Cooking the NYTimes and Other Assorted Retirement Activities

  A number of you have asked some very thoughtful questions re: driving to Florida. In today’s edition of the blog, I’ll attempt to answer a few of these. 1. How many miles from Minnetonka to Belleair Beach?  According to the Spousal Unit, it is 1,620 miles.   2. How far do you drive every day?  We go about 8 hours the first day, usually sponging off my sister in Arlington Heights, IL or my sister-in-law in Kankakee, IL. Due to COVID, we bypassed staying with relatives and spent the night in a dog friendly hotel in Rensselaer, IN.  Second day is our longest, ending in Dalton, Georgia.  Third day we pull into our home away from home late afternoon, early evening.  We tend to get on the road each day between 8 and 8:30 a.m. 3.  Ah, yes, the dog.  How does he travel?  Hank travels like a champ.  We bring his blankies and set him up in the back seat, where he engages in the same behavior as he does at home.  He sleeps. 4. What do y...

  I have written, some might justifiably say too often, about my dislike of cold weather--not just winter, though that season takes the brunt of my complaints.  Cold and I simply do not mix. Minnesota has been enjoying a mild winter.  I'm not sure the temperature has dipped zero.  I know for certain we haven't had one of those prolonged cold snaps that keep children from going to school (when that was the case) due to fear of frostbite contracted while standing at the bus stop.  The warm for winter weather wasn't enough to entice me to go walking.  I still look, with a mixture of admiration and consternation, at the regulars parading up and down our street, regardless of the temperature. I've spent more time outdoors this winter, however, than in probably the past two decades combined.  This was due to:          1. Grandchildren who do not share my 'fear of freezing' gene     2. Remembering I had purchased, on a whim ...

Alex Azar and his boss, President Donald Trump Alex Azar is a big fat, bold faced liar. IF this doesn't convince you that your administration has been lying to you all along, then you need a brain transplant. Today, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, with a mouth full of marbles, danced around the fact that his agency has been LYING all along in regards to the reserve of COVID-19 vaccine promised to all 50 states. This piles on top of the shit show it is to get in line for the vaccine, even if you are considered in the first tier of those eligible for it. IF you, at any point, questioned the validity of the 2020 election, the time to stop that is NOW because these lying liars have deliberately put you and your loved ones in jeopardy--to what end? As the children's book by Mercer Mayer states, I WAS (AM) SO MAD.  

My dad was one of the smartest people I ever knew.  He also possessed some of the quirkiest of quirks entirely not commensurate with his educational and professional attainments. Once, when we were visiting over the Christmas holidays, he and I got to talking about how they were financially positioned for retirement.  Dad was never one to spill all the beans, so to speak, but he let me know that he and my mother would be able to enjoy the retirement they had hoped and planned for.  Then, in kind of a sly aside, he said to me, "Well, it might be a whole lot better than that.  Your mother is a finalist in the Publisher's Clearing House." He was so sincere and so excited, I hesitated to deliver the bad news.  I, too, had received an envelope from the company, identifying me as a finalist.  So had everyone during that cycle of solicitation from the Publisher's Clearing House. Gently, I said, "Oh, Dad.  Maybe she will be but that's what all the letters said...

I've always been interested in history.  That we've traveled to locations where history was made, where civilizations grew and fell, has been one of the great gifts in my life.  Our first trip to Europe stunned me with buildings and places that existed long before America was established.  Last winter's trip to Israel really knocked my socks off with its intersection of ancient and biblical history, not to mention the genesis of Christianity and Judaism.  I'm still working that through. As a youngster, history was a series of stories that happened to the long dead who either 1) made some outstanding choices or b) really fucked up.  (Obviously there is middle ground there, too.)  For the main, I liked to believe that my forebearers operated out of number 1).  Naturally my familial line would have thrown in with those whose decisions and actions only served to improve the lot of all.  And face it, when you're in elementary school, the good sisters s...

Working out is an absolutely critical component of my life.  As a kid my mother would complain that I could never sit still.  Old home movies (taken on the Bell and Howell camera) confirm she was correct.  I tell you this, as I am fast approaching 69, because I believe I come by this need to move honestly.  It is part and parcel of my makeup.  I like the admonition that you should be getting up and moving at least every 20 minutes in your day.  While I was working, I know that's why I drank so much coffee--I had to walk to the coffee machine in the Gathering Center outside of our offices.  Even on the beach, ensconced in my Tommy Bahama beach chair not unlike Jabba, reading an engaging story on the Kindle, I can only sit so long without going back to the townhouse for a potty break or refill the water or maybe just wander down the beach a little to check in with our fellow Snowbirds. I believe I previously have written about the return of the exercise ...

This is a post about gratitude.  Unconditional, unmeasured, unfettered gratitude. I am grateful I continue to have agency over my own life--and all that entails. I am grateful for the gift of a loving and good humored Spousal Unit ™  with whom I share my Ground Hog's Day life.  In the midst of the maelstrom, he continues to be one of the nicest people I know. I am grateful for every last dab of family, who frequently poke their heads up like the Meercats in Meercat Manor to check in with their fellow members of the bloodlines.  In that vein, I am grateful for friends who do the same. I am more grateful than words can express for my grandchildren.  Not that I don't hold deep gratitude for my children, their parents, without whom I would not know the unbearable joy of being a grandmother,  However, the love I continue to harbor in my heart and secure in my soul for my children may have been multiplied, then surpassed by the love I have for my grandchildren....