the community college.  We meet three days a week for an hour.  With practice and an hour commute each way to school, I’m as busy with this as I was when I had a part-time job a few years ago!

On the first day of class last week, our teacher told us about four different levels of learning piano.  Actually, this is probably true with any new skill: 

-First you don’t know how much you don’t know.  That’s the Unconscious Incompetence stage.

-Next you start to learn and you realize how much you don’t know.  That’s the Conscious Incompetence stage.

-I’m beginning to gain competence (finally after three years of lessons!)  So I’m in the Conscious Competence stage.  It takes a lot of concentration and practice for me to play right now.  It doesn’t really come naturally or easily, it’s still very hard work to play what I want to be playing.

-The final stage, she told us, is the Unconscious Competence stage.  Where you can access all your knowledge basically unconsciously--with ease.

Of course one student asked how long until we get to that stage, and our professor said 10,000 hours.  We all know about that 10,000 hours thing, right?

So I calculated that if I could practice 20 hours per week, I could get there in 10 years.  Even though I’m retired, I don’t think I can manage that, 10 hours a week is probably even ambitious.   At that rate, if I stick with it, I’ll be really great by the time I’m 72 years old.  Probably too old to start touring, but maybe some time during the next 20 years I’ll at least get to the point where I can play for people without shaking.  Currently there are only four people I can play for without shaking—the teacher I’ve had for the last three years, my husband, and my parents.  And I have to play in front of the entire piano class for the mid-term and final.  So it would be nice to at least make a little progress on that stage-fright thing.

Family Tree

A few months ago, after my Uncle Jim died, I spent a weekend reading through a bunch of personal letters and work memos that Jim had saved over the years.  The best stash was a box of letters he had written to his best friend over 40 years.  His friend’s daughter returned the letters to my uncle after her own father died.  I learned so much, in my uncle’s own words, about his life.   I only wish he were still here so I could ask him some questions!

After I did that, I decided to attack another box of memorabilia that my dad had given me awhile back.  This box was filled with letters, photos, and other items my mother had saved.  (For those of you who are new to my blog, my mother died when I was 16.) 

In this box I found some paperwork about her own adoption.  She was adopted as a baby, and when I was a teenager, she had thought about trying to find her birth mother.   Something that wasn’t as easy back then.   Ultimately, my mom was too afraid to contact her mother.  She wasn’t sure what kind of response she would get, and she didn’t think she could face it if it wasn’t a happy reunion. 

But with the internet, I found my biological grandmother in about 10 minutes.  Unfortunately, she died a couple of years before my mom did.  So I contacted her daughter--my mother’s half-sister.  In spite of the pretty great shock, my newfound aunt and cousins have been very welcoming and are interested in getting to know each other better.  This is the beginning of an exciting chapter for me!

Politics

And finally, I wouldn’t be totally honest if I didn’t tell you I waste an incredible amount of time each day following the presidential election.  Yes, time I could be blogging, or working on that 10,000 hours of piano practice.  Time that would be much more well spent in any number of ways.  But I can’t help myself.  It is the most interesting race I’ve ever watched.  I’ll leave it at that.

Thanks to all of you who have sent me so many nice emails lately!

Related Posts:

 How to Get Nothing Done in Retirement

How to be Lazy Without Even Trying

How Much Time is Too Much Time to Waste?

 

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The Unwelcome Visitor

(Nope, this one is welcome.  Just not ON my computer.)

OH MY GOSH. 

This morning the cat let me sleep in until 5am.  I was so happy.  I got up and did the usual routine, feed her, open the cat door, go to the bathroom, go back upstairs to bed.  About five minutes later we heard a commotion downstairs.  I said, "Doug can you please go down and see what that was?”  

No, argument, he got right up since I had just been up.  I just thought she knocked something over.  I heard it again as Doug went down, so I thought maybe her most unfavorite cat-brother made his way in the cat door and there was a kerfuffle.

Then I heard Doug making stomping running noises.  So I got up and yelled down the stairs, “What is it?” 

    "RACCOONS!!!"  He stomped some more.

    I yelled, “Don’t try to chase them out.  You’re supposed to lock yourself in a room with your pets until they find their way out.  They are MEAN!”  

So he grabbed the cat, who was perched up on the back of the couch just a few feet away from the raccoon.  The one raccoon that was in the house was in the corner behind the conga drums—just a couple feet from the cat door.  Doug carried Fia upstairs and we barricaded ourselves in the bedroom.  Doug said that there was a whole family of raccoons outside of the cat door, but the rest ran off when they saw and heard Doug charging.  

Over the next 15 or 20 minutes we never heard the raccoon rummaging through the kitchen, which is what I’ve heard they do.  So Fia and I stayed in the bedroom while Doug slowly ventured down.  He saw that the raccoon was not in the corner anymore.  So he looked around to make sure it wasn’t anywhere else:  under the downstairs guest bed, under the couches, in any other corners downstairs.  For good measure I checked the upstairs bedrooms in case he had ventured upstairs.  

The coast was clear and we all went downstairs and had breakfast at command central.  I read stories on the internet about raccoons in the house.

The plumber came at 8am to replace our water heater circulation pump.

I moved my internet reading to the back deck.  I was intending to start trying to write in the mornings, but no way could I write with all the left-over stress/excitement.  I read all the Donald Trump news, the Brexit news, and why you shouldn’t eat raw cookie dough.

After the plumber left, I told Doug, “I’m trying this new thing to just not worry about things that might happen in the future.  We will just not open the cat door in the mornings until we actually get up (when it’s light outside).  We’ll figure out what to do when we are gone for a night or two.  But probably, if we just keep the cat door closed all night (and morning), the raccoons will learn it’s usually closed.  Probably they won’t try on the one or two nights we happen to be away.  After all, we’ve had Fia for a year and a half now, and it’s never happened before.”  That type of conversation.  I was proud of myself for almost having let this whole thing go.  For moving on.

I came inside and unloaded the dishwasher.  Now it’s about 9:30.  Fia was in and out all morning.  While I was unloading, I noticed her pawing at the little cube chair under Doug’s desk in the kitchen.  Then she darted away.  I thought maybe she had brought a lizard in.  Although that seemed weird since she would usually meow and not dart away if she brought a lizard in.  So I pulled the chair out (which is really a little ottoman cube that I slip covered with nice fabric.)

There was that raccoon!!!!

Hiding behind the little ottoman I slipcovered.  All morning.  While we were eating breakfast at command central just two feet away.  While I was READING about raccoons on the internet.  While the plumber was here, while I was outside binging on news.  While I was unloading the dishwasher.  

    I jumped back and shrieked, “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh!”  

    Doug yelled down the stairs, “What? What? What?”

    “It’s still here, the raccoon is still here!”  He raced downstairs and I showed him.  The raccoon was actually kind of cute.  Scared, huddled in the corner under the desk.  He didn’t know what to do either.

So we opened the back door, closed off the doors to most of the front of the house, the dining room has no door so we put up a child gate there.  At one point we saw the little guy making his way to the open back door, but then he saw us and darted back to his corner. 

So I got on Doug’s iPhone, took the cat outside to the front of the house, and called the Humane Society to see if I could get advice on what to do.  I was not calm.  I was assured that I was first in the hold queue.  I was on hold for what seemed like forever.  But they know how important my call is.

After about 10 minutes, while I was still on hold, Doug came out front where I was keeping my eye on Fia so she would not go to the back yard and back into the house.  He said the raccoon was gone.  Doug saw him leave, and then followed him out to watch him disappear over the back fence.  

Just to be sure he didn’t have an accomplice, I checked every single room, what I think is every single possible hiding place.

I think we’re all clear.  I hope.

Related Posts:

 

The Dog Free Retirement (Or Becoming Cat Parents—Part One)

Meeting Fia

Keeping Fia

 

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Maybe Men Aren't Boring After All

(Photo Details:  The View from Round Pond Winery, Napa Valley)

As I mentioned last week, I’m planning on writing a series of posts comparing the early days of retirement to retirement now, eight years later.  You know—now that I’m a professional retiree.

First I thought I’d start with the issues that concerned me before I actually left the workforce. 

Then

My very first blog post was in October 2007.  I had already informed my employer several months earlier that I would be retiring.  I had agreed to stay in my post until my replacement was hired.  (If I had it to do over again, I would have put a specific end date to the task!)  I think by October we had identified my replacement, but he wouldn’t be starting for a several more months.  So by then my patience to just get to the finish line already was wearing thin.

My first post was Hate Your Job?  Join the Club!  My neighbor teased that hating my job put me in a very select group of people called EVERYONE.  Which made me wonder then, why “does almost EVERYONE, when I tell them that I'm retiring, ask me ‘but what will you DOOOOOO?’ “

After several months of fielding this question, I realized that it was mostly men who were perplexed.  The majority of women in my circle had no problem picturing what they would do with their time if they had a whole lot more of it to spend on anything they wanted.

So in a gross overgeneralization I concluded that men are boring. 

Well even back then, I had several male readers chime in, “I’m not bored, I love retirement!”   And at least one woman countered that she did find retirement boring.   Then of course over time I “met” several happily retired male bloggers.  (I’m looking at you Bob, Tom and Dave). 

Now

A couple of weeks ago I attended a cocktail-party--a reunion of tax accountants from my first job out of college.  Either none of my former coworkers are retired or none of the retired ones showed up.  In any case, I was the only one I knew there that was retired.

One former colleague admitted that he didn’t know what he would do if he was retired.  I apologized for making what was going to be a sexist remark, and then told him I think this is more of a problem for men.  He surprised me by agreeing with me.  He said that his whole identity is wrapped up in his work.   It wasn’t a question of being bored (or being boring as I had put it years ago), it was a question of finding a new identity.

And I admit, that is a tricky one for men and women alike.  It’s why cocktail parties are so hard when you first retire.  You feel self-conscious that the things you are occupying your time with in retirement aren’t interesting enough to others.  You feel like your old work identity was more interesting.  You feel like others are judging you now.

Boredom is easy to combat in retirement—it’s not hard to find stuff to do.  But finding stuff to do that makes you feel good about yourself--that takes more time.  Once you discover the things that are meaningful to you, the things that you are passionate about, the things that make the time just fly by--that’s when you’ve found your new identity.

And here’s how to know when you have found it.  When you’re at a cocktail party babbling about blogging and describing the joys and challenges of learning to play jazz piano, and you don’t even care that your former colleagues’ eyes are glazing over.

Related Posts:

For another blogger’s take on the retirement identity crisis, here is Ted Carr’s post:  My Identity Crisis.  (Check out his blog and podcasts at Retirement Journeys)

Yes There is a Difference Between Men and Women

I Work, Therefore I Am

Cocktail Party Chatter

 

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Where Am I going to Find Ten Thousand Hours?

(Photo Details:  Cupcakes at my Uncle Jim's 80th birthday.  Hopefully I'll be playing jazz piano at mine.)

Ok, I really am going to kick off the new series of then-and-now posts next, but I just had to share a current-day challenge of retirement while I’m experiencing it. 

Last night, we went to a jazz concert at the wonderful new SF Jazz Center.  We saw Hiromi.  She is the most amazing jazz pianist.  This is the fourth time I’ve seen her and I will never tire of seeing her live.   I can’t think of any other word but amazing.  How can I describe it?  The whole concert I felt like I was going to explode.   Because that’s exactly what she’s doing—exploding.  I watched her hands dance across the keyboard, actually her whole body dances—she can’t even stay in her seat.  There’s just too much energy coming out!

Before the concert, we attended a reception showcasing SF Jazz’s education programs for kids in public schools.  The woman that runs the education program teaches jazz piano so I barraged her with questions about how they teach kids to improvise.  She knew what I was really asking--it wasn’t really about the kids.  It was about me.  How will I ever get good?  And of course she gave me the answer that I already knew:  10,000 hours.  Practice.

So while I was watching Hiromi, I was doing a little math.  If I practice one hour a day every single day, that’s 365 hours in a year.  At that rate it would take me 27 years to get really great.  Which is kind of what I was thinking when I took up piano in the first place.   My dad took up trumpet a few years ago, which is what inspired me to get started now.  My theory was that by the time I’m his age, I’ll be awesome.  He’s 78, so that is precisely how the math would work out for me. 

But while I was watching Hiromi, I kept thinking, I don’t want it to take 27 years!  So then I started recalculating—how could I do it in 10 years?  Ten thousand hours divided by 10 years—that’s almost three hours a day of practice.  Sounds fine in theory, right?  I am retired after all. 

But then add in time for sleeping, eating, exercising, seeing friends, cleaning the house, gardening, volunteering—oh yeah, and writing blog posts, never mind a book—and you see my conundrum.  Well I'm not sure those of you that are not yet retired see it.  But back me up here retirees--do you actually have three hours a day to spare?

Related Posts:

            Using Retirement to Get Really Good at Something

            Improvising Retirement

            Believing in the Dream

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Keeping Fia

 

Ok, so here’s the part of the Fia story that makes me sad.

After we returned home from Las Vegas, Fia’s mommy emailed me to ask if Fia was with us—Fia hadn’t been home the whole time we were gone!  She was worried about Fia and now I was worried too.  I told her we had been out of town; I just assumed she would go back home if we weren’t here. 

Now I know many of us animal lovers ascribe human emotions to our pets, and perhaps this never entered her little cat brain.  But I was not only worried about where she had slept and eaten that week, I was also worried that she felt like I had abandoned her.  I was worried that she was hungry, scared, and worst of all, sad--and maybe even mad at me.  But mostly I was just sad to think she might have been sad.  I don’t know, can cats be sad?

That night meowing woke me up around midnight—there she was at the front door.   How many nights had she done that while we were gone?  That thought made me even more sad!   But at least she was here and safe, so I was happy and sad at the same time.  The next morning I let her parents know she was safe and sound. 

Over the following weeks, we worked together on a kitty intervention.   When she was here for a visit once, my neighbor came over with her 9-year old daughter, who scooped Fia up to carry her back home.  She cradeled Fia like a baby, rubbing her belly as Fia purred and relaxed into her arms.  They both looked so happy in their reunion.  I loved seeing how much Fia was loved.

And the intervention worked for a few days, but then Fia wandered back over.

So we tried some tough love—we closed the curtains and pretended we weren’t home.  Her family made an extra effort to call her in at night.  But when we opened up the curtains again, she resumed her visits, spending more and more time back at our house.

The final straw was after we stayed in San Francisco for a few nights.  When we returned home, there was Fia, waiting at our front door.  She darted in when we opened the door.  She seemed shaken.   When she started licking her tail, I saw a big patch of fur missing and a fresh scab.  Someone had taken a bite of Fia’s tail!

So the next morning, I made Doug go up to the attic, pull out Murphy’s old dog door panel for our sliding glass door and re-install it.  There was no way I was going to participate in the tough love anymore.  I couldn’t handle it.  I needed to know that Fia would always have a safe place to go, even when we were not home. 

Over the next couple of weeks, Fia brought in two birds and one mouse (both dead by the time I found them).  She also brought in 3 live but traumatized lizards.  She came in and out through her new door all day long, and spent every night cuddled up with me on the bed. 

Now my sadness was replaced with guilt—I had officially stolen the neighbors’ cat.  I had to ‘fess up. 

When I told my neighbor that it was clear from all of Fia’s dead and live offerings that she resided on our side of the fence now, my neighbor told me that as much as they hated to lose her, she understood.  She told me that Fia and her cat-brother Thompson haven’t been getting along, and she thought that’s why Fia was spending all her time at our house.  She didn’t want to lock her up and make her stay if she wasn’t comfortable.

I don’t know what happened between Fia and Thompson, or whether he’s the one that took a bite out of Fia’s tail.  But after that conversation, I witnessed their friction first-hand.  Whenever Thompson came into our yard, Fia would arch her body and growl or hiss from the safety of our family room.   Whenever I see Fia get her dander up, I look outside, and there he is.  I always walk outside, just to show him I’m there, and he always scampers off.  And Fia knows she is safe.  And we’re both happy.

Related Posts:

Picturing Retirement:  Meet Fia

The Dog Free Retirement (or Becoming Cat Parents)

Meeting Fia

 

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Meeting Fia

Our back yard seems to attract a lot of cats.  They lounge around in the sun mostly, but we had seen many of the kitties drinking the sprinkler water that pools along the bottom edge of our barbeque cover.  So I started leaving a bowl of water out for our feline visitors.

Always, the cats ran if I went out to try and pet them.  Not Fia.  She came right up to our sliding glass door to introduce herself.  And when I opened the door, she didn’t flee—she came right in and made herself comfortable on our breakfast table next to our computers.

We became accustomed to her visits, she spent most of her day here with us when we were home.  After a week or two of visits, I started to worry that she might be a stray, so I got a little bag of kitty kibble to see if she might be hungry.  She gobbled up my offering. 

When she came over after that, she would walk right over to the cabinet where we kept the cat food, and stare at it until I got the hint. 

It was at that point that I decided I had better see if any of my neighbors were missing a cat.  I sent an email out to all my neighbors with a photo and asked if anyone knew who this cat belonged to.  I guess I should have completed this step before I started feeding her.    

Right away, the neighbors who live behind us sent an email.  “Oh that’s our Fia!  I guess she’s cheating on us!”  She wasn’t technically missing because she would go home every evening when they got home from work and eat again--breakfast and dinner at their house, and then a little snack during the day at ours.   At 9:00 or so each night they would bring all three of their cats inside to sleep.

So I stopped feeding Fia but she still came to visit most days while her family was at work and school.  We had a good thing going, all the benefits of kitty companionship and none of the responsibility!

One year later

Then about a year later, we arrived home near midnight after a delayed flight home from our month-long trip to New York City.  And there was Miss Fia at our back door.

I knew she was out way past her curfew, so I let her sleep over to stay safe that night.  After that, she came for a sleepover every few weeks.  I guess she figured if she was out too late to get in at her house, she had a back-up plan.

Then came Rainmageddon.   While we haven’t had nearly enough rain here in California, we did have a couple of big storms with rain that didn’t stop for two or three days.  A sopping wet Fia showed up on one of these mornings and stayed for 48 hours straight.  I tried many times to get her to go outside to go to the bathroom, but that girl can sure hold it!  Each time I put her down outside, she’d beeline back to the house faster than I could get there myself.  I even tried to escort her out under an umbrella.  But she wouldn't chance it.  She really did not want to be stuck outside!

I let her parents know she was waiting out the storm here with us so they wouldn’t worry about her.  When the sun came back out, she left, and we went to Las Vegas for a few days.

The next part of the story makes me kind of sad, so I think I will tell you that tomorrow.

Related Posts:

Picturing Retirement:  Meet Fia

The Dog Free Retirement (or Becoming Cat Parents)

 

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The Dog-Free Retirement (or Becoming Cat Parents--Part One)

After our dog Murphy died, we decided to take a break from pets for a while.  Once I retired, we relished the ability to travel spontaneously--and for long stretches of time--without worrying about a canine companion back home.  We figured it would be a very long time until we got another dog.

I admit, our decision to wait was also impacted by the fact that we were a little bit scarred from the experience of being Beagle parents.  Beagles are not for beginners.

Things that Murphy ate:

Fruit (including pits) dropped from our plum tree,

My dad’s $300 glasses,

L’Oreal Spice #860 lipstick,

The molding off the stairs of our first San Francisco home—a circa 1898 Victorian,

Seven chocolate Power Bars including the foil wrappers,

Unidentified items of trash on our walks,

The side of a wicker trunk.

Things that Murphy ate that resulted in trips to the emergency vet:

The remaining contents of a small container of plumber’s putty,

While my parents were staying with her on the last night of our honeymoon:  a bag of dried black beans, a box of cornstarch, and what was left of a jar of peanut butter (yes she unscrewed the top).

­Evidence of her existence even now, 10 years later:

Claw marks on the dining room table from her scurrying off as we caught her cleaning up the remnants of a dinner party while we were bidding goodnight to our guests,

Previously mentioned psychological scars.

Things we can do now that she’s gone:

Put appetizers on the coffee table,

Own trash cans without secure lids,

Buy a new couch,

Leave the front door open,

Sleep until whenever without getting up at 5am to feed her,

Travel without worrying about who will take care of her and what items of theirs she will destroy while they are staying with her,

Eat in peace.

Things I miss about her:

The way she snuggled with me in the bed each night--first sleeping under the covers between my feet, and later coming up for air--our three heads lined up poking out of the covers,

The way she greeted me with excitement each time I came home,

The comfort I felt just by sitting in the same room with her.

Even so, I probably wouldn’t have another pet yet—in fact I never even considered a cat—if Fia hadn’t wandered into our lives and adopted us.

I know I’m so delinquent on this story.  I promise details tomorrow.

 

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Picturing Retirement: Meet Fia

Photo Friday:  I know I said wouldn't get another dog for a long time.  At least until our traveling days wound down.  I'm a dog person, I never even considered getting a cat.  But here we are, with a kitty now.  I wouldn't say I got a cat so much as I'd say the cat decided she wanted to live here, and who am I do deny her what she wants?

Next week I'll share the story of how Fia made her way into our home and our hearts.

Related Posts:

    Picturing Retirement:  Coco-sitting

    Picturing Retirement:  Quality Time

    Picturing Retirement:  Enjoying Other People's Pets

 

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