I had a birthday this week – 63! I was going to get spiffed up and take a picture for the record, but getting spiffed up rarely interests me.

When I was in Santa Cruz visiting my gorgeous friend, Monica, who just turned 40, the concierge was helping her with suggestions for the evening. I said hmmm, he didn’t help me, what’s up with that? We got dressed for dinner, and I wore my new skinny jeans. She said, well, he just hasn’t seen your butt yet.

Aw, that’s what friends are for.

Honestly, I am grateful to get older. I was 43 when I had a variation of stage 3 ovarian cancer, and here I am, 20 years later. I was unlucky to get it but exceptionally lucky to survive. I definitely want to rock my age, and I found unexpected inspiration this week on the golf course.

I played golf in my Wednesday league with three women I hadn’t yet met. Three of us were walking, and the other took a cart. The woman in the cart turned out to be 80. I was impressed until I discovered one of my fellow walkers was 82! I told her she was my new role model. She laughed and said, yeah, I just keep walking. The 80-year-old in the cart wasn’t nearly as spry.

Note to self: just keep walking.

Like most people, my golf game varies. On any given day, I can shoot 85 or 100. I’ve been reading up on the mental game, because there’s nothing wrong with my swing … just my brain. I played again on Friday, and I was telling my partner about positive self-talk, such as, “I am the best putter! I can’t wait to make this putt and show off my putting skills!”

It’s not true, but I’ve been doing it anyway, and I have made some unlikely putts. I was describing it to Dale and said, you know, fake it ‘til you make it. He had never heard that expression before.

It’s a work thing. You probably don’t remember that anymore.

Well, you haven’t worked in a year, so they probably don’t say that anymore.

I lost my work creds in a year?

Sorry, but yes.

You know what? I’m OK with that.

I thought you would be. 

To finish off my birthday week, the temperatures dropped to the high 70s. It’s gorgeous outside, and it makes me feel happy to be 63 and retired!

Donna Pekar is an aging badass (for real) who lives in California and writes Retirement Confidential.

 

 

It’s a thing. And a potential problem. Childless baby boomers who are aging without a spouse or a partner, or who have children more than 500 miles away account for almost 40% of adults over 65. Add the fact that there is a growing shortage of caregivers and you have the perfect storm for a perfect mess.

If solo agers continue to live at home, and most of us will try to do that rather than opt for residential care, we could be facing a variety of problems. It’s not a reassuring picture: medication mismanagement, improper treatment of wounds, isolation and loneliness, poor nutrition, susceptibility to scams are just some of the issues we might potentially face.

Many baby boomers who value their independence or who are not joiners by nature may turn up their noses at residential care. But what if senior living communities went out of their way to attract this population segment?

Experts suggest that they build communities with lots of common spaces and indoor-outdoor areas; lose the pastel look and go modern; create small areas that mimic cul-de-sacs; create units that can be shared by friends/roommates; create spaces for gardening and walking; partner with colleges/universities; provide choices in every arena; and make sure every resident has a health care directive, a will and an estate plan that is updated regularly.

Solo agers need to start thinking about future legal guardianship, to prepare for the day when they are unable to make decisions for themselves. Designating a friend, a relative or a private guardian now is key. The day may come when you’re unable to make that choice.

Boomers are optimists by nature and we’ve got that invulnerability chip on our shoulders. But the reality is we will face the same fates as previous generations…cancer, heart disease, falls, organ failure, dementia/Alzheimer’s, etc. Sorry this is such a downer of a topic, but for solo agers it doesn’t have to be. Making smart choices now and keeping an open mind when it comes to residential living could make living longer into an experience in which we’re living better.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

When you’re both working, you miss a lot of the little things people do when they are by themselves. Or you ignore them because you have more important things to worry about. Without the distraction of a job, you can put all your focus into identifying and correcting your partner’s flaws! Don’t. Just don’t.

You are with this person for a reason, so either accept them as they are or have a serious discussion on what needs to change. Dale is the silent type, while I like to talk things through until I am speechless and comatose on the couch. But we both agreed these picky fights had to end. To get there, he started to talk more, and I started to listen better, and now if we start to go down that path, one of us will say, no, we don’t do that anymore. It’s not worth arguing about. And we let it go!

We were driving to the Smart & Final the other day, a store that is in an area of town we don’t go to much. He was about to make a left turn into the parking lot, and I said, oh, isn’t this where we had the big fight about how to make left turns?

Dale said, yes, it is. And we both laughed.

We love to be with each other, but we also like our alone time. And suddenly, neither one of us had it. I started playing more golf. He doesn’t play, so that’s my thing. People always ask me what he does with his time, and usually I say, oh, I don’t know.

Dale has the gift of being pretty happy with not much going on. He reads, plays computer games and works around the house or yard, but his big hobby is dinner! Shopping for it, preparing for it, cooking it. I like to cook as well, and I thought, oh, great, we’ll be doing this together! But it took me awhile to realize the joy of cooking is mostly a solitary experience for him. Now I let him run the kitchen, and if I have the urge, I let him know I want to do dinner on a certain day.

I attribute our success to deep and open communications, but I asked Dale what he thought the biggest difference was and he said you stopped criticizing my driving. I probably could have skipped the soul-searching all together.

So, there you have it. To keep your retirement relationship strong, sometimes you have to talk, and sometimes you have to Zip It!

Donna Pekar is an aging badass (for real) who lives in California and writes Retirement Confidential.

I’ve heard that some baby boomers feel like they should be winding down things on their to-do list, and I just want to emphatically state that it’s not going to happen in my world.

What? Winding down because you don’t want to add any new tasks or goals to your life? You want to coast the rest of the way? You don’t need the distractions?

I call bullshit. You do what you want but I think it’s important to keep adding things to the list rather than letting it atrophy. I’ve got places to go, new things to learn, more books to read, people to meet. I want to expand the to-do list not shrink it. If you’re finally at a place where you can do some of the things you always wanted to do, winding down the to-do list is totally counterintuitive.

Make no mistake –– I’m not against occasionally sitting back and contemplating my navel. I’ve earned that privilege. Maybe an end-life of contemplation made sense when life expectancy was a lot lower age than it is today, but if you’re going to live to 100 do you really think it’s rational to loaf all the way there from age 65? That’s a lot of downtime.

I thought baby boomers were going to be different when it came to retirement. Golf and shuffleboard were on the way out and personal improvement and a more hyperactive lifestyle were on the way in. No gold watch after 30 years of service with the same company, and that was okay because our varied worklife was more interesting and rewarding. Once again, boomers were going to make different choices from what our parents did. Slowing down was not going to be the goal of our retirement.

While the idea of just wasting time may sound like a plus if you’ve been a striver all your life, this striver thinks it’s exactly what it sounds like. A waste of time. You could be trying to learn a new language, taking a welding course, fusing glass, or getting better at Scrabble. In fact, it’s time to create a bucket list, not time to shorten your to-do list.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.

Dale and I both like pretzels, although he gets extra salty, and I like extra dark. We usually keep them in stock, but somehow both kinds mysteriously disappeared from the drawer where we keep them. I was away Monday night for a golf outing, and when I returned Tuesday, I noticed a bright new bag of extra salty pretzels but none of the extra dark.

Here we go again.

I said, “I noticed you replenished your pretzel supply. Why didn’t you get me any? You know I like the extra dark.”

He went into this harangue about how he doesn’t pretend to keep track of what I eat from day to day, and I’m always changing, and how can he be expected to know whether I want them or not? I said I’ve been eating them for six months and have never complained, so one would assume I still enjoy them and might appreciate a bag if you are already at the store anyway … buying some for yourself.

In the end, I caved. I agreed he can’t be responsible for knowing what I want. He is not to buy pretzels for me unless I specifically request them. He said perfect, that’s the way we will proceed. For the record, it was not a nasty conversation. We’re both a wee bit argumentative, but we come by it naturally.

Part of the problem is Dale was an award-winning debater in high school, and I was quite successful as a persuasive speaker in both high school and college. We met in the military, we were both leaders in our careers and we both like being in charge. However, our energy for the duel has waned with age and retirement, and we have gotten better about quitting before one of us gets a sword through the chest.

The next day he says he’s going to the store for pickles and will buy me pretzels while he’s there. I said, did I ask for them? I thought we had an agreement, or was it a dream? I mean, we went through all that only so you can ignore the new policy? He said no, you didn’t ask for them, but I’ll get you pretzels anyway. I said, no, that’s not what we agreed to. He said OK, no pretzels.

A few minutes later I heard his keys jingle and asked, “Are you going to the store now?” He said yes.

“Will you please get me some of the extra dark pretzels?”

I could hear him laughing all the way down the stairs, and it didn’t stop until the front door closed behind him.

Donna Pekar is an aging badass (for real) who lives in California and writes Retirement Confidential.

There’s a disturbing new trend among rich baby boomers. No, not that they are getting even richer. Apparently, according to architects and home builders, wealthy boomers are not downsizing. In fact, they are making their master bedrooms even larger so that they can live in one big room while the rest of the house remains vacant…waiting for the next party or set of house guests.

The kids are out of the house but these boomers just don’t want to part with their furnishings. The solution is to expand the master bedroom and rarely use the rest of the house. Builders of $10 million homes say that the buyers want wet bars, drawing rooms, dressing rooms and oversized bathrooms in their master suites. A 12,000 square-foot home in Aspen has an elevator that goes from the garage straight to the master bedroom that features an office, gym, fridge, sink and coffee maker. So a portable frig is no longer a big deal. Most of the house traffic is from the bedroom to the kitchen and back.

Which begs the question. Why not combine the kitchen and the master and just never leave that one big space. Nightstands could be replaced by beverage dispensers combined with convection ovens. The headboard could be a refrigerator-freezer combo. Groceries can be delivered by Peapod and with the help of Alexa opening the front door, the delivery person can bring everything straight into the master.

If the children and grandchildren show up, they can have the rest of the house, bedrooms and living room to themselves. The boomers can remain in their stand-alone apartment and only come out when the mood strikes.

Brokers are comparing this trend to the European penchant for closing off large parts of the baronial estate. Only the Europeans have to rent out their estates for weddings and tours in order to cover their annual upkeep. Not so wealthy boomers. They can afford to cocoon themselves in extravagant master suites without ever letting the rest of the world in.

When you think about it, even not so wealthy boomers can emulate this trend. Just move into a suite at a luxury hotel and when the kids come, make then rent their own rooms. Done.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept. His mystery novel, Head Above Water, is available on Amazon and Kindle. You can also visit his author page here.