Though I stopped working in June, I have only begun to feel retired and to understand that this new life is my new reality.  As I was leaving behind work, colleagues, and a paycheck, Sheila was applying for jobs to replace hers, which was ending.  Her company lost their contract in New Mexico and she and all her colleagues scrambled for a place with either one of the companies that won the new contract or with their current employer in another state.

In August we learned that Sheila would be promoted and transferred to Atlanta, effective September 9.  I had made plans before all the uncertainty set in to spend September in Vermont at a women’s fitness facility.  We managed to make those commitments mesh and began our life in Atlanta together in early October.

Everyones’ first months of retirement are unsettled.  What do we do with all the unscheduled hours?  How do we replace the effortless socialization of meetings and hallway conversations?  Can we manage financially?  And then there is the question of identity.  Who am I when I am not what I do?  I experienced all of that plus the upheaval in Sheila’s career.

But now, in a big house in a mock-chateau subdivision in upscale Marietta, Georgia, I am finding my own way into the rest of my life.  I unpacked the last moving box today and guessed at where the napkins rings should go; guessing, really, where I might imagine I put them when it is time to look for them.  I watered the house plants and decided to repot the African Violet.  I put the redwood shavings in the dog houses that Cooper and Lily disdain but I think are necessary for their comfort.  I hung the halloween dish towels on the handles of the double ovens, glad that I had discovered them in that last box on October 31 rather than November 1.  I checked the schedule at my recently joined YMCA for a water aerobics class at a reasonable hour and set an alarm to give myself plenty of time to deal with the epic Atlanta traffic.  On my way home from the Y this afternoon, I’ll stop at the grocery store to pick up a propane tank so that I can start grilling again and I’ll figure out what to do about dinner.  Sheila will come home and tell me about her day while we eat.  She’ll ask about mine and I’ll feel a little less self-conscious today than I did yesterday as I describe the small accomplishments of my new life.

We spent last weekend with friends at their lake-front home. Given the state of the drought in New Mexico, it’s a meadow-front home this year. The water that would fill the lake was released downstream. I didn’t mind the altered view at all, in part because at dusk a herd of female and juvenile elk moved out of the tree-line and onto the meadow. Bill set up the telescope on the deck and we watched the slow, grazing procession. The elks’ daily trek brings them from the Jicarilla Apache reservation onto New Mexico Parks & Recreation land, making them as safe from trophy hunters as any wild animal can be in the American West.

Off and on during the weekend we talked about retirement – Alane’s and Bill’s, and mine. They cut their final ties to work last year. I will finish up in July 2014, if all goes according to plan. For them, their retirement is ideal. They live in their northern New Mexico home from April to November, and move to their house in Sun City West, Arizona for the rest of the year. Two very different lifestyles, both of which they love. When I try to imagine myself in either place, I falter on my own Goldilocks conundrum. Sun City is too social and busy and their rural retreat is too remote and quiet. I need to figure out what is just right.

Sheila would like to live outside the city – and I think I would, too. But not too far out. I would like to rest my eyes on fields, trees, and 50 shades of green. But I want organic grocery shopping in town. I want to hear birdsong more often than I hear traffic. But I want a library close by. I want to watch storms roll over the hills and hear the thunder echo through the valley. But I want medical services within 30 minutes of home.

One thing we’re considering is scheduling vacations over the next couple of years in places we might like to settle. Huge swaths of America are already ruled-out, which limits our choices in a good way. We are not living north of the 37^th Parallel, which is roughly at the northern edge of Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina. It cuts California in half right around San Francisco. While I could settle in Portland or Seattle or actually any East or West Coast northern maritime region, Sheila, with her Mediterranean nature, would need to be on Prozac to survive the chilly, gray, rainy climate.

Cultural activities—and more importantly—cultural attitudes matter to us, too. Any community that says with pride that it is the “buckle of the bible belt” won’t work for us. I’d like a college nearby, for the performing arts and drop-in classes. A local historical society would be good for me. A cineplex, a mall, a Thai restaurant close enough to go to without having to pack a bag seem important, too.

So, just at the moment we think that a semi-southern small town or the far-suburban edges of mid-size city might work. We’ll plan a few vacations to explore our choices.

I learned last week that a friend’s mother has cancer. She is quite elderly and the prognosis is not good. I was told of her illness via a text message and I expressed my sorrow for her and my friend by text, too. With that exchange, I started thinking about the ways in my lifetime we learned of deaths and our customs for delivering our condolences.

When I was young, people would place a wreath on the front door of the deceased’s house to signal that the residents of the home were in mourning. I remember my father wearing a black band on his coat sleeve when his father died. At the end of 7th grade, my friend Libby moved to Laos with her diplomat father and French mother and grandmother. Several months after they left, I received a stiff card, bordered in black, printed in French, that announced her grandmother’s death. The Philadelphia Inquirer called us when my father died to get details for his obituary. I subscribe to a magazine that includes brief articles on the passing of women who have been active in — and loved by — their communities. Over the years, I have received word of family, friends, and acquaintances passing by personal visits, letters, telegrams, phone calls, and emails. I see memorial messages on Facebook now.

In the past, when I heard of a death in my community, I went to the family’s home or wrote a note or sent a sympathy card. I’ve made phone calls, brought casseroles, written eulogies, boarded pets, attended wakes, viewings, visitations, funerals, and celebrations of life.

I thought when I began to consider this subject that I might fall into the notion that there are right ways to honor death; and that our modern, technological ways are not the right ways. My grandmother might have thought that a telephone call or a printed sympathy card was unfeeling and inappropriate. My mother was even more Victorian than her mother, and I am sure that text and Facebook condolences would have appalled her.

But I believe that however we learn of someone’s passing, and however we acknowledge and commemorate it, the support we bring with our attention, affection, and assistance is what matters. Not the manner of our communication, but the message that we care and that our world has dimmed a bit by the loss.

A friend asked me, “What gives you pleasure?” At the time of her asking, I was gloomy because of yet another example of my inability to understand why people will stab each other in the back, throw each other under the bus, stir up shit. I felt like I was back in high school. My friend was, kindly, suggesting that I get out of the dumps and on with life.

Rather than immediately considering my pleasure index, I spent a few hours plotting clever revenge scenarios. When the fun of that wore off, I started trying to identify what pleases me, as my friend had suggested. It was harder than I expected to get started, but once the first brick tumbled, I was able to come up with a satisfactory list

I started looking at pleasure on Friday evening, while on a recumbent bike at the gym. Sheila was on the bike next to mine, beating herself at solitaire on her phone. I had the set called Favorites playing on my iPod. I realized I was enjoying myself as I listened to the Black Eyed Peas singing “Let’s Get It Started.” So maybe music was a pleasure for me. One style of music, though? No, the Favorites playlist includes George Gershwin, Jimi Hendrix, Bally Sagoo, Gary Clarke, Jr., and Gary Glitter among many, many others. So then I wondered why music makes me feel good. This led me to another discovery.

I like remembering the past and anticipating the future.

Music takes me back — to the first time I heard the song or, for songs I haven’t heard before, to a sense memory of how songs like that song make me feel. Rhythm is big for me. The strong beat in “Rumour Has It” turned me on to Adele last year. The insistent rise and fall of the clarinet in “Rhapsody in Blue” made me buy my first non-rock LP when I was 13. The piano coming in on the snare’s ride in Brubeck’s “Take Five” had me hanging out at the smokey, divey One Step Down on M Street when I was 18. So, music is transport to the past. And my past was generally pretty pleasant. Or, for those times when it wasn’t, I’ve made my peace with it.

Music doesn’t really figure in my thinking about the future. For me, there has always been music; there will always be music. What pleases me about the future is planning. Planning trips, planning gardens, planning parties, planning anything. I like figuring things out. I like planning more, usually, than I like doing. For travel, the destination is fine; getting there is a pain — scheduling, choosing, calculating is terrific. When I was much younger and had bouts of insomnia, I would put myself to sleep by planning a house I would build someday. Site selection and orientation, square footage, shortest possible drain runs, height of crawl space, pitch of roof, number of 2x4s! I could usually fall asleep counting 10d nails.

But, remembering the present tense in my friend’s question, I wonder what is giving me pleasure now?

I’ll head the list with music and planning. Then: moving my body, holding Sheila’s hand, improving clumsy sentences, entertaining my friends with stories, eating tomatoes I grew, petting my dogs and smelling their sun-warmed coats, and almost every minute of every day. Just the little things, the very consequential little things that really make up my life. Certainly not the stuff we think is big and important, like work, politics, economics. Those might be the outcome of life, but they aren’t the planning … or the music.

Why is medicine so expensive and communication so cheap? 

First consider research, technology development, manufacturing, training, service delivery. Think about factories, distribution, satellites, IT, call centers, retail outlets. Then consider that time spent in the ER, with a few tests and a small handful of medical personnel, can cost $1000 per hour, while our three DVR-equipped Dish-fed TVs, phone landline, two iPhones with massive amounts of capacity, and whole-house wireless internet connectivity costs about $0.42 per hour.

Just sayin’

The cleaning ladies are here this morning. Three cheerful, careful women come every other Friday to clean our house. They know Sheila likes butterflies, so one day they brought us a dead, but otherwise perfect, yellow swallowtail butterfly that that they found on the sidewalk. They give us tamales at Christmas. They do the windows and floors, and laugh at our comical dogs. I give them two hours of my salary for their six woman-hours of work, plus a holiday bonus that grows every year. I think it’s a great deal and I believe they are okay with it, too.

On Mondays, the Poop Lady comes with her scoop and bucket to clean up our back yard. A month’s worth of her visits is roughly the equivalent of 90 minutes of my salary.

I get my shirts laundered — that’s about six minutes of salary each.

All those services plus painting the bedroom, replacing the furnace filter, waxing my eyebrows, polishing my toenails — all things I could do myself but don’t have to, because of the increasingly uncommon blessing of money to spare.