Help Me Retire

 

By Rick Boettger

 

This is a cry for help. All my friends are doing their retirements the right way, led by my own wife, the Tinkerbell. She sleeps from around 11 PM to 9:30 AM. She hangs out with the local papers on the back deck for a few hours early mid-day until a small but exquisite lunch. She putters around the garden and kitchen, with major cleaning now done by a wonderful professional. She indulges in a little junk TV before either a range of healthy dinners she cooks herself, or takeout or dine in at any of Key West’s fine restaurants. She enjoys the company of her faithful Hubby, hollering together at the TV news or watching nature and travel documentaries, while he still inhabits her mortal plane.

 

 

And the same with most of her friends at her main activity, the Garden Club. Why can’t I learn from her? I just had an Epiphany when I had to interrupt a friend who was eager to discuss with me his late-in-life romantic adventures. I had to download a litany of stuff clogging my brain in the late afternoon before I could enjoy him and the fine wine and cheese at Uva on Fleming. Everything in the list below I have chosen to do because I enjoy the work and find it important and challenging:

 

 

  • At long last the Chief Investigator for the Florida State commission on Ethics is coming to the Keys this week in response to my formal complaint against Commissioner George Neugent, which I filed last October. I have to review a 200-page file I’ve compiled on the case.

 

 

  • I’m helping with a preliminary drafting of a long Exception to the recent ruling by an Administrative Law Judge against Dump the Pumps’ challenge to FKAA and the DEP over the use of grinder pumps instead of gravity systems in the middle Keys sewer systems. Dozens of pages of technical writing, short deadline

 

 

  • A year-long investigation of the City of Key West’s contractual enforcement policies in coming to a head with the possibility of after-the-fact enforcement of our agreements with the Truman Annex and Sunset Key over various unfulfilled contractual obligations like beach access, artists’ studios, and park space. It’s on my head to do preliminary legal research sufficient to trigger the City’s more formal investigation.

 

 

  • Analyzing the School District’s audit of the HOB project, actually at the request of a board member wanting me to utilize my skills in the manner most likely to help the District, as opposed to slamming them too casually.

 

 

  • Three other political things, details elided due to word count (Keys Coalition, Affordable Housing, and the Homeless Shelter).

 

 

  • Fixing a structural defect in our fine old Meadows four-condo Conch mansion, as Prez of our association. Finding the right contractor has become a six-month Diogenes-like odyssey.

 

 

  • At my day job, having wonderful new projects related to a melding of fortunes, averting overseas bank account criminal prosecutions, interpreting the new health care tax laws, and becoming certified in forensic detection of source documents for tax ID purposes, because apparently no one else in the Keys is thus certified under new laws.

 

 

I could go on but I am already depressed. Thank goodness for my singing! That is the only part of retirement I’m doing right. I’ve got my Keys Chorale and Unity Singing Team every week, and a great friend just gave me the perfect gift: at her lavish soiree later this month, I am one of four of her amateur singing friends she has asked to sing, in addition to the professional entertainment.

 

 

I am finally going to be able to perform the Toreador song from Carmen, in my key! While O Holy Night is my favorite song, Votre Toast, in French, is the most delightfully challenging song in my repertoire. I’ve sung it for three years, it having been suggested to me by Dean Walters for a lesson at my house. It was love at first phrase, and I have practiced it now and again ever since, without any prospect of actually being able to perform it.

 

 

The soiree will be the perfect venue. As I’ve written, my French, as my fifth language, is not up to snuff for a serious performance. Also, I’ve only learned the first of two verses and the big finish, as I think the whole thing is repetitive and too long. People will actually be dressed up like high-end opera-goers, with apparel instructions being formal, lavish, and over-the-top. I get to wear the only clothing I look good in, my tux.

 

 

Best is, I get to do it my way, which is following Kim Gordon’s instruction to let the audience “have a good time.” I’m going to quickly run them through the chorus of “Toreador! En garde. Toreador, Toreador” and the the two rising “Toreador”s at the finish so they can sing along. In between, I’m going to have the lady’s voice repeating three times, “L’ amore” echoed by me. For sure my host can sing all three, but in keeping with the spirit of the song, I fantasize that she will sing one, my boss the second, and my own Tink the third, all gorgeous blondes in love with their “fatuous” (the word is in the instructions on how to sing part of the song) Toreador, moi in all his imagined glory.

 

 

So why ain’t I spending all my time preparing for this once-in-a-lifetime shot, and prepping my Chorale solo audition? What opportunities! What is wrong with me? Can anyone arrange an intervention against my workaholism? Or bust me out my my own personal work-cult? Heeeeeeelllllllpppp…….!

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