New Hazards of Retirement Come to Light

When we last left this retirement saga, my husband had recreated a part of the apartment to accommodate the new washer and dryer.  He has been retired for two and a half months, and his enthusiasm for new projects is undimmed.  He has created a new bar table for us to eat at, finally putting to use the bar stools that have had many serviceable years as storage units for magazines, junk mail and the lost cable bill.  He has fixed a bit of the floor we have regularly tripped on, eliminating the need for a swear jar which chiefly funded our regularly Sunday brunch.  He’s gotten rid of the couch so we have a lot more room for our studio, and nowhere to sit.  He’s put wheels on everything so that you can’t lean casually on any surface with any degree of safety.  But by far his biggest enthusiasm has been reserved for lighting. 

It started innocently enough by replacing the single light bulb hanging from a frayed wire model of lighting we had in the spare room.  Then he put a light in the overhead fan over our eating area so we can actually see our food in the dark winter months.  But then something came unhinged.  I arrived home one day to find that the kitchen was lit like the runway at Kennedy airport.  It was blinding.  I could see everything, and it all needed a good clean.  “This is nice!” I said.

     “You’ve always wanted a bright kitchen!” he said proudly, detecting no hint of irony from me.  He had, instead of replacing the existing hoary track lighting from a bygone era, added a brand new track on the opposite wall.  I gave the place a good scrub and settled in to enjoy my new bright kitchen.  And then one day, no doubt while I was at work battling with some computer problem, he must have been gazing with pride at his handiwork and was stunned to notice a tiny section of slopped ceiling in the kitchen that was absolutely bare of lighting.  He must have rushed back to the hardware store that is his new second home, and, enthralled by the brilliance of the lighting section, been overcome by a desire to replicate these very conditions in our kitchen.

      Lights have sprouted everywhere like missile silos in a cartoon of Spy v. Spy. Now I stagger home from a day of battling the ever present threat to order and good government that is our district’s head office, and stand mesmerized in the kitchen wearing sunglasses, with a handful of junk mail and magazines, wondering where to put things.