Day Two

Day two of my retirement. Actually, I retired on Friday, August 7th. And today now is Tuesday. But I don't count the weekend as retirement. In fact, I don't even feel like retirement. I don't feel like... um... it doesn't feel different yet. But the thought about every day not having to go to work? That's where I feel it, although I haven't gotten to every day. You know what I mean?

I've enjoyed the freedom I'm having right now. And... um... but it still feels just like, you know, a couple of days of vacation. And so, until I, I think, until I get beyond, you know, two to three weeks of vacation, you know what you would feel? Going on vacation for that length of time of being away from work or leave. The longest in recent times I've been away from work is when my mother passed away in March if 2021, and we were in Las Vegas, taking care of her final things. And so, I was gone for a month on Family Medical Leave (FMLA). And so that was weird. That was a little weird to be away for so long. But I was out of town. At the same time, I was out of town. After my surgery, I was off a few weeks. I think I can't remember how long. And so, but that was different because I was laid up in bed for a little bit and it just wasn't comfortable, obviously.

But here we are. I have a ton of things that I can do. I don't have anything that I have to do. Except that Debbie has a project. A video editing project, so I hope that goes quickly. And I will start that today, I believe. Often, in the corner of the kitchen, are still congratulations balloons for my retirement from Debbie. Congrats, it says, and then You're awesome. I think the one behind there might say, I love you. Three balloons. Very nice.

And we really didn't make a big deal out of it. The day we went out to dinner, that's about it. That was Friday the eighth. Saturday, we went for a walk at Murphy-Hanrehan Regional Park. And that was nice. I haven't been out there for a long time. We used to go a lot. In fact, we used to walk a lot until we got Agnes. And so, now we need to get back into that.

The one thing that was kind of on my mind, I didn't think about it really until after I had retired, was that now, I don't get drug tested. And so, one of the things I did was look up... um... or maybe I did look this up on Friday, didn't pop into my head till Friday while I was working. I looked up where to get gummies nearby. There's a place... what do they call it again? Cannabis. Oh, I can't think of the name of the type of business or building or whatever, where you go buy cannabis. Anyway, we bought some gummies. There's a place in Burnsville, but we opted for the place in Eagan, and I'll try Burnsville next time just to see, compare them.

I've been to those places before, but I couldn't get anything for myself. I was there with my wife, some friends, and my brother in Las Vegas. I think with our friends, it was in Colorado.

A dispensary, that's the name I was trying to think of. Cannabis dispensary. And so, kind of get that out of my system. Now, I've wanted to try gummies for a long time. I never have. The last time I smoked marijuana was back when I was, oh, a teenager, I suppose. And now, smoking isn't what we want to do. Debbie doesn't like the idea of smoke, and I don't either, really.

It's fun to fictionalize, you know? It's fun to just pretend, you know, to reimagine what it was like back in the day when you're taking this long drag, this long hit off of your joint, and it fills your lungs. And then it expands inside your lungs, and you start coughing. And so there's nothing about smoking a joint that is good for you! Nothing. But it does bring back memories.

So again today, Tuesday, I do have a couple of things I want to try on the computer. I don't want to be tied to the computer for the day. You know, I'm torn between just going into my stash of artwork, art projects, if you will, and just grabbing something. And let's say, hey, let's just start. But what is this? How do I do it? Is it painting? Is it drawing? Is it wood carving? Even building birdhouses, which I actually move to the top of the list to build birdhouses first. 

Because the weather, I can do it. Now, you can open the garage, pull my car out so it doesn't get dusty. And then, um, work on those kinds of things until it's too cold to work out there. But that's not saying I can't do multiple things. I'm not going to spend every hour in the garage, building a birdhouse. I could do birdhouses, and I could do some painting or some drawing or something like that.

That darn office of mine, which is actually a storeroom now, a warehouse, a storage room. It'd be nice if that wasn't so cluttered. I could do painting there and just have an easel set up and not have to take it down while I'm working on a project. But it really has turned into a storeroom. It's hard to get in and out of. There's really nothing to be done about that. There are things in there that I'm not ready to give up yet. There's nothing I can throw away. And then the rollaway beds are in there for when the kids come over.

Um, I've got big drawings of paintings in. I know what I should do. I have a photograph that I want to give to Connie and Greg. At that, I should call them. I need to call. I need to contact them and get their address. I don't know why I keep putting that off. It's a photograph of Little Maurice who passed away this year. A photograph I took in 2008. He asked me to take pictures of him for use with his music business, his music career. I don't know if I don't know what he was going to use it for. Just headshots for publications or an album cover or what? Or social media. I never even saw what he did with them, if he used them at all. But one of the pictures I took of him was multiple pictures. It was a...

Montage, kind of a montage, where I took close-ups of sections of his face, his head, upper body. I think it's mostly his head, though, mostly headshots, and then I put them together, kind of like a puzzle. Each square image was treated a different way: black and white, high res, or camera pattern. And so I, I was experimenting with that, and I had done one with my daughter. I think that's probably the reason I did it with him. Let's go ahead. Just the same here, I had done kind of like that with my daughter. I'm pretty sure hers was first, and so it was on my mind to give that a shot. I'd like to try that again someday.

Anyway, that's the, it's a good size image. It's rare that I enlarge any of my work. I've got a couple of things I recently enlarged that we have to find a place for, or should find a place for, so they're not just in storage. But what we're going to do today is I'm going to experiment. Before I get dressed here, I'm going to experiment at the computer with these animation projects, software programs. Um, I can't think of the name of them right now, but we're experimenting with that.

What I, I really don't need another bill. I don't need to create another expense. I've been looking forward to getting my money from my 401k so I can plug that into the mortgage and pay off some of these credit cards. They've got the credit cards down to about $6,000, a little less than $6,000, I think, I hope. Anyway, probably $5,000 something. So, those stinkers down. And in a month or two, saving, because I won't have the mortgage to pay.

And then sometime in that process, sometime after that, Mike, who is now living in Las Vegas, we hope, we're hoping for his house here in Richfield to sell quickly. So we can start the process of him buying me out. And then, with that money, we can clear out some more debt and start the process of the reverse mortgage. And that will eliminate the mortgage payment. That will be a happy day. That will be when I feel like we're really set to enjoy retirement days with very minimal debt, just the week-to-week, month-to-month type of expenses.

So, here we go. This is, we'll count, this is day two. This is Tuesday of retirement. I think I'm going to like this. I know I'm going to like it. And I pray that I can live another 30 years so I can see what that's like. Mom and Harvey, they were retired for at least that long. So, that's it. I'm going to do that.