Yeah...well...

How time flies whether you're having fun or not....

So, it's been over a year since I last blogged.  And -yikes- what an expensive first year!  They never covered this in those retirement seminars!

2013 was the first year I couldn't do my own taxes. Things became complicated after Mom died. The way she put together her trust involved monies I would get after her death. But these weren't insurance monies. Nope- it meant taxes. Big time. And, for the first time in my life, I paid taxes. I have never, ever written a check that large. And this year I learned:

1. Unless I go back to work, I will never be able to use IRA contributions as a way to lessen my taxes.
2. I will never, ever overpay my taxes through income tax deductions. My former employer via the Pension Office errs on the side of not taking out enough for employees, The days of the income tax refund are gone, baby, gone.
3. Health costs become a big part of deductions. So do charitable contributions,  If you don't have those, you pay a much higher tax bill.

2013 was the year I started addressing my home's infrastructure.  I hadn't been able to do that when I was care-taking and working full-time. So- exterior boards were replaced; my fence gate was replaced; the house was painted; the water damage from the roof leak was addressed. I thought I was making a good start. Then, then, then.....SURPRISE!  

The slab leak.

First, I blamed the cats. I'd taken them with me on vacation and I thought they were paying me back by wetting the carpet. Then, my neighbor knocked on my door. There was a puddle in her living room. Had I had any problems? Uhhhhhh.....  Her landlord's maintenance guy concluded that the leak was NOT on her side. He very kindly turned my water off and managed to turn it off permanently- as my plumber and I discovered later. Well, darn! I started looking for plumbers and renewed my digging out efforts.  

Three different plumbing companies came to give estimates.   

1. The first was not sympathetic about why my house was in such a state and he did not hide it.  Looked great from the outside. Inside- not so much. The first identified the problem as a slab leak- not the 70s-colored hot water heater going out in a flood of glory. Since the slab leak was under the stairs and tearing up the stairway wasn't a viable option, repiping the house was the only way to go. And- as part of the repiping, he proposed running a pipe outside and up the exterior of my back wall.  I'm not a plumber but that sounded wrong. He gave me an estimate which turned out to be the lowest.  
2. The second was a plumbing contractor recommended by a Facebook friend.  He silently went through out the house with me apologizing and explaining. He sent me an estimate that was over three times as much as the first guy. This was his winsome, yet effective, way of telling me that he did NOT want my business.
3. The third estimator was sympathetic.  Like the first, he explained what needed to be cleared and what needed to be moved. Unlike the first or second, he had been through the caretaking experience and understood. He said he would work with me. His estimate was higher than the first contractor's but I felt more secure with this guy. He got the job.

Clean up and decluttering are somehow trickier without access to water. My next door neighbor let me get water for toilet flushing from her hose. Another neighbor gave me keys to her house so I could take showers and wash my hair.  I spent a small fortune on bottled water.  I hired the men who replaced my decayed exterior boards and siding to help with the garage and it was whipped into -at least- good enough shape that the plumbers could get to the walls they needed to get too. I tackled the inside myself. It was a long process.  I had to get help at the last to move a large piece of furniture out of my kitchen. And weeks later, the work I did clearing things up was enough to get the repiping done. For extra measure, I had them install new toilets, replaced the harvest gold water heater, and replaced the garbage disposal unit which decided to die when the water returned.

The house is still a work in progress.  There's a lot to be done yet but I need to save to get them done. 

And- I made my will. Planning for a time when you're not around is a very sobering experience. Yes- another yikes-inducing chunk of change was involved.

Yes, 2013 was a very expensive year.  I do love understatements.

So- do I regret retiring when I did?  No. Having more money to work with would have helped, but retiring meant I had the time to handle these challenges. I would NEVER have been able to get time off work to deal with these challenges. I hadn't had a vacation since the mid-1990s. And I would have been even more exhausted by the staff shortages. And--- I wouldn't have been able to do what I needed to do for me. Like addressing health and well-being issues.  When you don't address your own infrastructure issues as they occur, you pay both monetarily and physically. I'd been flat out ignoring myself while I was a caretaker. I was warned not to do that. But- like many caretakers- I felt there was no time for the luxury of doctor's or dentist's appointment if it wasn't case of dire need. Being retired, gave me the time I needed to make a start on addressing my needs.  And- wow- did that addressing add to the health cost deductions for FY 2013.  

And- if I hadn't stopped working and retired when I did- I wouldn't have been able to take yoga lessons, take Tai Chi, taking a painting class, go on Lunch and Learn trips, join a choir at church, take Wednesday night classes at church like the cooking class, join the local historical society, fully experience One Spark, attend the theatre, do group meditation, or go to concerts.  I would have been sick, exhausted, angry, and resentful and feeling very undervalued. I saw that coming while I was still working because I was feeling those feelings. For me, it was a no-brainer. It was time to go. It really felt more like escaping than retiring.

Would I have done anything differently? Well, yeah! I learned a lot of crummy life lessons this past year and it hasn't been pretty. The phrase "It seemed like a good idea at the time" can be applied to this period in my life--- even more than I thought probable. 

Is retirement what I thought it would be? I hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about retirement. I was busy coping with life at the moment for the past decade or so. My plan was to keep working as long as I could past the 32 year mark and keep feeding that IRA. That wasn't - as it turned out- the best or most workable of all possible plans.  There's a Yiddish saying- Man plans. God laughs.  One of my favorite quotes is from the first Indiana Jones movie: Raiders of the Lost Ark: "I don't know. I'm making this up as I go."  That line resonates with me. I may not always like it but there are always something that happens that is way beyond my control.  That's what makes life aggravating; it's also what makes it interesting.

Making Haste Slowly (or Caretaker Recovery)

So, yes, there's been quite a gap between posts due to illness and a sudden onset of grief. I had really hoped to be further along with the clear out than this.  From the beginning of this whole clear out progress, I noticed I could only work in short spurts. I would be short of breath or nauseated or extremely fatigued. I wondered why.  I still was putting a goodly amount of stuff on the curb for the trash man but my donation piles were becoming smaller.
By Christmas, I cleared a pathway to my sliding door,  By February my extra large walk-in closet (my spare room which has the most ceiling water damage had a path to the windows. My cats started sunning themselves on top of the under window bookcases. I was making progress. Then I came down with an upper respiratory infection. Fearing another bout of last year's bronchitis, I got to the doctor. Took the antibiotic but also took it easily.  The trash pile dwindled to sickroom debris. As I came off the antibiotic, my gastrointestinal track went kablooey as  my appetite dwindled to nothing. The blues hit big time as did grief and I realized that I needed help. Checked with my insurance provider and started the hunt for psychological help. I also made an appointment with my doctor.

So- this is what I've found out so far:

• There are a bunch of tests out there I 'got to' take- some blood, some I had to provide samples of stool, and some diagnostic tools. The stool sample was one of those Catch 22 deals.I had to solve some issues myself beforehand - the ones that brought me to the doctor in the first place- to get a decent sample. Not something I'd want to collect again anytime soon. 
• I don't have celiac disease. So I don't have to be on a gluten free diet. Good news because the foods I'll eat when I have no appetite almost certainly have gluten in them. I widened my food choices. Instead of "I can't have that", it's been "That I can have."  Still- the whole exercise made me more aware about what I eat.
• From the x-rays, the pitter patter of my heart and my shortness of breath are not caused by problems with my heart and lungs.
• I really need to watch myself. I tend to plunge into things too quickly, Instead of self/advice-diagnosing myself,spending money on foodstuffs I don't need to have. Since gluten free stuff has a short shelf life (and takes longer to cook, has a different taste, etc.)  And I need to stop myself from rushing out and buying what Dr. Oz says may "cure me".  I found homes for the gluten free stuff with families that need it.
• The best thing I did was to give up Mail/Web shopping for Lent. Amazon Prime especially makes it so easy to buy things.  Like the aforementioned gluten free stuff and Oz cures. From the stuff I've been clearing out, I've been seeing a lot of waste. Expired medications and herbal cures. Expired food. Just junk. Junk no one else would want.  And a lot that makes me stop and ask myself "What were you thinking when you bought this?"  Retail Therapy has huge drawbacks.
• I have a lot of unresolved anger and frustration about what happened these last ten years and before that- from job changes and challenges to caregiving to hospice, to Mom's death, to Jessie's near death and special treatments, etc. I recognized that I was setting myself up for a fall with all the changes I was going through added to all the changes I made this past year and a couple of months. I recognized that -by the stress list alone- I was setting myself up for something to happen when I retired. But just the idea of staying on the job was stressful, frustrating producing, and limiting that I was willing to risk whatever happened to avoid it.
• The good news is that I'm not so far gone blues-wise that I need to go on anti-depressives.
• The bad news is that I get to go to specialists to find out what is physically wrong. Every now and then Acid Reflux comes back. Can't find a trigger.
• The good news is that the music Pandora finds that sounds like Pat Metheny's Last Train Home is fairly energizing. And available via the Kindle.
• The mixed news is that I have been advised to do something creative in addition to my clear out work. And this blog with its one cherished follower is it.

Back to work!!!

 

The Not So Blank Slate

My backyard -tiny as it is- used to be my refuge. No matter how chaotic my house or my life got, I could go to my garden and escape.  The summer sky I'd painted on my back fence was always blue - no matter what was happening in the real sky.  When my mother came to live with me, she, too, liked my garden. We used to sit out there and read the Sunday paper. One of the neighborhood cats used to come visit and curl up in my lap- much to the displeasure of my own cats. But, as her dementia took hold of her, she became careless and uncaring. She'd leave clothing or paper out there. She'd let one of my cats who was strictly a house cat out and leave her out there. I'd come home to wet and ruined clothing and newspapers and a frantic cat.

As Mom became worse and more of an invalid, the way to the garden was blocked and I couldn't spare the time to care for it.  The garden became overgrown.

 

 

I wish that it looked as picturesque as the garden above.

 

The land takes untended spaces back. Florida's long growning season takes the process a step further. It went native. Big time.

 

This past August, I paid the man who mows my lawn to clear it out. He and a friend went at it with much vigor and thoroughness. And far exceeded my expectations. He left my two trees, my hydrangea bush, and my gardenia bush. Everything else was purged- including the first thing I planted- my azalea bush. All that was left was the stump. Chairs, pots, ornaments, figurines, hoses, border fencing, and tables went into a pile.  It looked pretty bleak back there. I was in a state of shock but consoled myself that this was an opportunity to start over anew.A blank slate. But I was going to miss the azalea's magenta flowers come spring.

 

I'd given myself a pep talk and a deadline to be able to get out door to the garden by Christmas. I did it by Boxing Day night.  Today was an unseasonably warm day and I went out to the garden to see what survived the onslaught. I dug through the pile rescuing and putting chairs back into place, started putting things in a pile to be taken to the curb, and tried to figure out what I could do with what was left. I noticed a patch of green about the size of a dinner platter. I frowned but then my eyes widened. The leaves looked very familiar and were growing around the stumps of the old azalea bush.  I may not have any magenta azalea flowers in this spring, but, perhaps, by the next.