A Conversation with Elizabeth
2017
Living Alone

From:           Elizabeth 
To:             Larry
Sent:           Sunday, May 21, 2017 12:49 AM
Subject:        Re: Just Curious What Your Thoughts Are
 
Larry,
 
I was just about to head to bed to read for awhile, but a check of my email caught your note.
 
Recently I got hooked on watching "The 100" which is streaming on Netflix, and I just finished watching Season 2.   At first I thought it was just an adolescent series, mostly about teenagers trying to survive in a post apocalyptic world, but it quickly started raising ethical and moral issues surrounding choices about how to survive, so it became fascinating.  Season 4 is currently playing on TV, but I'm not watching it until I watch through the first three seasons! As each season is quite long, Season 4 will be finished on TV before I can get to it, but I think I may be able to catch it on a TV marathon after I finish Season 3.  If not, Netflix will get it at some point. I haven't set up a router in my house, so I don't have Wi Fi, and so I also don't have Roku or another way to stream on my TV.  I have to stream on my laptop which is the only computer I have right now, except my old desktop and monitor is still on my desk, basically unplugged.  It has Windows XP on it!
 
Your sleep schedule of up and down does sound like how mine is now, but when I worked I had to try and be more regular.  One good thing about my teaching position was that we had some input into when we taught classes, although I sometimes I felt I got "stuck" being obligated to teach a few evening/night classes every term, because there was such a high demand for them.  Otherwise, as long as the combination of my classroom hours (15-21 usually) and my office hours totaled 35, and I met all my classes, I could schedule office hours whenever I wanted. Partly because I did teach a few evening classes, I made a schedule so except for one day I never went in until 10:00 a.m.  I also made a schedule so that on Fridays when I had no classes, I already had my 35 hours in, so I could stay home (or when I was commuting drive back home if I needed to).  I loved Fridays!
 
You mentioned longevity and health.  What though about your concern, which you happened to mention when I visited you in Reston, about Parkinson's in your family?  You mentioned not wanting to burden anyone if you should happen to be afflicted.  My family has longevity as well (my grandmother lived over 100+), but from my mother's side I have some concerns about Alzheimer's.  It is one thing for a couple to grow old over a long span of years with each other, and then have one or the other need intensive loving care from the other, but it seems like another thing to marry very late and then rather quickly find such a need arise.  I guess though, that love would make that not matter, i.e. that time together would be so radically altered by a progressive illness. 
 
Much of my evaluating my life revolves around whether to stay put or decide to move. Sometimes I find myself focusing on the negatives about staying put, but the other day I decided that some of those negatives that at time seem overwhelming are actually projections into the future rather than negatives that exist right now in the present. They are in that regard sort of "what if's" or "what happens when" rather than what is the situation now.  A simple one is that right now I tend my own yard, mowing and weed whacking, constantly hacking back bushes (I live on the edge of woods), and at times picking up dead limbs and taking them to the curb for pick up.  I try to minimize the labor, but it requires some degree of energy and muscular stamina.  So I reflect on "what if" I can't do it any longer.  An obvious solution would be to pay someone, but first the going rate is 70.00-100.00 which I think is outrageous for the size of the lot and someone in a riding mower, but more importantly I'm really into native plants and the few times I've tried to use someone to cut my grass, DESPITE me telling them what NOT to cut, I've caught them "forgetting" that.  My native wildflowers (which others call weeds) are one of my pleasures, so when I mow, I mow around them!

  So, how many years can I continue to mow--maybe I shouldn't worry about it, but face that day when I recognize it has arrived!  But other concerns are more serious, such as "what if I can't drive" and this town has NO public transportation.  Incidentally, does your father still drive?
 
This morning I finished reading Alone, by Richard E. Byrd.  Some of what he writes about is relevant to our discussion of "living with someone." As you probably know he was an American Navy explorer of both the Arctic and Antarctic.  Alone is his story of deciding to man a weather station alone for several months in Antarctica.  An interesting aspect of the book is that he first examines doing this alone, with one other person, or with a three man team. Three gets ruled out because of the number of supplies that would be needed. 
 
What is interesting is why Byrd rules out for himself (but also in general), using a two person team, himself and one other person. He claims that in close quarters over a long duration, it is almost inevitable that a two man team will begin to focus too intently on each other, especially little annoying personality idiosyncracies or personal habits that will get magnified into major annoyances over time. 
 
I've often listened to one or another member of a married couple complain of the other in such a way.  One I remember is a woman telling me about her husband, "I just can't stand the way he chews when we sit down to eat."   I've heard lots of other "he drives me crazy" doing X, Y or Z stories.  I know there are certain things that others do that can make me cringe a bit. One example is people who pick up a toothpick after a meal and dangle it out of their mouth.  Yuk!
 
I think about such things living alone, i.e. things I do that might drive someone else crazy.  For example, possibly because of all the pollen in MS, during certain seasons my head and nose feel totally clogged and stuffy at times, so in the morning I might use a Neti pot, but that involves alot of snorting and sniffing and nose blowing that might drive someone else up a tree!
 
One thing totally unexpected for me about retirement is that many of the more hobby type things I was dying to have free time to do when I worked full time, didn't feel as captivating or attractive once I did retire.  The list is enormous, from simple things like learning to make good sourdough bread or trying new recipes,  or doing more photography, to doing project type things like designing a simple raised bed garden or repainting my kitchen cabinets. 
 
Oddly too, once retired, I didn't feel as compelled to want to travel.  I actually took longer travel trips when I was working FT than I started doing once retired.  Of course, I've thought that one factor might be finances!  It is one thing to drop a chunk of change on a travel trip when you have regular pay checks coming in versus having to pay for a trip by taking the money out of irreplaceable retirement savings!  The other factor in travel was that both in 2013, immediately after I retired, and then again in 2015 in mid year (June), I was recovering from knee surgeries, which on both occasions required months of recovery. 
 
One thing I hypothesized is that NOT having the time to do certain things made them appear to be far more attractive to me than they actually were.  Also though, I recall what YOU said once in a long ago email, that you and your wife (or just your wife?) would do stained glass. Your comment was something like, "But how many stained glass pieces can you really use."
 
 Applying that to wanting to make sour dough bread--how many loaves of bread does one person need!  For 3.99 in Krogers, I can buy a wonderful loaf of sourdough bread which lasts me more than a week.  It would be nice to grow my own tomatoes, but sometimes I eat less than a tomato a week!  I went to our rather small Farmer's Market opening last Saturday, and for eight dollars I got two heads of mixed lettuce, a bag of fresh carrots, a huge English (seedless) cucumber, and some fresh turnips (I like to pan roast them).  Here it is a week later, and I've got 50% of it still left over.
 
I've been going through my endless, over abundant files from time to time, and I have stacks and stacks of clippings on recipes, gardening projects, interesting small home projects, and places to travel or take day trips that were for "some day when I'm retired." 
 
What happened alternatively to hobbies, projects, or even travel is that I found I wanted to pursue intellectual interests that I either had to lay aside in my various jobs or that got shunted aside as far back as my college years in order to "major."  It seems like that was work put on hold for me, or what work caused to be neglected or ignored, not doing things as much as learning things I wanted to learn.  This is true even though I had jobs where I was usually learning new things--but I was learning what fitted the job.
 
So, the past year or so, for example, I've bought stacks of books on cosmology and quantum or particle physics, two interests of mine going all the way back to junior or senior high school.  Just a few weeks ago I finished an online (FutureLearn) free course on "The Discovery of the Higgs Boson."  Prior to that I finished a course on "Thermodynamics," and in a few days I'll be starting  an engineering course on "Superstructures."  I've also been trying to teach myself calculus, but not with a great deal of success, because the math in some of these areas gets quite complex.  I've also always been enthralled with Antarctica, and a while back at a used book store, stocked up on most of the classic books about Antarctic exploration. That is why I sat down and read Byrd's book.  That interest also ties into cosmology, because even Richard Byrd, back in the 1930s took scientific equipment to the poles in order to study cosmic rays!
 
I suppose the "love of one's life" phenomenon is a fairly instant or at least fairly rapid onset awareness type thing.  With Francon, the French president I mentioned in my previous email, he declared at age 15 that he would marry the woman who later became his wife.  In that regard, I don't know if it is a relationship one could grow into having, over time.
 
Well, I guess I've written another LONG email!
 
Elizabeth

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