Ten-Finger Exercises

finally, sunshine!

New summer hours for church let me sleep in at least a little longer on Sunday mornings. Ever since Bill retired three weeks ago we've been late sleepers. Well, in truth, I have by preference forever and in real time, for about a year. I discovered I could not exist on 6 or 7 hours of sleep, and Bill was always still awake at 11p.m. Consequently, I was usually still awake till midnight and decided he could get his own breakfast. He is far too talkative for me first thing in the morning anyway. Since retirement he too has been sleeping in.

In some ways I'm enjoying Bill's retirement more than I thought I would. I was very irritated that he would not continue to apply for unemployment benefits past the first two weeks. After all, he's paid into it for years, and it's not his fault the job ended. He did well, protecting two counties worth of people from potential danger in the event of an accident at the depot, where chemical weapons were stored, until they were safely incinerated. It took over twelve years to get the job done, and it was finished in May. He made sure everyone in two counties had tone alert radios to alert them of emergencies and shelter-in-place kits if one occurred. He contracted for the hospital, schools, nursing homes, and head start buildings to be overpressurized in the event of accident, designing one of the filters himself. And now it's all over, with no incident. He is grieving, seriously, for the loss of an important job and no credit when it was accomplished. An unsung hero who really needed singing. How many of those are there? I bet there are lots.

He's only 63, not eligible for Medicare yet, and is taking his social security early. I worked till I was 68. There's something in me that doesn't want him to get off so easy. If he doesn't want to go back to work, it isn't too hard to at least look every week and get the unemployment check. He says he wouldn't feel right doing that, and that's noble, but I don't believe it. He just doesn't want to bother. He's the same guy who wrote a check to pay a bill on Thursday, even though it was due on Friday, and didn't want to go to the trouble of calling and making a payment on Thursday to avoid a late payment fee. I did it. It was worth it to me. $35=$50 right, for a late payment? We don't look at money the same way.

Anyway, we've had a nice weekend. He pruned a mugho pine that stuck out into the street, and that was a major job. (The city insisted.) We worked on that and the fish pond together, and I weeded the garden while he cleaned the pond filters. He definitely got the worst end of that one.
It was really nice to have sunshine today, and it may get up to 80 this week. We hope.