Retirement-the malt ball version...

     My main struggles with what to do with my vast amounts of retired time center around the following:

Getting exercise-this seems to take an inordinate amount of my time, and I pursue it doggedly in spite of my sister-in-law’s well founded warnings that it will bring me to an early grave.  Every week I discover through relentless reading of the pages of the New York Times, that there is some new formula.  A month or so ago it was interval training, where it was proven that if people can get their heart rate up to some gasping level for just five minutes a day, they will live longer.  I tried this, and so far it has worked; I am still alive.  Then it turns out the Japanese have a proven method that involves walking fast then slow at 3 minute intervals for half an hour 3 times a week.  No gasping involved.  The Japanese test subjects are all still alive.  I mix this in with a stretching program by a 65 year old former dancer with the National Ballet of Canada, an institution I attended when I was 13, in which the main component is to wave about like seaweed in a gentle tide.  I have ordered the disks and I’ve done that for a week now, and can report that life as a seaweed is quite agreeable.

Writing- I was reading a conversation between two writers yesterday and one was saying she likes to go into her room with a cup of tea and close the door and write, and she finds it most enjoyable.  The second was saying that she tries to capture the ephemeral, and she can agonize over one sentence for months.  I don’t have any stats on the mortality rates of writers, but I bet one of those options leads to an early death…ah…the kettle’s boiling.

Painting- I like wide open spaces, and if I can find the right green I’m never happier than when dabbling paint on a canvas, but lately I’ve illogically gone in for challenges, so I’ve been trying to paint a rather dark and claustrophobic stand of bare winter trees near our house.  My husband, the real artist, comes in, and with the enthusiasm that would characterize the father of a very small child struggling to find words of praise, says, “wow…look at you!” and like my art teacher before him exclaims how very much he likes this little understated section right here, which in fact is a corner of the canvas I haven’t painted yet.

Chocolate-you may question my assertion that this is an activity, but when your local Whole Foods discontinues dark chocolate covered malt balls, it becomes something like a full time job.  First there is going in to the store 4 or 5 times complaining to different people about the lack of malt balls, in the hopes that they will think I am four or five different people and that there is a groundswell of protest so they bring them back.  Then there is the search in all other stores for a similar product, then there is time lost in trying to come to terms with who I really am with no malt balls.  Then there are the listless attempts to replace the malt ball experience with expensive dark chocolate mint patties and 85 % French chocolate.

And finally there is what to do with the large case of malt balls you find yourself with when Whole Foods cottons on to the fact that it’s just been you all along, and they order you a case to get you off their back.  Our apartment, while generously proportioned in vast amounts of open, high-ceilinged, unheatable space, is short on places to stash cases of malt balls.  However, I am happy to report that you can google how to store masses of malt balls.  A site called “StillTasty” looks like telling you how to store anything.  It suggests I store them in heavy duty freezer bags in the freezer.  I will now spend my afternoon shoveling malt balls into freezer bags, and emptying my freezer of all other food (StillTasty would frown at how long I’ve had some stuff in there anyway) in order to store my malt balls. 

I need hardly point out that I wouldn’t have time for these important activities if I wasn’t retired.