...there are 220 days left until the day I retire. That's actual days.. not workdays. My friend Madeleine is retiring the same day I am. She and I went out for sushi today, being that it's Monday and I have transitioned to three days a week. We sat on my patio afterwards, eating our "no-sugar added" fudgsicles, watching the fish, and dreaming about all of the things we will do. We will join the garden club, we will take pottery classes, we will wrap up all those unfinished projects lingering in our upstairs guest rooms, including that project to clean up and turn the guest room back into the bedroom it used to be when the kids were at home. We will lose pounds and gain muscle, and we'll get denser bones for all our effort. We will fire the maids and the gardeners and do it all ourselves.. oh wait.. we don't have maids and gardeners. Well.. we will whip our gardens, our bodies, and our guestrooms into shape, and then we'll play bridge. Or Mahjong. Or maybe get a part time jobs.
I graduated from high school when I was 17 and went to live on a farm - a hospice for the poor in the hills of West Virginia. Okay, okay. It was a hippie commune. It was hard work and I didn't like it. I liked the goats, especially the kids, but then we ate them and I didn't like that either. I came home, got an office job, left for college in the fall and never lived at home again. On the week I retire, it will have been 40 years since the day I left home to go live in West Virginia. The twists and turns leading me from then and there to here and now seem remarkably complicated. To my children it probably looks like straight lines from this, to that, to that, to here. They are only beginning to understand the anxiety of trying to navigate this twisty old stream, and they are still years from knowing when to hold on and just let the river carry you.
It's the 4th of July and the juvenile catbirds are celebrating their independence. I bet there are a half dozen of the little guys dashing about the yard and ducking in and out of the viburnum. They are not afraid of the squirrels who run toward them when they land near the feeders, or of the robins who monopolize the bird bath -- a very popular commodity in 100 degree weather. They are not even afraid of me. They hop from the wrought iron butterfly to the top of the bench, then over to the goldfinch feeder to harass them while they hang upside down. Then with soaring speed they fly straight up in the air about ten feet and do a free fall, landing just an arm's length from where I sit. They look at me sideways, see that I am amused, and work up some new antics to entertain me on this hot, hot, hot, hot day.
I had a bunch of fish in the pond. I counted them every day.. there were eleven; 7 shubunkins, 1 lionhead, 1 gold fancy tail bugged eyed I don't know what, 1 black fancy tail bugged eyed I don't know what, and one little baby brown fish that is now completely gold. My school of fish is growing now. I have counted at least five fry of about an inch long. And then, God help me, I noticed tiny little mosquito sized fry hanging out in the water forget-me-nots. I didn't even try to count them. I suppose next year I will be trying to give away fish.
Next year I will also be retired. 239 days from now, actually. A study came out shortly after I had my double arthroscopic knee surgery. Findings show that arthroscopic surgery does not improve arthritis pain. Well phooey. My knees still hurt, are still stiff, and it has been one year next month since my surgery. Yes, I did PT religiously Yes, I bike and stretch and do all the stuff you're supposed to do when you can't do impact exercises. Makes me think I didn't retire soon enough. I do find, however, that gardening and pond watching do not hurt my knees. Neither does bridge, or reading books, or biking, or drinking wine, or playing guitar (haven't done that yet, but plan to), or writing blogs, or working out on the elliptical machine, or probably swimming, and I hope not skiing... kind of iffy on that last one.
How hot is it this 4th of July? Well I just looked outside and laying in a shady patch of the driveway like a bear skin rug was this poor, little black squirrel. He'll be heading over to the pond pretty soon.
