My Job

Six AM and I am glad I do not have to punch a time clock.  I have a pension and a GI disability allowance. Thank you, taxpayers for the later.

I could sleep more if I wanted to. Instead I can rise when I want and retire when I want. My fellow resident, Jim, sleeps 'til noon and retires sometime in the early morning. I hated the regimen of work, but put in my years, and now I set my own hours.

Some of my fellow residents wish they COULD work.  Retirement is not for everyone.  I had a great-grandfather who retired in the early part of his life, when leisure is especially valuable, and then at age fifty went to work in a hardware store for the rest of his life.  Makes sense, for some.

Oh, I have given myself a job: un latch the garden gates in the morning and close them at sundown. No one hired me to do it, and without my attention it would not get done, and who cares. It keeps transients out of the garden and away from the building at night, but I am not sure they would come in anyway, nor that the latches keep them out if they are determined prowlers.  We once had transients sleeping under the thick bushes in the parking lot, but they haven't been back since the gardeners trimmed the bushes radically.

What does one do with himself if he has no work to go to?  Some read, wander the halls, watch television.  Bingo is very popular here at the old folks home: three times a week.  Listening to the call of random numbers is one way to spend your leisure time. Our nightly rummy game consumes an hour a day, but, my, it gets boring from time to time.

I am starting two classes weekly.  One an Art class, taught by my daughter, and the other a writing class for seniors.  Mostly we write nostalgia pieces and try to explain to  the modern generation what things were like in the "old days".

But the best is my Blog.  I have just spent forty minutes in pleasurable chit-chat with you, my friends.