Never Trust A Candle

Today is my birthday.  I am 61 years old.  Last year, I had a little emotional discomfort with the idea of turning 60.  This advanced age disoriented me a bit.  I never thought of myself as elderly before, even when I retired, but the 60th birthday did mess with my sense of self.  I found myself challenging my perception of reality.

Little did I know that my birthday disorientation was a precursor of things to come.  My 61st year was a mix of muddle and misadventure for me and for the whole world.  There is no way I was wishing for a worldwide pandemic when I blew out the birthday candles last year.  Hiding in my house with only minimal human contact was not what I had in mind. Learning to breathe through several layers of sweat-soaked cloth whenever I ventured outside was not on my list of #lifegoals@60. Cancelling a long-anticipated trip to New York City was not on my agenda for my 61st year. Re-engaging with remote learning and virtual gatherings, after giving them up when I retired, was not something I would have ever imagined, much less desired.  All in all, my 61st year has done a lot of sucking. 

On the other hand, it has not been all bad.  Things seemed like they were going pretty well at the end of 2019- a trip to Las Vegas, a visit to California to see my brother and his family, a Christmastime getaway at Disney World with a first time (and, at this point, maybe my ONLY time) opportunity to go to the Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party, and a growing enjoyment of my retirement life here in Florida were all great starts to my “over 60” life.  I grew in friendship and fellowship with my new church.  My relationships were all doing great.  I had plans and excitedly looked forward to numerous new adventures.

Then the coronavirus pandemic hit. My birthday candle must have fizzled out because my plans all went to hell in a handbasket.

This year, I am approaching my birthday celebration with cautious optimism.  The celebration is kind of a moving target.  When we had to cancel our New York City trip in May, we decided to go crazy and book a one-night stay in a premier room at Disney’s most luxurious resort, the Grand Floridian.  We have visited there often, marveling at the water park area, the beautiful views of the Magic Kingdom, tales of the nightly water pageant in the bay in front of the hotel, and the cool dining options, including breakfast with Mary Poppins. We have never actually stayed overnight there because it is wildly expensive.  Since we cancelled our even more wildly expensive trip to New York, we booked the Grand Floridian room as a consolation prize. 

As time passed, it became increasingly clear that the pandemic-tempered Grand Floridian experience would be significantly lacking in cool factor.  Disney was allowing limited access to the resort, so the fancy room we booked was not going to be available. There would be no fireworks or water pageant to view.  Character meals were cancelled.  The lovely up-scale dinner house is still closed.  The water park area is still open, and the Disney people offered us a villa instead of the fancy schmancy room we booked.  Still, for the money it was going to cost, I felt like any whittling down of the experience meant we should just cancel.  Sadly, I cancelled that trip at the end of August.

Last year, we spent my birthday at the Magic Kingdom, participating in a behind the scenes tour.  I had always wanted to experience the tour and my 60th birthday seemed a good time to empty that particular item from my bucket list. This year, there are no tours running and we 86ed our overnight splurge stay at the Grand Floridian, but we are again going to spend the day at the Magic Kingdom with friends.  It will be a more laid-back day than we originally imagined, but I am sure we will all enjoy it.  We have dinner reservations for Raglan Road at Disney Springs, which is another place I have wanted to try for a long time. 

So, all in all, I am sure it will be a good birthday.  At least, I am hoping it will be.  One thing that the pandemic has taught me is that it is often better to live in the moment and to enjoy what is, without too many pre-expectations.  I think many of us have spent too much energy over these past seven months or so trying to plan around the world-wide circumstances.  We have been holding our collective breath, waiting for circumstances to change and for the lives we have planned to come together. 

I think I am just now deciding that I would rather change my life to accommodate the worldwide circumstances than wait for the worldwide circumstances to change to continue living my life.  The life I live, just like my birthday celebration, may not end up being what I expect or completely the experience I would choose to have, but there is something to be said for embracing the sweetness of discovery!

Just a reminder that you can get my second book, Random (A)musings on Amazon.  If you never ordered my first book, Changing My Mind: Reinventing Myself In Retirement, and would like a copy, please email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.  It is out of print, but I do have some copies for sale.  Come on, folks, throw me a bone! It’s my birthday! Make me happy and buy a book!

Have a happy birthday or happy un-birthday, as the case may be!

Terri/Dorry 😊

Injured

I broke my toe recently.  People ask me how I broke my toe.  I broke my toe by having the coordination of a two-year-old and the strength and bulk of a sixty-year-old woman.  That’s how I broke my toe.

I was doing my walking in the living room the other day.  Some of you may remember that, since my brother got me a Fitbit for Christmas a few years ago, I am somewhat obsessed about my step count every day.  I typically walk 6 to 7 miles a day, mostly across my living room floor in front of the television set.  Walking for one’s health is all fine and good and everything, until one slams one’s foot against the wooden foot of the sofa.  I immediately doubled over in pain, as if folding my abdomen in two would have any effect on my foot.  It did not.  At first, of course, I thought I had simply stubbed my toe.  As painful as stubbing a toe is, there is no long-term impact.  After the first few seconds of torture, the pain recedes and everything is back to normal.  Except when the pain does not recede.  That usually means a broken toe. 

I broke my toe once before on a trip to Hawaii.  On my first day there, I was walking through the waves and rammed my foot into a large underwater rock.  Note to self:  when you fight with a rock, the rock is going to win.  The rock is the very definition of an immovable object.  Being younger and even more stupid than I am now, I kept on keeping on through my whole trip.  My rationale was that I had paid a lot of money for the vacation and I was not going to waste it nursing a sore foot.  I continued to walk all over Waikiki and beyond for an entire week, dragging my injured foot behind me. It was agony, but it was agony in the name of vacation, so I was not going to let anything stop me including my throbbing, swelling toe.  Funny, it never occurred to me to rent a car, take a cab, or get on a bus.  I just kept walking.

When I returned home, my pinky toe was roughly the size of the rest of my foot.  It still hurt like a billy-be-damn (no, I don’t know what a billy-be-damn is, but my father always used to say that) and I was starting to develop calluses on my ankle from turning my leg in to avoid pressure on the pinky toe.  I went to urgent care, where the nice doctor ordered an x-ray to establish that I did, indeed, have a broken toe.  It turns out that there is not much anyone can do to treat a broken toe, other than take ibuprofen and wait.  It also turns out that the optimal treatment for a broken toe does NOT include walking all over Oahu.  Who knew? 

Anyway, with some rest and ice and a week of NSAIDs, the toe did begin to heal.  Apparently, despite my ignorance and stubbornness, I did no permanent damage.  I may have learned a few lessons about taking better care of myself and thinking outside the “walking everywhere while on vacation” box. 

This experience came back to me when I smashed my foot against the sofa the other day.  Being much older and maybe a trifle wiser, I knew better than to continue my physical activity as if nothing had happened.  I have done a better job of staying off my foot and giving myself time to heal.  I am still not able to wear a regular shoe and I still have some pain, but the bruising is fading and the discomfort is much more manageable.  I have faith that I will, at some point, be able to walk without hobbling.  Dr. Google says that, with a broken pinky toe, the pain and swelling usually resolve in a week or so and the bone heals in about a month.  I can live with that.

The problem is that, since my injury, I have learned that I only have two speeds- “run around like a chicken with her head cut off” and “lay around like a lox.”  I can walk 6 miles a day, do water aerobics, hop from one activity or errand or meeting or chore to another throughout the day, and rush around fueled on adrenaline or I can recline inertly on a sofa riding the waves of lethargy.  Neither mode is very satisfying and, certainly, the “run around” speed is on the blink just now.  I feel distinctly discombobulated and disoriented.  I do not know how to manage the middle ground. 

I need some help.  Since neither “chicken” or “lox” is working for me right now, I need someone to please find me another animal to emulate that is appropriate for a person with a broken toe… and a pulse!

How do you find and keep the balance between rest and activity?  Please share your perspective by leaving a comment.  In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a pain-free day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

Ok; It Is Freakin’ Hot

Maybe I am finally becoming a Floridian.  This is the sixth summer I have spent in Florida and I have managed to squelch my annual whine about the weather until the beginning of September.  I am sure the new air conditioner I installed a couple of years ago has not hurt my climate adaptability, either.

Whether my increased tolerance of Florida’s summer weather stems from my disposition slowly morphing into “Floridian” or from a better air conditioning system, I am proud that I have held out until now.  June, July, August… you have not heard me bitching about the heat, humidity, thunderstorms, or general sogginess of the climate.  Still, I now have to say I have reached the end of my tolerance.  

It’s freakin’ hot. 

The news says the temperatures this summer have been well above normal.  In fact, for most of the summer, the mercury has been breaking records.  Because of the COVID-19 restrictions and closures, it did not make much difference since I was mostly inside, enjoying the air conditioning and the highest electric bill I have ever received.  I always said that I figured the COVID-19 quarantines would lift just about the same time as our summer weather comfort quarantine would hit.  I was right.  In the summer, the weather is often too hot, too rainy, too humid, and too unstable to make plans.  It is not that the weather ALWAYS keeps people from doing things, but it COULD keep people from doing things at any time.  You can sometimes get lucky and spontaneously enjoy some outdoor activity, but you can never rely on a plan to do something because the weather will likely make other plans.  For someone like myself, who is not that spontaneous, it is frustrating.  This year, the whole outside world is frustrating and unstable, so maybe the weather is not infuriating me as much. 

Recently, though, I have started to wilt noticeably.  Part of my challenge is that I have started going out to do things that I have missed since COVID-19 shut down the world.  To add to the weather challenges, these activities require me to wear face coverings.  Central Florida in the summer always makes me feel like I am breathing water.  With a mask covering my breathing apparatus while wandering around a Disney park on a “feels like” 106-degree day, it is like I am breathing an old, wet, soggy, wash rag.  Funny, my lungs seem to prefer air.  At least, as I recall.  It has been awhile since my lungs sucked down some unhumidified air. 

I am sure many of you are yelling at your computer screen and calling me all sorts of names because, really, what do I expect, wandering around a theme park in the middle of the summer?  I would normally never go to Disney in the heat of the summer.  There is no way I would pay regular admission to get the truncated Disney experience right now.  With the annual pass, though, it does not cost me anything, and I really, really wanted to experience what “Disney without crowds” feels like.  I have been able to get on all the rides that were unavailable prior to COVID-19 due to massive attendance.  I also find it fascinating to examine the creative strategies Disney employees to manage social distancing and other safety protocols. 

But I digress.  This blog is not about Disney World.  It is about my ability, or lack thereof, to weather the weather. 

As I said, I’ve been a pretty good sport about the weather this year. I have maintained a sunny disposition and avoided weather-induced crankiness, for the most part. The last week or two have been my Waterloo, however.  It was like, suddenly, the immensity and oppression of the “heamidity” whacked the constitution clear out of me.  I have valiantly wrestled with the weather for the past three months and now, the weather has me pinned.  Somebody slap the mat, please!  Put me out of my misery. 

We are slowly slugging our way through the humidity to autumn, at least by the calendar’s reckoning.  I have been in Florida long enough to know that the climate usually does a pretty sucky job reading the calendar, but a girl can hope.  I am three weeks away from a sudden trip and Fall.  At least, I hope I am.

In reality, September is often the worst month because there is little if any relief from the heat and humidity.  Every hurricane that has been a realistic threat for our part of the state since we have lived here has occurred in September, which makes me a little hesitant to proclaim September 21 the end of the Florida summer boil. 

At some point, I look forward to not sweating while actually in the shower.  I look forward to days when my air conditioner will run a sprint, rather than a marathon. I look forward to being able to walk out my front door without my glasses fogging up. I look forward to not feeling sticky icky every hour of the day. 

Right now, all these goals seem like impossible dreams.  There is some hope that autumn will come, and the weather will eventually change.  Starbuck’s has started selling pumpkin scones. 

It is too hot and I am too lethargic to think of a question this week, but feel free to use the comments as a space to vent your own personal weather whine!

Have an air-conditioned day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

Bread, Wine, and Hand Sanitizer

I have stepped up my COVID-19 reopening game.  I have attended IN PERSON worship services!

Our church leadership decided to try to make some lemonade when the COVID-19 lemons closed our church building.  Our church has been operating since 1889.  In 1947, a fire destroyed much of the original architecture, but the congregation faithfully restored the structure in 1948.  It is common belief that 1948 was probably the last time the building saw any major renovation.  There has been the odd vacuuming and some air conditioning repairs, but evidence suggests that the place has been running solely on duct tape and the Holy Spirit for as long as most of us can remember.  Our sexton and various volunteers have done a pretty miraculous job keeping the facility standing and presentable (as long as you didn’t look too closely), but there comes a time when band-aids do not suffice to treat a compound fracture.

We have a new junior warden on our vestry. For those non-Episcopalians out there, the vestry is the unpaid governing body of an Episcopal parish. The junior warden is the saint who typically gets stuck with resolving all things property management in Episcopal churches. It seemed a great opportunity to rope in that unsuspecting “volunteer” junior warden to project manage a major renovation. Besides, spending quality quarantine time beautifying and reinforcing our property was a productive use of down time. It also kicked that messy question of whether to reopen the building way down the road.  We hoped that, by the time the building was ready, COVID-19 precautions would be unnecessary.

We now know that hope was a pipe dream.  As COVID numbers have improved in central Florida, many of the churches in our diocese reopened for public worship with about a gazillion different rules and regulations about safety protocols.  Our church renovations nearly completed, our parish decided to ease into official reopening by celebrating the Eucharist in person, with appropriate social distancing, in our parish hall.  About a dozen of us pioneers have attended.

I do not know that I felt a particularly strong need to attend in person.  Max and I have been watching two services on television each Sunday- his church, which is always a televised ministry, and my church on YouTube.  We worship with each other and then meet a small group of church friends for an outdoor BYOL (Bring Your Own Lunch) picnic to maintain our connections and fellowship. 

I decided to attend some of the parish hall in person services because I wanted to support the effort to reopen.  I wanted our livestream of the service to show that people were enjoying worshipping together safely and without fear.  I wanted to help put butts in the seats, basically.  It is part of my conviction that “doing isn’t feeling” when it comes to “normal,” but feeling doesn’t start until we start doing. 

At any rate, I believed I was going to the in-person service for other people more than for myself.  I felt so brave and altruistic. I do not think I crossed the line into Smugness, but I may have come close. 

God laughed at my pompousness and then put me in my place. 

It turns out, I was missing in person worship services more than I knew.  I felt like I was breathing fresh air again, after being in a smog-filled atmosphere for some time. It felt so easy and natural.  Of course, it felt strange to not touch anyone.  I had to restrain myself from hugging, patting arms, and shaking hands. The social distanced chairs and the mask-wearing is almost not weird now, we do it so much.  The priest delivering the host to each of us in our places was different, but felt more bonding than distancing, despite the copious amounts of hand sanitizer he used.  There was a brief moment of awkwardness when Max, having grown up in a Catholic church prior to receiving communion in the hand, stuck out his tongue for the priest to place the host in his mouth.  The priest and Max both recovered quickly when Max realized that “force of habit” is not a good reason for someone to touch your tongue during a pandemic.  No harm done.

I think there was a certain amount of altruism in demonstrating to the people who are on the comfort level fence about returning to in person worship that these differences are easy to manage.  The barriers are not as bad as they sound when you get right down to it.  Maybe some people are more inclined to participate in our IRL worship services after seeing some of their brothers and sisters jump the hurdles and enjoy the experience. 

Still, despite the more altruistic motivators I had to participate at the in-person worship services, I found out that I needed them much more than anyone else needed me.  I had no idea how much I missed the presence of other people praying with me.  Even though our parish has done a great job of fostering community during this time of separation and I pray with others regularly on Zoom, I found the experience of worshiping with other people in the same room, with the same voice, to be overwhelmingly powerful.  My hands might not have been touching anyone, but my heart and soul certainly were.  I was sitting on a folding chair. Huge bottles of hand sanitizer figured prominently on the tablescape of the makeshift altar. Fake flowers decorated the space. We had two singers and a pianist instead of a beautiful choir.  There were some audio and livestreaming glitches to be resolved.  None of that mattered.  I might as well have been in the most beautiful cathedral in the world because God was there.

Our church renovations are done now.  Last Saturday, a bunch of us spent the morning cleaning the sanctuary for about the eighty millionth time over the past several months.  I had it easy.  Other people did a great job in an earlier round of cleaning, so there was not as much leftover postwar grime from 1948 as there might have been.  The most disgusting thing I encountered was vacuuming up a desiccated creature that was, at one time, either a lizard or a frog.  Hey, every house, even a house of God, needs a thorough cleaning every 70 years are so.

We’ll be back in our newly beautified worship space on September 13.  I will be there.  Pray for us!

terri holding mop as she cleans inside of church
Yes, I do know how to operate a mop!

What have you started doing “IRL” again that you have been doing virtually since the COVID quarantine? How has it worked out for you? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a REAL day!

Terri/Dorry 🙂

Doing Isn’t Feeling

Little by little, I am escaping the confines of my four walls.  I am doing more and more “normal” things. We go to restaurants once a week.  We have gone to outdoor and indoor malls. I have attended some real-life meetings for church committees. We have been to Disney Springs and even to the Magic Kingdom. I rode in the same car with two friends and stayed with them in the same hotel suite on our overnight trip to Amelia Island.  It was a big day when Max and first sat inside a Starbuck’s with our beverages and pumpkin bread. 

It is tempting to believe things are “getting back to normal.”  That is not the case, though.  Doing isn’t feeling. 

A weird sinister vibe accompanies our furtive ventures out of the house.  We do not do anything without analyzing the risk/benefit factors. No matter how you look at it, life is certainly painted in a vibrant shade of “weird” when the notion of going to Starbuck’s is a potentially dangerous activity. Everywhere we do go, there are reminders that the world is still considerably off-kilter.  While we are trying to right ourselves, our entire culture is working up quite a sweat from the effort of playing “let’s pretend.”  No hugs or handshakes.  Masks covering smiles.  Following one-way directional arrows in the supermarket. Learning to speak up because no one can hear me from an appropriate social distance.  Fitting rooms closed at department stores. Strangely quiet and empty streets, stores, and other venues.

There is also the “social acceptability” factor of returning to previously normal activities.  Watching the news and social media, reactions to real life are mixed.  There seems to be one camp of people insisting that the virus is taking over the world and we are all going to die.  There is another camp that is insisting that there is no danger and taking any kind of reasonable precautions is unnecessary.  I know I should not care, but I do tend to worry about what people will think if I post pictures of us at Disney World or suggest an in-person meeting for a church group.  I want to be respectful and comforting.  I also want to not be judged. 

All in all, things in the area where I live and are doing fairly well.  News media and prayers for full annihilation of the virus aside, causes for concern seem to be receding. People are aware that the world is not normal, but they also are beginning to feel the need to live outside the box… literally.  People are beginning to stop waiting for things to return to normal to continue with their regularly scheduled lives.  There are adaptations and adjustments we need to make, but society is restarting some form of regular life. That is a hopeful sign.  The more we can do that, the more doing will be feeling. 

It is another weird transition time that we are experiencing now.  When the world first went on lockdown, the changes we had to make to our normal lives were so massive and intrusive, many of us felt our sanity sensors wobbling.  I know I felt like I was kicked in the gut back to the last twelfth of Never. Now, we have adapted very effectively to zoom meetings, social distancing, and avoiding non-essential human contact. We might be having a hard time starting to climb back from Never.  We may have become a little lethargic and rut-bound. In some ways, it is easier to remain securely in hunker down mode.  It is a bit like COVID-19 spooked the horse of our lives and we got thrown out of the saddle. We toppled to the ground and hurt ourselves.  For a time, it made sense to stay off the horse and heal.  We could even decide to stay off the horse permanently if we did not enjoy riding.  On the other hand, unless we want to give up riding forever, we must get back on the horse at some point.

I know that point will be different for everyone.  I know that everyone heals differently.  I know some horses are gentler than others. I know some people are better riders than others.  I am not here to advise or judge, just to hope and pray that, someday, I can hug people again.  And that I will feel “normal” doing it!

What activity or condition would help you to feel “normal” again? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. Alternatively, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a normal day!

Terri/Dorry 🙂