She Tells Me This All The Time: A retired husband is often a wife’s full-time job.
Memories: This morning Paul got an email with sad news. Paul’s old boss, Edward P. Smith, lost his lovely wife Susie all of a sudden and without warning…she apparently died peacefully while watching TV. Ed was the Chief Engineer on Apollo and also for the Space Shuttle. I always admired him and frankly, he was a major reason for my success in Aerospace. Ed worked hard, I mean six+ days a week and sixteen hours a day for years. He was honest and brutality frank but that was the right thing to do as we were dealing with peoples lives!
Ed left Rockwell to run the B-2 Program for Northrop about the same time as we left Shuttle and went into the black world and we lost track of him only to find out he is almost a neighbor. Thank you Ed for the great mentoring and leadership and our prayers and thoughts are with you at this terrible time.
And so it begins,,,another adventurous day in the lives of Sue and Paul, Retirees! First adventure today is the dry-run walk to the market! Why a dry run, well it’s a short story! Paul took off at 8:00 AM to the market, a four mile walk! With shopping bag tucked carefully into the wallet pocket Paul gets underway but today, he is smart! He put the shopping list in the Ralph’s shopping bag so the list would not get lost.
Life is good…Paul is walking when all of a sudden he is “almost” viciously attacked by the yard-gator! It was a frightening experience! Just look at the gator sitting on the lawn disguised as a tree root! Teeth sharp as rubber nails and a grin that would freeze the Devil in his tracks! Sneaky devil!
Paul managed to get by this dangerous animal only to get the feeling of being watched a short time later. No one was on the street, traffic was minimal but it felt like eyes were staring daggers in my direction! He was waiting for someone to “bark” but alas, not a sound. He will get to the “root” of this feeling eventually. He felt like such a “sap”!
OK…Paul arrives at Ralph’s, reaches into the wallet pocket and zip, nada, zero…the shopping bag done flew the coup (To depart hastily or unannounced; to escape or flee.).
No problem, Paul will buy a new bag…oops…the shopping list was in the bag! Dead end! Memory failure. Senior moment! Paul suddently develops CRS (Can’t Remember S..t!) Paul does a one-eighty and retraces his steps. Where is that pesky bag?
Paul did have some urgent needs on the list so into the Grey Ghost (Son Joe calls it the “Soccer Mom Car”) and back to the market. Paul loves the car as it is roomy, full of gadgets, gets excellent mileage, and it hauls a lot of soccer equipment!
Marketing is done, we clean up, and off to the Anaheim Convention Center to see the Home and Garden Show. We got our seniors discount and 2 for 1 savings…cost us $8.00 to get in…if it were more than that, we would have complained. The show was a bust for us…they had very little home and garden displays…everything else was satellite TV, nuts, hand cleaners, and random junk you see at the OC Fair.
Random Memories: We used to go to the show and stay several hours bringing home a wish list of things to go do around the home. We would have a glass of wine and then keep going. We had our windows changed, floors installed, spa added, additions made, and many other improvements based upon what we saw at the show It was fun to see all the ideas. The show was not really good last time we went four years ago but today’s adventure will likely be the last one we will every see.
We returned home and watched some TV before going to the Garden Grove Elks for dinner, dancing, and friends! We had nearly a full table of our dear friends and when they get together, who knows what might happen!
Poor Marianne and her feet…the years of ballet done them in…she is back in a soft-boot after four toes are re-operated on. She should not dance on the dance floor but decided a good Hokey-Pokey might cheer her up. Craig, her partner, is a good fella and joined her in the off-the-floor chicanery.
We sat in the back of the room which has good and bad aspects. Good: far away from the speakers making the sound level tolerable. Bad: far away from the dance floor!
Leon and Marsha found a solution to the bad part of our location…don’t go all the way to the dance floor! Half was is good enough!
We danced about eight dances this evening as Paul was having some back issues which seem to come and go these days. Sue did not eat and Paul attacked the Mexican Plate which was really pretty good! Two taco’s, an enchilada, with rice and beans…more calories than needed but a tummy filler!
We always have a good time especially when we are surrounded with friends…we got the birthday’s celebration handled…big cake on the 25th for Bob, Leon, and Brenda (and Sandy if she were here).
We headed for home about 9:30 PM as the volume was just too loud to really enjoy visiting and as we walked in the door, Mitch was on the phone! First thought was…the new great grandchild is on his way!!! Alas, Mitch just had some info on the new Apple iPhone!
It’s hard to believe that these two (our grand kids) are having another baby which will be our fourth Great Grandchild…OMG, Sue is getting old…Not Paul! We stay close to the phone and are ready to go to the hospital at a moments notice! Remy does not know what he is getting into as Lilly is practicing to be the big sister.
We are quite proud of these guys…Great family, own their own home, good jobs, good future. We are also quite proud of Jonathan and his family and wish they were closer to civilization than New Hampshire.
We watched more NCIS and we are into the Eleventh season now and Tony and Ziva are getting involved…we won’t say any more right now! We had our tookies at 11:00 PM and crashed at midnight!
