Cooking the NYTimes and Other Assorted Retirement Activities

This falls into the category of "other assorted retirement activities" as in reorganizing the fall/winter closet.  Yes, don't judge, I have two closets, one for the aforementioned fall/winter clothes and a second for the sweatshirts and spring/summer clothes.  With the culling of the fall/winter clothing, however, I might need to consider moving the sweatshirts to the fall/winter closet although sweatshirts, for me, are a year round item of clothing.   The past two weeks, I've had the pleasure of teaching a few classes.  When I teach or speak in public, I feel compelled to wear a dress.  Hence, on the evenings I taught, I pulled out a dress.  And heels.  Again, don't judge.  Remember, I'm 65 1/2 years old and came up through the ranks when NO ONE wore jeans to work unless it was Casual Friday and even then, if you were an administrator, you thought twice about wearing the jeans.  (Once you crossed the line, however, you seldom we...

I feel that the test is coming. The past couple of weeks in yoga, our instructor has been reminding us that fall is a season of change that we might feel in our bodies, our hearts, our minds, our souls.  We may be experiencing a sense of disequilibrium as the days shorten, temperatures fall, and we can see through the trees to branches rapidly becoming bare.   Right now in the upper Midwest, fall color is peaking.  Earlier sunsets are often sky filled blazes of wide swatches of pinks, purples, oranges.  In that respect, it makes it easier for me to accept the falling temperatures, the constant chill in the air that both intuitively and intellectually I know will only grow deeper and more intense over the coming months. You all know that I am a warm weather girl, truly the warmer, the better.  I park my car in the sunshine year round, never in the shade (I mean, come on, why?).  My gravity chair has a place of honor in the sunniest spot in the bac...

We've been ripping our basement apart, a retirement activity if I ever saw one.  We demolished a powder room that we stopped using a couple decades ago--fortunately, when we opened the toilet, we didn't find any dead critters in there.  We pulled down sheetrock from waist-high down, which means ripping out the insulation as well.  There was a unused bar in the basement and it's now in the dumpster.  Finally we pulled up the carpet from the basement stairs.  That night, we sank into our matching recliners in the family room.  Dan looked wearily at me and said, "We're never doing that again." Damn right. Anyhow, while demolishing, I've had a lot of time to think, too much time perhaps.  Pulling down the powder room walls, I composed the following letter to my Congressman, Erik Paulsen (R-MN).  I originally intended to send it to all members of Congress and the President.  However, as I researched doing that, it became clear that members of ...