Retirement Chronicles: Part 3

Retirement Chronicles Part 3 (read time is approximately ten minutes).

My retirement adventures and musings continue. I continue to grow peppers and have added Spanish Moss to my growing list of things I am nurturing. We used our first harvest of peppers in Sweet Chili Beef and Pepper Rice Bowls. Cathie bought me the Spanish moss on a recent trip to Louisville and I have gone down some more YouTube rabbit holes on the best ways to grow and propagate Spanish Moss. The YouTube experts are now at the point that they are contradicting each other so I am at a loss on which to believe at this point. It’s like that old Abraham Lincoln quote, you can’t always believe everything you see on the Internet.

I have added checking my rain gauge to my daily routine as I have learned that this is one of the first conversational topics among men who have retired. Nobody has come out and said it but I have seen the looks of judgment when I haven’t been able to report on how much rain we had at Casa Drury in the previous 24 hours. If you run into me now, I will be able to report down to the hundredth of an inch how much rain we have had at our house in the last 24 hours.

A question I get asked a lot as a recent retiree is if Cathie has a honey do list for me. Anyone who knows me well at all knows that mechanical inclination is not something I was blessed with but I will enthusiastically tackle (and watch ten explanatory YouTube videos) a project if it is important to my lovely bride which brings me to what will going forward be known as “the box” or “the sample” incident.

Cathie asked me last week if I would take a box to UPS for her to be shipped out. This is not an unheard-of occurrence in our household and I was glad to help, that is until I found out what was in the box. You see, someone in our household decided they were too special for a good old-fashioned colonoscopy and wanted to do the Cologuard option. I’m sure you’ve seen the Cologuard commercials on TV with the cute little animated box that dances around. What the commercials don’t tell you about is that the whole ordeal will test your thirty plus year marriage.

As a loving and caring spouse, I said that I would help Cathie make sense of the process. Little did I know that the unboxing of the apparatus would take 30 minutes and include a 30-page instruction manual. (A helpful tip, if you ever find yourself in this situation, whatever you do, do not watch any YouTube videos on this topic. One wrong click and you will see things you cannot unsee). This box had bottles, brackets, booklets, additional boxes, and labels. It is all a blur and something I have tried to repress from my memory but I almost backed out when the instructions said we might need a Phillips screwdriver and a measuring tape at one point.

Most marriage vows have language about for better or for worse but at no point in a ceremony have I ever heard a minister say you may have to assist you spouse with collecting and boxing up a sample of poop. My professional opinion is that all premarital counseling sessions should include this possibility going forward.

As this is a family site, I will spare everyone the collection part of the story and jump to the final parts of our story with “the sample”.

After surviving the collection process and taking a nap to recover, I came downstairs to find that “the box” with “the sample” was sitting on the island counter in our kitchen. Mind you I’ve gotten in trouble before for putting my shoes on the same kitchen counter as they were “dirty and it was hard to say what I may have stepped in” but a box of poop on same said counter is just fine and dandy. But if you think about it where is the best or appropriate place in your house for a box of poop? I put it by the front door and counted down the hours until I could drop it off at UPS.

I will share that there was a certain amount of mental preparation that took place in my mind as I drove to drop off my shipment the next morning. What do I say? Do I say what it is? Do I make some sort of joke? Is this something that happens daily? Will they recognize it right away and make some sort of comment about me after I leave?

Well, I found out that our local UPS no longer has drop off service and that you either have to take it to Advanced Auto Parts or Standard Quick Print. In my mind, I quickly did the calculus of whether I wanted to take a box of poop to an auto parts store or a print shop. I decided pretty quickly that I was taking my chances with the print shop. So I pulled up, took a deep breath and went in. I didn’t even get a chance to use any of my rehearsed phrases as the clerk said “You got a box for us. It will go out today. Thanks.”

I have so many questions and thoughts about this whole process. Rather than go into all of them here, I will share with you that I have prayed for the poor soul who had to open and process that sample. I don’t know what kind of day they were having but I know it got much, much worse upon opening our present to them. I have a class I do on the topic of Work-Life Balance in which I talk about bad jobs and use the illustration of the person whose job is to test whether or not deodorants work by sniffing armpits. I am replacing that illustration with the poor soul who opens and processes boxes of poop every day.

I am happy to report that Cathie and I have been able to move on from “the sample” and after multiple disinfectant cleanings are using the kitchen island again for my forays into cooking new things. Over the last couple of weeks I have made for the first time zucchini bread, homemade marinara sauce, stuffed zucchini boats, and shrimp and grit deviled eggs.

Best thing I’ve read is Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman.

Best thing I’ve watched is Silo Season One on Apple TV.

Best thing I’ve listened to is An Oral History of the Office.

We assisted our youngest son Nicholas and his roommate in moving from Richmond KY to Lexington KY. Little did we know that we would be moving on literally the hottest day of the year with a heat index that hit 107F. My watch said that I had over 20,000 steps that day and did 26 flights of stairs. My left ankle, knee, and hip say that it was double that.

Until next time everyone. Take care.

August 12, 2023