The Myth That Retirement Always Equates to More Leisure Hours

It seems to have been one of those weeks...and there's no relief in sight yet.  Some of you know that I went into full-time retirement about 10 days ago, and that I expected that my leisure time (make that my reading time) would expand accordingly.  Yeah, in my dreams.

In addition to being responsible for making sure that my father (who is 93) is as healthy and happy as possible, I'm also responsible for the upkeep on the house he still owns.  So I have spent a good chunk of the last two days yanking an old dishwasher out of the house and replacing it with a new, better one.  Frankly, I'm not very good at that kind of thing, so a few misfires later, it is finally done, and done correctly, I'm happy to say.

Also, came the good news that my newly 16-year-old granddaughter passed her driving test last Saturday - and that she remembered my promise to give her my five-year-old Honda when she became licensed.  So I spent a good part of yesterday finding a replacement vehicle for myself...what turned out to be a much more pleasant experience than I had expected it would be.  But it still took several hours.

Now I'm involved with getting papers notarized so that I can spend a substantial part of my Monday morning in line at the county tax office getting the title of the old car transferred to my granddaughter's mother.  Just can't wait for that experience.

Oh, and tomorrow?  I have tickets to the Astros vs. Toronto baseball game and will be downtown most all day with my youngest grandson taking that all in.  Hopefully, the team will continue its winning ways and it will turn out to be a great day.

Why am I sharing all of this?

Because I'm not reading nearly as much before I retired and was allocated all these extra hours of free time (sarcasm).  In fact, my reading hours have been cut down by at least 50% since if walked away from my office for the last time.  And everyone keeps telling me that since I'm retired "what else do I have to do?" besides standing in lines and the like.   Ah, yes, retirement life sure moves at a different pace than working life moves; I just never thought that retirement life would be the most hectic of the two.

What reading I've done this week has at least allowed me to finish up Ben MacIntyre's thrilling account of the career of infamous British spy Kim Philby, A Spy Among Friends.  Although the book seemed to drag a bit about halfway through (or maybe it was me that was dragging), I recommend this one to anyone even remotely interested in Cold War spies.  Philby was most certainly a despicable human being.  I've also gotten a bit over halfway through Dead Wake, Erik Larson's nonfiction account of Germany's  sinking of the Lusitania and how that event so suddenly changed the course of U.S. history.  

So, not at all a "lost week," just a much less productive one than I had expected.