How will I fill my days when I retire?

For many years before he passed, my father-in-law Tom liked to point out that he was retired and rarely had significant obligations on his calendar, unlike those of us still working for a living.

It would be a family get-together on a Sunday, and someone would say something like, "I have to work tomorrow." Someone else would chime in, "Me too."

Then Tom would flash that funny little mischievous grin of his and say, "Not me!"

I have often wondered what that life would be like.

Actually, we all get glimpses of it on our days off. Especially our weekday days off.

The stores and the roads are relatively empty. We're free to structure our time however we like.

And sometimes, after that giddy feeling of being unencumbered by job-related responsibilities passes, we're also free to be bored.

I look ahead a decade (or so) hence to my own retirement, Lord willing and the creek don't rise. The possibilities are intriguing and exciting, but I also worry I'll run out of things to do.

I imagine it takes a little while to get the hang of being retired. By the time I call it quits, I anticipate having been in the full-time workforce for 44 years or more.

That's a fur piece, as my dad used to say. Certainly long enough to develop deeply ingrained patterns of behavior necessary to survive and thrive in the world of work.

Changing those patterns can, I assume, be a bit of a challenge, especially when you reach an age when change of any sort is met with skepticism or outright annoyance.

How am I going to deal with that?

Maybe more importantly, how will Terry deal with having me around all the time?

I can't say for sure, but I can tell you something I noticed recently when talking with her.

It was a particularly stressful and busy week, and I sighed and said to her, "Am I retired yet?"

It took her less than half a second to reply with a sharp and emphatic, "No." The message I took away was, "No, you are not, and I would prefer you not be retired for as long as possible so I don't have to share this gloriously empty house seven days a week."

Maybe, if she has her way, I'll never have to worry about how I spend my retirement days because I'll never be allowed to retire in the first place.

Say the things you mean to say, do the things you mean to do

Today's post was supposed to have been of the type that normally appears in this space: Silly, maybe slightly funny, but ultimately inconsequential. That is, after all, what we do here three days a week.

But then I realized it felt inappropriate to post anything that wasn't somewhat serious and heartfelt less than 24 hours after Terry and I lost the last of our parents.

My father-in-law Tom passed away yesterday quite unexpectedly. He certainly wasn't in the best of health in recent years, but to the end he was stubborn enough and certainly robust enough to be driving himself around and doing the things he wanted to do, if maybe a bit slower than he used to.

How he died doesn't really matter, though suffice it to say his heart (which was always three sizes bigger than anyone else's) finally gave out.

My own heart aches for my wife and her siblings, and for my kids. Even if they and their grandfather didn't always see eye to eye on everything – really, what combination of humans ever do? – they knew he loved them. They knew he was goofy Grandpa Ross, always ready with a laugh, a corny joke and a loving greeting.

The only point to make today is one you already know, but one that often escapes our notice until a loved one is suddenly gone.

It is this: Do not hesitate to tell the people you care about that you care about them. Do not delay doing the things with them you mean to do. Do not let them leave this life with any doubt that they had a wonderfully positive effect on you.

You don't need me to tell you this, but I tell you anyway because I need to hear it more than anyone else. Once someone is gone, they're gone. The only chance you have is right now. In this life, tomorrow is never, ever guaranteed.

That's all. It's not new, it's not groundbreaking, but it's true.

I promise I'll try my best not to forget it. I hope you will, too.

(For what it's worth, I appreciate you coming here and reading these posts. Just in case I forgot to tell you before.)

I need a new doctor and I'm apparently biased against men

This is my soon-to-be former physician, Dr. Spech-Holderbaum. She would probably think it's funny that I'm posting a photo of her on my blog.

My primary care physician, the wonderful Michelle Spech-Holderbaum, M.D., is retiring in a week. I have been seeing her since the 90s, as has my wife. She has also been my father-in-law's doctor for many years.

There was a part of me that looked forward to annual check-ups because she was always so nice and always took the time to answer questions, give advice, and really just listen.

So now I need a new doc, which is cool. Dr. Spech-Holderbaum deserves her retirement after many years of being very good at her job.

Dr. Spech-Holderbaum worked for the Lake Health medical system, but rather than look there for her replacement, I first checked out the local branch of the Cleveland Clinic that's near my home.

I went onto their website, where you can select physicians by specialty; whether they treat adults, children, or both; and by gender. And without giving it a thought, I automatically set the parameters to internal medicine, adults only, female.

It's not that I looked at the gender box and said, "What, have a man poke and prod me? Forget it!" I just subconsciously picked "female" because that's all I've known for many years.

And there were, by the way, many female physicians there from which to choose.

Are female doctors more attentive? Better listeners? More in tune with their patients' fears and worries? Maybe. Those are all stereotypes, and they're certainly not universal (I know men in many professions who possess those qualities in spades.)

But for whatever reason, I'm almost certainly going with a woman as the next person to whom I will, once a year, ask dumb questions about vitamins, my horribly scarred hamstrings, and if I'm really OK at my current weight or whether losing a few more pounds is a good idea.

As a man, all I can say is that I would not want the job of caring for neurotic me.

We bought a $1,000 dishwasher

(NOTE: This is our once-a-month Blog Rerun, in which I bring back a post that has appeared on this blog at some point in the past. Today's post about the $1,000 dishwasher first ran on May 23, 2012, and it's one of my favorite things I've written. Flint Parker still makes me laugh.)

We bought a new dishwasher.

I realize how unimportant this is to you, but I'm thrilled about it. I end up being the one who loads the dishwasher most nights, so this is one appliance that matters to me.

The old dishwasher cost something like $400. It lasted four years. The new dishwasher was about $1,000. Can I assume it's going to last 2-1/2 times longer? Probably not. But I'll tell you what, it had better hold up longer than four years.

We bought the dishwasher at B&B Appliance, one of those family-owned stores that has been in business since the Stone Age. Seriously, I'll bet these people were selling hand-crank washing machines and wooden TVs in the Oklahoma Territory 150 years ago. They may not always have the best price, but their service is excellent and they stand behind their products.

I know this mostly because my father-in-law Tom shops there. Tom is not a guy who just rushes into things like buying thousand-dollar dishwashers. He has many years of experience in buying (and fixing) appliances. So if he says B&B is good, I'm with him.

The guy who sold us the dishwasher is named Flint Parker. Really, that's his name: Flint Parker. Isn't that great? If I'm being honest, I'll admit that part of the reason Flint was able to close the deal with us was because of his name. Plus, he looks like Morgan Freeman, and I like Morgan Freeman.

Another reason we bought this particular dishwasher is because it's a KitchenAid. Some years ago I bought my wife a KitchenAid mixer. The thing not only weighs 5 tons, I think it could mix concrete. Terry only uses it to make cakes and stuff, though, so I can't confirm the concrete thing. But it's definitely heavy duty and will last for decades. I'm hoping the same is true for the dishwasher.

Yet another reason we bought it is because it has four spray arms across the bottom. Most dishwashers (including our old one) have only two. Flint walked around the store opening up various dishwashers and showing us that, unlike the KitchenAid, every one had only two and occasionally three spray arms.

I asked why four spray arms is better than two, and Flint looked at me like I was slow. I guess I understand, but if four spray arms are so revolutionary, why don't other manufacturers make their dishwashers that way? I didn't ask Flint because I was afraid he wouldn't like me. And I'm not sure I could handle having Morgan Freeman not like me.

Flint said he has been working at B&B for 26 years and selling appliances for 50. That means he's at least in his late 60s, but he didn't seem that old to me. He was wearing a button-up sweater vest and he looked good in it. Not many people look good in a button-up sweater vest, let me tell you. I guess it takes someone with the confidence of a veteran appliance salesman to really pull off that look.

Anyway, we went ahead and bought the dishwasher, which now that I think about it didn't really cost a thousand bucks. The total was a thousand with delivery and installation, and I was happy to pay extra to have the thing brought to my house and hooked up. I suppose I could manage the job myself after much reading of the instruction manual and the requisite weeping and gnashing of teeth. But really, it was worth the extra cash to come home and see it correctly installed and ready to use.

It's really quiet. And it has buttons on top of the door instead of on the outside. It feels very space age to me, like the sort of dishwasher you would see on Star Trek. If I had the money, I would equip our house with nothing but Star Trek appliances. That's a very tempting thing to do, especially when you walk into a store with all of the latest models.

And believe me, B&B had all of the latest models. Washing machines, dryers, TVs, ovens, refrigerators. They were all there, and they were all insanely expensive. They had a model kitchen that Terry very much wanted. I did some quick math in my head and calculated that all of the appliances together in the model kitchen would set you back about 25 grand. That's some serious cash...cash we didn't have.

So for now we'll content ourselves with the new dishwasher. And with the fact that we now have a friend named Flint Parker. He was nice enough to give us his email address. I think I'm going to email him and let him know how quiet his four-armed Kitchen-Aid dishwasher is.

23 years and counting with Terry

My wife started out beautiful. And now in her mid-40's, she has moved on to "hot."

This is the mother of all mixed blessings for me. Any guy wants to be married to "hot," but it also puts pressure on you to try and match your wife's hotness, which I honestly cannot do.

So I try to make up for it by earning money to support our family and occasionally writing nice, heartfelt things about her.

This blog post, for the record, is the latter.

Tomorrow is our 23rd wedding anniversary. We're just two years away from our silver anniversary, which is funny in that:

• It feels like we got married two weeks ago. I'm not quite sure how we got here so fast.
• I remember my own parents' silver wedding anniversary, and man, they seemed a lot older to me then than I feel now.

But 23 years it has been, and every June 6th I give her credit for having stuck it out.

Terry knew I wasn't very handy when we got married, but at some point in the months after our wedding when we were living in our first house, I'm sure she thought, "Oh, you were serious about that not-being-able-to-fix-stuff thing? Like, really serious? I didn't know it was going to be this bad."

And so she has become quite the handy-woman, with occasional and greatly appreciated assistance from her father, the saint-like Tom Ross.

She is also chief cook and bottle washer, head homework helper, vice president of interior design, and director of finances, and she holds a myriad of other positions (all unpaid) around our house.

I have invested my life in her because I figured it was about the safest bet I could make, and for once it turns out I was right.

For the remainder of my days, I will go where she goes, I will essentially do whatever she tells me to do, and I will continue to stare at her sometimes with the vague expression of a guy who can't believe his own dumb luck and realizes he has most definitely outkicked his coverage (click on that link if you're unfamiliar with the expression).

Happy 23rd anniversary to my hot wife, whom I'm hoping can get around to tightening the faucet in the downstairs bathroom sometime this week because it's loose again...