That Puzzle That Day

Retiring

Having had the good fortune to be able to retire at age 54 has been really amazing. It has been 8 years since we were able to make this transition.

The early days were mainly spent figuring out what we wanted to “do” and how to make that work for us. Throw in having 2 knees replaced early on and time became more about physical therapy vs relaxing with my morning coffee.

Fortunately, those days settled down, after a few months, and my knees have remained functioning quite nicely. It was in the past couple of years that I added the diagnosis of macular degeneration added to our routine.

What is the old saying? It's always something. While pushing through these challenges as best we can, retirement still feels right.

Every day

Feeling relatively young in our early retirement, our days still needed some structure to feel normal. Most days we are up and about by 7:00 a.m. Owning a full grown Standard Poodle in the house adds to the motivation to get up and move around, so we rarely lounge in bed for too long.

Early retirement days, I was very involved in yoga and the husband was often out and about working with our local scouts on projects or hikes. Over time there has been a shift, yoga has taken a backseat for me and the husband has stepped back a bit on his scouting commitments.

Walks through the neighborhood are quite satisfying. Spending time painting or drawing occupies much of my time and frankly makes me happy.

The newspaper

Being a bit “old school" our days often begin with perusing the paper copy of our local newspaper. My husband just cannot seem to give up his hard copy, and as such the paper between his fingers while he reads comics and the front page is a necessity.

I, on the other hand, am quite happy with the electronic edition of this paper. It’s easier on the eyes, leading to much less strain and as a bonus, there’s no hassling each other over the next section please.

The puzzles

Almost sounding stereotypical, working the daily puzzles is something we both look forward to and enjoy very much. He works the puzzles straight off the newsprint. I, on the other hand, am so happy I can print off these puzzles on nice, bright, white printer paper, making the working of the puzzles much easier on my eyes.

My favorite puzzle is called “The Cryptoquip”, a word puzzle of sorts. The puzzle is encrypted and the element of the challenge is to decipher the letters given and figure out the phrase. You're given one hint: one letter to begin this quest, K=L for example. Most days I feel very confident and can solve this mystery relatively easily.

That one time the puzzle bested me

Today was an exception, I sat down to begin this process and very early on I realized I was stumped. I wrote and erased and wrote again. Eventually I waited for my husband to attempt this puzzle and after a bit he realized the error of my ways. My error?

I had misread the key code, incorrectly I had seen the key letter as T. Wrong. The correct letter was L, making all the difference in the world to solving this puzzle. Frustrating as it was, I took a minute, fussed a bit to myself and then correctly completed the assignment.

Just another tic in the list of macular degeneration challenges.