Sheila Blanchette: Marriage on the Move

My husband has finally joined me here in South Florida. I am helping him through his adjustment period and truly, it is an adjustment. "Toto, I have a feeling we're not in New Hampshire anymore."

I haven't written much since my husband arrived. I'm trying to make sure he's happy here. After all, it was me who wanted to move much more than him. He likes winter. He skis, goes ice fishing and loves chopping fire wood. But he was ready for a change, so I've been trying to ensure his first days here are fun. As they say, first impressions are lasting.

Although we are not retiring, I now understand what women mean when they say, "I can't get used to him being home all day." When I first left my job, we were still in New Hampshire. He left for work every morning while I spent my time writing, tweeting, pinning and blogging. I attended book clubs and started my second novel. When I got to Florida, I added blogging for the Huffington Post to my list of things to do. I was living alone for the first time in 30 years. I had my own schedule. I stayed up late writing, got up in the middle of the night to write, slept late after all that writing. I could eat scrambled eggs for dinner and left over pasta for breakfast. I temped at an accounting job two days a week but other than that, my time was my own, to do what I pleased, whenever I pleased.

The first week back, I showed him around the area. We went to the beach and we had drinks at waterfront bars. On my two temp days, he met the builder he will be working with and unpacked his things.

The second week rolled around and my temp job came to an end. He wasn't starting work for another week. I was ready to get back to writing. I desperately needed to write. Ideas were churning in my brain but there was one small problem: We had no TV. We decided to leave our old clunker behind. We'd put the TV armoire out on the road, a FREE sign taped to the door. It was a beautiful piece of furniture but a white elephant, as it seems we are one of the only families in America who have not converted to a flat screen TV. I had been living without TV for over two months now and didn't miss it at all. I was hoping my husband could make it for awhile without TV too.

But it was the height of the golf season, the Celtics were in the playoffs, the Bruins were still playing hockey. "This is the best time of the year for viewing sports," he complained. I gave him some books to read, Travis McGee crime novels set in South Florida, written by John D. MacDonald. Instead, in the evenings, he commandeered my computer and watched movies on Netflix. We started shopping for a TV.

Little did we know how complicated and expensive this would be. Do we go with the plasma or LED? How big do we want the screen? My husband wanted big, at least 50 inches big. These things cost from $700 to $1,000? Then we had to think about pixels and Hz. What is Hz? We went to Best Buy, Costco, Walmart. We shopped online. Next we needed to find a table to put this behometh on. Or then again, we could mount it on the wall.

Now time to deal with Comcast. It was Tuesday, the new TV was in the house. We had cable because it came with my internet service, a special package called BlastPlus for $56.99 a month. But we needed a box. I called Comcast, a long process of punching numbers and answering questions until I finally spoke to a human being. They could deliver a box on Friday. "Friday!" my husband shouted. "I can't wait that long, let's go to one of their offices." We drove to Boca, entered the store and joined the other disgruntled Comcast customers sitting on plastic chairs, eyes glued to a computer screen that had a list of names. Sheila B was number 49. There were four Comcast employees manning the service desk. It was one o'clock, the woman sitting next to me had been waiting since 11. I decided this might be a good time to catch up on my tweeting obligations which I had been neglecting since my husband arrived.

Time moved slowly. I could no longer think of anymore witty things to say with 140 characters. We had inched our way to the 39th position when Elaine G was called to service desk #3. This was when I almost started a riot. A man in his early forties stepped up to desk #3 then a few minutes later a woman, obviously Elaine G, stood next to him, looking confused and angry.

"Hey, that guy jumped ahead of Elaine G," I said loudly. Other people started asking what happened and I explained what I had just observed. Elaine G looked at me gratefully then started complaining to the Comcast representative. In his defense, the 40-year-old guy's wife said, "He was called earlier but he wasn't here." An elderly man sitting near us, shouted "You snooze, you lose. Get to the back of the line." My husband shot me a look, "Why are you causing trouble? Let's get out of here. I can wait until Friday for TV."

We left. Later that day, we found out our apartment complex has a Comcast rep who could deliver a box on Thursday, but he forgot a wire we needed for HDTV. Another new option we were unfamiliar with. That arrived on Friday, after I'd gone off on a rant about the evils of monopolies and deregulation. My husband ignored me, biding his time until he could slip into his recliner and channel surf to his heart's content.

Today is Monday. Last night, after the golf and some basketball (not the Celtics, they lost in the first round of the playoffs), we watched an HBO movie, Untamed Heart, which we both enjoyed. Yes, my husband added HBO to the cable package. So much for the inexpensive BlastPlus deal. But today is Monday. He has gone to work. I am writing and all is well in South Florida.

Earlier on Huff/Post50:

• Genealogy

  "I have over ten thousand names in my [genealogical] file and am hooked on not just the facts, but the story-writing. I reconnect with cousins I haven't seen since I was a teen. I meet new relatives online and in person, even fifth cousins, who I never know I had... There's nothing like knowing that you had an ancestor in the Battle of Saratoga..." -<em>Jean Benning</em>, 75

• Cultural Immersion Travel

  "I traveled with the Hershey (Pennsylvania) Community Chorus to sing in Wales. When you visit the valleys in the east it's like going back in time; people aren't attached to their computers and mobile phones. I started renting an apartment in the city of Pontypool for six months a year. Now I have a lot of friends there and even volunteer at a shop where the proceeds support cancer research." -<em>Judith Emmers</em>, 69

• Exercise

  "I'm lucky enough to live across the street from a gym. I go over there two mornings a week and work out for an hour at 5:30 a.m., and then see a trainer for another hour. I also do water aerobics three times a week. I do it so I can keep doing the things I love, not because I love the exercise. I didn't start exercising until I was sixty-six." -<em>Corinne Lyon</em>, 74

• Travel

  "I spent my seventieth birthday in a hot tub six thousand feet up Mount Hood. I didn't want my kids to think they had to do something special." -<em>Carolyn Rundorff</em>, 71

• Group Bicycling

  "A group of us organized a trip along the Natchez Trace from Nashville, Tennessee, to Natchez, Mississippi. We researched stops and places to stay, and every day one of us was the designated driver to haul the gear. You want to know the people fairly well before you set out on something like this. We covered 444 miles in less than a week." -<em>Bill Dunn</em>, 65

• Book Clubs

  "We started the Canetti Literary Society in December 1981. [Elias] Canetti...had just won the Nobel Prize for Literature. I have a Masters in Literature and had never heard of Canetti. So I thought it was a good time to read his work, and the best way would be to have a book club with other women who might be interested in reading good literature. We are still in existence." -<em>Anne Richtel</em>, 95

• Volunteering As A Docent

  "I'm training to be a museum docent at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. The training to be certified is rigorous -- six hours a week for six weeks, then shadowing a certified docent, then delivering your spiel to two different staff members in two different areas of the museum." -<em>Therese Wilkin</em>, 63

• Dancing

  "I began morris dancing in 1984 and long sword dancing in 1989. These forms are English and date back several centuries. I get exercise; a very close bond with a group of people of both genders and a variety of ages; the challenge of learning and performing a wide variety of rather complex and demanding dances; and the satisfaction of helping keep ancient traditions alive and growing." -<em>Robert Orser</em>, 79

• Gardening

  "It is lovely to come to this physical and spiritual, scientific and creative body of knowledge at this point in my life. When I talk over the back fence with my gardening neighbors or give someone a bouquet of flowers from my garden, I know just how my grandmother and mother felt when they did the same thing." -<em>Ally McKay</em>, 68

• Singing In A Choir

  "We had one piece that we were doing at a festival, which we had only a short time to learn, and we rehearsed on the bus to Abilene. We were the last to perform, and our director was very nervous. We rehearsed one last time before going on, and everyone in the choir got every note right. It's a pleasure you can't understand if you haven't done it. It really keeps you going." -<em>Mary Roberson</em>, 70

• Community Theater

  "The best part of community theater is that no one cares about your politics, your religion, or your money. Everyone's on the same bus. I've gotten so much out of it. My closest friends come from there. The ones I depend on, the ones who have my back, come from the theater." -<em>Ellen Kazin</em>, 71

• Writing

  "When I retired I took several Road Scholar watercolor trips and subsequently read everything I could find on Winslow Homer... My wife suggested that I had uncovered so much material on Homer that I should write a book... The rewards are beyond my fondest dreams...I believe that has brought me as close to the Master as one can get." -<em>Robert Demarest</em>, 83

• Learning A Foreign Language

  "I started [studying Italian] when my husband and I were planning our first of four Road Scholar trips to Italy. I have found other people -- over two hundred of them, to be exact -- in an organization called Il Circolo Italiano on the Philadelphia Main Line, who come together to speak and promote the Italian Language and culture... They are the warmest people you would every want to meet." -<em>Jean Benning</em>, 75

• Volunteering With Habitat For Humanity

  "I wanted to do something in retirement that would give back to the community and to people in need, and this seemed to be an excellent candidate... The major reward is seeing families that are living in great need...partner with us in building first other people's and then their own homes, and then move into what in most cases is the first home they have ever owned." -<em>Robert Bond</em>, 75

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sheila-blanchette/marriage-after-50_b_3224997.html

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