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.

Obama is a Christian

I went to the grocery store today to fill a prescription.  As I was leaving the store I walked past the displays of magazines and tabloids that are at the entrance of each checkout lane.  The large headline on one of the newspapers read "Obama is a Muslim"  and was at each lane -- therefore anyone walking past would read that 4-5 times. (The more something in repeated the more we believe it) I felt physically sick walking past and had an urge to pull them all down and deposit the papers in the garbage cans. How do we combat these lies? What power do we have against all the money that is behind a movement such as The Tea Party? Shouldn't we be concentrating on the big problems our country is facing? As I see it, the religion of our president is not something we should be concerned about.

I am frustrated and angry but feel powerless. I need some hope here. What can I do to help? (except don't ask me for money)

Temple Grandin

If you have not watched the movie Temple Grandin on HBO you need to check it out.  I watched the Grammy's and was so surprised to see that the movie was nominated and thrilled to have it win 7 awards. I was doubly surprised to see that she was in the audience and then on stage. She did not wear a designer dress but was dressed like she was ready to ride the range.  I was so happy for her it brought tears to my eyes.

Temple Grandin is a professor at Colorado State University (CSU) in Ft. Collins.  Her story is remarkable because as a young child she did not speak until she was four and the doctors recommended that she be institutionalized, advice her mother fortunately did not take.  She was not diagnosed with autism until she was older. She has worked hard all her life to get an education (she has a PHD) and to be accepted into a field that was dominated by men. What an incredible inspiration to autistic adults and to the parents with autistic children.

When I was in Portland I needed a book and after looking through Megan's bookshelves choose Look Me in the Eye by John Elder Robison. This is a story about a man with a similar success story-diagnosed later in life with Asperger Syndrome, a form of autism.  If you are interested I am sure Megan will loan you the book.

Dylan

Dylan ponders coming down the slide

He loves to play in the sand

Pretend painting with water in the Secret Garden

Looking over his work

I love to walk over to Lyons park with Dylan. There is a special park for children with water, sand, and lots of plants. I tried very hard to take a picture of him looking at the camera but with the delay click on my camera and Dylan wanting to focus on sand and water I was not successful.  He has the most beautiful blue eyes and sweet face--I need Christie and Rachele and Amber here with their great cameras to help me out.

Portland

Avery in her princess dress

                                               

Henry, Josie, and Avery at lunch

                                             

Avery and Nain

                                                   

Avery is an excellent golfer

                                                

Bubbles

                                            

Lots of bubbles

                                        

Nolan really wanted to play in the bubble solution

                                      

Another lunch photo

                                                       

Avery the ballerina

                                                
 It has been a beautiful week in Portland. Avery loves the princess dress I bought on sale at Princess Paradise in Ft Collins.  She loves to dress up and pretend.

Thanks to Julie (who gave me the bubble wands) we had a great time at the Gorsegner's BBQ blowing really big bubbles.

Megan, Avery and I had a great time playing miniature golf. Avery was very persistent and was determined to get the ball in the hole using her club (not her hand). 

AND--Megan has spent hours with me on my new laptop making sure it is set up correctly and that I understand most of it.

Loreto Bay , Mexico

Blue skies
Blue water
Flowers of every color and shape

Orange birds
White seagulls
Dark sandy beaches

A quite place with workers here and there
slowly building houses that were to be finished long ago

Time marches slowly in Mexico

Cool mornings and evenings
Bring beautiful sunrises and sunsets

Hot afternoons bring reading and naps
Siesta time!

Book Club

I recently joined a book club and think I am going to enjoy it because I will be reading books I  would not have ordinarily chosen. The book I just finished is The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom by Slavomir Rawicz. The story takes place in 1941 and starts out in Moscow where the Polish author has been arrested and is being coerced into signing a confession. As I started the first chapter I realized that he was going to be tortured and I cannot read (or watch) about that subject.  I  knew I could not read the book and put it down for two weeks.  As I thought about it and after  reading  the reviews on the back cover I decided to try again but to skip the first chapter because after he signs the confession he and hundreds of other prisoners are marched thousands of miles across Russia into Siberia to a labor camp. That I can read.

"The Long Walk is a book that I absolutely could not put down and one that I will never forget." --Stephen Ambrose. I could not put it down either. 

To paraphrase a review: 'In 1941, the author and six other fellow prisoners escaped a Soviet labor camp and marched thousands of miles by foot--out of Siberia and through Mongolia, the Gobi Desert, Tibet and over the Himalayas to British India.'

Check it out!