Well, somehow it’s nearly a full eight months into my retirement, but I haven’t felt particularly retired or organized as I careen from this to that to the other in chaotic fashion — until this week, when I still did a lot of careening, but all of it for things I’ve not been able to do in the past.
Let’s start with that part where I’m not technically retired. I did leave 27 years of Pat’s Screen Printing, and I’m quite happy to say I haven’t looked back once. I stop in now and again to drop off cereal boxes (used for moving ink), pick up stray pieces of mail and answer a question or two, but judging by the piles of boxes and heaps of shirts, they’re getting along fine without me and I am doing quite well without the stress of management.
My former colleague James coached the boys’ basketball C (freshmen) team at the high school again this past season, so Gilly, Kara and I would meet at his home games, including a very exciting final home contest that ended with a double overtime win. Gilly, Kara and I have also managed lunch a couple of times, although while I thought my retired life would be a whirlwind of social outings I’ve been quite remiss in that aspect of life.
And that’s because my post-retirement job has become jobs, plural, with expanded hours. I am still delivering mail one day a week up Taylor Canyon, but now that it’s summer my mileage has gone up, with many more stops and lots — I mean lots — more packages. Now the other rural route that operates out of Almont has its hooks into me, and for the next three weeks I’m going to be covering that route so that the subcontractor can go to her kids’ 4-H events and her brother’s wedding.
In addition, my volunteer work at the food pantry turned into a paid position. They had been looking for an AmeriCorps applicant, which I had inquired about but it was 30 hours a week, but when they didn’t find anyone suitable they reworked the position into two small part-time jobs, and now I file reports, manage inventory and organize the food that comes in for several assorted programs. It’s not dissimilar to what I did at Pat’s. I’m really liking my job, particularly since I feel like I’m helping a vital need in a community where 20 percent of the population knows food insecurity.
While I’ve supported the pantry with time and money before, it’s been eye-opening to realize how many people I know who utilize the pantry’s services. Hunger has become much broader to me than an abstract set of “poor people.”
My plan to sort out and organize my life has failed spectacularly. I’ve stopped managing even the half-box-per-week as I strew new workpapers all around the house. I did manage to expunge at least 150 pounds of paper, which I like to think counts for something, but I still have piles of boxes and still can’t find any of the things I brought home from Pat’s that I know I could use.
But this week. This week, even though my work hours are ramping up, I felt retired. And that’s because in the screen printing biz in Gunnison, the busiest weeks of the year are the last in June and first in July. It’s also the busiest time in the broader community, with every entity deciding to host its events in this same crammed time. Events I’ve wanted to go to but have never been able to. Until now.
In one short week, I made it to four events and won prizes at two, and came very close at a third.
First up was our electrical co-op’s annual meeting. That may not sound exciting and perhaps, given the CEO’s speech overstuffed with numbers (trying to explain the necessity of the apparently-not-popular peak-demand charge appearing on bills as of this January) it wasn’t, but there was free food and I was one of the few to win a prize for knowing that the pitcher and catcher on a baseball team are called “the battery” (like electricity, get it?), and Lynn and I ran into several people we hadn’t seen in awhile. (I was saddened to learn that Imbra is no longer at my bank, but since she’s a year older than me and enjoying her garden I guess I can’t take her to task for wanting to retire.)
The really exciting part of the evening was winning one of the door prizes, a $100 gift certificate to the Pitkin Hotel where we had recently eaten for the first time, in celebration of my brother-in-law Don’s birthday. Technically, I suppose the most exciting part of the evening was being able to be there at all.
Next up, the Six Points annual picnic. Six Points is our non-profit for folks with intellectual disabilities and traumatic brain injuries, and two of my long-time colleagues, Donnie and Jeff, came to Pat’s through Six Points. I saw Donnie there but to see Jeff I had to go inside and watch him on ESPN, because he was competing in the 5K at the National Special Olympics. The telecast featured him quite prominently and kept noting he is a 30-plus-year Special Olympian, which I think was a polite way of telling us he was older than most of the competitors on the track, but he ran a great race and was featured on national TV.
I got more free food at the picnic, talked to more people I hadn’t seen in awhile, including “lunching” with my friend Teri, who is on that long social list of people I’m going to get together with any ol’ day now; got hit up to become a member of the Six Points board (I’m thinking about it); and won a door prize: I can get “something that makes noise” with a value up to $10 in the Six Points’ Thrift Store. What I need to do is get an entire garage-worth of stuff to Six Points — again, any ol’ day now.
The third was kind of a sad event: I attended the good-bye party the city rec department threw for Cara Faulds, who is moving with her husband Stan to Montrose. Cara has been baking for several years for the senior meals the rec center serves three times a week (it used to be Young at Heart at Webster Hall) and apparently tormented the spin classes, held in the cafeteria prior to lunch, with the smell of her rolls.
I’ve known the family (six children total) for probably going on 40 years (long enough for the youngest daughter to have two grown children of her own), and it’s going to be strange to not bump into them now and again, but as more than one of us noted, we’ll probably run into each other at the Super Walmart in Montrose, which is where you see everyone from Gunnison.
For the third time in a week there was free food (cake), and a chance to catch up with folks I hadn’t seen in awhile (Mom, I forgot to tell you Coie Lorimer said to say hi), including Diane and Sharon Cave, who still live two doors down from the house I grew up in. I didn’t even have to give my phone number to Diane, because she still has it memorized from all the times she called my sister Tia in their youth.
I still have my fourth event in a week of leisure that wasn’t at all leisurely, but that can keep until tomorrow, which will make it look like I’m blogging on a more regular basis. See you then.
Garbanzo Beans for Breakfast 