EDLM
Entry: Thursday, February 20, 2020
4:30 am Woke up with too many thoughts going thru my head.
5:00 am Decided to get up and start writing these wandering thoughts down. I have just 9 days remaining before I retire and depart Muncie; and only 6 work days! So much left to do at work, and a long list of items on my personal checklist. Then I have too many people to say good-bye to, so many thank you notes to write…retrieving important financial documents that were sent to our old address…trading in my car…helping family in Dayton…making a list of things that I have to remember to pack…gifts to get to friends…people to visit…finish packing…finalize the filing of our taxes…making sure my BSU freshman son is taken care of before I depart…
5:31 am Just read my emails and found out that the one meeting I had scheduled for today has cancelled due to illness. While that opens up my day, it means that I have to try and fit one more meeting into a full calendar next week. I need to realize that there will be things that won’t get done by me before I leave my position here at Ball State. I need to begin to let go and trust that I have done the best I could at communicating and organizing for my replacement. Time to shower and begin checking things off my list instead of adding more to it. At some point I can’t fit anything else on “the list”.
6:15 am Showered, dressed and packed to head to Dayton after work to trade in my Subaru. In just 2 years, I put over 56,000 miles on the car. Heading into retirement where I will be living 35 minutes from the nearest town, of 2,300 people. Thought I would venture into the wilderness with a car with fewer miles. I need to go unpack the rest of my personal belongings from the car before going into work where I begin to tackle the items on my “to do” list. “Alexa, play Abba”. “Alexa, volume 8.” Dancing into action!
7:00 am To work early this morning. I have two bigger projects that I feel need to be completed before I can retire. Too many details and “institutional” knowledge in my head that can’t easily be passed along for the next person to do them for me. Where does it stop though? The work NEVER ends. At some point you just need to deflect, defer, etc. Not my style, but I’m learning. Found out last night that important retirement documents were sent to our old home address via FedEx. We began forwarding our mail in July so I’m not sure what will happen to them since it has been over 6 months. And, what happens with FedEx packages/envelopes? I left a note for the current tenants to call me. I emailed the sender asking for a tracking number. I can’t reach out to FedEx until 9 am. I guess I’ll go back to working on the two projects that need completed. I’m actually further along on one of them then I thought I was so I should be able to let my boss review it today.
8:00 am Just had a breakfast shake. I have been eating terribly this month and hoping to get back on track once I retire. Too many dinners out on the town.
10:30 am I took a walk to the Tech Center at Bracken Library to get assistance with how to arrange/move/file all the information on my computer. After working at Ball State for 26 years, I feel like “loose ends” just keep popping up. It has been a long time since I left a job! They sent me back to the office to “log a ticket”. I will miss having these resources so close at hand and all free. I will also miss the wonderful people I have met in Muncie and at Ball State. It has been a fabulous place to work and raise a family!! While at Bracken Library I stopped in the little coffee shop to get a hot chocolate. This was my first visit and I’m glad I stopped in before retiring.
11:00 am Back in the office, I continue to work on a job manual for my position. I am the first and only to do my job and I find it difficult to explain 20 years of event management and planning, filing systems, record keeping, staff scheduling, calendar maintenance, training, etc.
1:30 pm It is now midafternoon and I’m getting ready to go sign off on my tax return and then head out of town for the night. After picking up my new car, I will help one of my sisters paint her living room, dining room and hallway. Even with little sleep I will be able to stay awake if I’m sharing time with one of my sisters. (I have 3 sisters and 2 brothers.) My calendar has been one appointment after another for almost 2 months. Though I will miss the people, I won’t miss the meetings, or the endless evenings and weekends that I have been working for 33 years. I’m sure my mind will wander while driving for 2 hours. I will see how much I can capture in writing tonight.
As I contemplate my retirement and look at the blessings in my life, I struggle with what to do with those in my family who are less fortunate. My husband and I have worked some long, hard years, and made sacrifices to be able to retire. In December I bought my youngest sister a refrigerator. She has been divorced for many years and does not manage her money well. With that said, it still bothered me that she has lived a year with a broken refrigerator. I won’t have the monthly income to do it later, so I bought it while I was still employed. Giving you a complete picture of my youngest sister would take a very long time. She squanders money, has sleeping issues, has anxiety issues, is a hoarder, etc.
Soon after that, I loaned my brother money to get thru the slow winter months. He has never asked before and he didn’t want me to let his wife know. She is a nurse, but he said that she would stress out too much if she knew he had to borrow from family. He owns a Dairy Queen and doesn’t have much money coming in and had some major repairs to do to the building this winter. He says that he can pay me back in April.
4:30 pm I arrive at the dealership hoping to start the process earlier than my 5:00 appointment. No luck. It strikes me as funny when I realize I’m getting a brand-new car. I’m trading in my 2017 “dream” car because I put almost 56,000 miles on it in two years. Up to this point, my only thoughts were that I’m getting the same car with fewer miles. At some point, I realized that I get to keep my dream car; but now it is new with less than 300 miles!!! That is more comforting as I will be living 35 minutes from the closest town; and the town only has a population of 2,300.
6:15 pm Finished at the dealership and headed to my sisters to help her paint her living room, dining room and hallway. I’m thankful that she has soup and sandwiches on the table for dinner when I arrive. I have not done much cooking the past 8 months. I’m just days away from moving to our retirement home Up North where I will rejoin my husband, who does the majority of the cooking. He loves to cook and he is very good at it. I have been living in temporary quarters for 8 months and it will be nice to move around the house freely without feeling like a guest. I’ve lived with a “roommate” and his dog for 8 months. They have been fantastic, but when you have been married for 30 years, living with a roommate again feels a little awkward and restrictive.
9:00 pm A second sister joins us for the painting party. She had been out with a group of her girlfriends. She has a group of high school Gal Pals that still get together monthly with whoever is available. And once a year, all 11 of them get together in a cabin in Brown County, Indiana or Hocking Hills, Ohio. They come from all over the country for that gathering. Quite amazing, really. They graduated from high school in 1977! As time passes, they realize how much they rely on each other for comfort, laughs, and moral support.
11:00 pm We finish up painting and sit around talking for another 2 hours before I fall asleep on them. We are quite a team and got it all done. We will do some touch-ups in the morning when the natural light will help us see spots that we might have missed. I fit in between these two sisters in age. There is only 20 months between the sister older than me and the sister younger than me. Since we all hover around the age of 60, we discuss ailments, doctor’s appointments, our children, and our friends. We also discuss the care of my parents who are in their mid-80’s. I don’t like thinking about moving away from my family, especially these two sisters. We have been living the past 26 years only 2 hours apart, making it fairly easy to make it to all the big moments in each other’s lives. We all brought 3 children into this world. I was the last to marry at the age of 29 so my children are a few years younger than theirs. My older sister lost a child to the flu 30 years ago. She was only 5 years old. She then lost her husband 5 years ago. A part of her was stolen from us with each of these devastating loses. She is such an amazing woman, but the pain is always near the surface. We talked recently about how she was doing living alone. She said that she would probably never marry again, but it would be nice for male companionship. Our Father worries about her. He says that she has too much love to offer to live the rest of her life alone. That is a very true statement. She accidently smashed her wedding ring at work and it can’t be repaired. She is taking some of the gems and making a cross necklace out of it.