Winter Woes

If you are from a warm clime like Florida and are thinking about retiring to this area or to someplace even farther north you need to think about what you are going to do during the winter months.

What brings this to mind is that it’s finally gotten cold here after an unusually warm November and December. We have had a couple of mornings where the dawn temperature was in the teens and never rose above 40 during the day, and the weather forecast is for even colder weather with the possibility of snow flurries and freezing rain. It is 17 degrees outside as write this late in the evening.

I have concluded that winter is my least favorite time of year here. It was fun the first year and still something of a novelty the second year but now it’s just a giant pain in the ass. I view it as period of time to hunker down and just get through—kind of like a trip to the dentist but way longer. There is nothing to do in the garden, and on many days it’s too cold or wet or both to work outside. At least a couple of times each winter there is snow or ice, and I can’t get out of my driveway because I bought a light two-wheel drive pickup instead of a heavy four-wheel drive pickup like my kids told me to. Winter might be okay if there was enough snow to go skiing and there was a convenient slope nearby but that’s just not the case.

Winter means that I’m forced indoors a lot of the time and that means I have to find multiple entertaining indoor activities to avoid going crazy with boredom. Unfortunately I get bored easily and have the attention span of a gnat. I’m just not very good at patiently waiting things out like a bored dog is. I suppose the good news is that I have a lot of things on my plate this winter so maybe I won’t go stir crazy.

As I wrote in a recent post, one of my new activities is being a college student. I am now officially a student at the University of North Georgia. Go Nighthawks! I have student ID number and a student email. I received an official letter of admission from UNG congratulating me on my admission to “the University of North Georgia’s Bachelor’s Degree program on the Blue Ridge Campus as a post-baccalaureate student.” I thought I was just auditing a course but now it seems I’m in the bachelor degree program and destined for a college degree. Just think. I could be the first person in my family to retire with a college degree and receive a second college degree after retirement. I’m a potential American success story. I could go on to a second career and a second retirement if I live to be 120.

I had intended to take a sophomore political science course entitled “Global Issues” but scheduling conflicts forced me to sign up for a freshman level introduction to political science course. If I can't pass this class then I'm going to enroll in a GED program.

There are about ten people in the class. Eight of them are true freshman. I estimate they are between 18 and 20 years old. It’s a little weird knowing that I own shoes that are older than most of my classmates.

There’s one other older guy in the class. He tried to cozy up to me after the first class but I was having none of it. There’s no way I’m getting friendly with him. I figure he’s my only real competition. There is a cute little girl in the second row who I wouldn’t mind having as a study buddy but I think there are laws that prevent me from even talking to a woman that young.

Another activity that has been keeping me busy is the men’s group at the church I go to. They have been active doing helpful things for older parishioners like cleaning roofs, clearing tree limbs and doing carpentry work and home repairs. We did one project last week that consisted of refurbishing a deck and some outside stairs. Unfortunately we had our first real cold snap just as the project started. I, for one, froze my ass off. One morning it was 20 degrees when we started. My hands were so numb from the cold that I could drive nails with them. I think my toes took a side trip to Florida.

Let me say that these are really good guys as witnessed by the fact they are willing to take time to help others. They are educated, well read and had an accomplished career before they retired. It’s just that, like me, they are getting older and that adds a little extra something to the work effort. Drop a screw, and we all stand around looking at each other to see who is going to make the attempt to bend down to pick it up. To paraphrase that country song, we’re not as good as we once were, but we’re as good once as we ever were—only for a much shorter time and with the necessary naps.

I wish I had a video of the project. I would entitle it “Retired Men at Work.” Everyone in the group is handier than I am when it comes to tools and home repair stuff. They would say things like “make sure you cut the kerf” and “we may need to chamfer the edge,” and I would just nod my head pretending I had a clue about what they were talking about. After a while I got the impression that it had become a typical male competition to see who could sound more knowledgeable and use the most obscure woodworking term. I was thinking about throwing in a few legal terms like “I wish I had my mandamus miter” or “I left my quo warranto saw at home” but I figured someone in the group would call my bluff.

Half the group is hard of hearing so there were a lot of conversations like this (the names have been changed to protect the innocent):

Bob: Hey, Jeff, would you grab my four-square framagadget?

Jeff: Yeah, it is cold this morning.

Tom: Okay, Jeff, I’ll get you another cup of coffee.

Harry: What?

Fortunately, my hearing is okay so I served the role of translator in which case the conversation would go like this:

Bob: Hey, Jeff, would you grab my four-square framagadget?

Jim: HEY, JEFF, BOB WANTS YOU TO GRAB HIS FOUR-SQUARE FRAMAGADGET.

Jeff: What?

Hey, at least I tried.

So the bottom line is that between my class, men’s group projects and all the other stuff that I’m involved with maybe I’ll be able to stay busy this winter and avoid a bad case of cabin fever.