Just a short post on the Gerbera Daisy (common name Gerber). Sena planted it in our garden recently and it is firetruck red. They symbolize innocence, purity, and, most of all, cheerfulness.
When I need a little cheering up, I just look at the Gerber Daisies.
I don’t read the news much at all these days. It’s almost always bad, anyway. I was a paperboy in my youth. I delivered the Des Moines Register and Tribune for a year and earned a certificate as Honor Salesman.
Let me tell you a little something about being an Honor Salesman back in those days. First of all, I had to cross some railroad tracks to pick up my papers at the drop up the street from my house. Evidently, tree swallows like to nest around railroad yards sometimes, because they dove at my head like bombers. I had to swing my paper bag at them to fend them off.
And I had to deliver my papers in a little red wagon on Sundays to get the big Sunday edition out. My paper bag wasn’t big enough to carry around my skinny neck with all those supplements, ads, and tons of news.
In the winter, it was twice as bad. If I’d had a sleigh, I could have made like Santa Claus. But I didn’t. All I had was the wagon and dragging it through a foot or more of snow did not put me in a holiday mood.
I learned a little about business. One of the lessons was that you sometimes meet some pretty strange people on a paper route.
I was embarrassed a few times when I had to collect, which was to gather payment from my customers for a paper that one guy said wasn’t worth a shit. In all fairness, he’d been drinking and had fallen on hard times—but he paid me anyway.
Another awkward moment was collecting from a young newlywed couple who always answered the door while wrapped in large bath towels. “Large” is a relative term, especially on the young lady. It left a little to the imagination, but not much.
I folded my papers, which is, of course, a lost art nowadays since everybody gets their news on their electronic devices. I didn’t pitch them on to porches though, because that was frowned on at the time by my boss. We were taught to place it carefully inside the storm door so it wouldn’t get wet or dirty.
Dogs were not as much of a problem as bumblebees, particularly at one house on my route where the guy raised fields of Hollyhocks. They were well over 6 feet tall and they covered his back and front yard, crowding around his front door which I had to open to deliver his paper. The air was always alive with the drone of bees, some of them as big as golf balls (well, it seemed that way). The place scared me to death—but I had to do my job.
I didn’t really develop a head for business but it was good training for life in general.
My wife and I were watching an episode of Antiques Roadshow this evening and saw a spot about a pair of cufflinks that turned out to be worth a lot of money.
That reminded me of the first and only pair of cufflinks I ever owned. Back when I was an undergraduate in the mid-1970s at the private, historically black Huston-Tillotson College (now H-T University), in Austin, Texas, a wealthy, successful white businessman who was fond of my English professor bought me a suit, dress shoes, tie, and cufflinks.
I was ambivalent about the gift as I was being fitted for the suit at the men’s store in downtown Austin.
I wasn’t sure what cufflinks were supposed to do for me. I suppose I shouldn’t judge the guy too harshly. After all, he was just trying to be generous—and probably trying to impress my English professor.
It was the 1970s and it was not a great time for black people in America. There was violent racism of course. There was also a sort of paternalistic generosity which may have emphasized superficial symbols of economic success.
Anyway, after a while the shoes started to squeak. I outgrew the suit. Despite those losses, I became successful through hard work and good luck.
I lost the cufflinks.
We were out for an adventure today, shopping for a retirement home. That’s what it was, really, although we really didn’t make any hard decisions or commitments.
Nowadays there are considerations for whether to build from the ground up, buy and modify a spec home, buy an older home, go condo, even rent, move to a retirement village, and whatnot.
You have to think about mud rooms, pantries, walkout basements, whether to finish the basement or not, lot size, square footage of the house and the yard, two car or one car garage, Jack and Jill sinks, lawn sprinkler systems, Home Owner Associations (HOAs), fences, ceiling fans, gas fireplaces, whether or not you want to live next door to a high school baseball stadium and more even beyond that.
What you don’t have to think about is whether or not there’s indoor plumbing.
When my brother and I were little boys, our pastor and his family took us on a long drive up to the sticks somewhere in Minnesota in the dead of winter. Man, it was cold up there. The object of the visit was to visit a family who lived out on a farm and they didn’t have indoor plumbing.
There was an outhouse and a well. I remember the pastor’s little girl and his brother and me and my little brother stood by the well and talked about how pure the water was in the well. While we were talking, the pastor’s daughter picked up a rock and, before anyone could stop her, dropped it into the well—just to see how it would float down to a bottom nobody could see.
Her little brother was pretty annoyed. The member of the family we were visiting had just remarked how clear and pure the well water was. After the rock spiraled out of sight into the water, her brother spat out, “Well, it was but now it isn’t!” She just snickered.
Because we were staying the night at the farmhouse, we went to bed. There was a large pan for urinating but if you had to move your bowels, the only option was the outhouse.
I had to go. I waited as long as I could because it was really cold out there. Finally, I just couldn’t hold it any longer, and I had to pull on some clothes and trudge over the frozen ground to this shabby little shed that I could smell long before I got to the rickety door.
There was some paper in there but—it wasn’t real toilet paper. It might have been magazine pages. I was so cold it was impossible to relax enough to let go.
I had problems with constipation after that for a good long while, well after we returned home.
Things have changed a lot—mostly for the better in many ways but you still have to pay a high price in other ways.
Toilet paper is softer.
I’ve thought about my weight over the past few days and decided to look at a few pictures. I had not realized that I had lost about 20 pounds over the last several years. This was all intentional and I’ve shed about 7 of those in the last six months—due mainly to daily exercise including planks.
As a consulting psychiatrist, I thought I was getting plenty of exercise running all over the hospital, up and down stairs and whatnot. The trouble is that it’s stop and go, fireman-type activity that often isn’t sustained over much time.
I’ve got a few pictures of me before I lost my paunch. It’s funny that I’m not climbing 20 or 30 steps and getting a couple of miles or so on my smartphone step counter—yet I’m probably a lot more fit off the job than when I was on. That could also partly be from not eating quite as much for lunch when I’m not working.
Retiring has overall been better for my health.
It just occurred to me while writing this post that a couple of the pictures might not make much sense. They were taken during a Psychiatry Department Residents vs Faculty matball match and picnic several years ago. If you don’t know what matball is, you can find out more about it here.
I didn’t play, but I suppose that’s obvious. Maybe it’s also why Faculty lost.
We’re just a bit on the sad side today. The robin chicks are gone. It’s another empty nest and sort of the story of our yard over the last month or so, what with the loss of the house finch and cardinal chicks before this.
It’s a hard life for every creature. On the other hand, death in our own yard is always counterbalanced by the triumph of life elsewhere on earth.
That doesn’t make it any easier. I’m reminded though of a quote attributed to Sydney Harris:
“When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?’”
Sydney J. Harris
I’m pretty sure he never, ever actually asked that question.
Well, it has been about 3 months since I opened this blog. My YouTube channel needed an updated channel trailer, so I’m posting it here as well. Why not?
I was surprised at how long a minute and a half channel trailer took to make, even with the aid of video editing software (maybe because of it, partly).
In my situation, a channel trailer is sort of a mini biography. It’s hard to compress a career into a short clip that takes about 5 minutes to upload to YouTube–after a few hours of what was essentially cut and paste.
As you can gather, my path is changing. Over the next 12 months, I’ll be half off and half on the consultation-liaison psychiatry service. That’s according to the terms of my phased retirement contract.
This is really a re-introduction, of course. I’m slowly evolving–not in any big way. I’m still a geezer.
On the other hand, I have found that I’m much more comfortable being on some kind of schedule. I still get up early, only by about an hour later. I generally arise between 5:30 and 6:00 a.m. That may seem very early to some.
I eat less when I’m off service (which I’ll call “retired” for simplicity). That’s probably why my trousers fit more loosely.
I need to have something to do. I exercise daily, for about 20 minutes. I do mindfulness meditation and yoga. I blog. I photograph and film, mainly birds, which I post to YouTube.
The only reason I ‘m not a disaster in the kitchen is because you generally can’t get me within 10 yards of it unless I need a snack I can immediately eat (like an apple). I still don’t cook–not really. It’s embarrassing.
I trim the lawn and by that, I mean just around the walkway edges and some of the garden margins. I don’t mow the lawn because my wife does a much better job, by mutual agreement.
I’m not a gardener. I’m a garden appreciation expert. That means I watch gardening that is done by others.
I suppose a lot of this adds up to laziness.
We were out working hard in the garden today–or at least Sena was. She was very busy planting Black-Eyed Susan and other things the names of which I can never remember.
I usually just take pictures and make videos of her garden. It’s a lot of fun watching her. But that’s not all I do. Sometimes I carry bags of mulch.
She has been devoted to gardening for over 17 years. It began with cultivating our back yard. I labored cutting out weeds by the dozens–until I found out it was Vinca. I think another name for it is creeping myrtle.
She gave me permission to film her usual planting posture. You’re welcome.
I’m in the off phase of phased retirement right now. It reminds me of the consuming question, “What are you going to do when you’re retired.” Coming to terms with retirement is not a one-step thing.
It’s probably easier to think of things I’m not going to do. I can think of at least a couple of books I’m probably not going to finish reading: “The Social Transformation of American Medicine” by Paul Starr and another title I rather not type but the picture of which I’m not squeamish about showing.
I’ve already read a new book by Dave Barry, “Lessons from Lucy,” which is about coming to terms with getting older. And I’m going to reread a book I read years ago, “The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams.
I read the Hitchhiker’s Guide and lost it in one of our many moves. I bought a new hardback copy a few days ago and just restarted it.
I can’t remember when I got The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide. It was published in 1986. Around that time, I had graduated from Iowa State University and could not find employment for about a year. It was a difficult time. Anyone who has been through something like that might understand how hard it could be to retire.
I’m not going to write another work-related book. Editing a multi-author book was too much like herding cats. And as one of my friends put it, once you’ve done that, you ask, “Now what?”
I’m still checking my office email every day. You never know. It’s FOMO, I realize; on the other hand, there are still legitimate work-related things I need to do and some have deadlines.
This makes me think of my YouTube video, “A Day in the Life of a C-L Psychiatrist.” It’s a little tough to come up with something like “A Day in the Life of a Retired C-L Psychiatrist.” Of course, there would be nothing connected with psychiatry in it.
I’m reminded of an exchange between Men in Black agents J and K (2nd sequel) after K is deneuralized out of “retirement” to return to the active job of defending this little green planet from aliens.
Agent J: “So what was it like on the outside, not doing this every day?”
Agent K: “It was nice; Sleep late on the weekends, watch the Weather Channel.”
My life is more or less like that, except every day is a weekend day…sort of. And the Weather Channel has gotten way too political for me.
I watch Men in Black reruns. I wait for the garbage truck. How does that guy know exactly where to brake in order to operate the automated side load mechanical arm grabber? I carry my POS camera on my belt. You just never know when an opportunity for great snapshots might arise. I trim and edge the lawn boundaries. I vacuum. I fold the fitted sheets, Hondo. I really don’t cook; I stick frozen pizzas in the oven and make microwave popcorn—not very often, Slick. I exercise and do mindfulness meditation and yoga. I take clothes out of the dryer and put away. I dry the dishes and put away. No, we do not use the dishwasher, pal. It’s about coordination and timing.
I realize that I might sound like Agent K. But I’m more like Agent J—still a rookie around the house and in the yard. This is going to take a while.
There are now 3 eggs in the robins’ nest. I saw a big turkey vulture soaring close by. I wonder if that’s what got the House Finch chicks. The bird that made a noise with it’s wings that was as loud as a big sheet flapping on a line in the wind, and looked too big to be a crow or even a raven–I wonder.
I wonder if I somehow was partly to blame for the murder of the baby birds, always messing around the tree. Still, I take pictures–and maybe draw death nearer.
And that leads to other strange thoughts. It’s odd that the nearer I get to retirement, the more I think about my life way before I ever even thought about medical school.
I remember the first time I ever heard about death was when I was in kindergarten. My mother woke me up early one morning to tell me that Steven, one of my schoolmates, was killed the evening before. He was playing around the railroad yard just a few blocks from our house. A train ran over him.
I remember my mother talking about it but I didn’t make any sense out of it. I was too young. I only wondered what it meant.
When I was a difficult teenager and made a conscious effort not to smile for pictures, I remember hitchhiking along a lonely highway in a bad rainstorm. I was glad when the man pulled over. I was not glad when he began to rub the back of my neck and asked, “How about a ride for trade?” I was not too young to know what he meant. When I said, “Let me out,” he did. I was too young to know that was miraculous.
I sometimes catch myself wondering if my life has been a grand illusion since then, only to protect my fragile soul from knowing the true horror. Maybe the driver really didn’t let me out. Why should I wonder that?
I remember a man who taught me how to do the work of a land surveyor. I looked up to him. He committed suicide by shooting himself in the chest over a failed relationship. I couldn’t help wondering why.
Of course, death visited me several times after I became a physician. They sometimes led to decisions I would rather I had not made about the direction of my career. I always wonder.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 