Tuesday,
October 1, 2002
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the garden bird is threatened with takeover by the Asian jasmine
"Things are in the saddle, |
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too much to do My intention, when I get up, is to put on my grimy clothes from yesterday and hack bamboo again. But...it's raining. I do some e-mail and some other projects and decide to go to the club for a workout. I ask Forrest if I can do any errands. He says I can run over to the building we own and pick up the rent check. I do that. I have a pretty good workout. In fact, when I get warmed up my slight back ache disappears. (I attributed this upon rising to the yard work.) By the time I get home from the club and shower up, it's nearly 11:30. Where does the time go?
I spend some time pondering a trip my dad wants to take to Germany. Finally, I book him an airline ticket. I review options for trip insurance. I read e-mail. I sort some of the piles in my office. Which inevitably leads to looking up WEB pages, trying to figure out filing systems. FFP is going to a ribbon-cutting for a building that Ballet Austin purchased. I go along. I can do that because I'm retired. I meet a few people, talk to people I know. I'm wearing my ancient Banana Republic shirt with a sailing chart print. People comment on it.
Back home the maid is at work on the house. I put away the clean dishes and retreat to my office. The vacuum is bothersome. But I hate doing routine things like vacuuming or cleaning the shower, week after week.
Because I'm retired I can do little tasks for Forrest and even go downtown for a ribbon cutting on the new ballet building. I decide to try to find info that I have on Germany for my dad and Berlin for me. This entails a good deal of sorting of the growning bookcase in my office. Dust flies and I engage my ostrich feather duster. I even toss out some stuff like a manual for Windows for Workgroups.
Then it's evening. I decide to spend the evening getting the newspaper piles under control. Yeah, right. I read that self-esteem is overrated as a way to assuage society's ills. For sure. I don't get the paper problem whittled down much. Because I doze. And work some crosswords. And watch The Great Dictator and a documentary about it. Talk to someone from my old office who drops by to bring me a photograph of a bunch of the gang taken for my retirement. Llife is good. But I did think I'd catch up on newspapers when I retired.
Let me ask you this: do people really think I'm interested in their joblessness, their success with herbs and berries, their spouse's joblessness and an undiscovered painter they discovered who paints Lance Armstrong looking like a victim of a wasting disease? How can people with minimum success still support such egos? And, hey, it was FFP's work day. Was it rude to keep backing you to the door? Nah, I don't think so. I'm retired, my time is now even more precious to me. On the other hand, some people call or drop by or write e-mails that I really do care about. I try to be careful of their feelings lest my retirement, my leisure, my choices offend.
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JUST
TYPING