Month: September 2024

Sog And Sag

It is late September, and this summer is slinking by like a sloth stuck in saran wrap. I am tired of it. Granted, I was tired of it in May. At least in May, I could tell myself that the miserableness of the atmosphere was simply summer and would pass in time. I have reached that point in the sog season now where I firmly believe I will never be cool again. For the rest of my natural life (which may end in a tragic air-drowning accident), my body will continue to stick to every surface imaginable. A layer of sweat and humidity will glue every random object that I touch to my body. I don’t feel comfortable. I don’t feel clean. I don’t feel cute. Actually, most of the time, I feel disgusting.   And it is never going to end. Don’t try to talk me out of it. I know this is a permanent condition.

Friends of mine spent part of this summer in Scandinavia. They kept posting pictures of the Arctic Circle, reindeer, huskie farms, and people wearing long pants and sweaters. Personally, I think it is sadistic. I was in possession of her plants, watering them while she was away. They required three or four kettles of water a day to keep them upright. All those pictures of frost-friendly Scandinavia  caused me to contemplate plant-icide in retaliation.

The Florida summer rain is getting to me, too. Usually, it rains heavily for a fairly short time period each day, maybe a couple of times a day. However, it is also hurricane season. When I first moved to Florida, I learned that it can rain any day of the year in Florida and sometimes it does. I finally got to the point where I did not despair and suddenly change plans when a forecast several days in the future called for rain. First, those forecasts for a “future” beyond three hours from now are completely unreliable. … Just because tomorrow’s forecast says it will rain, one shouldn’t contemplate changing plans. It is very likely that, when one checks the weather by hour the next morning, there is a good chance rain will no longer be part of the mix- and, if it is, it will likely be pretty self-contained in a one-hour block of time.

This year has been different, however. We have had activities rain out because the weather did not cooperate. In fact, that is why I am writing a second summer rant about the weather. Normally, I limit myself to one whiny post a year about how annoyingly oppressive and completely bizarre the weather is in Florida. This year, however, something has happened that really must be addressed.

My birthday. Of course, I have one every year, but this September 30th is my 65th birthday. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this one seems fairly momentous. One could argue that, along with the 18th and 21st birthday, 65 is one of the most significant milestone birthdays in a person’s life. Many people retire at 65. Medicare kicks in at 65, suggesting that the United States government proclaims one officially “elderly” at 65. Typically, I have always been the youngest in my friend group and in the workplace. Even though I retired nearly 10 years ago, I have been able to avoid thinking of myself as “old” because of context. Most of the people I knew were older. However, that is changing. Every year, there is a new influx of people newly retiring into my community from points north. There is no doubt about it. There are now numerous people around me who are younger than I am. That, along with the United States of America seal of approval on my “elderly” status, has sent my brain careening into “old” with all the subtlety and finesse of electroshock therapy.

Anticipating that this was going to be a tough transition for me and also wanting to celebrate myself on this landmark day, I have been thinking for months about what to do  to mark the occasion. I particularly planned vacation around my birthday this year. The past couple of years, we have been traveling to or from a vacation on my actual birthday. I wanted 65 to be special and I wanted to focus all my energy on my birthday on celebrating me. I had several ideas, but nothing was really singing my name. Finally, I found something that had me written all over it. I planned a trip to an animal sanctuary ranch about an hour away from home. As part of the experience, I planned to interact with a sloth, pet a hedgehog, and take a miniature horse for a walk. There was a catch. The owners were planning to be out of town beginning on my actual birthday. If I wanted to do all the elements of the experience, I would have to visit on the Saturday before my birthday. This was not my ideal plan, but I finally decided to do it.

Our visit is planned for this Saturday. Yesterday, the governor of Florida declared a state of emergency because of Hurricane Helene’s approach. She is expected to make landfall on Thursday. The storm is extremely slow-moving and may still be raging on Saturday. Even if Helene has passed by Saturday, it is likely that she will leave a wide field of damage in her wake. It seems more than likely that I will not be slothing or hedgehogging or mini horsing around on Saturday. And I blame Florida weather for this travesty.

Of course, this is not a giant problem. I am blessed that Helene will probably not cause much damage in my neighborhood (knock on wood) and safety is the main thing in a hurricane. It seems very callous to even complain about my birthday celebration when people will be afraid for their lives. Even people in Helene’s path who are physically safe will be way more inconvenienced than I will be. Losing power is a bit more tragic than losing the opportunity to walk a miniature horse. I am still sad that the storm may keep me from having the birthday celebration I planned. And really peeved at the weather. I mean, is it not enough that I am turning “old and saggy?” Do I really have to be soggy, too?

Have a storm-free day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

Have you ever had your plans for a “special” birthday derailed? How did you end up celebrating? Please share your perspective by leaving a comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Still Employable- Although Maybe Just Barely

A couple of years after I retired, I published a blog post called Employable (Employable – Terri LaBonte- Reinventing Myself in Retirement.)  I discussed what it felt like for someone to offer me a job at that point in my life. I sorted through a great quantity of feelings related to the offer, but my bottom-line response was that I didn’t want a job- even though it was nice to be asked. I had not considered starting a new career in retirement before the job offer. I certainly have not considered it since then.

Recently, a situation arose at church that involved a major re-juggling of administrative staff. Our parish administrator of nearly a decade planned to retire in mid-September. I initially agreed to help in the office one day a week to reduce the strain on our parish ecosystem while we transitioned to a new office organization. There were a few of us who were teaming up to cover basic processes for a couple of months. As the situation unfolded, however, increased complications bombarded the well-intentioned plan, demanding a more permanent and cohesive solution.

The church’s administrator (secretary/financial systems manager) semi-retired a few months ago. In her semi-retired status, she was concentrating solely on the financial systems. The parish hired a part-time secretary a couple of months before the church administrator was due to change to her part-time schedule. Unfortunately, as soon as the administrator officially started coming into the office only two days a week, the newly hired part-time secretary resigned.

Our parish administrator agreed to return to a full-time schedule while we found a new person to take on the entire full-time parish administrator job. We did find someone, but she had some pre-existing commitments that would limit her availability during part of the transition time. Our retiring administrator devised a plan to transfer skills in both the secretarial and financial administrator arenas between June and September. This succession plan also involved training me so that there would be at least one other person with a pulse who knew the mysteries of the church’s financial software.

I love plans at least as much as the next person. There are those who would argue that I take planning to an absurd degree. However, I also have my own little motto- “Terri proposes, and God disposes.”  Such was the case with this transition plan. Despite our best efforts, there were a series of disastrous events that caused the plan to crumble beneath its own weight :

  • The retiring administrator fell and smashed her elbow into a million pieces, requiring extensive surgery.
  • As soon as the retiring administrator recovered from her surgery, her husband was hospitalized with COVID.
  • One of the stalworth volunteers who had been helping to keep the train on track went on a boating trip and got stranded in the middle of some body of water somewhere due to mechanical problems.
  • The rector was on vacation.
  • The photocopier possessed (or is possessed by) some sort of evil, vindictive genius. It stopped working for nearly an entire week- probably in protest against the excessive number of revisions of the Sunday service bulletin documents that we copied the week before because we kept finding errors. It turns out that cutting and pasting changes into five or six separate documents is not as easy as you would think.
  • I learned that my eyes are spoiled by the 27” computer monitor we have at home. The 23” monitors in the church office are just not cutting it for me, especially as I sit behind the new hire and try to coach her through different processes.
  • The retiring parish administrator, overwhelmed by trying to keep the parish office operational, train new workers, and care for her husband, suddenly declared she was moving her “retirement full stop” date up by a month. Instead of disentangling herself from us in mid-September, she decided to leave in mid-August.
  • Certain key passwords retired along with our outgoing administrator. One especially important system required that I get a new password through snail mail. I am glad our government is concerned about protecting privacy, but this particular system has the clunkiest password parameters I have ever encountered.   .

During this period of limbo, I tried to use what I learned in the approximately 7 hours of training the original administrator was able to give me on the financial workings of the parish before destroying her elbow. It made me nervous when people kept saying, “Terri knows the financial stuff.”  Terri knew the foam, not the root beer. My claim to fame was that I was putting money in the bank and paying bills. Beyond that, I was uncomfortably aware of the limited depth of my knowledge. People kept telling me, “At least you are getting something done- anything you are able to do is better than nothing.”  I am not so sure that is true. After 30+ years working in a financial-related field, I am all too aware that a person can easily know just enough to be dangerous.

As time has passed and I have had the opportunity to complete the routine financial operations several times I feel much more hopeful. The retiring parish administrator was able to come back to work for a few weeks after her surgery rehab, so I was able to reality check some of the things I did in her absence. Despite my misgivings, I had not done anything lethal to my church’s financial system. The original administrator was able to resolve the hanging chads of work I had left over from the prior couple of weeks. I managed to expand the number of hours I was in the office while she was still working so I could sop up every last bit of knowledge from her brain cells. Learning from her tutelage increased my feelings of accomplishment and confidence.

When the retiring parish administrator was in the office, I did not get involved with the Sunday service documents. This was probably a huge relief to everyone involved, I know it was a huge relief to me. I was even able to take a day off and go to the beach with a friend. I called from a beach cabana to see how things were going and if they needed me to come in and help the next day. In my book, if I am calling from a beach cabana, things are good. They told me all was well and there was no need for me to come in the next day.

I think I needed to “act my wage.” My wage is 10 times more than most volunteers. However, 10 times 0 is still 0. That would imply that I should be investing $0 in worrying about or taking responsibility for any of this. Still… it is hard for me not to give my all. Predictably, it is also hard for me to give my all and not reserve anything for myself. When a friend texted me on Friday night to report that the bulletin did not reflect the correct person giving the sermon, I wish I had been able to react with more understanding, urgency, and courtesy than I did. Sadly, I may have “acted my wage”  during that encounter.

Now that our former parish administrator is officially retired, the new hire and I have been on our own. I am continuing to train the new hire in the financial administration duties. This has often been of dubious benefit since I was only about a half step ahead of her in knowledge. I found myself confusing her because I still had so many missteps. I took a week or so to just do the work so that I could more clearly direct her. It is truly a case of the “partially sighted leading the blind.” That axiom takes on a whole new meaning when the “partially sighted” person is trying to read tiny print on a tiny screen from much further away than her eyes can accommodate. We spent half an hour of mucking about yesterday because the field I thought said “date” actually said  “deposit.” 

Despite the struggles of the past few months, we are making great strides, and I am proud of our little administrative team. While I do not believe we have yet produced a perfect set of Sunday service documents, they are getting better each week. The new administrator is picking up the financial tasks with agility. A volunteer who has helped in the past with the secretarial part of the job has kindly offered to take over some of the work for a few days so that our new administrator can concentrate on solidifying her knowledge of the financial aspects of the job. We are all working well together. We treat each other patiently and kindly. We ask for grace as we learn, from each other and from our “customers”- the God and parishioners we serve. People are more important than perfect procedures. We pray a lot.

You may ask why I tangled myself up in all this. Is it my inability to say no that has expanded that “helping out one day a week” to 20-28 hours a week? I don’t think so. I believe that we have the right long-term solution for the future administration of our parish. The process of transitioning to a new office staff has been wracked with many unanticipated complications.  With God’s help, we can resolve the complications and move forward. Because of that, I am willing to invest in the solution.

However, even if I am employable… I still don’t want a new job.

Did you take a new job in retirement?  How has that been for you?  Please share your perspective by leaving a comment.  In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.

Have a productive day!

Terri/Dorry 😊

“Writing Blogs” Is Not The Same Thing As “Writing A Blog”

I expect that you are thinking that it has been uncharacteristically quiet in TerriLand recently. It is rare for me to go so long without new content. Truth be told, I am not sure that this really counts as “new content” either. It is more of a letter of apology or excuse… depending on how charitable you feel.

I try to make my blog posts relatable and genuinely honest. My goal is that the posts authentically demonstrate my real self and my thought processes. I believe my blog posts do reflect the state of my brain, which could be a very scary thought. Most of the time, the effort I put into examining what is on my mind and writing about it tends to resolve the general disorder and messiness of my interior world. Without this process, it would be much scarier to live inside my own head than it already is. By the time you read the blog post, I have pulled out that awful junk drawer inside my brain, carefully examined its contents, decided what to keep and what to throw away, and organized the remaining items. In my blog posts, I am able to show you the newly neat results of this effort to tidy my mind. Of course, just like with a junk drawer, my mind does not stay tidy for long, but my blog posts often reflect that one brief, shining moment in time when my brain does not look like the den of some demented squirrel.

Recently, though, I have not been able to declutter and organize my brain. There are so many ideas and analyses running amok in my gray matter and none of them will sit still long enough for examination. It is not writer’s block. I have no less than 5 blog posts in various stages of development. Problematically, “various stages” include “embryonic,” “infantile,” and “prepubescent.” None of these potential blog pieces are anywhere close to “adult.” It turns out that teasing around many blog posts doesn’t necessarily result in completing one publishable piece for the entertainment and edification of my readers- all three of them. Rather, the confusion in my brain that writing usually helps to order and inform is simply more cluttered with these bits and pieces of drivel. These wannabe blog posts are just more brain junk that needs to be moved out of the way when I am searching for something in there.

So while today’s post may not rise to the level of “content” and is certainly not my best work, there is an honesty about it. Today’s blog does authentically demonstrate my real self and my thought processes. It is just that recent life has fed my real life and thought processes lollipops for breakfast and then scrambled the whole mess up in a blender on “pulverize.”

Send help. Pray for me.

Have a clear-minded day!

Terri/Dorry 🙂

What do you do when you know you need to slow dawn and calm down in order to gain perspective? Please share your ideas by leaving comment. In the alternative, you can email me at terriretirement@gmail.com.