Cocoposts

Thelma's Truths

When I read the Albuquerque Journal I find Thelma Domenici's manners column is often what I enjoy most.  Hers* is the only writing that makes sense and rings true.  Her tone is clear-headed and her message is smooth.  Well, as smooth as possible in telling someone not to pick their teeth.   

She answers the larger-than-tooth-picking question this week:  Why do some people lose their manners once they retire?  

Retirement isn't an excuse for losing your manners. All of the social behaviors you learn during your lifetime should become a part of you and who you are to the core. You shouldn't change dramatically from your true self upon retirement.

I'm pretty sure she wrote this one for me.  In fact, I'm her don't example in many instances.  Like, I get invited indirectly (a clear don't) to her Christmas party where she serves the best little peppermint cocktails.  You have to have about six before you get a decent buzz. 

That some of us picked our teeth at the table before we retired doesn't diminish her larger point. 

* Yes I do need an editor to remind me that Hers should never have an apostrophe.  How embarrassing.

Random Motor

Between the frustratingly few showings of my for-sale home, for which I scurry to tidy and exit for the coco and goat movies,  I inhabit my house thoroughly - reading and packing and reading AND READING.  Shh!  

Among the other interruptions are the barking dogs, covered previously, and the sound of traffic.  The engine noise is a background constant punctuated by astonishing roars and rackets.  It ebbs and flows with the rush hours but never goes away entirely.

Mighty mistake to leave the house in the car in this mood.  I drove the speed limit to Santa Fe and nearly died risked getting rear-ended in the right lane.  Remember when it was 55 mph?  Now 75 is not fast enough.   No soft driving.  No calm traffic.  No hypermiling here.  People I wouldn't trust crossing a parking lot are hurdling by me at 95 mph.  I've an imaginary ray gun mounted on the dash to turn them into rickshaws.

The ability to accelerate alone does not constitute a driving skill.  Oh, and if I can hear a motor over a half mile away it is too damn loud.  :wags finger: 

Men Who Stare at Mules

The "goat movie," as people buying tickets referred to it, was great.  Goats, Clooney and it was filmed in New Mexico.  What is not to love?  White Sands National Monument is a Middle Eastern desert again.  Just like in the 80's Sean Connery movie bomb, Wrong is Right.

In downsizing and packing there is a growing pile of must read books - books that can not possibly be packed before they're read.  These join the many borrowed books which must be read before they get returned.  Once this system was established it seemed imperative to apply it retroactively and begin unpacking already packed boxes.  Luckily, I don't have time.  I'm too busy reading and watching goat movies.

Reading versus Blogging

It's hard to do both.  A good book can eclipse everything - bathing, cooking, blogging. The most recent addition to my retirement reading list* is The Death of a President by William Manchester.  I was intrigued about it after reading the October 2009 Vanity Fair story, A Clash of Camelots.  It describes the controversy over the publication of the book and how Jackie (or Mrs. Kennedy, as Manchester refers to her throughout the book) attempted to get it stopped. 

It is now out of print.  So I paid $45 on ebay for a first edition without a dust cover.  It was filthy - the book itself, not the content. It looked like it had been taken on a picnic and used as a cheese plate.  But I still couldn't put it down.  If it wasn't so dirty and hadn't cost so much, I would have taken it everywhere and eaten on it too.  I nearly didn't go anywhere until I finished it. 

Curiously, two sections of the 40 year old book appear to be from a separate printing( P173-266 and 365-394).  They are discolored - or rather, they remain ivory tone while the majority of the book's pages have yellowed.  This might not be suspect in any other book but in light of the fight over this one it may indicate that changes were made to books that had already been printed, if not already bound.  Hard to know what the excluded material contained, although VF suggests it may be as mundane as how much Jackie smoked and how Caroline was told her father had died. 

* The List is growing precipitously.  Soon I won't keep track.  Right now I'm enjoying How to Be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson.  It's keeping me busy. 

Live Blogging Retirement

There are killer cocktails made with Belle de Brillet pear cognac and Hanger One vodka infused with raspberries.  Such a cocktail can make TV a little more bearable in the time it takes to finish one. 

I persist in the illusion that sitting down to watch television is relaxing and entertaining.  But sadly, no.   I watched Oprah yesterday.  It was a little early for cocktail hour but the drink helped.   Mackenzie Phillips was discussing incest with her father, the late Jon Phillips of the Mamas and Papas.  She has written a book.  I could have gone the rest of my life not hearing about that but I would have seen it in Salon anyway.

Then there is this commercial for Marshalls and TJ Max played over and over.   It supposes an "intervention" on a woman who spends too much money on designer clothes.   Her friends jump her after a shopping spree telling her you can be beautiful and smart!"  Nice.  I suppose this makes me a freaking genius for shopping Goodwill.

UPDATE:  I know it isn't really live-blogging unless it is going on now.  Right now I'm going to get my trash bin out of the street and walk Big Dog.  No, I'm not making cocktails right now. But I may very well go thrift shopping soon. 

Crazy Red Dog

I've noticed that all the things I needed to be doing in off-hours before retirement have expanded to fill that 8 to 5 space.  And I'm still not doing them. 

I've also noticed many other, even less profound, things.  Like how some dogs bark a whole fucking lot.  All day.  Every day.  I never noticed this before because I was, like their owners, at work.

Retirement Rocks

Interesting info-rich New York Times piece about retirement and the wounding realization of so many Americans who have trusted their 401k accounts and will have to delay retirement.  (I have a public employee's retirement account, but I'm not gloating.) 

What is most interesting is the strong Reaganian bias against government reflected in the last line - the closing comment.  It has become commonplace to speak against all things government, in this case the entire concept of public retirement accounts. 

The diverted life plans of families like the Petruccis are an unintended economic consequence of the nation’s sprawling 401(k) plans. These private retirement savings vehicles, designed 30 years ago as a supplement to traditional corporate pensions, have somewhat haphazardly replaced the old system, like an innocuous weed that somehow overgrew the garden.

As is apparent in this downturn, the economic effects of such an ad hoc system can be perverse. In boom times, when companies need more workers, the most experienced employees may decide to retire, taking comfort in their bloated 401(k)s, whose values typically fluctuate with the financial markets.  (...)

Even conscientious investors — like the Petruccis, who keep an updated spreadsheet of their investments — lose money.  “We thought we were conservative,” said Mr. Petrucci, noting that he and his wife lost about 35 percent of their life savings in the crisis and have made only a little of it back.

Still, the American preference for self-reliance, instead of more socialized financial protections, remains strong, even among those who lost big.  “I don’t want to depend on anybody else in my retirement,” Mr. Petrucci said. “Not family members, not our children, and certainly not the government, for that matter.”

Well, for that matter, my government-run public employee retirement account comparatively rocks.  But again, I'm not gloating. 

Packing Stress

Oh yeah, retirement is relaxing.  So far.  Not.  With no certainty about whether or not I'm actually going to move, I'm packing.   The house is for sale but my expectations are modest.  Not only that, I'm pretty ambivalent about going anywhere.  But I'm gradually emptying out rooms and depersonalizing the space as the real estate professionals tell you to do.  My house no longer looks like a Museum of Me. 

Whitelodge Retreat

Re-familiarizing myself with old music,  books, pens and pencils for awhile.  

Walking in Circles 25 Years

New York Times reports that people tend to walk in circles when lost.  This is apt metaphor for so many things.  National news coverage of any complicated legislative issue, for example.   But other things too.

Scientists in Germany reported Thursday that this often-described sense of lost-hiker déjà vu, of having inadvertently backtracked while wandering in the woods, is real. “People really do walk in circles,” said Jan L. Souman of the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen.

This is my last day of local government work after 25 years.  What I have accomplished in that time amounts to walking in circles.  But I'm not bitter.  I prefer to think of it as a contemplative labyrinth - an art garden in which I did a lot of planting and exploration. 

Bureaucracies go in lost circles where there is no vision, no plan or sense of direction.  They can fall right over a cliff in the dark.  I think I caused some organizational inner-ear imbalance and nausea by trying to push all the time - yelling about plans and maps and "having visions."  I'm proud of that at least. 

The boss said I could go home after lunch.  They're eager to start moving into my beautiful office.  I'll have to remind them my cake isn't until 3:00.  I'll just wander around a few more hours and plan my next walk.  

Image from Soupablog