This is how it was planned to go

I get up around 8:00, go downstairs,

Pour a bowl of cereal, a half-glass of juice and fill it the rest of the way with seltzer,

I do not reach for any pills.  All I have is baby aspirin and sertraline, and these days I don't feel like I need either.

I finish off Spelling Bee and begin Immaculate Grid

I check the Politics list within Xitter

I put my dishes in the dishwasher and take the iPad into the family room, and sit down on the recliner

If I'm lucky, my cat will come over and lie down on my lap

I can continue getting news from Xitter

I can read another chapter of 1776 or another day or two of The Long Season

I can put in the earbuds and listen to the machine voiceover while reading a story from Le Monde.

I can skim the headlines in the Times, Post, and Google News

From time to time, I check Facebook and Slack for news about the foster kittens.  If any, I screen shot the page or copy and paste the relevant text into a NoteTab .txt file, then save it into that month's subfolder in Dropbox.  If there are photos, I make a copy and save them into the same subfolder.  (This feels more important than the rest of the actions.  Those other actions are for my own amusement, but the Kitten Fund is the closest thing I have now to a job.)

Later, I take a walk around the neighborhood, and to keep my mind busy, I put on a podcast or count the rabbits.  

I look over the current lesson in Drumeo and work out the sticking (Today, single paradiddles)

I pull out the four printed pages of the drum part for Rikki and work out the sticking for a few more measures.  (Today, the first four bars of the first chorus.)

As of early June 27, this is how I envisioned retirement.  Then came the Biden-Trump debate and the overwhelming dread it produced.  Then came the first Monday after leaving my job, and the suffocating grief it produced. 

I collected the WFH gear and stuffed it into a provided box, and took it to the nearest FedEx store to return it.  

We had a contractor in for a week, which threw everything off for humans and cats alike.

Then someone shot at Trump.

Then my Welcome to Medicare visit, with an abnormal EKG.

Then my 68th birthday, and a day later, my wife's birthday.  That shook me, too.

Then there was a letter from my former employer that didn't make sense, so I drafted a response to mail back the following Monday morning.

Then the plastic line from the cold water pipe in the basement to the refrigerator upstairs split and sprayed water on possessions that need to be kept dry.  I felt better about my state of mind while solving the immediate problems:  put a bucket under the drip coming from up above the sink; find the squeegee and move the water on the floor over to a drain; find the leak and turn the saddle valve from On to Off, only for nothing to change, so I folded over the plastic line and duct-taped it in place to stop the flow. Just in case, I put a large plastic box under the sealed line and tied the line to the stepladder so it wouldn't thrash around if it did come loose.

The immediate crisis was past, and then I phoned the plumber.

He recommended replacing the plastic line with one made of copper, and replaced the useless saddle valve with one made by SharkBite.  As long as he was here, I asked him to replace the other saddle valve that was controlling water for the HVAC humidifier, and replace the pipe where rubber-lined clamps covered the pinholes made by past saddle valves.  In a couple of hours, everything was fixed, and I felt better about the plumbing in the basement.  I shouldn't have to deal with that kind of problem again.  Cost?  We could afford it.  

Then I contacted the internet provider/cable/phone company to try to get them to reduce the monthly bill, which has risen sharply since the previous reduction.  Not only did I get minimal sympathy, the reduction (such as it was) corresponded with the sympathy.  

Then Biden dropped out.

Then a spring fell off under the rocker-recliner and I had to play chair repair.

All that in less than a month.  PG gave me all the loving support she could.  I walked more, ate less, took sertraline.  By the end of July, I'd gone from 229 to 225.  

Then things got better.  I kept walking and drumming, but ate more and stopped sertraline.  My state of mind was much improved, but by this morning, I'd gone back up to 232, which wasn't planned.

But now that I'm over the shocks of 2024 presidential politics and the adjustment to being without a paying job, the framework I'd planned prior to retirement is holding firm.  I volunteer, doing things to help cats, I learn more about a foreign language, and I learn how to play a musical instrument.  Repeat as long as the household's health holds out.