Being Irish, Retiring, and Rocks in My Throat – Thoughts from March 17 to 23, 2024

March 17, 2024

St Patrick’s Day means nothing to me. I used to care about wearing green on this day, but I’ve realized over the years that my last name is the only thing Irish about me. I’ve never been to Ireland, don’t drink beer, and am the opposite of a Catholic. Like every other religious holiday, I never took part in the religious part of the holiday. I don’t even know what the religious part of the holiday would be. I just know it’s named after a saint so it’s religious. Four-leaf clovers, pinching people, and leprechauns are all I ever knew about this day. The only part I enjoy is telling people I have on green underwear when they ask if I’m wearing green.

Patti is on her last week of work before her retirement. Her official last day is this Friday at noon. They’ve had parties for her at her work and I think they’re having another one this week. She will be missed. Her coworkers are about to find work much less entertaining. I’m about to find out what living with a retiree is like. She says she’s going to do many projects around the house and maybe get a part-time job. With Patti, it’s hard to tell how much of that talk will happen. I hope for her sake she does it. She said the first few days we’re going to be spent sleeping. I have a feeling that will happen.

One thing I know that’s going to happen when Patti is at home more is watching movies we’ve been planning on watching for years. Most of them are movies we didn’t have time to watch together. I made an entire list of them around Christmas time, and we only watched a fraction of those. We’ve only added to the list since then. She has always been more of a television watcher than a movie watcher. I just want to add a few more movies to her watching experience. I’ve watched movies by myself for years. Some movies she said she wanted to watch, but we never did. Eventually, I watched them on my own.

This Thursday, I’m finally going to the doctor to find out what I can do about the back of my throat. It continues to feel like a rock in the back of my throat. I tried all my tonsil stone remedies, and they didn’t work. When I speak or sing in my higher register, I feel it more. It feels like it’s lower on my throat than I can comfortably get to without choking. I hope they can get to it and fix it without choking me. Mainly, I hope it’s something they can fix.

March 18, 2024

I started this document several times. Why? Because I was trying to figure out how to change the default formatting for the blank document in Microsoft Word. The tough part is that Word is on my iPhone. After about an hour, I had to give up. I tried several different Google searches, a ChatGTP search, and a couple videos showing you how to format a document in Word on the iPhone. Some results looked promising, but led to no actual answers. Most were horribly out of date and not relevant to what I wanted to know. The genuine answer is there is no answer. Microsoft doesn’t want formatting to be easy for an iPhone.

March 23, 2024

Today, Patti is a full-fledged retiree. This was also her quitting day for smoking, but I know she’s only a few cigarettes a day from quitting. She’s told me not to nag about it even though I rarely ask about it. She tells me when I ask, which is more than she used to do. Last night, we went to the Old Spaghetti Factory to celebrate Patti’s retirement. I gained three pounds when I weighed this morning.

I went to the doctor on Thursday for my throat and they prescribed allergy medication and a stronger nasal spray. This was kind of disappointing, as I was counting on them being able to scrap the rocks off the back of my throat. Over the next two days, I developed a constant nasal ache, hives on my hands, and tiredness that won’t quit. They said to give it two weeks and if it’s still hurting, I can see a specialist. I don’t know if I can make it the two weeks if this continues.