Luuuuucy! I’m hooooome!
Or maybe Gladys Cravats Kravitz would be more appropriate because he is sitting out there in part because he can spy on the neighbors. A certain household at any rate. I won’t go into detail other than to say the “matriarch” over there is something like seven years younger than yer fav-o-rite blahgger and she is a great-grandmother. Yes, you read that right. So I guess the spying can get pretty interesting. Or not, because 50-something great-grandmother implies various small children running around. In 14 years or so, maybe things will get interesting and she’ll become a great-great-grandmother? Let’s not go there.
Me? What did I do today? Well, besides the usual wrangling of old-skool table-based html and the truly nasty old-skool javascript that “drives” the navigation menus, I had the pleasure of beating up on a massive MS Word doc with totally screwed up section numbering courtesy of the corporate bean counting department. In this case, I am referring to project managers, not accountants when I say “bean counters”. Project management is important but not at the expense of getting actual *work* done. There is a balance there. I have taken classes in project management and it actually isn’t a bad fit for me but [delete long rant here] I decided I was better off being a regular old systems analyst. I won’t even try to define what the heck that is. You are either a systems analyst or you are not. No matter what else you happen to be doing in life.
Anyway, I am now sitting out here and the sideshow down the street has gone inside and I should go inside and put the leftovers in the oven but it is so nice out here it’s just hard to go in. Because you know what’s coming, don’t you? Alas, all good things come to an end and someone is making an appointment at the Genius Bar because an iPhone hit the bricks and that did not turn out well. It wasn’t mine. This time. Been there, done that.
I was gonna end there but then I remembered back when I lived down on N. Seventh St. in a rattly old upstairs apartment, the first one I lived in alone. Except that the GG (now TP) was there a lot. The TP has worked for more years than I am strong enough to count, beginning his career as a paperboy when he was something like 10. He did not deliver papers like the kids do now where mom stops the minivan and they deliver the papers together. He was out by himself, maybe with a brother sometimes but mostly alone. And he had to do collections too.
At any rate, the GG was actually unemployed for a few months the summer I lived in that apartment. He had an apartment over in, where the heck was that? Clawson or Troy? I dunno. We were sometimes over there but mostly here on The Planet (because I was working). There was a beautiful porch on N. Seventh St. and the GG spent a lot of time there watching what was going on in the neighborhood, kinda like what he was doing today. The GG snagged a decent job after only a few months of being unemployed and, although that was definitely not the job he retired from, he has worked his you-know-what off ever since and retiring from a federal government career is not the worst thing.
So I totally understand why he has taken that retirement step. And we can afford it and so it is all okay. (And my job is really just gravy at this point but it does keep me off the streets.)
October 8th, 2016 at 11:38 am
My neighbors aren’t that interesting! I’m glad I didn’t retire this year, but so far I’m seeing the certainty of doing so at the end of this year. Just too much STUFF and I’m tired of the bell schedules, the expectations and stresses. However, I’m afraid of being bored silly in retirement. Especially with no Henry. 🙁