The Lull Before the Storm

The Lull before the Storm

 

If you’re retired and have a summer home, you know the lull before the storm. I go up to my cabin near Flagstaff in the middle of May. It’s a lonely existence as most people come up starting Memorial Day. Today I’m the only occupant on my block. Well, there is a cute single man working on his kids’ cabin but he seems to be taken up with that.

           It’s quiet. No small loud vehicles (Pilots, ATV’s, etc.) No traffic of any kind except the school bus at 6:15 a.m. and 3:45 p.m. This reinforces my solitary nature, of which I was not aware until I got a cabin. I’m seen as a gregarious person: talkative, outgoing, smile on my face. But when I get to Munds Park, I change. I don’t call my friends and family as much. I quilt, read, write, watch TV and generally hibernate. Maybe it’s decompression after a busy winter in Scottsdale.

I got to see my lilac bush bloom this year. I see lot of tulips and irises on my morning walks with Sparky and wonder about the homeowners who plant the bulbs but aren’t here for the blooms. By Memorial Day, these flowers look scraggly.

I should take up golf again. Plenty of room on the course. There’s lots going on in Flagstaff but I can’t get myself out of my cocoon. I tend to do things like bake artichokes, which takes ninety minutes.

I don’t have a revolving door of guests during the summer. I have a small place. My kids will occasionally come up and I will keep my five year-old granddaughter for two separate weeks.  My childhood friend from third grade comes from Connecticut for week around the Fourth of July. A few friends visit from the Valley, but not many. I’m not sure why.

You will see me having meals alone at the Country Club or Pinewoody’s.  Feel free to join me. I go to the movies in Flag and the independent films in Sedona solo, too. I guess I just haven’t found that magic chemistry of a soul sister up here. I take it for granted in Scottsdale.

But starting tomorrow, Friday of the Memorial Day Weekend, this and all other summer havens, will be abuzz. Grandchildren will spill out onto the streets. The dog population will multiply by tenfold. There will be traffic but not enough to need a traffic light. Saturday kicks off the Pinewood Farmer’s Market, the sight of the only traffic jam in town.

I do have a friend coming up Saturday. It always takes visitors a day to calm down. When we sit on my porch the first morning, drinking tea and coffee, they’re ready to make plans. I lean back and encourage them to let the laid-back atmosphere of Munds Park seep into their bones. If they stay long enough, they get it.

Winter Weight Gain

Winter Weight Gain

In a Psychology Today article, Norman Rosenthal puts forth a theory of winter weight gain. He says that during the short and dark days of winter, the brain chemical serotonin falls to its lowest levels in the parts of the brain that regulate mood and appetite. I’m sure the feeding frenzy during the fall and winter holidays (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hannukah, Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s Day and Easter) also have something to do with it.

Since I live in Scottsdale in the winter time, it would seem that I could exercise outdoors:  walking, hiking, tennis, etc. Theoretically. But I didn’t. I packed on twenty pounds and now I have to lose them.

Some things help me lose weight in the summer. There’s no Yogurtland, Filiberto’s or MacDonald’s in Munds Park. The fast food option isn’t as available so I eat at home more.

Sparky doesn’t have a doggie door up here so I am forced to take long walks several times a day.

I’m physically and emotionally further away from the demands of family and friends. Although I’m lonelier, it’s an easier existence.

The question is how soon can Sheri start her exercise class at the Country Club? Guess I’ll have to use the fitness room until then.

 

Dating is a Numbers Game

Dating is a numbers game

I have two criteria for guys I’ll date:  self-supporting and not crazy. I don’t think that’s too high a bar. I went on a date last week with a guy I met through the online free dating service POF (Plenty of Fish.) He emailed me and asked why people in the arts were usually politically liberal. That was an interesting question. I suggested we meet to discuss it. I assumed that he was also a liberal. We spoke on the phone several times and he made me laugh. That was a good sign. I agreed to meet him for lunch, against one of my rules of a first date: never commit yourself for more than a drink or iced tea.

He suggested Thai food. When I suggested a place I knew that was reasonably priced, he rejected it as only mediocre. (Why do I always have to come up with the place to meet?) I then suggested Malee’s On Main in downtown Scottsdale. I’d never been there but it’s always on a list of the valley’s best restaurants. He asked what I would be wearing. I told him he would recognize me because I looked just like the picture on my profile.

I recognized him right away, waiting for me outside the restaurant. Miracle! We both looked like our photos. We were seated at a window table. The place was nearly empty, although it filled as we ate. I was relieved that the lunch prices were within my price range as I always offer to pay my share. (He insisted on paying the bill.)

We settled in and told each other some of our life stories. He was a bit older than me, but definitely economically secure. He still sold insurance part-time to Medicare-eligible people.

I’m not sure this qualifies the guy as crazy, but it turned out that he was a conservative, not a liberal. He chose to discuss religion, politics, and abortion, not usual topics for a first meeting. Our opinions were polar opposites. It never degenerated into an argument because he was the type of person who thought others were entitled to their wrong opinions. I made it through lunch, but knew he was toast, even though both of us said we’d do another date. It’s hard to say “no” in person, and easier to just not communicate further.

My neighbor with the blood clots is doing better and can go out for short periods of time with portable oxygen. She went to the grocery store and was surprised to see an older, portly gentleman, also hooked up to oxygen, checking her out. She smiled but turned way. Dating is not on her priority list.

A friend of mine in Connecticut went out with a Scottish fellow for dinner through match.com. It was a disaster. He had his hearing aids in, but they weren’t fine-tuned, so he couldn’t hear her. And his accent was so thick she had a hard time understanding him.

Maybe I’ll have better luck this summer.

Getting older isn’t a battle, it’s a massacre!

Getting older isn’t a battle, it’s a massacre!

This is my adaptation of a quote from the Philip Roth novel Everyman. This past week one friend had a stroke, I rushed my friend and neighbor to the ER with blood clots in her lungs, I treated my dog for exploding warts, and my son’s girlfriend bailed him out of jail after I asked her not to.

The good news is that everyone is going to be all right. The friend with the stroke is in rehab for limited movement of one hand and foot, but otherwise, she’s fine.

My neighbor’s recovery is nothing short of a miracle. The doctors couldn’t believe she survived the blood clot that went through her heart into both of her lungs, and the ones waiting to break free from her leg. Her recuperation will require patience and persistence, but she’ll also be fine again. She got out of the hospital yesterday. Her son made me promise to sleep overnight. She wanted to me to go home so she could have time alone, which I certainly understood. But I waited until she was sleeping, and then I crept into her guest room and slept. I didn’t fool her at all. She got up several times to give herself breathing treatments. I never heard a thing! Good thing I’m not a nocturnal caregiver.

My son was arrested for probation violation. I met his girlfriend at the hearing. We talked about how he needed to grow up and take responsibility. Since he had nowhere to live, it was just as well he do his time. She was saving fort an apartment with him when he got out. My son told me he was going to reject probation and serve the last two months of his sentence. Instead, the public defender got a continuance and got him bail.

Long story short, she paid his bail. He wanted to take a shower at my house and live here until his hearing. I had told him that I was no longer going to enable him. He was mighty mad. The girlfriend paid for a motel room for two nights. They thought I would break down and let him stay here. It really felt bad to say “no” but I know it was the right thing to do. Otherwise in ten years I’ll have a thirty-three year old son living with me. I was so upset that I didn’t want to eat anything, not even dark chocolate!

But in the midst of this chaos I got the inspiration for my next book and started it. It’s a memoir that will include a scathing condemnation of the Maricopa County Criminal Justice System. I’ll let you know when it’s published.

My Son’s Girlfriend

My Son’s Girlfriend

I have two terrific daughters-in-law. They are caring, intelligent, respectful, generous and grateful. I am not their best friends, but we’re close. I waited until my sons were engaged before emotionally bonding with their fiancés.

My two older sons had long-term girlfriends in high school but I never got close to them for several reasons:  one was very shy, one was argumentative, and I would get hurt if they broke up and I had a deep relationship with the girl.

My youngest son had a girlfriend for five years. She was a beautiful and intelligent girl but the couple fought often. I didn’t like the way my son treated her and I told him so. They broke up and he’s played the field as well as having girlfriends who lasted a month or two. My son has not taken on adult responsibilities although he is twenty-three. I refuse to support him.

Now he has a girlfriend with a with an eight month old baby boy (not my son’s.) She also is pretty, intelligent, caring, and has a career path. Her parents live a thousand miles away. She calls and texts me. We have met for smoothies. Of course her baby likes me. I’m great with dogs and children. Men, not so much. I have been aloof on purpose. I don’t want to invest in this woman and her baby and then have them disappear. I’ve tried to convey to her that I hope she doesn’t support him financially or enable him in other ways. Perhaps that’s overstepping my bounds.

I rarely give advice to my married sons and daughters- in-law. I’ll give my opinion and leave it up to them to agree or not. I don’t get upset when they don’t agree.

I’m not sure how to relate to the girlfriend. I guess time will tell.

I’m So Glad I Don’t Have to Work!

I am still recovering from last week. I subbed all five days in a kindergarten classroom. The students were well behaved, the teacher left decent plans, and I was the principal of this particular school twenty years ago. Still it took me three days to regain my energy. The hardest part of the assignment was standing on my feet for seven hours a day. Of course I wore my good athletic sneakers with my “professional outfits,” but my back was still sore at the end of every day. Two days I went to the gym after work to limber up. It worked on Wednesday. On Friday I went to the gym and could hardly do my routine. I went home and collapsed on my bed for three hours.

It was fun to interact with the five and six year-olds. I got lots of hugs and pictures drawn and colored for me at home. Kindergarten is all day and very academic these days. The kids switch for reading in order to be taught in achievement groups. I had one off-the-wall child in my reading group. One day he ran out of the classroom. Another day he locked himself in the boys’ bathroom while the psychologist was observing the class. On Friday he kicked and hit seven children and then ran off. When the principal tried to return him to my classroom, not knowing what behavior had sparked the escape, I informed her and gave her my “principal look.” She took him somewhere else for the rest of the period. I don’t know how the teacher can deal with him and teach the rest of the kids.

.Since I was the sub I could do fun things, like help them write a book and illustrate it, use playing cards for math, read and tell stories and act them out, and teach them songs. I brought in my puppets and used animal stickers for rewards.

The key point, though, is that I choose to do this, I don’t HAVE to work. I have a golden parachute from the district where I get paid extra for subbing as a retired teacher for a maximum of thirty days a school year. It serves as incentive for retirees and the district benefits from instruction going on more or less as usual, with some fun projects thrown in. All the retirees I know who substitute.bring their own bag of tricks. My bag of tricks includes favorite picture books, copy paper and Ed Emberley’s drawing books I teach the children to draw figures that actually look like race cars, bears, hippos, castles, etc., rewarding good classroom behavior with stories and drawing by following directions.

The money I earn is a nice cushion to pay country club dues or extra on my credit cards, but not essential for food or mortgage payments. I do have a friend who’s a real estate agent who worked convention registrations to eat during these lean times. She earned eight dollars an hour. It wasn’t a bad job but sometimes she was a room monitor and had to stand on her feet all day. Now that the real estate market is picking up, she \’s glad to jettison that job.

Although I never earned big bucks in education, even as a principal, the social contract is that educators earn a fair retirement. The attacks on pension programs scare me. I agree that high level officials shouldn’t get enormous sums. I don’t even think people should “double dip,” returning to the career they just retired from and getting a salary and a pension. But most of us education retirees are teachers and live modestly. We earned our pensions.

 

Coasting

Coasting

I’ve been in California this week, coasting in many senses of the word. I spent four glorious days at the Mendocino coast. We (two couples and me) stayed at a fabulous house called Whale Watch. I highly recommend it. See the pictures at  http://www.whalewatchhouse.com/  and rent it at http://www.vrbo.com/277582 The living room, dining room, master bedroom, and family rooms have panoramic views of the waves crashing on the black rocks. I saw whale spouts and seals!  I loved sitting on the deck or in the living room on the comfy furniture staring at the crashing foam. Mesmerizing. We sat in the hot tub at eight in the morning, watching the ocean. We drank wine on the deck as the sun set

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I read, ate gourmet meals my friends prepared, had meaningful discussions, and shopped, went to the Botanical Gardens and saw unbelievable rhododendron blooms,

 

Annie and Susan among the lavender

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and snacked on quality dark chocolate caramels. In other words, I coasted. One couple I’ve known for more than thirty years and the other I knew just slightly. It was comforting to be in the company of people who love each other after so many years of marriage, still enjoy each other’s company, and were gracious to me.

There was no cell phone service up there, so I got to “coast” from my life. I felt free! No responsibilities as a parent or friend or date or colleague, just “me” time. Writing this makes me feel a bit guilty but I totally luxuriated in the calm.

The weather was supposed to be rainy every day but it mostly was wet at night. It was overcast and cloudy which added grandeur to the setting.

 

I’m back to Santa Rosa for a few days. Tonight Susan is putting on a St. Patrick’s Day birthday party for me. She’s making Irish soda bread, corned beef and cabbage, and homemade horseradish sauce. Tomorrow we go to SF to see Vanessa, Susan’s daughter and my godchild. We’ll eat at the City View Dim Sum restaurant in China town and do some tea shopping if there’s time before I catch my flight back to Phoenix. I’ve only been gone six days but I’ve renewed my inner resources and am ready to get back into my real life.

Zits and Wrinkles

Zits and Wrinkles

It just doesn’t seem fair  to have zits and wrinkles at the same time. My neighbor was complaining about that today as we were reading the paper and have tea and coffee. She said that at sixty-six she should at least be done with pimples. I sympathized. What else should we be past at our age?

• Wearing mini-skirts or short-shorts
• Cramming for an exam
• Looking for a job
• Breaking in a husband/wife/lover/girlfriend/boyfriend
• Chasing after toddlers 24/7
• Supporting children financially
• Bragging
• Blaming our parents
• Sleeping on the ground
• Holding grudges
• Drinking and driving
• Moving furniture by yourself

Got any others to add to the list?

 

 

 

 

The Single Senior Goes to a Writers’ Conference

The Single Senior Goes to a Writers’ Conference

            I went to a writers’ conference in San Diego over the weekend. Three colleagues, Phoenix area writers, and I boarded the plane on Friday very early in the morning with high hopes but secret doubts. We all had appointments for one-on-one sessions with editors and agents to get feedback on the first fifteen pages of our completed books.

We noticed that there was another event at the hotel, a Marriage Retreat. Were they retreating from marriage or to it?

After a leisurely brunch at the hotel, we went to the first of many sessions that covered how to plan, improve, publish, and market our books. Most of the sessions were excellent, and even the so-so ones contained a pearl or two of wisdom to improve my writing and marketing.

On Saturday morning I had the first of my five appointments. The New York agent and I discussed my book. He thought my writing was hyper-real and natural. He asked me to send him four more chapters! I felt like I had climbed Mt. Everest!

It was a comedown when the second New York editor was less than wild about my writing. She liked the characters and idea but thought I needed to work on my dialogue.

The third appointment, with a California agent, was even less laudatory. She also liked my characters and idea but . . .

I was thrilled that one wanted to see more, but disappointed the others saw a lot of work to bring my book up to snuff.

On Saturday afternoon I was sitting with an author at a table in the lobby when a woman came over, looking discombobulated. She said she had taken the elevator with an airline pilot. They both got out on the eighth floor. She was turned around and not sure where to locate her room. (At this point she confessed that she’d had a couple of drinks.) The pilot asked her the room number and pointed her in the right direction. When she got to her room, the phone was ringing. It was the pilot. She said she was “creeped out” and ran back to the conference.

The author (male, married, and seventy-eight) inquired why she was upset. He thought that she should have taken it as a compliment. My question was, “What did he look like?” I figured he must have been a toady guy, or threatening. The author then wanted to know if it would have been okay if he was handsome. I had to think about that. I replied that if he appealed to me, I might react differently, but handsome was in the eyes of the beholder.

The distraught conferee kept babbling, but she calmed down. She was drunk.

That evening the mariachis from a wedding reception across the hall made it difficult to hear the evening speaker at the conference’s banquet.

The next morning, Sunday, before the eight a.m. speaker, one of the conference directors said pilots were hitting on the conferees. A pilot had come into the bar the night before, dressed in his pilot’s cap, jacket, and shorts. He tried to put the make on several of the women writers.

I went to a session and then packed up and checked out. The front desk clerk gave me the pass to the business center so I could print out my airline boarding pass. I was surprised to see five people in the small room with three computers on two walls. A man was sitting on one side but not doing anything. He said there was something wrong with the computer, but continued to sit there.

As I waited my turn to use the computer on the other side, he asked me where I was flying. I replied “Phoenix.”

“That’s too bad,” he said. “I’m flying to Denver later and could have comped you a drink.”

It took me a second to realize he was a pilot. And one who wanted an afternoon delight. I didn’t feel creeped out or threatened. Rather I laughed to myself, felt complimented and glad I wasn’t a desperate woman in search of any man.

My next appointment, with an author and freelance editor, was positive, although she said to throw out the prologue. She gave me suggestions while complimenting my writing style.

At the beginning of the final one-on-one session later in the afternoon, the freelance editor told me he loved the prologue. He had some suggestions, but thought I was on the right track.

The “experts” had contradictory advice. What I learned was to trust myself. Consider suggestions, but ultimately it was my book. I think it’s in writers’ natures to doubt ourselves since we work in isolation without much feedback. I will try to stay focused on the positives I received instead of dwelling on the negatives.

I will do some revising before I sent the agent the next four chapters. I’m still ecstatic that a New York agent wants more.

 

Happy Valentine’s Day (?)

The Single Senior and Valentine’s Day

By Annie Weissman

 

     Valentine’s Day was always an important holiday for me. It meant candy and cards. When I was in elementary school, my mother would buy me an oversized cardstock book illustrated with cupids, flowers, hearts, and birds. I punched out the Valentine cards from the perforations and agonized over which classmate got which card. Candy hearts with the printed messages would be included in the envelopes. I would receive a card from almost everyone in the class. These were delivered to a special Valentine’s Day mailbox that we made in school. It was unmitigated bliss. It was all about friendship and crushes.

     Valentine’s Day was ruined for me in 2002. My husband decided that was the day to tell me he had rented an apartment and our marriage was over.

     So Valentine’s Day isn’t my favorite holiday. It has bitter memories as well as bygone sweet memories. During each of my two marriages there were times when I was full of love for my spouse. None of the beaus I’ve had in the past ten years of singlehood have made the day special.

     Today I finished revising my novel, ate dark chocolate with sea salt that was a present from my best friend, played computer Scrabble, and hugged my dog. Happy Valentine’s Day indeed.