Tick, Tick, Tick

I am half way through one of my last four days as an employee.  At this point I have little to no real work to do, having transitioned most everything to my managers.  My managers will likely be waiting a long time for a replacement to be named to my position so I’m glad they are such competent and conscientious people.  Of course the right thing for the company to do would be to promote one of them, but I don’t get to make those decisions.

 

As I go through this final wind-down and de-brief, I’m reminded of one of the opening scenes in the movie “About Schmidt” where Jack Nicholson, playing the about to be retired insurance actuary, is trying to give his replacement some valued files only to realize they are of no interest.  So it is, at this point, with my opinions about things.  I may be missed after my retirement, but the work world will go on without interruption.  The things I have done will continue to be done, perhaps differently, but still completed.

Tomorrow is my retirement reception.  Having just attended my husband’s two weeks ago I am fully aware of how painful and awkward such events tend to be.  A few people I have worked with in the past, who have moved on to other companies or their own retirements, will be there and it will be nice to see them.  My boss will thank me for my contributions.  I’ll have to say something (dread) and then everyone can move on to some cake and punch.  And then I will have two days left – well really one and a half since my final meeting with HR will be Friday morning.

It really is quite hard to wrap my mind around.  I’ve been working almost continuously since I went back to work after my daughter was a year old.  That’s almost 40 years of going to work everyday.  I was unemployed for three weeks somewhere in all those years and I was off once for six weeks recovering from a surgery.  I had a short stint being a remote employee who worked from a home office or traveled to clients, but even then I was getting up, getting on-line or getting to the client site.  Everyone I know who is retired says it is great and I expect that to be so.  But once those first couple of weeks of “I’m on vacation” mentality wear off I hope I am ready.  

Flashback to Our 1976

We have made the move to our temporary housing and it has brought back a lot of memories of a little house we rented three years into our marriage.  I suppose I say that more because of a feel to the place rather than any actual physical similarity.  Our Airbnb vacation rental is one side of a duplex located about a block from an edge of the Belle Meade Country Club golf course.  It is in a VERY nice area, adjacent to a great area.  It was built in 1940 and has some quirky modernizations like a toilet room right next to the original bathroom and the associated sink located in a bedroom down the hall.  It has a small kitchen with new cabinets and countertops but without a garbage disposal or a dishwasher.  

It has a cute little dining room and a strangely large living room.  There are two comfortably sized bedrooms.

The duplex is centered on a half acre lot so there is a large fenced backyard that the dogs love.  It’s perfectly comfortable and has everything we should need for the 6 weeks we will be here, even if it is a bit of a back to basics place.

And the place it reminds me of is a two-on-one-lot 2 bedroom, one bath house we rented in 1976.  The two houses on the lot were both built sometime around 1950 with one on the front of the property and one on the back.  We were renting the back house which came with fencing all around and three or four well established fruit trees.  It wasn’t anywhere near a golf course and was in an okay, but not great, area which befitted the amount of rent we could afford to pay.  Nothing much had been done to that house in the 25 years of its existence.  It had all the basics one was understood to need in 1950 Southern California.

And somehow, to me, these two properties, separated by 2,000 miles and 40 years, evoke a similar feel. Maybe it’s something about the light or the ascetics of the 1940s and 50s.  Or maybe it is some mental state created by having only just what is needed.  Whatever it is, there is something pleasant about the time-faded memories that seem to drift about the Airbnb place.

When your House Is Not Your Home

This weekend we did another U-Haul van trip to our house in North Carolina.  Had we been more efficient in getting things packed up for the moving van weekend we could have probably skipped this extra U-Haul rental.  But we still needed to go to North Carolina so that the estate sale team could set up for next weekend’s big downsizing sale.

We knew we should expect a transformed environment when we returned to Nashville on Sunday night, but I wasn’t prepared for the extent of that transformation.  I had heard that some things that were left over from other sales would get mixed in to our sale items.  Just as our unsold items will continue to be offered at subsequent sales until they find buyers.  But it was completely disorienting to come home to find most of our furniture moved and intermixed with other pieces of furniture.  I found myself walking around and becoming confused.  I’d see something and think “I don’t remember that” and then have to sort through a memory game – is that ours and I don’t remember it?  Or is that something that isn’t ours?  And sometimes a thing that wasn’t ours would actually look familiar and make me question all over again.

I should say that the estate sale team, Estate Sales by Sheila, did a fantastic job.  Some of the set-up was so attractive it made me want to buy my own stuff.  And it was amazing to see that as they found instruction manuals scattered about they managed to get them reunited with the small appliances they went with.  But just the breadth of what they prepared for sale was stunning.  A windchime from the backyard – moved and priced.  A huge partly broken clay art vase that was a decoration in the backyard moved to the front and available for sale.  Every cooking utensil, plate, glass, and cup out on a table with a price tag.  We had to reclaim some just to eat a simple dinner.  Of course being careful to take ones that were parts of sets and didn’t actually have a price tag on them.

Suddenly the three days until we decamp to our rental seems like a very long time..

Downsizing - What to Keep?

I haven’t read the book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing” by Marie Kondo but I have heard about from my daughter and son-in-law and feel like I am getting to try out her “does this thing spark joy” approach on a house-wide scale.  As my husband and I prepare for our retirement move to North Carolina, we must downsize.  Our house in NC is 1,000 square feet smaller than our Nashville house and, having been used as a weekend/vacation home for six years, it is already functionally outfitted and furnished.

So what gets kept and what gets left….  I think I like the idea of basing that decision on whether something gives you joy.  And accepting the fact that some random things may give you joy for absolutely no discernable reason and likewise, that something that seems as if it should be treasured may not really elicit much emotion. 

So what random thing gives me joy?  How about a bakelite vacuum tube radio.  I’m pretty sure my father found it in someone’s trash in the late 50’s. He brought it home, did something to it (a new electric cord?  A new tube?) and it worked.  It sat on a repurposed metal stand in his home for years, gathering dust.  I don’t know if he ever even listened to it.  Somehow, when he downsized it ended up with me.  And the coolest thing about it is the cardboard station guide behind the station indicator – it identifies the stations by call letters, the call letters of Los Angeles radio stations – KHJ, KFWB.  Now why should that give me joy?  Absolutely no idea.  But it makes me happy to look at it, so I’ll keep it.

And what item that should be treasured is not making the cut?  How about the dress I made for my daughter’s first communion.  That was absolutely a labor of love - fully lined, gathered skirt, flat lace embellishments, lace trim at the neck and sleeves.  A beautiful dress that she looked beautiful wearing for a key initiation sacrament.  I’ve kept that dress for over 30 years.  But does the dress itself, hanging in a closet, give me joy?  No.   The memory of her wearing it gives me joy, but I have pictures to memorialize that.  So the dress is not being kept. 

The Big Shift

It was thinking about what I envisioned as the “the big shift”, going to work everyday as always and then abruptly hitting that first day of retirement, that made the name of this blog – Wake Up Retired – seem appropriate.  And maybe it will still feel that way when I get there in 52 days.  But having been caught up in a whirlwind of preparation activity over the last 4 weeks it feels more like a phased transition.

I’m pretty sure we are doing this retirement thing all wrong.  Logic and reason would say that you get to the first day of retirement, maybe go on a celebratory trip, chill out a bit, and then put your house up for sale.  The house sells, you devote all of your time to packing and moving and then you move.  But not wanting a house payment for any longer than necessary, we put the house up for sale 4 months before retirement and then had it sell in 2 ½ weeks.  So here we are working along and then spending every free moment packing and moving and coordinating.  First there was the U-Haul cargo van weekend

That was exhausting.  Chuck driving the van, me driving the Murano with the dogs.  It’s a 5 ½ hour trip from Nashville, TN to our house in Black Mountain, NC, assuming no traffic issues.  We arrived and started unloading the van.  Then the next day it was re-loading the van with stuff that had been furnishing the mountain house that we weren’t going to need or want anymore.  Drive back to Nashville and unload again.  We’re getting too old for this stuff!

Then there was the professional moving company weekend.

That one was mainly Chuck’s heroic effort.  I had year-end financial close to deal with at work so there was no way I was helping.  Plus, the moving company was taking not just all sorts of furniture and boxes to the mountains, but also Chuck’s Can-Am Spyder.  Most of one day was for the movers to load the truck and most of another to unload it at two different locations (the house and the storage unit where the Can-Am is going live).  Them Chuck had one day to do some sorting and rough placing and one to drive back.  And when I wasn’t at work over that weekend, I was busy packing more boxes.

So this weekend will be another U-Haul van adventure and the weekend after that the move to temporary quarters.  Shifting, shifting, shifting – right now I’m waiting for the downshift.     

The Home Sale Inspection

It comes as quite a shock when you get the home inspection report on the house you thought you were doing such a good job of keeping up.  Oh sure, some of it is knit-picky stuff that no one would look for or repair – like replacing rusted nails in exterior window trim.  But some of it kind of hits you with a why didn’t I notice that surprise.  Really, the hand rail on the back steps is loose?  How did I not know that?  And then there are the things that have been there the whole 10 years we have owned the house.  Yes, there is some water that seeps out of the shower in the master bathroom and is discoloring the baseboard trim.  It hasn’t gotten any worse or better in 10 years.  We re-did caulking; we resealed the door; we put on new water-proof trim at the bottom of the door.  None of it had any effect.  So now I guess we are just oblivious to it.  So yes, I understand you either have to fix some things or give an additional concession on the price.  Perfectly understandable.  In our case, the buyer really only wants a price concession since her plan is to do an extensive interior remodel anyway.

But then, on the inspection report we got back from the buyer is this completely baffling issue.  The report says the downstairs HVAC does not work.  We need a new unit.  What????  It’s working just fine.  What are you talking about?  We even have a service contract on it and it was completely inspected two weeks before the home inspection.  Clean bill of health.  Part of the buyer’s proposed price reduction is related to HVAC.  But wait, the HVAC works.  We submit our clean bill of health paperwork dated two weeks earlier to the buyer.  We offer to get the service company back out to re-certify that the HVAC works.  No, the buyer, who we graciously let come to the house multiple times so her contractors could measure and estimate for the re-model, says the system wouldn’t work any of the times she was there.  What????  I’m sitting here now and the unit is on, keeping everything toasty.  As for our service contract inspection report she dismisses it.  That company “owns” the area, she says.  What?  How is that relevant?

So the buyer will split the HVAC cost with us.  That’s her “concession” after already refusing to negotiate on the cost of any of the other work.  So the final decision is in our court.  Do we accept what is seeming to be a very unreasonable price reduction and start over or accept it and move on?  Can we get a better deal with a new and different buyer, I ask our agent?  Well, maybe not, he says.  What if we put the house back on the market?  Well, he says, agents talk….  What?  He elaborates - the real estate agents in this area all know each other and they talk.  If an agent brought a client through before and wasn’t wowed by the house, they tell other agents not to bother showing the property.  Now this really floored me.  I’m from Los Angeles.  There are thousands of agents and, of course, they don’t all know each other.  But then I remember I am in Nashville.  And in one of those enclaves of Nashville where most everyone went to grade school together, often at the same grade school their parents attended.  Okay, game over.  We’ll give the buyer a price concession.

Moving

Retirement, like marriage, job changes, and having a child, is a life changing event.  Big changes are inherently stressful even if you are excited by the upcoming experience.  And in the months leading up to actually setting a retirement date I had those moments of fear and doubt that should probably be expected.  I’m sure I’ll have more anxiety on the retirement change in the coming weeks, but another major change known to cause stress is moving and right now that is the one that is consuming my mind.

It felt like a big step forward to have lined up our housing for the time between the closing of the sale of our current house and the last days we need to be in the office before retirement.  And obviously that was an important thing to get done and I felt great when it was accomplished.  But now each morning, as I’m getting ready for work, I look at all the stuff that fills a 3,600 square foot house and think “how are we going to get all of this packed”, “how are we going to get all of this moved”.  Obviously we have already planned on a lot of downsizing – I can walk through rooms waving my arm over lots of furniture we aren’t going to take.  But there are drawers and cabinets and closets to be dealt with.  And I am a collector – I have numerous pieces of lovingly acquired American Brilliant Cut Glass; I have a Department 56 Christmas Village and a Halloween Village.  I am a crafter with storage bins of yarn and fabric and patterns, a sewing machine, a serger, and an embroidery machine.  Oh, and a random bin of crewel embroidery and counted cross stitch.

And my husband, Chuck, has five guitars? Six?; lots of vinyl record albums; books.

We’re both making decisions to shed all sorts of stuff.  But some days getting the stuff we are keeping packed and moved, while still going to work everyday, seems daunting.  Our move to Nashville from California was a corporate relocation so we had next to nothing to do.  Our most recent move before that was a for a distance of about 15 miles and although we did our own packing there was lots of stuff we could just run over of an evening since we had access to the new house some weeks before we moved out of our old house.  Getting stuff ready to travel 300 miles……..I’m tired just thinking about it.

Our Country Club Housing

I have to say that finding our temporary housing was much simpler and easier than I expected.  Having narrowed down the Airbnb offerings to those that would allow pets, I focused on location.  I currently get up at 4:30 am to do a 4 mile run each morning (I won’t miss the 4:30 am alarm in retirement, let me tell you!!).  

So I wanted a property that would be on or near streets that have streetlights.  A lot of properties in the Nashville-adjacent areas don’t have streetlights, something I still find quite odd after living here for ten years. So I went with properties within Nashville Metro and then eliminated the rentals that were in downtown condominium buildings and the ones that were in high-density apartment complexes.  No need to take a risk that the dogs will turn into incessant barkers in an environment like that.  That left me two promising options.  I messaged the host whose picture included her dog and got an enthusiastic response about accepting our dogs.  So we have a place to stay in May!!!!  And with a Belle Meade address.  Maybe I can do my runs around the Country Club J

Now we can move to Step Two – downsizing.  

Step One - Sell House. Done.

For us the first step on the journey to retirement, well first after telling our employers and co-workers that is, was selling our house in Nashville.  Nashville is currently considered to be a pretty “hot” market for real estate and our house is in a well-established, close-in (read “desirable”) neighborhood.

 

It sold in two weeks, which was a bit faster than we had expected.  We have 44 days to be out of the house.  But 83 days until the date we told our employers we would be out of their houses.  So now we are faced with three projects – downsizing, packing the things we are going to keep, and finding a place to live for the 39 days we will need to be in Nashville before decamping to North Carolina.   I fear we may have bitten off more than we can chew, but there is no going back now.  The offer we accepted on the house was a fair offer with no contingencies and no requests for us to upgrade anything.  Turns out the buyer is planning on gutting a lot of the inside (??? The house is only 11 years old.  Whatever.) 

I’ve been checking out the properties on Airbnb as a possible solution for our gap housing needs.  One of the big issues, wherever we try to stay, is going to be our two dogs, Jasmine and Freddy.

Jasmine

Freddy

Somehow I’m not much of a fan of small dogs, so our two are a 72 pound Rottweiler and a 45 pound German Short-haired Pointer . Turns out on Airbnb you can filter for “Pets Allowed”.  That’s a good starting point.  That filter alone took the available properties down by about 90%.  So now to do a little messaging with the “hosts” of some likely properties.

3 Months 8 Days

So my retirement countdown app tells me I have 3 months and 8 days left as an employee.  The last 14 days of that time will be paid vacation so it is really 2 months and 26 days.  Other than a 3 week period of unemployment something like 35 years ago, I have been continuously employed for 38 years.  And the refrain that runs through my mind as I think about retirement is from the Kaiser Chiefs’ song “Retirement” – “I want to retire, No longer required”.  It’s probably that “no longer required” part that scares me.  No rhythm and routine to be adhered to, because that is part of “being required”.  And “being required”, while it implies a burden of doing what someone else directs, also implies being needed, being relevant.  I certainly want to continue to be relevant! 

                                          Me and My Husband with our Grand-daughter at Sea World

So I embark on the journey from being relevant because of what my skillset is worth to an employer to becoming relevant because of what I do with my “free” time.  Where am I as I start the journey?  Well, I am 62 years old and have been married to my best friend for a few months shy of 43 years.  He and I are entering retirement at the same time.  I am mother to one child, a daughter, and have two adorable grandchildren, a boy and a girl.  I am a California native, now living in Tennessee, but with a retirement home waiting in the mountains of western North Carolina.  I am a Certified Public Accountant with a Master of Science in Taxation, who has mainly worked in corporate tax departments.  I am retiring from a role in which I manage a team of ten in filing corporate tax returns, defending the returns on audit, and recording the financial impact of taxes in the corporate books.  I have been doing handcrafts for most of my life and look forward to all the projects I want to complete with more free time.  My husband and I love to hike and cook and occasionally travel.  When we travel we come up with our own itinerary and enjoy the immersive experience of taking public transportation and walking a city.  We enjoy small get-togethers with friends and family but are not super social.  Being best friends for all these years we can be quite content just being together.  And in 2 months and 26 days I will start becoming…?  He will start becoming…?