Dawn of a New Day---Retirement

No, it's not me retiring. Long time readers may be surprised to wake up and realize that I have been retired over six years.

No, George W. Bush, the 43rd President of the U.S., has retired after serving the maximum term for a president. And, since I have now spent ten percent of my life retired, I thought I'd give him some advice. Oh, sure, you are saying, "He could ask his daddy." In fact, this morning I asked my daddy what advice he'd give George and he said that he'd never been that good at managing other people.

So, it's up to me, I guess.

Piece of advice number one: ignore the critics. Yeah, you pretended for eight years to ignore them or maybe you actually did ignore them. But maybe it stung a bit. Sometimes. I got a pleasant send-off from my last job although I'm sure there were people happy to see me go. (In fact, I later realized the event organizer was probably one of these!) But, dude, living well is the best revenge! You get a salary, a staff. You'd already saved for retirement, huh? You can do whatever you want, within limits. Wake up each day and dig the freedom. Who cares if the people back at the workplace are altering your code (er, executive orders in your case)?

Piece of advice number two: don't fall into being your father's keeper. Yeah, your dad is eight years younger than my dad and he's still got your mom, the Secret Service, various other help. Still, make no mistake, it can be time-consuming to hover over them when they have problems. Try to get Jeb or the twins to do it. You still have your Mom, too. (People will say "You are so lucky to still have them." It's true, but it can interfere with your travel, fitness and time to follow some of the advice below.)

Piece of advice number three: wake up and smell the coffee. In fact, make the coffee. I think somewhere you said you'd enjoy making Laura a cup. Do that. Take yours outside and watch a beautiful sunrise, knowing that you don't have to do a thing you don't want to today.

More retirement advice? Yeah number four: just pretend to write the book. Books are hard, blogging is easy. Take it from me. Since you can get a lot of money for a book, do one. But get someone else to write it. Get Jenna to write it. She did her own book, yes? Let her ghost yours or co-write it. Get yourself a blog. Moderate the comments. You can delete the negative stuff and the spam selling drugs and weight loss. You can say whatever you want, edit it later and pretend you didn't and scoff at your critics. In fact, get a Facebook page. Not one someone else concocted but one of your own. Just collect your real friends here.

Am I done? No. We have number five: learn something new. I don't think you are as stupid as people would have us believe. Nevertheless, retirement is a time to learn new things. Since I retired I've practiced identifying the countries of Africa (harder than you might think: click here), learned a few new words. Left to your own devices with no earth-shaking work (literally in your case) you can research things like history and literature. You can read Ulysses. (Or maybe you can't. I haven't made it to page 700 yet.)

Is there more? You bet. I haven't wasted the last six plus years. (Well, that's disputable but still there's more advice.) Number six: do something at a weird time. Take Laura to a movie in the afternoon. Go to SXSW. Stay out as late as you want and sleep in some morning.

I know you love to exercise, Mr. ex-President, but number seven: change your routine. You have time to add water aerobics or Pilates. You can take up a new sport or one you haven't pursued in a while. Come down to Austin and play tennis with Rick Perry and Andy Roddick. (Well, actually I don't know if Rick plays tennis, but he looks like a player, doesn't he?)

And, number eight on the list is: downsize! I know you and Laura bought a really big house in Preston Hollow (nice timing on that) and you have the ranch. Seriously, though, it's very freeing to dump some of that junk. Do you really need all that space? After all, if it's something sentimental stick it in the library. I wish I'd had a museum to store my stuff in!

Number nine? Travel. Don't just talk about it. Do it. Go to Paris and eat stars. Make the Secret Service follow you and Laura on a driving trip around the U.S. and Canada. You might want to stay out of Mexico, though, especially border towns. Kinda dangerous just now.

And, number ten on the list of retirement wisdom? Spend more time on your finances. Your money was tucked away in a blind trust, but now you can track your own investments tanking and rising. You can struggle to figure out where to get a decent, safe interest rate return. You can worry about your taxes. The muni bond market is weird right now, by the way. But since you're a Texan you don't have to worry about state income tax. Wait until you see your property tax bill, though. But Dallas is better than Austin where we bear the burden of much un-taxed state property. You will be really glad you have a defined benefit pension, I promise. Even though you may think you bought that mansion at a low point you may find that you see comparables in your neighborhood decline in value. But honestly just get out and get into a condo and lower expenses. We have some nice 1200 square foot or so units here at our place.

Dizzy Dame

This is a reflection of railings at a modern retail and lofts area on SoCo. I've heard some things about that place kind of being a disaster for tenants. Maybe it's always that way, huh?

I'm actually NOT dizzy this morning. I had a bit to drink last night, all wine actually. I had some interesting dreams, I think, but I've forgotten them.

I have a goal or two today, sort of unformed. We have an early evening event. It's cool and sunny outside so I think I should take a long walk and maybe have coffee and a snack somewhere and think. Then I think I should get a workout. And I think I should read. And write. (Not blog. Write. Really. I'm thinking of actually working on the Pogonip piece. Yeah, though, probably not.)

And so it goes. One day. Another day. The same, yet not. We may grow intellectually, we may get fatter, we definitely grow older. But we can take that first step on a walk. There you go.

I Once Shot Shops in Other Latitudes

I am so whiny. I know I got to go on my (blizzard-shortened) jaunt to New York not so very long ago. But now I'm wondering if time and circumstance will allow travel any time soon. (Not to mention gas prices and air fares.) It's sad to be retired and unable to travel. Of course, moving to a condo is supposed to be a first step to making travel easier. We just have to weather it, so to speak. It is clear, though, that we will be needing to get hired help for our parents to make those trips and who is to say that their circumstance might not necessitate our presence. Don't you laugh when you see those ads from financial advisers showing smiling and fit gray-haired sixty-somethings pursuing their dreams on beaches or in exotic locales. If you'd invested with some of those 'advisers' you probably wouldn't be smiling plus you wonder where the elderly, needy parents or the return to the next ne'er do well children are at that moment. (Fortunately I don't have children, but I certainly have younger relatives who aren't providing for themselves too handsomely.)

Maybe the young people are right...spend it now whether you have it or not, mooch off the older people if possible and HAVE FUN. Because you never know.

Yes, I know how lucky I am. And yet...I wish I were taking shop window pictures in Paris or Vienna or even Portland...where this one was taken.

No Resolutions! None!

Today's photo was taken yesterday on Second Street. It's really a portrait of a friend of mine. You can see her back in the striped shirt if you blow the picture up by clicking. This is as close to getting a picture taken as she likes to get.

This is the penultimate day of Holidailies. Which I like. Because of the opportunity to use the word penultimate if for no other reason. That's one reason I write. I love words. Today's writing prompt is "For 2008, I resolve ..." but we all know I need no prompts to write. Er type. (I used to have a feature on my online journal in days of yore called 'Just Typing!')

No. Resolutions. For 2008. None will be necessary, you see. It is going to be a year that pulls me along through already promised actions and firmly-made commitments. We are buying a different, very much smaller place to live. We have to fix up our current place and sell it. We are committed to caring for our parents and they will hopefully celebrate their 88th, 92nd and 98th birthdays. They need us to look into things. The IRS and other taxing authorities have commitments lined out for us. I will follow my commitments from day to day, dutifully doing my best to fulfill them with ample reminders from real estate entities, the governments and my dad and in-laws.

Oh, I've made resolutions in the past. And even relentlessly tracked my so-called progress against those goals.

Last year, I decided to just recycle some resolutions. That itself says something. I then proceeded to examine the ones I thought I should try to give attention to. There was exercise. There was the save money thing. The old 'write more' illusion. Lots of talk and little doing.

This year I have to do more and talk (write) less. I'm afraid I'll be forced to. Now...off to the gym before they close early for the holiday.

The Less Said the Better

It's that time of year when we recap, review, reconsider and, most of all, write a holiday letter that sums up our year. Actually, we very rarely do that without tongue firmly inserted in cheek (something I've been doing a lot the last four months with some dental problems). Actually, we already sent our holiday cards and they have a decided lack of information...just a picture that might puzzle some people and a simple greeting.

For the sake of Holidailies and Jette's excellent writing prompt of the day ("Write your own version of those holiday newsletters that people send to friends and relatives at this time of year.") I'm going to pixel out here what we could have printed and sent.

We spent 2007 firmly entrenched in our role as the grown children of very elderly parents (three, average age 91.6) who miraculously live on their own but not without a bit of help. LB's dad sputtered along at the beginning of the year with an infection and complications from a surgical procedure but miraculously recovered, got back into the pool for water aerobics and back to driving himself and doing things for himself with minimal assistance. His back began bothering him again recently and compromising his mobility toward the end of the year, but he still manages a lot of his own errands. At 91, not bad. LB took him to West Texas and Colorado to visit relatives in his van. FFP's parents settled into a system whereby FFP shops for them and drives them to any appointments. With one good eye between the two of them, that good eye needed a cataract surgery this year. LB likes that she almost never has to shop unless her dad doesn't feel like it. As long as FFP is shopping for his parents....he might as well shop for this house, too.

Friends died. The dog died. Well, we 'put her down.' We never had a dog that just died. We are now, for the first time in twenty-some years, dogless.

We took a trip together, too. We just sort of randomly decided to go to Santa Fe and Scottsdale. Mostly to break in a new car and smugly listen to XM radio in the middle of nowhere.

Books. We got rid of hundreds, acquired an exceptionally small number (for us) and didn't get nearly as many read as we'd like. LB did attack James Joyce's Ulysses which never fails to elicit rolled eyes when she tells someone. She has read 550/933 of it as of this writing.

Weather. As I write this it is warm and humid outside. We had a 'big ice storm' (it's all relative in Austin) in January and all our households survived fine but the reflecting ball in the garden was destroyed by falling ice during the melt.

People asked us all year the same old question: "What do you do now that you are retired." We answered that we are now dilettantes. But, really, FFP wrote a weekly column and worked hard on the boards of two non-profits and on special projects for a couple more. LB rocked along avoiding much beyond tennis, workouts and Dad duty except for a few volunteer things at the country club.

We tried to downsize. We gave away furniture, books, knickknacks, clothes, kitchen things. We gave away fine wine. We tossed worn out clothes and shoes. We recycled magazines and papers we'd kept too long and shredded things that needed shredding long ago. We tossed VCR tapes, cassette tapes. I gave away old cameras, toys, stuff I'd saved to make found-object collages, literary journals. I transcribed paper journals to the computer to save them without taking up space.

LB rode a couple of Austin's Capital Metro's buses to meet friends. This had been a goal of hers. She has no idea why she set that goal. She also signed up to post a blog entry every day in November through NaBloPoMo and throughout the holidays in Holidailies. She probably sets these goals because they aren't too challenging and allow her to displace from, say, downsizing.

Everything in our front yard leaked this year. The water main, the sprinkler system and the water service to our house. Short of christening it Lake Preece-Ball we couldn't think of anything to do but badger the city and pay workmen hundreds and hundreds of dollars.

We went to many charity affairs or parties precipitating multiple fashion emergencies for LB. We gave a dinner for charity and had a reading of a play at our house. We did a 'white tie and ball gowns' party for the first time ever. People treated us. We treated them. We drank some fine wine from our own cellar and happily helped people winnow down their collections.

LB admitted she will never be a cook and we ate out more than ever.

We got serious about moving downtown by signing a contract on a condo in a downtown high rise that should be finished by the middle of next year. We saw a building open to house the Ballet Austin Butler Dance Education Center after working on the capital campaign for several years. This building is next to our condo.

We watched downtown Austin change in other ways. The Intel shell got more or less imploded. The 44-story building that will one day shelter our (tenth floor) condo rose and rose and topped. Other buildings changed the skyline and the Long Center neared completion.

LB continued to live up to the notation on her personal blog (The Visible Woman): "Pretending to write but really just blogging." She helped a friend start a screenplay project and she started two more blogs(The Journal of Unintended Consequences and Austin, Texas Daily Photo), but there are no manuscripts of novels or the self-help books she intends to write.

We didn't see a lot of movies in the regular theater runs this year but we saw a lot on DVD through Netflix and also saw a pile in Austin Film Festival and SXSW Film. We were volunteer screeners for AFF, too, and we watched 192 films. Most of them shorts, of course. Two involved men with relationships with dolls and were not pornographic. Neither film was Lars and the Real Girl. But the coincidence so freaked out LB that she refuses to see that one.

In general, we spent a lot of the year wearily answering questions about our future home in the condo, how we like retirement (and how we spend our time...see above), when we are going to sell the house (and what happens to the found object band in the backyard) and how we are doing at downsizing. Occasionally people would ask if we 'had any big trips planned.' And we'd have to say, no, not really. Now that our desire to sell a house after buying a condo has been made known and caused something called the subprime credit crisis and housing downturn, we are tired of being asked why we didn't sell earlier and how we plan to deal with that. It makes me sigh. It makes me boring. Let's just talk about something else.

Happy Holidays to You and Yours. Catch you next year for another boring recap. And I'm glad that your kids did well in (1) school; (2) scouts; (3) soccer and/or (4) whatever and that you had all those family vacations!

Spiraling into the Rabbit Hole

Yesterday, Sunday, had a delicious free quality to it. We had a little social event in the evening and one that didn't elicit a fashion emergency at that. This was the first day in a few weeks where there weren't daytime commitments as well as evening ones. Don't get me wrong...it was all fun or self-improving stuff for the most part. Still I'd been busy. Here was a nice time to maybe catch up on the downsizing or get something tidied up around here. Or just relax and read. So how did I waste my time?

I decided to run virus and spyware scans on one computer and watched them run part of the time. I tried to work The New York Times magazine crossword on the computer and later tried to fill it in in the actual magazine. (No joy until today when I could unlock the key and get help. Clever puns in this one.)

At one point I thought I'd attack a pile of magazines that had survived other attempts to move them toward recycling. I managed to discard a few. In one I just had to read a piece before letting it go. Most of the ones I looked at got saved. A Harper's because of a piece by Jonathan Lethem about plagiarism that was completely plagiarized. (I later read this on the exercise bike but still saved it because I hadn't completely read his notes about where he extracted everything.) I saved a Summer Fiction edition of The New Yorker from 2004 even though I have it on DVD because you never know when it would be handy to take along to read. I saved another Harper's because of an article about Werner Herzog. I saved a June issue of The New York Times magazine not to work the puzzle (which looks quite hard) or to read the serialized novel (I haven't been able to get into any of these and this is chapter five of the last one they did). No, it was a bunch of articles about the rich getting richer and the poor...you know. I'm still trying to figure out which I am much less the whys and wherefores and politics of that economic idea. So...interesting and maybe I should read it.

Then there was The New Yorker issue (too new to be on DVD yet) which had a review of the Edith Piaf movie I missed at the theaters. I saved a Harper's because of an essay on the virtues of idleness. The irony was not lost on me.

I saved another issue of The New Yorker because of an article about the Queen Mary 2. The issue is on the DVD collection. But I'd really like to read it. If I ever get downsized and escape real estate hades, I'd like to go on that ship. I've been on the QE 2. But I digress.

Another issue of The New Yorker survived because of an article about neurosurgery and a Woody Allen casual. And another because of an article about mathematics. So sue me. I must confess that there is a 2005 issue in one of the bathrooms because of an article about Angela Merkel.

So the result of all that activity was that one pile had become two, reduced by three or four magazines that will make the recycling truck on Friday.

During my bout with the magazines, FFP arrived in my office with a 'home for sale' brochure from a house in the neighborhood. We spent a bit of time looking the place up in the database of the local tax collector and calculating a price per square foot.

I sorted through some current newspapers and tossed some ads in recycling. I glanced at Marilyn Vos Savant's column in Parade. She had an interesting puzzle. I didn't try to work it out but when I read the solution I thought it was amazing and wrote a small proof about why it worked. Seriously.

I managed to get to my gym for some exercise (mostly riding the recumbent bike while reading the Jonathan Lethem piece). I thought briefly about a trip to New York, too. Because in New York once, in the Village somewhere, we found a mystery book store while waiting for time for a jazz performance at the Vanguard. And I bought Motherless Brooklyn because it seemed interesting, I wanted to support the store and it was set in Brooklyn. I later bought Fortress of Solitude because I liked Lethem.

Yeah, those were the kinds of "accomplishments" and reveries I managed on this day of little obligation. Oh, and I put together a letter about my great nephew Jack's Flat Stanley's adventures in Austin and ordered and picked up prints of pictures of his (F. Stanley's) visit here and wrote on postcards and put the whole thing (along with Mr. F. Stanley with arms and legs folded) in a package to mail back to Jack's teacher.

I wanted to accomplish things in my retirement. I didn't anticipate how much my adult attention deficit disorder would affect idle times. And my greatest accomplishment seems to be becoming a dilettante. And learning to spell dilettante!

Tear Down

One of our Realtors (a mother and daughter pair will represent us on the house sale next year) suggested that our house will probably be torn down. I can certainly see that happening. It was more, obvious, however that this house a few doors away would be demolished. Who knew Habitat for Humanity had a service to do this and at the same time salvage materials.

It's hard to think of our house as a tear down, but it's a good-sized lot and I guess I could see someone with enough resources gutting it or even taking it down. It certainly puts all the touch-up paint and cosmetic things in perspective, though.