This retirement is HARD work!

Oh come on Rich you done like that warm furry feeling they bring you when they are in your undies??

You know, I have often heard it said that when people retire, they often lose their will to live because they have no more incentive to go on and will often die early. I believe this is incorrect. What REALLY kills retirees is that they try to do all that physical labor around the yard that got neglected for decades and wind up getting a heart attack from the work load they are no longer used to. I've been doing a WAY lot more physical labor than I have done while working with the snakes. That sort of work was tedious because of the repetition and long hours, but didn't really stretch the muscles or give the heart a workout. Today I was digging up clumps of centipede grass that was sprouting up where the rains had moved them to the places I wanted them to be around the garage. Oh yeah, when I cut what I thought was a root through a plot of grass, it turned out to be my Comcast cable.... Duh!! But in my defense, it was only about an inch or two below the surface. Comcast will be out tomorrow to fix it. So how am I here typing this message? Hah! Soldering gun and a piece of wire across the signal wire in the cable. Bandaid fix.....

Also today I was digging up clumps of root balls from the rose bush from Hell (Cherokee rose). Actually it's more like a mixture of vine, rose, and bamboo. Sends out long runners underground, climbs overtop of anything, spreads like wildfire, and will slash you to ribbons if your aren't careful. The roots snap very easily when prying up the areas that are sprouting new leaves and branches, so obviously it is used to surviving this sort of attack. I'm sure we'll be finding new plants coming up from that root network for the rest of our lives.

One good thing about all this physical exercise is that I don't have to watch my diet. I can eat anything I want, whenever I want, and I just burn off the calories working outside. I actually weigh less right now than I did this morning when I got up.

I'll be getting into pretty good shape if I live through all this.....

I love reading your ramblings Rich, your crack me up!!!

Rich, how is the epic squirrel vs bamboo battle going?

Ahhh yes have you had time to sit in the blind and peg the little varmints off and save your bambo??

Originally Posted by Rich Z

Oh yeah, when I cut what I thought was a root through a plot of grass, it turned out to be my Comcast cable.... Duh!!

I laughed with you when I read this . . . I can relate.

D80

Originally Posted by mike17l

Rich, how is the epic squirrel vs bamboo battle going?

Actually, this year I apparently won the battle. There were a few nibbles on some of the new shoots coming up, so I set up an IR sensor alarm down there and sure enough, when it went off, I saw a squirrel jump over to a pine tree, but he was still partially exposed. Kerplink! ALL of the bamboo nibbling stopped then. Not to say he was the ONLY one engaged in raping the bamboo groves, but obviously he was perhaps the last of the Mohicans this time around.

Lately I've been awakened in the morning by the sound of the pitter patter of little feet on the roof of the house. The ones that were doing that won't be doing it any longer.

As for the blind, well I only used it once. That was probably as boring as watching glaciers moving. I was shocked to find out that I was down there three hours, so the only thing I can figure out is I must have fallen asleep. I didn't fall out of the chair I had there, though, so maybe not. I only saw one squirrel, but he was over at the far edge of the bamboo grove and apparently was in a rush to get somewhere, so I never got a shot at him.

Of course, I'm not counting my chickens quite before they hatch. The last time I had had all the bamboo eating squirrels eliminated, a hurricane came through and toppled many of those bigger bamboo shoots anyway. Which left me with the very uncomfortable thought that perhaps God is a squirrel and he's not real happy with me....

Originally Posted by Rich Z

Oh yeah, when I cut what I thought was a root through a plot of grass, it turned out to be my Comcast cable....

Sorry, but that's funny! I love your candor; most people would have kept that little tidbit to themselves.

Kathy

I am tackling the monumental task of cleaning up my den. The first part of this is going through all of our financial records from the 1990s to discard them. Kind of shocking to see receipts for things like electric bills and such that were a magnitude lower than last year's bills. Home insurance was only a few hundred dollars where it then ballooned to over $2K per year.

I guess I should keep most of this stuff for nostalgia purposes, but then all I would be doing is rearranging the crap instead of getting rid of it. So into the shredder with it all. I'm betting the shredder will die before I get rid of all the stuff that needs to be shredded.....