The hazards of retirement

By Dan Barber

One of the hazards of retirement is losing track of the days of the week. I woke early this morning in a minor panic thinking that I had forgotten to set the clocks back an hour last night! When my wife got up she asked me “why are all of the clocks set to the wrong time?” Aha, I thought I had one over on her. I told her because we were supposed to set the clocks back an hour Saturday night before we went to bed! She informed me, “It is Saturday morning, dork, we are supposed to reset the clocks tonight!” “Well then,” I replied, “I don’t have to worry about it tonight then… we just have to add an hour to the time today.”

This is just one sample of our conversations these days.

I have so many more opportunities to get in trouble now that I’m home all the time. For example, I am no longer allowed to keep track of my tools because when my wife asks me to take care of some minor repair around the house, I was always asking her if she knew where the tape measure, screw driver, hammer, wrench, etc. was located. She is now the owner and keeper of the tool box. When I am assigned a task to take care of, I have to check out the tools from her and when the job is done, return those tools to her so I can be excused. Only then, am I allowed to take a cat nap on my couch in my den!

In an attempt to keep from getting bored I have developed an interest in cooking, so I have started collecting recipes. But, it seems that whenever the recipe calls for the use of flour, my wife has decided that I need close supervision in the kitchen! I can also get into trouble for using so many of our pots and pans that it takes two dish washer loads to clean up everything!

I can never guess what my wife is talking about most of the time because she can carry on a conversation about the same subject over several days, so when she asks me, “are you going to take care of that thing I asked you to do?”  I give her a blank stare, which is my question of, “what thing?” Keep in mind, that my wife will ask me this question on Thursday, for example, about the conversation we had about the “thing” which took place back on Monday!

She is off shopping today and I can’t find the darn remote control for the TV so I think that I will take a cat nap…