HEALTH AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

One of the activities I enjoy most about retirement is taking pills. I never had time to go to the doctor before, but now I see doctors for body parts I didn’t even know I had. They gave me pills and then gave me more pills to cure the ailments caused by the first pills. I saw a commercial for one of my prescriptions on TV. They said it could cause certain side effects such as death, but not to stop taking it without my doctor’s permission. I have a feeling my doctor’s brother-in-law is an undertaker.

Also, I graduated from Physical Therapy this week. When it first started, I didn’t want to go, but then I found out it was really gym class where you don’t have to wear an unflattering outfit or run laps, and your insurance pays for it. If high school had been like this, I would have lettered in track.

My PT instructor gave me a yellow elastic band for resistance training. I wrote “Police Lines Do Not Cross” on it and hung it on the vacuum cleaner.

At Physical Therapy I got to play tennis inside in the air conditioning while standing in front of a chair in case I wanted to sit down. My therapist brought me ice water and chased the ball whenever I missed it.

I’m ready for Wimbledon and she lost twenty-five pounds.

 

Weathered

 

In the Spring and Fall, seasons in the South change not only day to day, but sometimes hour to hour. It’s not unusual to find someone sporting a sweat-wicking tank top under their Let It Snow Christmas sweater.

Wondering if I should grab my jacket when I went outside, I asked my living room meteorologist, Bill, if it was raining. He whipped out his cell phone and in seconds I knew the temperature and average rainfall in London, Alberta, and Sydney. He threw in the humidity and air quality for free, but noted that I need to sign up for updates concerning UV index and wind direction.

He was sitting beside the front door.

“Just open the door and peek outside.”

He looked at me like a newborn robin looks at mama just before she coughs up the worm.

“I’m not going to build an ark. I just want to snip some rosemary for my sauce.”

He consulted his phone.

I slipped on my jacket and strolled outside. It’s not that it was hot and dry, but the moisture in my skin evaporated immediately, giving me the jaunty air of a body with a shrunken head and dusty dirt clods  for eyes. It must have been a fetching site, because the neighbor called Emergency Services for the Kool-Aid Man.

I snipped several sprigs of rosemary and felt my way back into the house, making a mental note to add my house number to the door in Braille.

“Don’t forget to work on the gutters this week,” I quipped as I staggered past Bill’s chair.

He clicked out of his weather app and headed toward the door.

“And don’t forget your coat.”

 

The Twelve Steps (Give or Take a Few) of Retirement

1.     Everyone will perish without you

2.     Everyone won’t.

3.     You’ll die, simply die because they won’t.

4.     It will be okay.

5.     You sit on the porch to watch other people go to work.

6.     You sit on the porch because you’re not going to work.

7.     You decide to cook homemade meals from scratch every day.

8.     You rediscover the Crock Pot so you can go back to bed every day.

9.     You order Chinese takeout and wear something without stains to pick it up.

10.You order pizza delivery wearing your bathrobe.

11.You find yourself wearing work clothes as play clothes.

12.You order play clothes off the Internet.

13.You discover that takeout food has made the new clothes shrink.

14.You do a sit up.

15.You discover the danger in doing floor exercises and pull yourself up using a chair.

16.You decide that exercise is dangerous and could involve your health insurance.

17.You shouldn’t put yourself in danger because everyone will perish without you.