Book Group: Feb 2015

Book: Still Life With Bread Crumbs
Author: Anna Quindlen
Group meeting: Tuesday, Feb 17, 2015 at Jean's
Dessert: Bread pudding with whiskey sauce and pecans. Yum.

60-year-old NYC photographer retreats alone to the woods and falls in love with her roofer, a younger man. I thought I would dislike the book but actually loved it. Quick read, fun characters, and bigger themes than the first sentence suggests: personal expression/style, luxury vs. sparsity, level of caring/help for family, juggling the finances of three generations. Worked for me. Loved the dog! Quindlen is a great storyteller.

Surviving Winter

It's mid-February, 2015. My tin Mexican cactus reminds me of where I'd like be. But, this year, I'm home for the duration. Since this is a journal of how I'm spending my retirement time I will resist the temptation to remain silent in my winter hibernation. 

Tennis: Playing as much as possible. Recent locking of the left knee put me in panic mode, but it actually feels better when I play than when I'm stationery. (Note: the orthopedic surgeon recommends replacing my right knee. I'm of the opinion my left is worse than my right. Putting off any decision while I'm still mobile.)

Spanish: Attending my Monday night class with a group of 6 or 7 with our maestro Karen. Also working through the tedious Rossetta Stone. Just started Level 2. Still feels like review, but that's not bad for me. Need to plan a trip to keep motivated. . .

Food: I considered posting this photo as my profile picture on Facebook, but decided it was a bit decadent. These are the three staples of my diet. Coffee for breakfast; wine with my main meal; whiskey at bedtime. These are also my preferred drinking vessels at this time. Maintaining weight loss from last year (motivated by the Type 2 diabetes diagnosis) and enjoying the seafood from Sitka Salmon Shares.

Projects: 1) I've begun working on Pancremaniac stuff. The Minneapolis Tour de Cure is May 30 and Heather asked me to co-captain to help her coordinate the team when things heat up. I'm having fun playing with my helmet.  2) Heather gave me an online class as a Christmas present: "The Joy of Assemblage." The problem is that I don't feel very motivated to do random assemblages, but I'm not ready to commit to the significant ones that are percolating in my mind. I'm doing the assignments in hopes of learning techniques that will help me in the long run. 3) I'm nearly finished with the glass work in the kitchen. I'll photograph it and make a separate post when it's done. 4) Photos still confound me. I can't seem to manage the Oaxaca collection. But, I don't want that frustration to thwart efforts to get better.
 

Socializing: We hosted a few gatherings around the holidays. I still enjoy planning the menu, getting out the good stuff, and being with friends. But it is an effort. I wonder how long I'll want to keep doing that. (Note: the tablecloth in this photo was my mom's. I bought it in Patzcuaro, Michoacan, Mexico. It's always been my favorite one from there and now it's mine. But, I feel sad when I use it because I miss her.)

Volunteering: I'm helping out at a library program for little kids. It's called "Toddlers in Motion." I find myself smiling for most of the sessions because these kids are SO CUTE! They're 0 - 3 years old and are just learning to navigate group interactions. Cindy, the leader, sings and does rhymes and dances and keeps things going for an hour. And we do two sessions on Thursday mornings at the Goodman South Madison Public Library. I herd people to the sessions, prepare the snacks, and manage the music on the iPad. Heady stuff!!!! But I get to see kids and they are rare in my life.

Snow and Cold: I stupidly monitor the weather in Oaxaca and Saddlebrook and Gulf Shores and compare ours to theirs. Maybe spring will come early. The days are getting longer, at least. My days are full but there is a sense of treading water, waiting for the next big thing. Or, maybe I'll settle into this scene a little better. We'll see.

That's my life in the winter of 2015.

Fun in the Sun at Saddlebrooke

A quick January visit to Saddlebrooke, Arizona (just north of Tucson) was a welcome break from winter. My Madison to Dallas to Tucson flight felt quite luxurious. Usually, I hop on a bus to O'Hare for better prices and connections. I left Wednesday, Jan 14 and returned Tuesday, January 20.

Tennis buddy Brenda lives there with her husband Owen for five months of the year. Jim finds it hard to reschedule tennis lessons, so, I decided to go on my own. 

Owen and Brenda at Honeybee Creek.

Great petroglyphs at Honeybee if you walk back far enough

Saddlebrooke is nestled between a ridge and then towering mountains. Someone called it a "Disneyland" for seniors. Owen golfs most days and Brenda plays tennis or pickleball for hours at a time. In addition there are clubs of all varieties: bridge, books, games, discussions, you name it. 

A morning tennis match with more Saddlebrooke visitors from Madison!

Tennis, pickleball, hiking and eating filled my days. What fun to see the sun every day with stunning sunsets to end them. 

Now that I'm back home the sun rarely peaks out and I'm coming down with another cold. Darn! I wish I could go back and bake in the sun.

Spreadsheets. Love 'em.

I commented in the post about my parents' passing that I was grateful for the organized lists my mother left for me to sort out the family accounts. I made it a goal of my own to corral our accounts into a comprehensive list so that daughter Heather would have a clue what to do if Jim and I should not be around (or, more likely, a starting point for Jim or me when the first of us dies).

It is projects like this that can consume me because I have loved spreadsheets and databases since I first learned of their existence. When I told Heather that I had completed the list she asked if I could share or provide a template for others to use. Since these lists are personal and I think most people have their own organizational preferences, I doubt if my order will fit others. But, I have decided to outline what I did and anyone who reads this personal journal can use, adapt, or ignore it. 

There are two lists.  The first is a "Master Account List" and the second a "Where Is It?" list.

Master Account List
Columns: Institution / Contact / Account Type / Owner / Value / As of / Beneficiary 1 / Beneficiary 2 / Notes

I will comment on each of these columns.

Institution is pretty straightforward, but once I exhausted the financial institutions including banks and investment firms I went on to include Life insurance companies, property, cars and then finished off the list with sources (current and potential) of retirement income and credit cards. 

Contact is the most loosely organized cell(s) since it might need more rows to include a name and a phone number. 

Account Type is important. Is it a CD? Is it an IRA or Roth IRA, etc.

Account Number will help keep information straight. 

Owner is also important. Is it joint? Is it one or the other? Should it be changed?

Value is just a snapshot in time. Mom's list was slightly out of date, but it was close enough so that I could make estimates for myself and others.

"As of" puts a date on that value. If an account is on an auto-payout plan the amount will be less by the time someone needs to do the accounting.

Beneficiary 1 and Beneficiary 2 may be critical if one is trying to avoid or reduce probate. This exercise has given me a "to do" list to check on beneficiary designations and to make them if they don't exist. I'd also recommend having the printed beneficiary document with signature(s) in the hard copy file. In my mother's case, we had a draft of a document without the signatures but the bank did not have the document in their digital files even though it was done the same day as another beneficiary document that they did have. It was a small account and I could follow my mother's beneficiary wishes, but it could have been the tipping point for the total value of the assets.

Notes just gives me a space to make a comment as to the source or plans for a certain account. 

The second list will help someone to find important documents.

Where Is It?
Columns: Item / Place

Items includes banking, credit card info, digital files and backups, financial accounts, passwords, power of attorney documents (health and finances), taxes, and anything else that you have of value.

Second section list:
Contents of XXXXX (could be safe deposit box, fireproof box in house, freezer, etc.)
This list will help identify what is in these "boxes." (In some ways it duplicates the Item/Place list, but this is the list of the things in one place. Some things to include: auto titles, property titles, birth certificates, marriage certificates, passports, powers of attorney, social security numbers. Whatever you decide to save and protect, a list may help or speed the search.

I consider all of these lists/spreadsheets a work in progress. Yesterday I remembered an important document that was at the bottom of a basket. It would have been really hard for someone to find and it could have meant that our wishes for donating our bodies to the UW Medical School for scientific research would have been overlooked. Duh! Those forms are now in their proper place and ON THE LIST! 

Hope this helps someone, sometime.

Book Group: Dec 2014 and Jan 2015

Book: Stella Bain

Author: Anita Shreve

Date: Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2014

Place: Julie's

Food: Dinner in honor of Grace's birthday. Smoked salmon dip for appetizer, spanakopita for the meal, and a cake, of course, for dessert. This was a first ever meal for this group. Delicious!

I read Stella Bain as a digital download while in Oaxaca in November. The story of a young volunteer nurse with amnesia near the front lines in France during WWI and her life as it eventually unfolds kept me turning pages. But, it all wraps up a little too neatly in the end for my taste.

Book: We Need New Names

Author: NoViolet Bulawayo

Date: Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2015

Place: Jane's

Dessert: chocolate cake with caramel sea salt ice cream

Again, "Not a happy story" (this is a recurring theme of books chosen by this group). Darling (the name of the main character) was born and raised in Zimbabwe and eventually comes to the US. My favorite part of the story is her descriptions of snow and cold. 

From p.152 of the hardbound book: "With all this snow, with the sun not there, with the cold and dreariness, this place doesn't look like my America, doesn't even look real. It's like we are in a terrible story, like we're in the crazy parts of the Bible, there where God is busy punishing people for their sins and is making them miserable with all the weather."

OK, I promised not to whine about the weather, but this was SO Madison in December; not white, but no sun and dreary. Bulawayo has at least 3 other sections devoted to winter in "Destroyedmichygen" where snow is described as sneaky and a monster. I'm glad I read it, but I can't say I enjoyed it. 

2015 Begins

The new year arrived while Jim and I were visiting our cabin near Elcho, Wisconsin. It was bitterly cold, but once the kerosene stove and the fireplace both kicked in we were comfortable. Subzero temperatures in the teens meant we spent much time in front of the fire and cooking so we'd have another heat source. I managed to gain almost 5 pounds in spite of skiing a couple times. Some of that weight came from Heather's Epiphany party in Minneapolis where she served my grandmother's chip dip. It, and the chips, are my undoing. (I'm back to counting calories and carbs to get back on track.)

Skeleton skier on the cabin mantel

by the Miguel Paredes workshop in Puebla, Mexico.

I have no specific resolutions for 2015 except to put my various interests on a weekly timeline so that I don't ignore things that I want to do. I'm very good at diverting my attention to some petty thing that could be left for another time (or no time). Some of the things on the weekly schedule include another kitchen enhancement (involving glass), wrangle the hundreds of Oaxaca photos into a cohesive group (and keep taking more), organize the home business affairs (like my mother's system), plan a couple trips (Tucson and Alaska are in the works), keep plugging away at Spanish (weekly class and Rosetta Stone), continue exercising so that my knee will hold me up for more tennis (while controlling carbs), and "live in the moment" with no whining about the weather. This is quite difficult because of the time I spent in Oaxaca where the weather is perfect every day. I keep remembering the flowers and the patio and the papaya . . . 

But this is what this part of my retirement is about. Try things, enjoy life, give back, and make changes if I/we want. That is a very privileged place to be.

Cemeteries Here and There

I visited the cemetery in La Crosse where Mom and Dad (and Grandma and Grandpa Schreiber) are buried. I still find it hard to believe that Mom isn't here. The wreath I ordered looked over the plot, but it had no joy. The day was grey, overcast and foggy, just like my mood. The year of death had been inscribed on the headstone. All was final, the place desolate, me the sole visitor in the solemn park. I couldn't help but compare the space with the vibrant celebrations that I witnessed in the cemeteries in Oaxaca. We don't know how to honor our dead. We put them aside, we move on.

I made what I call my Ofrenda Navidad (Christmas Alter) on my mantel. I placed photographs and objects under the wreath that was lit with the lights we used to have at home and ornaments from Mom and Dad's trees. The display has given me the chance to talk about my parents with friends visiting this holiday season. I've shared some stories and know that some I need to record.

The year is coming to a close. I will spend the final days off-line in frigid northern Wisconsin. I'm hoping for ski-able snow, cozy fires, and a little time to read and write and get ready for the new year. I'm hoping mine has fewer calamities and continued journeys as I discover what my retirement is meant to be.