TGIFriday Random Thoughts

There comes a time to retire. Will I know it when it gets here?

I watched something someone sent me with Barbara Walters. I admire what the woman has accomplished in a time when it was so much more difficult for women. She made it easy for the Katie Couric’s and Diane Sawyer’s to be nightly anchors. Her experience as an anchor was horrible from the man she worked with and no one was there to defend her. But she now appears so out of touch and I think it’s time to pass the torch. I imagine everyone close to her knows but who would say that to the Queen?

I can no longer watch Larry King because he has been so off his rocker game for so long it’s painful to sit and watch. He doesn’t listen, he asks insipid questions, and he knows nothing about most of the people he interviews which is apparent from his questions.
I saw him interviewing someone and it was so obvious he knew nothing about the book the guest was hawking; nothing about this guest’s life and that I knew more. He asked a question and the person had just discussed this 3 minutes before! After the guest was asked again he tilted his head and gave such a puzzled look at Larry as though to say, “hello we were just talking about that!” But he was polite and answered it yet again. 
Larry is severely out of touch when has on guests that he doesn't know what they do or why they are  a cult figure.  Obviously never doing a prework before the show or else his memory is shot.  The last time I watched Larry King I ended up screaming at my TV, which makes me look off my rocker as well.

My father is retired....sort of.
He worked his whole life. He was a proud blue collar man. He was a master plumber who had his own business and did commercial and industrial plumbing.
(malls, businesses, nuclear power plants etc)
He never had hobbies. It was work or his family.
All of his good friends have passed away. He used to golf but it was never an obsession for him. Then after he hurt his shoulder golfing was even out of the question for him.
So when it came time to retire he went crazy. His wife went crazier.
He would suggest to his wife to, “hey lets have a drink” and it would only be 11am.
He wanted to lunch and have a few cocktails most of the day.
His wife thought he’d become a fat drunk so she strongly suggested he get some sort of part time job or she would kill him.
He became a greeter at Wal-Mart. He loves giving the kids stickers and he really seems to enjoy it. But now I think its more habit than enjoyment. He was so sick recently and he insisted he had to go to work. WHY? He is 82. He stands in front of a door that is open more than closed and it is only 12 degrees outside. He can’t understand that maybe it’s time to just sit back and read and enjoy what is left of your life. He can’t though. Sometimes I wonder if maybe Dad thinks that if he stops working, he’ll stop period.

I always think I can do nothing all day until I actually get a day of no obligations. I can’t do it.
I was reading Mary this morning talk about her retirement and I have a feeling I’d be a bit like that myself. Oh you will never find me at Wal-mart but I know I’ll have to do something. I just hope I will be able to retire, that is looking slim these days.

You know how when you wash your car it never fails to immediately rain?
It seems to be the same for my floors now that I have a dog. Poor Izzy is 1 yr old now will I ever get used to all these changes?  I washed the floors after work last night before the dog came back from doggy day care for the day. They looked fabulous until this morning. Her wet paws on dark wood floors leave beautiful marks all over a once clean floor. By the end of today it will look as though I never did them. Rain, mud and other fun stuff everywhere.

I know when I had a cleaning person I really appreciated her. I would tell her and Rick this all the time. I loved coming home from a few days on the road to a clean home. I didn’t have to spend the short time home doing housework. I could spend it doing laundry and time with hubby. I knew I was lucky to be able to afford this luxury and I thanked her ALL the time and thanked my lucky stars. Now that I no longer have that job and that money I have to clean my own home. I also know that sounds like privileged whining I get that so please don’t fire off a nasty gram to me. But I miss her.

I have come to realize I didn’t pay her enough. Oh I wouldn’t have told her that but God how I miss her. Really really miss her. How did she get my granite so shiny and not smudgy looking? I can’t seem to. How did she make that stove top shine like that? We have tried but it’s not the same. Once when I asked her about the countertop she laughed and said it was a secret. Smart woman. My tip to everyone is don’t get dark granite if you are anal retentive like me. I can see every finger print etc on the very dark color and I am always walking by and wiping it. It’s my quirk I know. Drives me crazy.

Hubby misses her too because he does toilets and tubs. He’s very good at them too.
We figured out long ago that since he loves a sparkling bathroom that is his job to make sparkle. Until she came into our lives that was how the chores were split.
And he likes it…well to a point, he too misses Olga. And he usually will yell that out loud to no one in particular while he is on his knees scrubbing the toilet. It always makes me laugh.

The easy stuff he sucks at. He won’t move anything to dust but dust around it.
Again that drives me nuts. You can see the dust UNDER the television and when I point that out to him he says, “no one can see that.”  
"Hello I just did and YES they can".
He says I’m too anal about it so after all these years we each have our own chores and that works out well for us. What he likes to do and does well I would so prefer not to do. So I guess I’ve got it made that at least he shares in the household chores as he should.
I know a lot of men don’t.

One thing he doesn’t do anymore is laundry and for 2 very good reasons.
When we first moved in together he did laundry. One day he went into the bedroom and picked up a sweater laying on the floor. I threw it on the chair but it fell off the arm. So he assumed it needed to be washed. (more like aired out due to being in a bar and it was smokey)  He washed and dried it. He came into the bedroom and held it up and began to apologize profusely. This lovely shade of kelly green lambs wool sweater that I had only worn twice was now the size of a Barbie Doll sweater. I have a sister who was a size 0 and it was too small for her.  My boobs alone are a large sweater!   He saw the look on my face and again began apologizing. I asked why he would wash and DRY a wool sweater.

"I do mine all the time and they are fine." he says

"Do you ever read labels?"

He looked down and said, "No not usually. I’ll buy you a new one really I will."

The 2nd reason I do all the laundry is the major reason.
When we lived in the house with the spooky basement that is where our washer and dryer was.  This basement freaked me out. I hated being down there and I always felt someone was there with me and yet the basement was empty.
It was a very very old house and  this basement just gave me the heebie jeebies.
One day I told him that if he were to do all the laundry while we lived there I would do the laundry for the rest of his life! We shook on it.

Now when he wants to throw a load in and I catch him I run and say, "Nope I made a deal" and I do it immediately. Once when I was sick I heard the washer going after I woke from a nap. I asked him why he was doing the laundry and he told me that he was very capable of doing laundry he wasn’t incapacitated. “I know that but I promised.” I whined.
He laughed and did it anyways. I was too sick to fight him. But other than a couple of times I kept my promise.

You can tell that was one helluva scary basement!