Category: OpEd (Page 2 of 5)

Bitter and Sweet

August 27, 2023 / hkraushaar

I am in a bittersweet mood, and I blame it on Clifford, though it was not his fault. He was just the unintentional catalyst that put me into my nostalgic state this morning, but to be fair, I would have been in it soon enough anyway.

I met Clifford in September 1960 when I began going to Horace Mann School for kindergarten. His presence filled a room. He was an outgoing, blonde kid who, ironically, had a big dog, though the dog was not red (duh). Everyone in my kindergarten class knew Clifford, even though he was in the other class.

Despite only interacting with Clifford a handful of times in the 50 years since we graduated from Beverly Hills High School, my memories of Clifford remain as bright fixtures in my mind. He was the quarterback on our Horace Mann School flag football team. I was his left end. When we speak, he only mentions the catches I made. Thankfully, he omits talking about the ones I didn’t make. Those were good times and most likely account for why I feel like I still know him well to this day.

As bright as my memory of Clifford is, it is not as bright as my memory of Jill, the girl who I had not met before and whose hand I held 63 years ago when I walked into my kindergarten classroom for the first time. We were not good friends in either elementary or high school, but, hey, holding hands can leave a seriously indelible impression. Just think of the Beatles.

My memory of her may also be enhanced by the chance, yet somewhat pre-ordained, meeting we had in a Berkeley motel parking lot as we were both dropping off our kids to begin their college experience at the University of California.

Over the past couple of weeks, Ellen, another of our Horace Mann School classmates, and Clifford have been reaching out to me to help them organize an informal elementary school meetup the evening before our 50th high school reunion.

Clifford called me this morning to talk about who might or might not be coming to our meetup and to the reunion. When Clifford called, I was chewing on a piece of rye toast while sitting in my den, which due to the ongoing remodeling of our kitchen, is also serving as our breakfast room.

Of course, I put the call on speakerphone when I answered, even though I had the replay of the Amsterdam Formula 1 race blaring from the TV. He either didn’t mind or couldn’t hear it. For some reason, Pam, my saint of a wife who was also in the den, didn’t bother to admonish me to turn it off.

Pam graduated from high school with Clifford and me and was listening to our conversation. When Clifford started saying he was having issues locating many of our Horace Mann classmates and it became clear that neither Clifford nor I could remember a good number of the names of the kids in our class, Pam, being the packrat she is, sprang into action, grabbing my 1969 Horace Mann yearbook off one of the bookshelves in the den and locating whatever lists of contact information she had from our prior reunions. I knew I had the yearbook, and I knew it was somewhere in the den, but it felt like too much work to search for it. It never ceases to amaze me that Pam knows where everything is while I only have a general idea.

I started scanning the yearbook, focusing on each of the 95 faces and names that made up our eighth grade graduating class. The last time I looked at it was probably 10 years ago. My perusal of it at that time did not generate the feelings I was feeling this morning.

I realize it is pretty normal to lose touch with classmates as time goes by, but as I looked and looked, it was quite evident that I had lost touch with over 95% of them. Some had moved away. Sadly, some had passed away. Some had lost interest in being found. Sure, I still speak with a couple of them somewhat regularly. Sure, I interact with a handful of them on social media, and that should count for something, I guess. But those facts did nothing to quelch my feelings, which I think were spawned more by the stark reality of the passage of a great amount of time than anything else.

Every sweet face on that page was filled with youthful energy and the joy of moving on in life. We were still young and generally naive. While we were beginning to grow apart as we aged, we still had way more in common than not. We were early in our march to adulthood, and we couldn’t wait for it to happen.

Well, a lot has happened since then, almost an entire lifetime worth of stuff. Stuff that I am yearning to learn more about, as I think I am finally enough of an adult to make that stuff more meaningful to know.

Purged

July 23, 2023 / hkraushaar

Pam and I knew it was time to fix our kitchen. While we are never exactly on trend, we knew our kitchen was dated. I mean, it has wood cabinets and green granite. I think it is damn near perfect the way it is, but even I knew it needed updating for functional and cosmetic reasons. Pam just wanted it clean and new and white. So, we decided it was time to deal with it. That was over three years ago.

It started as a simple refresh, repainting our existing cabinets and keeping our flooring and most of our appliances. We got quotes and bought some new cabinet hardware at the end of February 2020, right before COVID. That put a hard stop on our plans. We thought about restarting it about 18 months ago. We put a stop to that restart once we realized the supply chain issues were still too severe. We waited until early this year to really get going. We got a new contractor. We got new quotes. Along the way, we got the might as wells and dropped the refresh and turned it into a full-blown redo. Of course, the budget when up exponentially. So here we are on the eve of destruction. Literally.

We have spent the past couple of days purging our kitchen, dumping old stuff and moving all the remaining stuff into other rooms and the garage as we prepare for our remodel, which begins tomorrow.

It was sort of shocking when we started opening up kitchen drawers and cabinets. We found items that expired in the early 2000s. We had to clean the pantry, which still had some of our un- or partially-consumed food items we bought, but did not really want or need, during the height of the hoarding days of COVID. We laughed at the pots, pans and utensils that we found that have not been used in decades but were lurking deep in drawers. It was like a reverse treasure hunt. Every unused item just added to the time it took us to purge the kitchen.

In theory, our remodel should be simple. In theory, it should not take more than six weeks or so. In theory, we should not drastically exceed our most recently increased exponential budget. In theory, we know what to expect, as we did a much more complicated version of this over two decades ago, at a time when we had kids living in the house. I hope the theory is right.

I mean, we are not moving or altering any walls. We will be replacing our current cabinets, counter tops, backsplashes and flooring. Due to code changes, we will be ripping out our drywall in order to redo the kitchen wiring. We are adding some HVAC ducts in the kitchen walls. We are moving some plumbing and changing our overhead lighting. We are putting in new appliances, including the built in griddle on our range top that Pam thinks is my ultimate boondoggle. Simple stuff. We will have at least one inspection. We have spent an eon deciding on our counter tops, backsplashes and floors. We have selected and bought our new appliances. Everything else has been ordered and is either in stock or arriving soon, except for the backsplash tile which is on backorder for at least a month. We are good to go. Simple. Right?

We think we have come to grips with life without a kitchen. In theory, we have it all figured out. Our kitchen table is in our den, along with our microwave, coffee maker and coffee bean burr grinder. A spare bathroom has our slow cooker and toaster oven. The contractor says our refrigerator and washer and dryer will be usable. All we are missing is our cooktop, ovens, dishwasher and insinkerator, which we use a lot less often than we used to use now that we are trying to do more composting per city decree. We got this covered. Really.

Tomorrow, they start demolishing the kitchen. By tomorrow night, we will testing our planning and preparation, not to mention our patience.

Dad’s Lights

June 18, 2023 / hkraushaar

Another Father’s Day. Pam, my saint of a wife, took good care of me. This year marked a return to doing more normal Father’s Day stuff. Breakfast at Porta Via in Beverly Hills. Followed by a stroll down Rodeo Drive to look at the classic cars that are on display every Father’s Day.

While Pam was happy at brunch, inching our way down a crowded Rodeo drive gawking at cars we most likely have seen before was no fun for her. I appreciate her sacrifice for my benefit. If I am lucky, I may be able to get her to ride shotgun in my 89 Porsche 911 Carrera Targa this afternoon when we drive to Shelby’s to see the grandkids. I probably shouldn’t press my luck, though.

The car selection this year was really varied. We saw everything from old to new. We saw sports cars and sedans. We saw hot rods and SUVs. Surprisingly, there was a large collection of 1950s Cadillacs, a brand that I used to enjoy.

Shockingly, the highlight of the show for me was not the smallish collection of Porsches, though there were some really nice ones, but the 1959 Cadillac, the model with the fins on each side and the iconic twin horizontal taillights on each fin.

The 59 on Rodeo Drive was white. The same color as the one my dad owned. My dad owned a four-door sedan. The one on Rodeo Drive was a convertible. It didn’t matter to me. Just seeing the one today brought back a host of memories.

The 59 was the last nice car my dad owned. He bought it because his business partner, who could not drive, wanted it. He bought it before my mom started losing large sums of money gambling. Frankly, I think he was more comfortable in his pickup trucks with manual steering and brakes and the 3-on-the-tree manual transmissions than he ever was with the fins and twin taillights, power steering and brakes and automatic transmission. Personally, I liked the fins and taillights and the air conditioning in the Cadillac.

That is not to say that my dad did not like cars. He did. He just like functional ones more than stylish ones. He was a child of the depression after all.

My dad was not good at spending money on himself, mainly because he spent all his money funding my mom’s gambling habit and raising my sister and me. He was generous to a fault, always putting everyone else’s needs before his own. He was happy just having a family, something he never expected. I did not understand that growing up but really appreciate it now.

My dad was a bachelor for a long time. He got married at 39 and had me when he was 40, which in 1955 was really old to have a first child. I was three or four when he got the 59, old enough to be fascinated by the taillights. He married my mom thinking she could not have kids. I was a life changing surprise for him. One that he cherished.

My dad was always there for me. He could not have done more for me or my sister. The only times I lost my temper with him were when he let my mother’s gambling run amok. I thought he could control it. I thought wrong, but I still blamed him for it. Maybe I shouldn’t have.

So, Dad, I spent the morning thinking about being a dad. Once I saw the 59, I spent a couple of hours remembering and appreciating you. You would have loved spending the late afternoon with us when we visit our grandkids. Happy Father’s Day. Love ya.

Prom + 50

May 20, 2023 / hkraushaar

50 years is an effing long time. Or, as my kids would say, “Mom and Dad are old AF!” They are not wrong. Pam and I were seniors in high school 50 years ago, and recently I have been thinking about that time in my life.

Today, I felt the need to watch the clip of the pool scene in It’s a Wonderful Life, not because it’s such a great scene, even though it is, but because the setting has shaped my life for the past 50 years.

In 1973, Pam and I were attending Beverly Hills High School, the location of the pool in the iconic scene. It is a unique pool because, for some ungodly reason, the designers felt the need to combine a pool and a basketball court in the same space, resulting in space savings but not yielding either a fully functional basketball court or pool.

But that is not the reason I am writing about the pool. The pool holds a significant place in my life because it connected me with Pam, even though we were not swimming or dancing in the pool at the same time.

It was the final quarter of the school year, and for some reason unbeknownst to me, the school district thought it would be a great idea to offer scuba diving classes as part of the physical education curriculum. At the time, Beverly Hills High School was a truly unique place to go to public school. I mean, how many other schools, public or private, had a planetarium on campus? None, that I have heard of. But that is not the point.

I thought it would be fun to learn to scuba dive. The school hired an outside firm to teach us how to use the diving equipment, and they supervised our class time in the pool. They also said that if we wanted to, we could become certified by doing a series of ocean dives on Saturdays in Corona Del Mar, some 50 miles away from the pool. As the cost of a gallon of gas was a paltry 39 cents at the time, I felt it was a good investment to make all the drives to get certified to dive.

Pam wanted to get certified, too, and while I don’t remember the reason why, she asked me if I could drive her to Corona Del Mar for the beach dives. I dove right into that one and said, “Sure!”

So, Pam and I spent several Saturdays in my car making the drive to and from Corona Del Mar.

During that time one of our classmates, Michelle, had a pre-prom pair-up party. I went. Pam went. Though we did not go together, we ended up spending time together at the party once Pam came to the unfortunate realization that her first choice as a prom date, Roger, was already taking someone else. I, along with most other dateless guys at the party, were her potential Plan B prom dates. Having had spent so much car time with Pam, I felt I had a good shot at being The Plan B Guy. So, after the party, I summoned up the courage to ask her to be my date at the prom, an event which occurred 50 years and one day ago. She said, “Yes!”

Thanks mainly to the pool, partially to Michelle, and partially to Roger’s date saying yes, Pam’s life has been intertwined with mine for 50 years, enabling me to have a wonderful life.

True Ridge Mountains

December 25, 2022 / hkraushaar

It’s Christmas Day, and I am writing this while listening to various covers of John Denver’s Country Roads, something that has never crossed my mind to do before.

I owe it all to Bryan, Shelby, Portia, and Ford. They went to Louisville to celebrate Christmas. On the surface, it made a lot of sense—to them, at least. I mean, who wants to travel with two kids under four during the week of Christmas. As Bryan is from Louisville and his family still lives there, they had a great reason to go. Pam and I knew it was the right thing, but it put a slight damper on our Christmas activities, not that we do that much on Christmas anyway. But still….

Pam and Kim decided that since we would not be with Bryan, Shelby, Portia and Ford on Christmas Eve, I should make a Christmas Eve brisket, leaving us leftovers for dinner on Christmas Day, thereby eliminating the need for us to scour the city for a non-Chinese restaurant that would be open. Not that we do not like Chinese food, we do, but we had a lot of it last weekend, making it out of the question this week.

Having finished night one of the brisket, thankfully sans latkes, which I am still digesting after the last time I made them a couple of years ago, Pam and I settled down to watch Glass Onion on Netflix. I cannot say I was thrilled, but I agreed to watch it. It was reasonably amusing and somewhat entertaining. I loved the whole malapropism theme, as it reminded me of Shelby, who was the queen of them when she was younger. The other thing I enjoyed was the soundtrack, which was great.

About halfway into the movie, my subconscious began to register a tune that was, at least for me, out of place with the lyrics. Suddenly, I stopped listening to the dialog and focused on the song, which was Country Roads, yet it wasn’t. The chords and notes were all there. The lyrics were, well, off. I was captivated, trying somewhat unsuccessfully to get a handle on it. Clearly, it was a cover with altered lyrics, but not in the sense that Weird Al turned a cover into a parody. This was a real song, just different, and it was good.

Though I never told my friends and would have lost several fingernails before I admitted it, I have always been a John Denver fan, even before he was popular, even before he released Country Roads, even when I was in high school. For a kid from West LA, this is quite an admission. In an era when it was cool to spend hours eroding the grooves on vinyl albums like Surrealistic Pillow, Woodstock, Live at Fillmore East, I was content to idle my post high school day afternoons away by myself listening to Aerie, the album John Denver released prior to Poems, Prayers & Promises, the album that featured Country Roads. I did not know it then, besides the phrase was not coined yet, but John Denver was one of my guilty pleasures, albeit a sub rosa one.

Which is a long, winding way for me to get back to Country Roads. Thanks to Bryan, Shelby, Portia and Ford, I found myself with not much to do today. So out of the blue I googled the Glass Onion soundtrack. I noted that the song that fascinated me was sung by Toots & the Maytals, a long-lived Reggae group of which I had never heard. I listened to their cover more than once. It turns out that they recorded their version of it in 1972, soon after John Dever’s release. Who knew. I didn’t, but I do now.

Not being content to leave it at that, I started listening to too many, if you ask Pam, one would have been too many, covers of Country Roads, a song that has been covered way more times than I would have suspected. It turns out that it is an amazing song to cover. Its simplicity and heartfelt lyrics lend itself to a wide range of artists. I played several of the covers, beginning with the versions by Loretta Lynn and Olivia Newton-John and a gaggle of versions by no-name artists before listening to Brandi Carlile’s 2021 version, a stripped-down, soulful rendition which highlights the purity of her voice. It was the best one I heard.

So here I sit writing this, enjoying some great music and feeling quite sure that I will be doing something similar on Christmas Days to come. I just need Bryan, Shelby, Portia and Ford to go back to Louisville.

Merry Christmas.

TDay 2022

November 24, 2022 / hkraushaar

It’s a little after noon on Thanksgiving Day. I am sitting here writing this while sipping my coffee, brewed with freshly ground Peet’s beans in filtered water, all the while humming a few bars of Alice’s Restaurant as Arlo endlessly blathers in the background.

My 19+ pound, outrageously expensive, branded, minimally processed, free range, dry rubbed turkey is nestled in the oven sans two thirds of each of its wings. I use the wings for my giblet gravy, because the thought of eating gizzards is a bit too intense for my pampered, Beverly Hills self to digest.

The wing tips are currently simmering in my soup pot, along with onions, celery, carrots and other stuff. Soon, I will have my turkey stock for making my gravy later today. Ironically, cooking the turkey is the easy part of my day. Making the gravy, which requires a whole lot of hands-on time and micro adjustments to get the taste right, is the hardest task I have left to do.

If I count our two grandkids, we will have 16 people eating here tonight, a big crowd for our little dining room. The good news is that the workload has been divvied up, with everybody contributing, giving me time to reflect on what I am thankful for.

Yup. Different year. Same Thanksgiving Day stuff for me. Thankfully. And I have a lot to be thankful for.

Pam and I are healthy, or as healthy as can be expected for two people staring down the gun barrel of our 50th high school reunion later this year.

Shelby, Bryan, Portia and Ford, their son, not their car, are doing great, in life and in their respective careers. Sometimes I watch Shelby mother Portia and am amazed by just how good she is at it. Clearly, she got those genes from Pam. Ford is seven months old, and his birth was the highlight of the year for us. Portia continues to amaze us with her precociousness and unbelievable control over all the others in her life, Bryan, never being content with their house, has begun a substantial remodeling project to make room for Ford. Otherwise, Ford may have had to sleep in the garage alongside the other Ford or shared a room with Portia, a potentially ego damaging event for a Ford. The way I see it, their remodeling costs will most likely be lower than the potential therapy costs if they do not remodel.

Kimberly, happily relationshipless and pursuing a new opportunity at her job, is doing great. She loves to travel, and has now, thanks to stellar advice from the psychic at the wedding of the daughter of our friends, became part of the international team at the company for which she works. In the few weeks since she has made the transition, she has been two Europe twice, once to England and once to France. She will be in Mexico next month. That same psychic told her that she will find romance in 2023. Sadly, the psychic did not specify whether Kim would find the romance domestically or internationally.

Pam, my saintly wife, is the rock star of our family. She continues to work for the school district, all the while counting down the months to retirement. I think the main thing preventing her from pulling the trigger is that I work at home. She has had a great year, spending time with Portia and Ford, who she tells me will be sleeping here tonight for the first time. Pam was recently appointed to the Human Relations Commission in Beverly Hills, an appointment she worked hard to obtain. We were all impressed and proud of her efforts and appointment. As Pam is one of the nicest people I know, I think this is the perfect commission for her. Pam continues to work out at Pure Barre. I think she has done almost 1,400 workouts there, making her an inspiration for us and the younger, post-boomers who work out there with her.

Pam and I finally took our first post Covid vacation in October, parking our butts in Wailea for about a week. It is our happy place, a place where we do very little except eat, exercise, bask in the shade, float in the ocean, and drink mai tais. We had a great trip and are planning another one for 2023.

I continue to spend just about every weekday in my den, mainly working, but sometimes, though not as often as I should, getting out of it. I do get out to walk Jake, our dog, twice per day, and every three weeks or so to walk the five blocks to Supercuts to get the hairs that are remaining on my head cut. Every now and then I have a weekday lunch with friends, and I actually went on a business trip this year. As I have noted before, I kind of embrace the hermit lifestyle.

This year was a transition for me, though, as I began to generate more of my own CFO consulting projects and rely less on work from my previous employer. I expect this transition to continue in 2023, and with it more “out of my den” outings during the week. Of course, that means I might be more impacted by high gas prices, something I have been immune to in 2022, as I have purchased gas only three times for my Cayman, my “daily” driver, throughout 2022. I think it’s a bit miffed at me for that, but at least I start it weekly, which is more than I can say for my 89 Carrera, which is on a trickle charger in the garage and which I do not start for months at a time.

I did, however, make a change in my life this year. Not a big one, but bigger than the rest of my changes this year. I decided todump, along with many other Americans, my Peloton. It served its purpose for 18 months, but I would rather walk or run than spin so I bought a treadmill. I continue to use my Tonal for strength training, meaning I never have to leave my house to exercise.

Time is ticking, and I have been sitting here for long enough, blathering far longer than Arlo. It’s time to take stock of my turkey stock and get on with the rest of my day.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Memory Day

May 28, 2022 / hkraushaar

My earliest memory of an event that blew a hole in my soul occurred when I was in middle school, a few years after the assassination of JFK. The specifics of the event do not matter, though it consisted of the abduction, mutilation and ultimate death of a child. Some fifty plus years after the event, I can still vividly remember sitting in one of the swings on the school playground with my feet gently rocking my body back and forth, while my mind reeled. I sat there like that for over half an hour trying to still my mind and stop imagining what that child experienced.

Thankfully, I have not conjured up that memory for decades. Sadly, it came roaring back unbidden this morning. I wish it hadn’t. It still cuts me to the core.

Over the years, other tragedies have moved me, some to tears, some to rage, some to fits of frustration, but none have had the same impact on my entire being as the one that occurred when I was in middle school. None, that is, until this week’s events in Uvalde, Texas, a place about which I had previously never heard, a place about which I wish I still hadn’t heard.

I have been dwelling on the event since it happened. When I first heard the news, I was shocked and dismayed, but I chalked my somewhat muted initial reaction up to being inured to mass shootings, as they occur so damned frequently.

But then the details started to come out. It was the details of the event that came out in the news conferences that transported me back to being in elementary school, trying to come to terms with a heinous act. It was the details that blew an atomic bomb sized hole in my soul. It was the details that crushed me.

I did not write this to make a political statement, though maybe I should have. I did not write this to advocate for better protection of our schools, though maybe I should have. I did not write this to advocate for mental health reform, though maybe I should have. I did not write this to advocate for a rational gun control policy, though maybe I should have.

No, I did not write this for any of those reasons.

I wrote this because I needed to. I wrote this because it was cathartic. My eyes filled with tears multiple times as I pressed the keys.

I wrote this because I can no longer spend half an hour in a swing.

… Tradition!?

May 22, 2022 / hkraushaar

In a couple of days Pam and I will celebrate our 42nd anniversary, though the word celebrate may be too strong, as we typically just acknowledge the day in passing. That’s not to say it is not an important day in our lives. It is. It just means that we are somewhat past the point of celebrating anything. It also turns out that we are being traditionally appropriate this time.

Being appropriate is a very rare thing for me, as I am never intentionally appropriate. I am consistently inner directed. I am unapologetically me. I like what I like. I do what I do. I wear what I wear. Heck, I still watch network TV, and my favorite zip up hoodie is threadbare at the elbows and is fraying at the ends of the sleeves. I claim it is comfortable. Pam says it’s disgusting. I’m sure she is right, but I can’t bring myself to admit it. Every now and then I could be considered appropriate, but it is a coincidence, not a planned act.

Pam, on the other hand, loves to be current. She loves to be appropriate. She is always reading the newspaper looking for trending things to eat, to do, to listen to, to watch. I love that aspect of her, as it pushes me to be more mainstream.

So as I approached our 42nd anniversary with nothing planned, I decided to research the traditional 42nd anniversary gifts. I wanted to know what I should be doing, even if I most likely would not be doing it. I was shocked to learn that I should be doing just about nothing. Wow, I thought, “I am good at that.” It turns out that there is no traditional gift, meaning, color or name to signify the event. The best tradition has to say is that, “The couple must be doing something right.” Geez, what a backhanded way of looking at it. A way that I thought was pretty appropriate.

All was not lost, though, as the 42nd anniversary does have a traditional stone. It’s called the Jasper stone, a type of stone I have never heard of. Once I looked it up, I understood why I had never heard of it. Apparently, is is an impure form of silica, riddled with a bunch of minerals, including iron, which gives it its red hue.

I was nonplussed by the Jasper stone’s composition and color. It looked like an almond to me. But then I dug deeper and was pleased to learn the true meaning of the Jasper stone. It is said to be nurturing and bring wellness through times of stress. It is also said that it provides protection, absorbs negative energy, promotes feelings of peace, relaxation and security, and balances the yin and the yang. Oh my!

Once I did my research, I was intrigued. I decided I should get Pam a Jasper stone for our anniversary. I mean, it is traditional. It turned out that it was not only traditional, but it was darn cheap, something else I found endearing about it. So I ordered one. Thanks to Amazon, it should be here before the big day. It is not wearable, though it could be carried in a pocket. It is not pretty, though it could be caressed. It is not extravagant, though it is thoughtful.

I was pretty shocked with myself. I was acting traditionally, with intention. Dang. Could this be the start of a new habit? Thankfully, my research was not done. It turns out that doing a home improvement project is thought to be a pretty traditional 42nd anniversary gift. Pam and I have a couple of big-ticket improvements to make. We have been procrastinating due to supply chain issues and general malaise, but we recently decided it was time to move forward again, without any realization that they were traditional anniversary gifts to each other. I was stoked, as that thought sunk in because I didn’t have to worry too much about becoming intentionally appropriate.

Happy Anniversary, Dear.

Year of the Glump

January 1, 2022 / hkraushaar

It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way, but it did. I wasn’t ready for it, but I got used to it. Now I embrace it. So much so that my name on the Tonal and Peloton leaderboards is set to it or a form of it. That’s right, I have become the Glump.

My grandfather moniker was supposed to be Grump or Grumpy, mainly because I can be, but as Portia, our exalted granddaughter, could not pronounce her “Rs” in 2021, she started calling me Glump or Glumpy. So I became the Glump, and I wear that moniker proudly.

Thankfully, 2021 was a good year for the Glump. Given all the good that was going on, it was actually pretty tough, even for me, to generate enough glumpiness to really be glumpy. It turns out glumpy is actually a word in the English language, albeit the archaic English language, but a word nonetheless. It can mean sullen, gloomy, somber, sluggish. And while I do not generally earn those labels, I do embrace my moniker.

So why was I not generally glumpy last year? Mainly because the family was healthy and happy. Work was fun, even if I was too busy, which drove me to form a new business at the end of 2021 to actively pursue in 2022. Pam and I embraced our Covid driven, homebased lifestyle, which included going to Shelby’s every weekend to see her, Portia and Bryan. My sister and I have continued to have a great relationship, and Pam and I were able to visit her in Northern California in the fall. Shelby is expecting another child at the end of March. Kimberly is happy and in a relationship. I have not seen an airport in over two years. I was able to work from home all year. Life, in short, was good.

Importantly, I have continued to embrace exercise and movement, something that is crucial to sustained health as I age. As I sit here writing this on New Year’s Day, I have already finished my first strength workout of the year. I completed the 16th and final workout of a four week program I began in early December. At first I was bummed that I would not finish the program on New Year’s Eve, but it actually feels really good to finish it on New Year’s Day, as it has given me a great sense of accomplishment to start the year.

So how much exercise did I do in 2021? In short, a whole lot. Thanks to modern technology, I actually know what I have done. I mean, my Tonal tracks pretty much every strength movement I do. My Peloton tracks every stationary mile I ride. My Fitbit tracks every step I take, while tracking the miles I have moved and the total beats of my heart. Of course, Fitbit is not super accurate with respect to heartrate so I also wear my Scosche arm band heart rate monitor while I exercise. Frankly, the only thing I do not track is what I eat, mainly because I am happy with what I eat. At least most of the time.

My Fitbit told me I took about 2.5 million steps, either walking or running during 2021. This translates into moving about 1,000 miles. It would have been more, but I stopped running when I suffered a stress fracture in my right foot at the end of January.

My Peloton, which I bought in early March after my stress fracture healed, told me I “rode” 1,000 miles in the 10 months I had it.

My Tonal told me I lifted over 1.1 million pounds in 2021. What it didn’t tell me was how many calisthenic type body weight movements like lunges and regular squats and split squats and burps and burpees and pushups and crunches and planks I did in 2021. Suffice it to say I did many. My Tonal did tell me, though, that I spent over 50 hours under tension during the year, meaning 50 hours doing weighted reps of many different movements, and it told me I lifted the equivalent of an Airbus A380.

I would have been proud of my accomplishments if I had done them in my 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, or pre-Medicare 60s. Having done them while on Medicare just makes them more meaningful.

I did a lot last year. I expect to do at least as much this year. And I hope I continue to wear my moniker because I like it. Not because I earn it.

Pressing It

December 18, 2021 / hkraushaar

It’s mid-December. How the hell did that happen? I couldn’t believe Thanksgiving, as late in the month as it was, got here so quickly. Now Christmas is just around the corner. Many people have issues during the Holiday Season. I don’t. I have issues when they end.

Ever since I have been a young adult, I have always dreaded the first week of January. Not because I had made a boatload of resolutions, because I usually hadn’t. Not because I had gained a bunch of weight, because I usually hadn’t. Not because I had to return to work after many days of vacation, because I usually didn’t. Not because I had missed a slug of workouts, because I usually hadn’t. Not because I would miss holiday music or Hallmark holiday movies, because I knew I wouldn’t. So what gives? Why the dread?

I think it has always related mainly to, sorry Billy Joel, my New Year’s State of Mind. I live my life in a very orderly rut, a rut that I flow through without lots of thought. That is not to say that I do not make changes in my life. I change, but I change the way glaciers used to change before global warming, very slowly and very subtly. And those changes are not marked by the calendar. They are marked by need. Generally, this has worked out very well for me, and I have made significant changes over a long period of time. But there is something about the first week of January, all fresh and new, that just makes wonder if I need to pop out of my rut and press reset. It is this wondering, or maybe more accurately any FOMO, occurring as, sorry Andy Williams, The Most Wonderful Time of the Year draws to a close, that causes me to dread the first week of January.

Ironically, this year is different. There is no dread in my head. There is no wondering. I have pressed reset.

Over the past several months I have been dwelling on the most asked of questions: “What do I want to do with my life?” At 66, well almost 67, I should have made those decisions already. And to a large extent I have. But, as I wrote about earlier this year, the specter of a rapidly diminishing quantity of quality time remaining has been causing me to assess just how I want to spend my next chunk of quality time.

After much thought, I have decided to continue to spend major portions of my life doing exactly what I am currently doing. I am really fortunate, as I am, sorry Tim McGraw, generally Living Like I am Dying. But I have decided, despite how much I enjoy my work, to change how I work, to change with whom I work, and to change how much time I spend working.

For good or bad I am not ready to retire. So instead, I have decided that at almost 67 it is time for me to become an entrepreneur again, something I have not been since 2004. For the past four months I have been laying the groundwork to start my own consulting entity. I would have preferred to transition to it earlier in the year, but I had to finish several projects in which I played a key role, forcing me to live in my current rut for longer than I should have.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that, sorry Carly Simon, my Anticipation about starting anew in January has put a damper on my dread. In fact, there is no dread. Just the opposite. I feel more alive and excited about the future than I have in years. I cannot think of any better way to defer retirement. Or any better way to spend my time.

As far as I am concerned, the first week of January cannot arrive soon enough. I can only hope that by the time next year ends I will be firmly ensconced in my new rut and dreading the first week of January yet again.

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