May 22, 2024
Yesterday, a fellow employee retired. He retired from his primary job a while ago and this was his retirement job. Now he’s fully retired from all jobs. Patti is still retired and still not smoking. I never really had a plan for retirement. I will never see myself as a retired person even if I am. When I retire from my current job, it will give me time to create more things. This Thoughts paper is one of those things I will have more time to create. Mainly, it will allow me to create and develop other ideas that I’ve sidelined for years. I have audio and video to create and edit. There are science fiction and modern fantasy books I can develop into series. In other words, I will never consider myself retired.
I listened to a book in which a woman who grew up in a polygamist community gets out and helps others to get out. It was Church of Lies by Flora Jessop. The book was hard to listen to because of the horrible things that happened to her and others in the FLDS Mormon church. I’m not a fan of religion, but this community’s beliefs were as bad as those practiced in the Middle East. Their attitudes toward women were very similar. Men run the society and women merely survive. Flora got out and became a crusader for girls and young women who also wanted to get out.
The only thing disappointing about the book was it singled out Mormonism as a bad religion but didn’t dismiss religion as a whole. I always wonder why people leave one religion without leaving religious thinking completely. If the supernatural things religious people believed in were true, none of the horrible behavior they get away with daily would happen. What use is a supernatural being that doesn’t help people behave better? Even as a story, it’s not as good as the modern conception of a Santa who gets children to behave. Santa’s not real but at least he’s jolly.
May 25, 2024
Patti has not been feeling well recently, but she said today that the gray blind spot in her right eye seems to be smaller. Hopefully, this indicates her right eye will be back to normal at some point. She is still a non-smoker. This is a big part of why her eye is getting better. The longer she stays a non-smoker, the better she’ll get in her health overall. I hope she doesn’t stop at just quitting smoking. She needs to exercise, eat better, and stop drinking caffeinated soda. A while back, she changed from regular to diet soda, but she still drinks way too much.
In our weekly shopping trip, Patti mentioned she doesn’t understand why people say that caffeine keeps them up at night. The reason caffeine doesn’t seem to bother her is the same reason alcoholics can live normal looking lives. Your addiction is just another part of your life. It becomes your routine. Just like smoking, you make sure you never run out of your supply. Every week, Patti buys between four and nine bottles of soda. She has several crates to hold the bottles until she puts two of them in the fridge. If she slept through the night and always felt like she got enough sleep, she might be right. As it is, she regularly complains that she gets up throughout the night, doesn’t get enough sleep, and can’t stay in bed when she wants to keep sleeping. Now that she’s retired, she has no excuse for not getting enough sleep, except that reality is getting in her way.
I can hear the future conversation now. Patti is going to say I’m picking on her. She will ask, “Why don’t you divorce me if I’m so horrible?” She says it so often; it comes out more like a statement. I tell her I only want her to be around and be able to do the things she always planned on doing when she retired. She’s doing things, but she could do much more if she took her health more seriously. Cancers sneak up on people and they have no idea how they got them. Doctors say we don’t know what the causes of certain cancers are, but they know smoking, unhealthy diets, and sedentary living cause most of them. If I get cancer, I’ll be able to tell you what I did to cause it.
Two of the books I’ve listened to recently by women have mentioned that your husband should not be your best friend. I always say that Patti is my best friend. She has many more friends now than I ever had at any point in my life. I’m almost afraid to ask her if I am her best friend. Maybe I don’t want to know the answer. I get it if I’m not. I’m fine in small doses, but I can get too much over time. We’ve been married for almost 27 years, and we knew each other 2 years before that. She didn’t have to see me as much before she retired. We had almost opposite work schedules. I think I’ve thought about this too much, so I’ll stop.
Thoughts from Life 
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