Retirement

I am often asked if I am enjoying retirement and what I am doing with all of my time. I always answer yes to the enjoying question and then try to come up with some interesting things to say about how I fill the time.  That is usually more difficult.

Right now I am sitting under my mulberry tree (that I brought from my mother's yard in a zip lock bag while traveling back to CO on the Greyhound bus--too much information you say--well that is what one does in R) with a cup of tea, some Welsh Tea cakes, the phone, a book, and of course my new and wonderful laptop. Now that the heat has subsided and it is starting to feel like fall I have been working outside in the morning pulling weeds, cutting off the dead flowers and generally cleaning up the garden. It is amazingly quiet here considering the fact that my yard backs up to six neighbors yards.  Everyone is either working or in school. The birds are singing, the bees are buzzing, and Barkley is keeping me company.

Over the last 3 days I planted some mums and have filled three large lawn bags and two garbage cans with weeds, branches, and dead flowers.  After my last episode, when I worked for 4 hours cutting branches after a wind storm and then experienced very painful muscle spasms, I am very careful not to work too long.  Once I get going I do not want to stop--big mistake.

Julie (another retired teacher and neighbor) and I went to hear Dr Temple Grandin speak last night at CSU.  It was part of the Ft Collins Read program-the book chosen was The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. The story is told though the eyes of the dog and therefore all of the events planned by the library have to do with animals. And who better to talk about animals but the Emmy Award winning Temple Grandin.  She came onto the stage wearing black jeans and a cowgirl shirt with a red tie.  The title of her talk was Autism, Animals and Sensory-Based Thinking.  She really is quite brilliant. She talked about her life with autism and the struggles getting into the field of animal behaviorism.  She had illustrations of brains which showed how her brain was different from normal brains. She thinks in pictures and her pictures are very detailed and specific.

Art, music, and hands on activities such as carpentry are what saved her in school. She could not understand algebra because she could not picture it but was very good in Geometry.  Someone asked if she still had and used her squeeze machine and she said it had broken a couple of years ago and she had not had time to fix it. But that now she is able to enjoy a real person hug and then went on to say how she hugged the woman who was holding the Emmy and then grabbed the microphone to tell her mom, who was in the audience, to stand up.

There was a question and answer session after her talk and she is definitely a 'cut to the chase with your question--no fluff-common sense type person.  Julie and I rolled our eyes at a couple of the questions. One woman said she had a 10 year old pug and when taking him for a walk he would only go two blocks and then did not want to walk anymore. TG told her he was old and probably had arthritis.  In other words 'get over it'--at least that is what we were thinking.  TG was very polite but to the point with some of the odd questions.