Where is my watch?

I've been retired for almost six months.  Here are some random thoughts on my status thus far. I miss my colleagues!  I knew I would miss them, I just didn't realize how much a part of my life they had become.  I especially miss the laughter we shared.  Thank God for my WW meetings; my friends and I have lots of laughs there.  Also, I think I'm finally winning over some of the folks at my Pilates class, although a few of those ladies are really cranky.  I blame planking. (planky cranky!!!) I miss being called "Doctor McGlone."  Well, you know I worked long and hard on that damned PhD!!!  Outside of academia, the folks in my new world probably don't care too much about my doctoral status.  It meant a lot to me; I guess it still does. I took my awesome employee benefits for granted.  Health insurance is necessary and very costly.  If you have benefits, be grateful!!! Meetings: most were painful, some were bearable, and a few coul...

So many things I thought would happen when I retired.  For example, I really believed that, once I had no work obligations, I would feel the ever elusive desire to clean my house.  I mean, I would really enjoy cleaning my house, scrubbing the toilets, dusting, vacuuming, etc.  You know: endless chores that, no matter how often you do them, they just need to be done AGAIN and AGAIN.  Who doesn't love that?!   Is there some pill I can take to arouse sheer joy at the thought of housekeeping? Like Viagra for vacuuming?  For some reason, I still don't enjoy cleaning, despite the amount of free time I have.  I would much rather spend hours binge watching Doc Martin, or Midsomer Murders, or anything...I can find a lot of excuses for not cleaning the house.  Going down endless rabbit holes on Ancestry.com can use up an entire afternoon.  When I finally force my sorry self to clean, scrub, dust, vacuum, etc., I feel really good about it (when i...

About ten years ago, I had the frightening experience of seeing diamond shaped objects zig-zagging across my field of vision.  It was distracting enough that I couldn't read or drive.  I called my doctor.  Her primary concern was that I might have had a transient ischemic attack, or mini-stroke.  After lots of tests, they found no evidence of a stroke.  It was a migraine.  I've had a few more of them over the years; one of them was the dreaded "vomiting migraine" where I had to stay in my bedroom, in the dark, lying still until it passed.  I still get the occasional migraine, but I recognize it and it doesn't frighten me.   I have always had headaches, even when I was a child.  I remember coming home from school with my head aching so much that I had to lie down before I could eat dinner or attack my homework.  This went on and got worse through the years.  I regret all the time that I missed with my family because I had to r...

Actually, the cockroaches ate and pooped on my dishwasher computer board, and it died having lost its innards.  As I discovered when cockroaches invaded my Keurig, those suckers love dark and damp spaces.  The dishwasher is dark and damp (I assume, as I've never been inside it when it is closed...).  Also, the dishwasher has tiny pieces of food on the items I place in there before I turn it on with its damned computer board.  Cockroaches love tiny pieces of food.  Did you know that you can't buy a dishwasher that doesn't have a computer board?  Since we've lost two (!!!) dishwasher computer boards in the last two years, I guess we didn't learn anything when the first one fell victim.  It's cheaper to buy a new dishwasher than it is to replace the damned computer board, what with labor and all that.  Geesh. Because we live in Florida, we have bugs.  Really, there is no escape from the bugs; they love this hot  humid  weather. (I'...