Ahh…Retirement

I finally retired earlier this year and am still in the adjustment process of not getting up and going into the job every day. We have a short/long range plan for the rest of our lives. Long range plan is to decide where we want to live and move there. Short range plan is more immediate and easier to do. We have committed to moving more and getting in better shape.

I still get up at about the same time every morning, shower and put on makeup, just like a regular workday, the only difference is I dress more relaxed. We are walking three times a day every day, regardless of weather, after breakfast, after lunch and after dinner, getting in roughly fourteen thousand steps a day.

One thing we have noticed on our walks is that the majority of the neighbors are never outside, regardless of the time of day. We have started making up back stories on the neighbors we have never seen to make the walks more fun. We wave and/or speak to anyone that is outside or driving down the street. It has been fun talking to some of the neighbors, making small talk about the weather, etc. We are now getting questions from some asking how many times a day we walk or comments about us being hardcore walking in the rain or the heat, now the cold.

I think that when the neighbors see us walking all hours of the day in the heat, cold, rain or snow, they think we are the crazy old people down the street. They are right too.

Gardening Gone Wild

I love playing in the dirt, always have. I love watching things grow, especially fruits, vegetables, and herbs. I have also become really excited finding nature’s predators in the garden taking care of business for me. Toads are always welcome and if I see one somewhere else in the yard, I will catch it and take it to the garden to search for food. This year I found ladybug larvae scattered throughout my sedum and when they hatched, the ladybugs went about eating all of the aphids that were attacking the sedum. Now I am watching a small Carolina Mantis stand guard over my poblano pepper plant.

In addition to the pepper plants, I have planted different varieties of tomatoes, onions, leeks and cantaloupe this year. We devised a type of trellis for the cantaloupe to grow up on instead of along the ground. We thought this might keep the voles at bay. Well as usual, we grossly underestimated plant growth. The plants have taken on a life of their own and are producing lots of large fruit, some too large and heavy for the vine to support. I have four melons that I found in the garden so far that have fallen off the hanging vine before they were ripe enough to pick.

This morning while inspecting the plants checking on a couple that are close to picking, I found two that were growing tightly wedged between the fence post, the 2 x 4 support and the back fence slat. One was quite large with a squished shape and the other was a bit smaller, though just as squished. The two were forcing the two slats to bow out and pull away from the support. We had to push the two slats away from the support in order to get the two melons. Have you ever seen a flat melon? It is something to see. Nature always finds a way.

Popular

I have a long-standing opinion of not feeding wildlife. I believe that feeding wildlife, birds, deer, squirrels, etc. is a bad idea. They can become too comfortable being close to people or lose their ability to hunt on their own. Then if we move away, the next person may not continue the practice, then the birds, squirrels, etc. have to re-learn to hunt on their own.

I do however provide water for the bees and the birds. I started with a bee bath to entice them to come and pollinate my vegetable garden. Ravens came and hogged the bee bath, so I added a bird bath for them. They loved the bird bath, drinking and bathing in it. They would make a huge ruckus, if the bird bath ran dry. They would sit on the fence or in the Cedar trees in the yard and yell at me until I refilled the bird bath.

When we moved back to the Midwest and started a much smaller garden, we didn’t have many pollinators around, so I set up another bee bath and the smaller birds, sparrows, house finches, robins, etc. availed themselves of the bee bath. I added a larger deeper tray with some rocks in the bottom and filled it with water. Soon that became a huge hit with the local birds. I kept the bee bath also and also set up small individual tiny bee-sized cups in and around the tomato plants, oregano and thyme.

This spring I ordered two real live bird baths and put them out in the back yard in different locations and waited. It took a day maybe before the birds found the new baths. They were lined up around the rims taking their turns at dipping their beaks in the water, then flying off after their thirst was quenched. Another bird would land in the vacated spot. We noticed that the birds would line up along the fence waiting for their turn.

Now we have swallows coming in the backyard darting back and forth, along with the sparrows, house finches and robins. Our backyard looks like a bird sanctuary and bee farm with honeybees, bumble bees and even a great gold digger wasp, something I’ve never seen before.

We are so popular.

Fearless

When we moved back to the Midwest and bought our current home a few years ago, we discovered a problem with the local birds. This is a newer neighborhood and there are not many larger trees. There isn’t many places the smaller birds can roost and build their nests.

We had to remove three small nests that the birds had built in the light/fan on our deck. As soon as the nests were removed, the birds started to rebuild again, so we had to construct a cover over the light fixture to keep them out. Once that location was cutoff to the birds, they moved to the front of the house and started hanging out on the front porch and eaves, covering the porch and railings with bird droppings. So attractive.

A co-worker told me that they had the same problem with their RV that they stored between trips. They bought a couple of large owl statues and placed them on top of the RV to scare off the birds. She told me that the owls worked exceptionally well, no more birds or bird poop. We decided to try that and bought two life size owl statues for the porch.

Mitch added a small platform above the front door and placed one of the owls there. We set the second owl on the porch railing below and to the right of the first owl. I cleaned off the porch and railing so we could see if they would deter the birds. It worked, no more bird poop. We were amazed that it worked out so well.

It continued to work for about three years, but the birds are starting to wise up and realize that the owls are not the big bad “wolf” anymore. We have started to notice bird dropping on the porch again and the birds are flying in a couple of large bushes in front of the house and hanging out. Yesterday I got a notification on my phone from the doorbell camera that there was a person on the porch. I could not believe what I saw when I answered my phone. A Sparrow flew to and landed on the owl’s head. It only flew off when the owl’s head turned around. What a slap in the face! I laughed so hard, the dog was startled.

I wonder if a giant boa constrictor would work.

Most Annoying Commercials 2025

Let me preface this by saying that in my humble opinion, the commercials listed below are the most annoying so far in 2025. Also, based on our age, there are only five commercials that are marketed to us, senior citizen group, Life Insurance, Medicare, Social Security and a certain Cellular company. The rest of the commercials out there pertain to a much younger group.

For me, the most annoying commercials are:

The fast-food commercial with the well-known doorbell at the start of the commercial. Samson, our English Mastiff loses his mind, runs to the door and barks loudly with death to the interloper forever.

The payment commercial with a certain actor that can’t carry a tune at all.

The vaccine commercial and has a loud flat line screech that goes on for at least thirty to forty-five seconds.

The potato chip commercial with flying mustaches.

The “buy” gold commercial geared towards “average” people assuming we would be wealthy and beautiful if we buy gold.

There are many more, but these are the top most annoying commercials to me.

The World is on Fire

On our walk this morning just as the sun was rising, we were treated to another day of wildfire smoke from the wildfires in Canada. It is amazing how far the smoke travels and that the smoke stays pretty thick thousands of miles away to the Midwest.

One of the side effects of the smoke haze is an absolutely beautiful sunrise. I took these pictures with my phone on our walk. Another side effect is that we were able to wake up most of the dogs in the neighborhood too, while stopping and taking pictures. I am sure that all of our neighbors just love us on an early Sunday morning.

The last one turned out really cool.

Early Mornings

I took this picture with my phone early this morning, before 4:30am. I still wake up every morning before 4am and most of the time before 3:45am. There is a part of me that wants to sleep later, maybe till 4am, but there is a very large part that enjoys the dark quiet times in the pre-dawn mornings. I listen for owls, the calls of the coyotes but most of all the quiet. For me, this is the best time of the day, before the world wakes up and chaos ensues.

“Regrets…”

I know that I will regret saying this later, but at this time I am so sick of the cloudy gloomy skies, may or may not rain (for the most part, no rain, just sucky weather), chilly temperatures, etc. Come on, it is almost May, I want to get dressed in the mornings in something other than a sweatshirt or long sleeve t-shirt and a zip up sweatshirt. I want to wear flip fops and paint my toenails, even though my last attempt ended up as a crime scene.

I am so ready to plant tomatoes and peppers. I will even plant cantaloupe and cucumbers and make pickles out the wazhoo. Just let me have some sunshine and heat, not the 120° temps in Phoenix, but somewhere around 70° to 75° for starters, then we can move to the 80’s. I want to go play in the dirt so badly, but right now it is no fun, too chilly.

I know that as soon as I say that out loud, we won’t get another drop of rain the rest of spring and summer, causing me to spend a large fortune on watering. The heat come on full force, meaning that the air conditioner will run non-stop until October. This will happen as sure as I am standing here, wishing for warmer weather, then regretting that utterance within the next month, but I can’t help myself, I hate the cold.

A Crime Scene

Retirement is going swimmingly, so far. I am trying to learn to sleep later. So far I am up to 3:45am from 3:25am. I know, baby steps.

We had a funeral to go to this morning, a very close friend died, just fourteen days short of turning 100. For some unknown reason, I decided that it would be the perfect time to paint my toenails, (yeah right). I was applying the first coat of color, a reddish orange, and was trying to make a small correction on my little toe when I felt something wet on my foot and hand. I looked down and had poured paint polish on my foot, my hand, the bench at the end of the bed and the newspaper I had covered the bench with. I jumped up and ran to the bathroom leaving “bloody” footprints in my wake. They look really good on the white bathroom rug. Good tip, there is no amount of polish remover you can use to remove the polish from the white rug or the multi-color bedroom rug for that matter.

It truly looks like bloody footsteps running from the bedroom.

At this rate, I may have to go back to work to pay for everything I break.

The Next Chapter

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything. Not that I didn’t have any experiences, I just didn’t take the time to write any down. I thought that I was too busy (I wasn’t) to sit still long enough to write about anything. I also can’t say nothing has happened (it has), that was worthy of writing down.

Our dogs, Orso and Royal, died of old age, we moved from the Pacific Northwest to the Midwest. I got a promotion, Covid hit the world and just wouldn’t go away. People quit making eye contact for fear of catching it if they looked at you. All semblance of courtesy has gone, and anger has taken control of almost everyone.

We rescued a three-year-old English Mastiff, who is very reactive. Evidently, he had a rough beginning. We thought that since we have had large dogs that a 168-pound dog with issues wouldn’t be much more of a challenge, wrong. It took almost a year before he trusted me. He bonded with Mitch easily because they were together all day every day, while I went to work. There were times when he looked at me in a certain way, I thought he was going to bite me. With a biting force of 556 psi, he can do some damage if he wants to.

I’ve finally retired from my career and am starting the next chapter. There were times when I didn’t think we would ever be able to retire, but here we are, both retired and jumping into being together 24/7 or there about. Good thing we like each other and enjoy being together, because the next 20 to 30 years are going to be quite a ride.