Post Retirement Life. 05/24/24

Once you stop working your responsibilities at work obviously end, but your responsibilities at home exponentially increase. More time to prepare meals at home translates to more time at the grocery store. While I am the primary cook, my wife is the fancy cook. She is particularly amazing at the wok. So an innocent request from me like, “Can you make us that delicious beef and broccoli dish you cook and maybe some veggie fried rice?” Turns into my least favorite part of going to the grocery store: the “ethnic foods” aisle. Here you’ll find Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese items along with Jamaican, Middle Eastern, Mexican and African foods. Jerk chicken spice anyone? How about Peri Peri sauce? Anyone for tahini paste? I know where they all are. But when it comes to Chinese cooking, my wife will ask me to pick up stuff like hot sesame oil. I have looked at four, mind you, four grocery stores and asked probably ten different supermarket aisle checkers where to find the hot sesame oil and the conversation goes like this. Me: Where can I find hot sesame oil? Them: Sesame oil? Me: No, HOT sesame oil. Them: Here let’s look in the ethnic foods aisle. Me: I was already here but okay. Them: This? Me: No, that’s toasted sesame oil, I want hot.

And don’t even get me started on chili garlic paste. Apparently, such a thing exists. And as I’m checking out, in comes the request for baby bok choy. Anyhow, it was this phenomenon that led John and me to our grocery store comic. He thought water chestnuts were exotic enough. I wanted tahini paste. In the end, I folded like a moo shu pancake.

The other part of being retired is during the week you’re generally around other people who don’t work…kids and grandparents. Hence the chance to receive compliments you might receive at work (‘Oh, you look nice today,” “ Love those shoes,” “Where did you get that shirt?”) decreases. Instead you might get a compliment from your 87-year-old neighbor. But you know, I’ll take it. Something is better than nothing.

So that’s it. I’m flying home from the Greek Islands today and back on the job next week. Thank you John for an excellent job of holding down the fort. Have a wonderful weekend everyone,

Andy and John