Stay as long as you like
- col-teri-stein
- October 9, 2020
- 1056
My husband, Joe, and I have always gotten along well throughout our marriage, but things have changed. What changed is I got retired (meaning not my idea), and then one week later, my retirement got Covided.
Despite that fact, the first couple months went well. I was happy not to have to go out, we watched news reports on the virus daily and it was nice to finally have unlimited time to spend together.
Over the summer, even though we were home together, I spent a lot of time on the front porch, and we had lots of yard work to do, so we weren’t in each other’s way. But now, with cooler weather here, the novelty has quickly worn off.
As you all well know, even though restrictions have lightened, still there’s not much to do or any place to go to anymore, and when someone’s not leaving for work, relaxing time spent at home by yourself is a rarity.
All my volunteer activities were canceled and have yet to start up again. I thought by this time in my new retirement career, I’d be enjoying more volunteer projects, going to group exercise classes and traveling on senior citizen bus trips because that is a perk of being a senior citizen. Although I don’t think I’m quite there yet, I do have my Golden Buckeye card, and I use it.
As a side note, when did people in their 60s start being referred to as elderly? I’ve been reading and seeing more about this: for example, “An elderly person, Teri Stein, 63, was rescued this week from getting lost in the mountains.” What? This is insane. The older I get, the older old is. I’m sure when I reach 80, I’m going to think it’s not that old, at least I hope.
I recently spent a week covering our county fair. So far, that has been Joe’s favorite week of our retirement together.
Our new favorite phrase around the house when one of us leaves is “stay as long as you’d like.” Joe coined this over fair week.
This was the first year I could attend the shows during the day, so I was telling him about one show I needed to be at that began at 8 a.m. I told him I might be gone most of the day; this news filled him with delight.
Later, I phoned him to let him know I would probably be staying longer than I had originally planned. That’s when I first heard it, “Stay as long as you’d like.”
It got pretty nasty over the week. I would send Joe a text letting him know an event would probably be going on hours longer than I had thought. He texted back, “Yay.”
Then there was the sad crying face emoji I got back when I texted Joe I would be coming home soon.
One day fair officials were having some problems prior to a sale, so I texted him to let him know I could be home late: “Oh no. Technical difficulties in the arena. They got out a big ladder.”
Almost immediately I got back a gif of actor Will Ferrell as Buddy the Elf jumping up and down excitedly. It was from the scene where Buddy finds out Santa is coming to visit.
Well, that was rude.
We are now trying to tiptoe around the fact that we want each other to leave so we can have the house to ourselves. Every morning I’m asking Joe, “Do you have any plans for today?” It’s my nice way of saying, “I wish you would leave.”
Will we survive our first winter together? Only time will tell.