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This Morning and a Little Channeling
Generally, I am a creature of habit. I wake up and go to sleep at about the same time every day. Occasionally, that rule will bend this way and that. What helps is that I am retired and am not required to be somewhere at a specific time every day.
Not going to work has both pluses and minuses.
The larger minus is that I don’t get that paycheck anymore. We practiced living poor the year before I retired. It didn’t really work, but the idea was there. I still give that advice to people who are anticipating retirement. It’s actually good advice, I think, even though I didn’t follow it too strictly.
The pluses far outweigh the minuses. If you can get by on your social security and have a spouse, though older than you, but who still works because he loves his job, then you are better off.
The pluses for me included not being as high strung as I’d been for years prior to my retirement. I’d gone through two life-changing experiences toward the end of my working life. One was to develop Diabetes 2 and the other was to go through Menopause. I wish somebody had warned me about the Menopause deal and that I knew more about Diabetes. But, I made my way through both.
The only good thing about Menopause is that you don’t have to get your period anymore. Sure, I’d gotten used to the routine and even, after it was gone, sort of missed it because it was how I unconsciously marked time. Now, time just flows differently. It’s not annoying, it’s just different. I live in Northern California where we do see disparate seasons, they are not, though, marked with snow. At least, where I live, they are not. But the time thing is odd to me. Sometimes I can’t remember what year it is. If somebody asks me when it was that I quit smoking or drinking all I can say is, “It was a long time ago.” The only thing I suppose I could say with certainty about those epic moments was that I didn’t have much grey hair.
My Diabetes was not diagnosed for many years. I’d always been overweight, well since I was 9 years old. They say, typically, people who are diagnosed with Diabetes 2 have it for 7 years before they are diagnosed. So, here are some symptoms:
You can get irritable as anything. Not to be confused with the irritability of Menopause. To have…
