Spa Weekend

So, right now the timing of my retirement may not be entirely up to me. Projects are being pushed out, etc., and I'm basically just hanging out in wait and see mode. 

I'm ready-ish either way. I was hoping to have a part time position (my boss even floated the idea of keeping me on part time if I wanted to, but it's not her call) lined up, the house my daughter rents being sold, etc., but I'll start collecting Social Security in March regardless. 

 I'm still hoping for a part time gig at Disney, but that's a super popular thing for retirees in this area, so I'm basically stalking opportunities. I wouldn't mind a six month break between retirement and starting a new thing.

Did you know that after you hit your full SS age there's no cap on earnings?  A coworker friend, who is older than I am and at full Social Security age, did not!  I said I'd started the ball rolling on it and she immediately asked how much I could earn, and when I explained how it works she didn't know. From the Social Security website:

When you reach full retirement age:

• Beginning with the month you reach that age, your earnings no longer reduce your benefits, no matter how much you earn.
  

 

So my good deed in December was to clue her in about that, and now she's getting that ball rolling and planning to retire this year too. 😂

Anyway, because I'm just waiting to see which way things shake out and my current workload is very light, I decided yesterday that I'm taking tomorrow off, and I'm doing a 4 day unplugging and spa weekend. Monday is MLK day and a company holiday, and I'm ignoring that other thing happening almost entirely. I am hoping that the predicted bitterly cold weather happens. 

I will catch up on movies I still haven't seen, knit on something for myself, do "spa foods" like fruit and tea and fancy fizzy water (on BOGO at Publix this week - like they know me!) and just...unplug. 

The only items on my to-do list for the next 4 days are to facilitate just totally fucking off.

Onward into the Insanity.

 Welcome to 2025! Are we ready to invade Greenland? No? How about Panama?

 Despite my first comment above, I will not be blogging much about politics. There are many people who do it far better than I ever could, and my blood pressure doesn't need elevation. If you're not already following the brilliant Heather Cox Richardson, go sign up for her newsletter now. Newsletters and The Daily Beans podcast are enough to keep me in the loop about what's going on without stewing in it. I swore off corporate media after the election and haven't missed it a bit.

I'm starting the year a bit late because shortly after Christmas I came down with my annual holiday virus of some sort. Not the norovirus, but its wimpier cousin. (I've had the norovirus. This was not that.) I almost always sick around the holidays, I have no idea why. I don't have a whirlwind of social obligations that would expose me to tons of people and germs, but it's become a thing: some time between Thanksgiving and the new year, I will get some sort of crud. Sometimes it's a respiratory crud, sometimes it's this version, but yeah.

So, anyway, I was sick for the first week of the year. I listened to audiobooks,  drank gallons of tea, and couldn't get too far from the bathroom. I lost 4 pounds, so it wasn't entirely bad.

 It did give me time to think about the future, and make some basic plans.  And to realize that a random piece of advice online (I'd attribute if I could) was very wise. The essence is to go small. We can't fix what's coming by losing our minds about it, we will do what we can when we can. What we can do is focus on our little world and fix what we can, make our lives as good as possible. 

I'm planning to retire this year. I can't afford to retire in any sort of fancy way, but I did do a few smart things in the last 20 years and my monthly nut is actually doable. Not in style, but livable. And I don't really want to totally retire, I just want a part time face to face job with a fun element. I know jobs are jobs, none are a party, but I want my purpose to be making fun for people.

I really want a part time job at Disney, and I'm focused on that as a goal.  I've spent the last nearly FIVE!!! years working from home. We were sent home in March 2020, for "a few weeks" which stretched to months, then I got a job on a remote team, and yeah, working from home isn't the amazing experience we'd been led to believe. 

Working from home was great for a while, but I'm now officially burned out. My email brings an issue, I work on the issue, I email, or IM, or sometimes actually call about the issue, and then it's on to the next one. It's utterly soulless, and I'm utterly over it.

I'm craving fresh air and face to face human interactions. I'd love to get my dream job in Animal Kingdom talking about the gorillas, but honestly, any human contact that isn't food service (I sweat too much) would be just fine by me. I'd be perfectly happy to chat with little girls in princess dresses and tell people where the restrooms are and help them figure out their schedules. I joked about parking cars at Disney when I got mad at my job, but seriously, I'd park cars to get my foot in the door there. 

So retirement is the overarching goal for 2025, but there are lots of lesser goals I've put on my list of life improvements. 

In the first quarter of this year, I will be ignoring the national shitshow as much as possible, and getting my home in order. I have a lot of what we call "deferred maintenance" issues, as well as neglected clutter. This year is starting off with Swedish Death Cleaning.  Yeah, it's basically just decluttering, but mine is extra special because I'm decluttering shit I inherited when my parents died.  I'm Ghost Cleaning shit from the last generation.

I have a large plastic tub of 35mm slides. They weren't always in a large plastic tub; they were in a closet at my parents' houses, hauled around in increasingly tired cardboard moving boxes for 40-50 years. When I cleaned out their last house after my mother passed, guess what? They became mine.

And I can't just throw them out, because at least half of them are part of my sad family history and my grandkids might need to share them with their therapists someday.  (It's genetic. Look how miserable they were on Christmas!) The rest are random nature pictures taken by my amateur photographer and nature nut uncle; I'm keeping the best of those, but honestly, there are a lot of trees without time or place. Not keeping those.

I've ignored this project forever, because just sending them out to be digitized wasn't worth the cost without a preliminary review (many, many unidentified forests) and reviewing them was tedious AF. I tried bribing the Kid to help and she gave up after half an hour. It's tedious.

I finally, finally found a system that works. I use a lightbox app on my iPad, the SlideScan app on my iPhone, and every day I grab a handful of slides and scan.  Boom, they're on my cloud account. Is this as high quality as having it done professionally? No, it is not.  But these slides have been sitting around for half a freaking century at this point and preserving them this way is better than throwing them out. Quick and dirty is better than not done at all. I'll still have to sort through them to identify the random people and places, but again, we don't really need a dozen pictures of me in an Easter outfit I don't remember. I was struck again by how much I look like my father. 

So, that's where I am right now. I am not checked out on the shitshow, but I'm balancing it with getting my own world in order.

I'll be asleep before midnight.

 Happy New Year to the few, the loyal, the people who still read this old school backwater blog.

Christmas Besties.

 

Sorry for the poor photo, they were in constant motion.

Eddie met Sebastian on Christmas. He'd met him before, of course, but he wasn't as interesting then. Now Sebastian is interactive and likes to play with small dogs! They were in each other's faces every chance they could. Sebastian pulled Eddie's hair, Eddie didn't mind a bit. Eddie licked Sebastian's face, Sebastian enjoyed it. 

Best of all (for Eddie) was that Sebastian found Eddie's barking absolutely hilarious! He'd giggle like a maniac when Eddie barked, and Eddie totally understood he was making that baby laugh, so he kept barking. When he'd pause, Sebastian would make noises to encourage him. 

Eddie is never encouraged to bark. Eddie is very accustomed to hearing, "SHUT THE FUCK UP EDDIE!" yet, this wonderful small human never told him to STFU! He laughed and bounced in his bouncer and thought Eddie was the best thing ever! Eddie adored him back! It was the best day of Eddie's life!

Gidget watched this noisy mayhem from a safe distance. Her attitude clearly conveyed "BOYS!" with an eye roll.

After Sebastian went home and Eddie passed out for a long recovery nap, he barked in his sleep. No doubt reliving the thrilling experience of finally meeting someone who appreciates his vocal talents.

Mom still tells him to STFU. 

My daughter reported that when Sebastian got home he tried yelling at their dog, a big good natured mutt, who was quite confused about why he was being bossed around by the very small human. Now EVERYBODY bosses him around, poor dog.

Weeks ago I had a random urge to eat at Boma and actually found a late morning reservation, so we did brunch there yesterday. 

This 7 month old put away grits, scrambled eggs with feta cheese and about half of a very small pancake, AFTER his bottle. Not bad for someone with not quite 3 teeth. His mom got him a slice of watermelon from the buffet, which was messy but brilliant as a teether: cool, sweet, delicious, but yeah, he had sticky watermelon juice in the chubby rolls of his neck. 

Totally worth it, though.

And, that was Christmas. Small, quiet, and I'm glad it's over. I'm de-Christmas-ing the place this weekend, preparing to start 2025 on the right foot.  Among my 2025 plans is a major decluttering.  I have tubs of Christmas ornaments in the garage that I haven't hauled up to use in a few years. I need to review them, keep any "treasures" for next year, and pitch the rest.

I'm so bad at throwing things out. It's not a hoarding situation, yet, but I have a strong tendency to do the "Somebody might want that!" thing when I contemplate trashing anything. Actually, nobody really wants that. I have to repeat that to myself every time I start thinking, "Maybe I could donate..." or "It's a shame to..." No. Stop. Nobody needs your old shit, just throw it the fuck out and get over it.

Nobody really wants the very cheap mass-produced ornaments I used as filler when I had a much wider Christmas tree and it looked sparse. We're talking the $3 a box crap from Target here, nothing vintage or special, and bought more than 5 years ago. They're not special, they're not sentimental, and they are NOT going back into the tub for next year, they are clutter. They are trash. The tubs that never left the garage this year are on the list for review and culling as part of the Great 2025 Purge, which is one of my major life improvement plans. 

It won't just be Christmas ornaments, either. Everything in this place is under review. I have too much shit. I told my kids I didn't want anything for Christmas and I totally meant it: from here on, I want experiences, not things.

I'm not planning to downsize my living situation in retirement, because the reality is I couldn't find a place as nice as this without spending a lot more money.  But if I'm here until I'm too old to navigate the stairs, I have a wish list of improvements, decor, etc. Time to prioritize that future.

Weird Neighbor Story from the Condo of the Olds.

 First, that's not entirely fair. Since I've lived here (over a decade, which was not my original plan) a lot of the original owners have gone to the golf club in the sky and we do have teens walking to catch the bus to HS at o-dark-thirty, and this afternoon a long haired tween I'd never seen before told me my dogs were cute as he shot past on his bike. It's not one of those God's Waiting Room communities, but we do have a preponderance of old people.

And yes, I do realize that to the kids walking to the bus and the kid on the bike, I'm one of the old people, and I am.

But damn, some of these old farts are just weird.

A couple of years ago, neighbors on the next street (I don't know their names) got a corgi puppy. Cutest little creature ever, and so friendly and bouncy! Though we live around the corner from each other, our schedules rarely mesh so I don't see them often, and now he's a dog.

Eddie didn't know him as a puppy, barely sees him now, and loses his mind barking at the now fully grown corgi, and the corgi responds in kind. I did let Eddie approach him, saying he's a new friend, and they happily barked at each other like idiots, but neither wanted to get any closer, and that's cool.

We do not see some neighbor dogs often enough to establish any rapport. Eddie knows some neighbor dogs and when he sees them I just say, "That's your friend Toby, you don't bark at him," and he doesn't. He has friends he knows by name and he's cool with them. But when we have a rare dog sighting, Eddie Loses His Shit at the Tops of His Lungs. When this happens, if he doesn't settle down I take Eddie in another direction, and as soon as the other dog is out of sight he shuts up and resumes walking like a gentleman. He's not truly reactive, it's not aggression, if he gets to meet the dog he actually turns shy and quiet.  He's just gets super excited about seeing other dogs and gets really loud, and it's only an issue at 6 a.m., like today.

We just haven't had enough random encounters with the corgi to establish the "that's a friend, you don't bark at..." rapport, and the owner just..isn't friendly. He'll hang back and watch Eddie losing his mind, smiling, like it's so funny. At first i thought he was just clueless, now, I wonder WTF is wrong with him.

And that brought us to this morning. I rolled out of bed into 37 degrees, threw a hoodie over my pajamas and took the dogs out for their morning pee. And corgi guy was standing at the foot of the driveway next door. I spotted them and hustled Eddie and Gidget across the street. Fortunately Eddie was thinking more about his bladder than looking for dogs to bark at, and I heaved a sigh of relief. I kept him busy across the street, then looked back, and saw Corgi Guy standing at the foot of my driveway, effectively blocking our way home. He could have turned around and gone home. He didn't.

So I waited. I waited. It was a bit after 6 in the morning and did I mention it was 37 degrees and I was in my pajamas, because I just wanted to take my dogs out for their pre-dawn pee, this wasn't a real walk?

And still, he stood there, watching us. Until finally I muttered fuck this, and let Eddie lose his mind barking, and the corgi barked back, and Sorry Neighbors, I really tried to avoid this. And as I approached MY driveway, the corgi guy still stood there, smiling at me, then slowly walked past while all three dogs barked at each other.  I hope he heard me call him "Fucking asshole," over the barking frenzy. I didn't yell it, but I didn't whisper it either.

UPDATE: This morning he came walking up the street from the opposite direction. I turned my barking fool around so he wouldn't be distracted from his mission, the Dawn Pee. Weirdo and dog turned the corner toward their home. Eddie saw them as they went around the corner and barked anyway, but at least there was no dawdling to stir the barking this time. 

I mean seriously, I've seen my share of weird neighbor shit, but deliberately making dogs bark at 6 a.m. (including his own, who was a gleeful participant)  is just fucking asshole behavior.