hrj

Retirement T-1 and counting

Tue, 29 Apr 2025 15:45:49 GMT

Only concrete progress has been setting paying my first 3 months of Medicare (after which they presumably will be paying my retirement benefits and can deduct it automatically) and sending in the paperwork for auto-paying the Kaiser add-on. Still no approval of retirement benefits. Still no exit interview appointment with the employer.

At my retirement party, everyone asked me what I'd do on my first day of retirement and the answer was, "Pack for two separate trips." But of course, me being me, I've already finished the packing. Because that's how I roll.

It's a bit fitting that my first "retirement activity" will be going to an SCA event (West Kingdom coronation). What's amusing is that of the two SCA events I've attended since I dropped out, both will have been at the same site, same event, and for the same purpose (attending a friend's peerage ceremony). Since I've given away all my camping equpment, last time I stayed at a motel. This time, what with working on reducing spending, I'll be sleeping in my vehicle (which is actually very well designed for the purpose -- I use it for regular camping on occasion).

I've been debating whether to start attending events again more regularly, if only because it would help with my "interact with people in person regularly" pledge. Site fees have really jumped since I was last active, though not unreasonably so. Still it makes it less of an impulse buy. I'll have to ponder on it. Find the things that bring me joy (which is *not* "generic SCA court culture"). And, of course, the writing will come first, in terms of time priorities.

Spending the day humming "One Day More" from Les Miserables.

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The Great SCA Gear Divestment Project

Sun, 09 Jun 2019 20:57:56 GMT

Today I tackled pulling stuff out from the righthand side of the garage to clean, catalog, photograph, and organize for my "Yes, I'm ready to admit I'm not doing SCA any more" giveaway open house. Tents, beds, tables, kitchen furniture. I've moved the containers of smaller kitchen equipment into the house for more focused sorting and washing. There's also the Wall-O-Fabric and the craft supplies to go through.

I'm not getting rid of *everything*. I'm keeping enough basic mundane camping gear for the possibility that I'll load up the Element and head for the woods. And I'm keeping plenty of fabric and craft supplies to be happy. But I'm aiming for "right-sizing".

The hardest part of this process isn't the "stuff" itself, but the investment I put into making and adapting things for my "ideal medieval environment". Some of those things I only enjoyed a few times. Some were still in the process of being perfected. But here's the thing: I'm *not* using them. And I have no rational expectation of using them in the future. And I'd rather that someone else used them to help build *their* "ideal medieval environment" rather than having the stuff continue to collect dust in my garage.

There's been a recurring theme in my life of needing to distinguish between living the life I will truly enjoy, and trying to live a fantasy life that I only *want* to want. Let me unpack that. The example I usually use to illustrate this struggle is My Fantasy Canopy Bed.

When I was a little girl, I fantasized about the French Provincial Canopy Bed in the furniture ad insert of the Sunday paper. But I didn't just want the canopy bed as advertised, I wanted it with the full curtains around it, like I knew canopy beds were supposed to have. I knew I was never going to get one. I had a perfectly good bed and my family didn't buy fantasy furniture like that. At one point I improvised a sort of half-canopy using random lumber and extra sheets. The fantasy was the image of having a private, closed-off space that was mine and mine alone in the middle of the house.

And when I was an adult and I had a place of my own and was doing some redecorating, I thought very seriously about fulfilling my childhood dream of having a canopy bed with curtains. And I realized that it was silly. Because the entire *house* was my private close-off space that was mine and mine alone. The image of what I wanted a canopy bed for was no longer relevant.

I have a few other standard examples of figuring out the difference between wanting something that I'll genuinely enjoy and wanting a fantasy of something that I can never actually have. I keep running up against that with home improvements. I fantasized about building a backyard combination grill and open-fire-cooking setup so I could invite my SCA friends over for medieval barbeque parties. Um...so the fantasy part? The part where I invite bunches of friends over on a regular basis. Wasn't going to happen. Sorted that out in my head soon enough to avoid expense and trouble. I've had similar issues around fun kitchen equipment for cooking things that I'm not actually going to cook on a regular basis. (Ooh, wouldn't it be fun to make my own homemade pasta...now that I've deliberately cut way back on carbs in my diet.)

Anyway, a lot of my SCA camping gear was about putting together that fantasy ideal of the medieval campsite. I got pretty close. I had plans for getting even closer. But even at its best, that fantasy ideal involved spending massive amounts of time and physical effort to pack the vehicle, unpack, set up, organize, and then reverse the whole process less than 48 hours later. All for one waking period of trying to "live the medieval fantasy" (and here's the kicker) at events where "living the medieval fantasy" mostly involved going to *other* people's campsites. Well, anyway.

There's the SCA experience I *wanted* to want and enjoy. I got close to it a few times. And that dream is what I had to let go of to be willing to give my gear away. I hit apogee. It's behind now. Somewhere in my files are the sketches planning out my medieval camping canopy bed. With curtains. I never did make it. In a box somewhere I have the mock-up of the bed curtains done in a cheap fabric for proof-of-concept, but I never found the right balance between engineering, portability, and historic appearance for the structure itself. I'll be giving away my IKEA-hacked camping sideboard that was going to have a plate display rack added to the back. I completed the design. I bought the lumber and hardware. Never made the display rack.

That's what I'm letting go of: that gap between the dream and the accomplishment.

One of the projects I truly do mean to finish is a set of throw pillows decorated with pieces of half-finished lace and embroidery. Projects that never got the momentum for completion. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Ou sont les neiges d'antan?

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12th night as a tourist

Mon, 08 Jan 2018 01:21:52 GMT

It's a thing to become a person whose only SCA attendance is 12th night (because there's no camping and it's a good context for simply hanging out and chatting) and I've decided I've become one of those people. You don't actually get to hang out and chat with everyone, because there are still people who feel compelled to attend All The Court and then are so completely drained that they disappear, so maybe you get a "hello" in the hallway, but that's just how things are. I didn't really have an agenda of people to bump into, so I had some interesting conversation just on the basis of the chance of the flows and eddies. I had a bit of a panic Thursday night when packing and trying to figure out an outfit that I felt like wearing, that fit, and that hadn't been devastated by the Great Moth Tragedy. I don't think anyone took pictures of me, so I suppose it doesn't matter anyway.

One of the peculiar things about being a Person Who Only Goes to 12th Night is the people who make a fuss about how they haven't seen you in ages and how they've missed you, but who never really talked to you much back when you were active. (This is as opposed to the people who say they've missed you who did interact with you back when you were active.) Given that I'm active on facebook and here and twitter, and that I do socialize with a variety of SCA folks, I guess it's a bit hard to take seriously anyone who makes a fuss about missing me when there hasn't been any effort to keep in contact.

There was a really great artisans' display in a well-trafficked area and I think I chatted with almost everyone who was displaying. (It's rather fun to notice that someone is using one of your articles as part of their research binder.) I also got introduced to a lovely young woman who is a fan of the Alpennia books and was tickled to meet me. I failed my saving throw against buying pottery and picked up a small kylix with a harpy motif. The sine qua non of 12th night, of course, is the Golden Stag Players performance, with the added amusement of seeing my brother do a stage-Welsh accent for the character of Sir Hugh Evans in The Merry Wives of Windsor. I guessed wrong on the timing of dinner, though, having left it for after the performance. A possibly record-breaking long sequence of courts shifted the target performance time about 2 hours later than anticipated, so I didn't get dinner until 10pm, but had some nice chat time with my apprentice, despite us both being pretty zoned out by then. I suppose as someone gone inactive, I no longer have a right to gripe about the rudeness of court run-overs crapping on all the other event activities, but it was pretty clear that attendance at the play, the subsequent choir performance, and the dance ball were gutted by the schedule shift.

The only thing that significantly hampered enjoyment was having my lower back be out of sorts and trying to seize up every time I sat down. I was even pretty much done with all my post-cold symptoms, so that was nice.

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