Oh, for the love of Pete!!

This was going to be a structured post about the things I have learned since retiring. I was going to provide a few examples and wax eloquently about the changes in me as the result of these things I have learned but my computer shut down. Yep! Right in the middle of me being wise and eloquent (and I had not finished the first paragraph) this laptop popped and shut off. TOO HOT!! I knew it! I am sure the fan is shot in this little laptop. I don't have the money nor do I imagine I have the expertise to install a fan so once in awhile this faithful, old laptop becomes indignant and goes on strike until she cools off. BUT...I, clever and resourceful me, brought my fan over, put it on the top of the printer, plugged it in and aimed it at the computer. Problem solved! Yes! Yes! I know! This action serves to perpetuate the belief that I am eccentric. A belief that I don't buy into in the least but,  by a poll taken by myself ,was strongly supported by a number of my friends. As a matter of fact, the phone calls I made were the result of a friend stating to me that I am eccentric and I bet her that no one else would agree with her. I made the calls to a number of friends who know me well and there was a 100% concensus that I am indeed eccentric. Egocentric I would have no trouble buying into but eccentric seems a misguided interpretation of my choices and responses.

ANYWAY...the computer shut down. It is up and running and I lost all my clever thoughts. I lost all the babbling I was going to do about building friendships with people I never would have met if I had not retired and worked at Wal-Mart and now working at home, on-line and on chat with folks I will never meet yet building chat friendships with a few of them. There's been an entire world outside of Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station where I worked for 29 years. I got sober after working for the government for about a year. Lord knows it is tough enough to work for the government straight much less hung-over and losing a healthy buzz about the time I showed up for work. It took me, a reasonably intelligent woman, way too long to learn how to keypunch. (ancient computer skills now defunct). People still smoked at their desks and drank at office parties and followed volumes of resource books that have since been condensed into about 30 pages of instructions leaving much to the imagination of someone trying to crack the code of government processes and procedures. But, I digress, I got sober, worked until retirement, probably got sick from asbestos and environmentally crappy air, took my retirement and ran through the guarded gates into the bosom of "the rest of the world"!

For awhile I related to Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz..."We're not in Kansas anymore!" Slowly I woke up and realized that I was with "my people". I could hang with this new way of life. I might be sick and I might be poorer and I might not be a big shot in this great big pond but I was one of "them". Yep! I fell right smack into home by my definition. I have not taken one step back through the gates of Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station since I left. I'm not mad. I don't have resentments. It seems like an old movie set to me now. Once in awhile I talk with someone who still works there and we chat about this and that and how things are going downhill and I drift off as I'm thinking that I have already seen that movie and I know that setting well.

Before I close...where did the expression "Oh, for the love of Pete!" come from...do any of you one or two people who read my blog happen to know where the expression comes from? Maybe I'll google it and write about it. I realized that my grandmother never lived to know that we would be googling everything we could dream up to google. Google is slowly replacing the word research. I don't research it. I google it!