The last day.

 I'm 79. I've told you that plenty of times before, but today is a different kind of ageing for me. It's my last day as a youthful man of 79. Tomorrow, I will wake up (I hope) as an old man of 80 years. That's simply amazing to me. To most others, it's no big deal. All over the globe people are doing the very same thing. Not as many as the number entering the world 80 years ago. Some have dropped out early while others more recently  

How could I have attained such an age? I can't remember making it to an age and then telling myself " I sure hope I can make to 80". And today, my son announced that the State Disability Insurance people have ok'd his  surgery. He has had a tear in the muscle caused by a bone spur. This will be the second surgery for the problem. He works for the State and when he reported the continuing pain despite physical therapy. That was close to 3 years ago and they (the State) have sent him to a multitude of orthopods. Some of them were close to 200 miles away. My son had suggested some that were close to 10 miles away and others as far as 75 miles. They rejected all. of those. As the years went by, without a decision the condition of his shoulder deteriorated.

My son had another bit of news for us. He said that he would retire sometime during his recuperation. He wouldn't have to go back to the prison...oops, the correctional center. At the age of 51 with a full retirement, he will be looking into pursuing a new career. That bad shoulder will still belong to the state.

He will be glad to get away from the seniority system, as that never made sense to him and he refused to participate. He stayed a Corrections Officer for the duration. He had been urged by the Warden to take the Sergeant's exam and he took it to see if he could pass it. He did. Then stayed where he was. If he had become a Sergeant, he would lose his seniority and the shifts he needed. As a single dad, he needed to be home for the kids. Later he was asked to move up to Lieutenant, even Assistant Warden. The answer was always no and he doesn't regret it. In my career, I saw some seniority problems handled handled the right way. I was given a second check on payday, as the fact that I was an apprentice and being paid foreman's wages, made some of the journeyman angry. So my boss arranged for my payroll check to be reduced and I was sent the second check to cover the difference. The tension was reduced. 

In another case, one of the journeyman hadn't put in quite enough hours for a decent pension. He was very old and didn't always make good decisions. Yet we all enjoyed his company and when working, he tried as hard as the others. We were all working piecework And when we could, we hired him put all the screws in the board and to install all of the metal trim. Or ha could install all of the board in the closets. His was just  the first of this kind of behavior that I saw. Certainly not the last. 

Thoughts regarding my day...

( This was written. about 3 weeks ago) Yes, I know it has been a long time since my last post. I did some posting on my blog "Working". Still that was brief. I suppose it's the quarantine that has me feeling this way. Depressed. I have depression, or better yet, depression has me, and has for many years. I take a drug for it, Wellbutrin, but it doesn't seem to work as well as it once did. Normally, I enjoy solitude, but now it's just my wife and I rattling around this large house. We are getting along fine with only rare moments of mutual frustration. We have daughters and grandchildren no more than 10 minutes away, but it might as well be a million miles away.  

We started this day with a brisk walk of 0.5 miles. I walked while gripping the handles of my bright red walker while my wife walked slowly behind me. That sounds terrible, I know.  But, she is not being subservient by walking behind me. One, she has a very bad knee that will be replaced as soon as it's safe to do so. Two, the sidewalk is narrow, not allowing two to walk together, if one is using a walker. About 2 weeks ago, I started walking, increasing the length by 100 feet, more or less. My goal is one mile and that will require some exploring of new neighborhoods.

When the quarantine started, I lost my exercise time that I had enjoyed with other members of the Pulmonary Rehab group at the Rehabilitation Center of our local hospital. It didn't take long for me to start losing muscle mass and strength. Depression, and the quarantine, had me sitting all day, doing nothing that was physically demanding. I did spend some time sketching, but nothing came of it. Now I spend my time trying to file all my photos and images. It has been tried before and nothing came of it. One major problem has turned up right away, and that is the duplicates I find. I am using the Photos program that Apple installs on its Mac's and it seems to create these duplicates, triplicates, and quadruplicates. Before I can file an image, I have to erase all the copies. Usually, they are all together and that helps me. As you can imagine, that doesn't leave a lot of time for blogs.

I try to avoid thinking about Trump. Thinking about him and being outraged by every utterance of his will do nothing. Biden has been using the right method, so far, in his campaign. He doesn't answer him. He ignores Trump and that is already infuriating him. Finally, a lot of people are beginning to ignore him. I think that Kamala will be using that same method of dealing with him. I have seen that when Trump loses his temper, he doesn't moderate his thoughts, and then he says things that reveal the real Trump that his staff and cabinet don't want to be seen by his adoring public.