Last Words 

are what folks say just before they die. Not long after I retired, I realized death was in my future. Not that minute, or even that day, but I knew that I was going to cease to be at some point. After all, the death rate is still holding steady at 100%. Although I always thought I was pretty special, I didn’t think I would be special enough to evade the big “D.” So what to do with the time I had left?

I mean, what do retired people actually do? 

My retired friends say they have so much to do; how they ever managed to get anything done when they were working is a mystery to them. They are busier now than ever. They have schedules! Appointments! They volunteer, do part-time work, babysit grandchildren, take care of their aged parents, and do many, many projects around the house. 

I tried to volunteer. It was a fine organization involving animals and children. Either the animals or the children had disabilities, sometimes both. My career in special education made me a bad fit. I lasted two weeks. One week I did orientation, the next week I “volunteered.” Turns out I am not cut out for volunteering. I think volunteers should be paid, which is problematic for a number of reasons. 

Part-time work. No. It’s like being half a volunteer. 

Aged parents are both long gone, which is a very good thing because now there is something called elder abuse, and it’s against the law. 

Projects around the house? Hell, no. I built a brand new house that is project free. When or if it ever needs projects, I will hire someone, or have my project manager husband attend to them. Other time sucks: my lawn is an unmowed meadow (weeds) which is great for pollinators, so no lawn mowing. I do free-range vegetable gardening and buy a lot of lettuce. 

My grandchildren live as far away from me as is possible, so no babysitting for me, which is come to think about it, is kind of like volunteering, but with the added mother/daughter emotional baggage. Thank goodness my daughter had boys. She will be spared the developmental stage of most daughters which is to blame their mothers for everything. Boys grow up and don’t do that. They just never call. Grandmothers have to go through the Have You Thought About... stage until they learn to JSH— Just. Shut. Up.  

Given my failures at the usual retirement time fillers, I broke down and started doing those things which made me happy. Puppies make me happy, so I got one. Then I got another one. I read books on all kinds of weird subjects. I got to hang out with my husband during the day, and that was pretty wonderful. Then Trump got elected, and I stopped being happy for a while. But I got back on track until the Kavanagh hearings. Then I was very, very unhappy. So, I wrote a book which is kind of about abortion and getting even, and strange love, and history. It has some magic too, why not? Who knows if it will sell. I had great fun writing it. 

Writing makes me happy. I’ve been around, and I’ve been around for a long time. I know stuff. I think about stuff. Sometimes I’m amusing, even funny. Sometimes I’m pissed off that women are still fighting the same battles I thought we won forty years ago. 

If this were the olden days, I would write stuff in a journal, put it in a drawer and my daughter would find it after I was dead. But now, I can put what I think on a website where the entire population of the earth can read it:  basically my daughter, my sisters, and my seven friends. (It’s the thought that counts.) 

This blog contains my last words. You never know, I could drop dead five minutes from now. So I’m going to write as if there is no tomorrow.  Might as well say it all, tell it all, and not give a hoot if someone doesn’t like it. “Let your tongue speak what your heart thinks.” Davy Crockett, the King of the Wild Frontier, said that. Who knew? My heart is occasionally black as sin, harbors evil thoughts, and cracks up at the absurdity of this strange world we live in. That’s what this blog is about.