Just another day

Almost

My cat was meowing to get fed at 6am.

I grudgingly got out of bed, trod downstairs (cat racing ahead of me) and went into the kitchen where he was waiting next to his food bowl.

I fed him, then made a carafe of Kona coffee in my little 2/4 cup coffee maker.

I went into the living room and sat down in my couch/recliner, and opened up my iPad to get caught up with the news of the morning. Fauci takes the fifth, even with his presidential pardon. What an evil scumbag.

Lewis, the cat, soon joined me, sitting on my lap, fat dumb and happy.

After a while, Lewis hopped off, and hearing the coffee pot gurgling, I got up and fixed myself a cup (dash of half and half, no sugar). Went back upstairs, and sat down at my computer, and started writing this article.

But today is the day my fortune cookie that I opened last Friday came true. Oddly specific, right?

Today, Wednesday, is my very first day of retirement.

This is an opportunity I have long sought. I’m 66 years old, but wanted to retire at 62. Fate decided that wasn’t going to happen.

I grew up in a decidedly middle class home. When we were kids, maybe 8-9 years old, my dad started giving my brother and I an allowance of 10¢, which my brother and I would dash to a little mom and pop store a block away to blow it all on penny candy. The store had a really cool display case of an amazing variety of candies. You could fill up a small paper bag back in the 60s for that dime. It was the only candy we ever had, as our house never had any.

In exchange for that weekly dime, my brother and I cleaned the house. Dusting, vacuuming, cleaning bathrooms, and every night washing dishes. Occasionally washing out our galvanized steel garbage cans (no such thing as garbage bags back then). In the summers mowing the lawn and picking out the weeds by hand using a dandelion digging tool.

As a young teenager (13 or so) in the summers my brother and I were shipped off every morning to the fields in Puyallup to pick strawberries, blueberries, or cucumbers for slave wages. We were forced to turn over any money we made to my dad when we got home, as it was meant for our school clothes in the fall. We got to spend like $30 bucks of it, probably a 10th of what we earned off the back breaking work. Years later I asked my dad why he made us do that. Turns out, his father used to do that with his own kids (he had 17, good Catholics them Germans), sending them off to neighboring fields to work, making them turn over any money they made. Was supposed to make me appreciate the value of a dollar.

Not sure it worked.

As I got a little older, I got a paper route to earn cash, usually about $50 dollars a month of also back breaking work (ugh, Sundays!). I would get up early in the mornings, deliver the newspapers, which took about 90 minutes), come home, make myself breakfast, then go to school.

I also mowed lawns, using an old fashioned push mower instead of a gas powered one, earning 50¢ for an hours work.

In High School I got a job at Bates Vocational school in downtown Tacoma for the summer. It was through a program called “JOY”, a 70s youth jobs program. This was the first time I actually got a paycheck and some decent money. Minimum wage at the time was $3.75/hour, so it definitely was a step up from the fields.

I did these odd jobs up until I joined the military when I turned 18.

From that point, until today, I worked every day of my life.

I don’t know if my childhood was any different than most kids, at least in the 60s and 70s. I just know that absolutely nothing was ever handed to me, and that all my life I’ve worked hard.

And here, sitting at my desk, instead of working, I’m writing this little post.

I’ve always felt that my life has been roughly divided in to quarters. First quarter, my childhood until High School graduation, and joining the Air Force.

The next twenty years traveling all over the world supporting the military’s mission until I retired in 1998.

Then my employment at the University of Washington. Twenty eight years later, here I am sitting at my computer contemplating my final quarter. I hope at least it’s that long.

So yeah, that fortune cookie was a shock. Such a random event to speak so clearly of something startling true.

People have asked me, “So now what?”. I honestly am not sure. I do know that I can’t just sit on my recliner and waste away my hours in an offhand way. Luckily I have activities I can do in the evenings with my brother Masons. I can visit my daughter more freely. Consider traveling, like all retirees do.

But, no grandiose plans.

If you are retired or contemplating retirement, what plans did you make?

I’m not afraid, it just feels…anticlimactic.