I pride myself on being pretty contemporary even in my old age. I blog, podcast, follow cultural trends and social network. I use a computer competently, text, stream TV and the like. My kids help keep me young at heart by their actions and allowing me to be a part of what they see and experience. This is a good thing.
But every once in a while, I find myself really liking something, something that sort of runs contrary to this technologically advanced, gadget driven world we live in. This morning I experienced it full force and it made me smile.
On weekends, I like to play “retired.” I try to experience at least part of the day as if my retirement has come and I am enjoying my time. I like to get up early and follow a bit of a routine each day that I can. This includes a cup of coffee while checking email, news and blogs and then a second cup (sitting right next to me right now!) while I do some writing for the day. That cup of coffee is the subject of my technology protest.
My wife likes her instant coffee and heats up water in the microwave. On weekends I would make a pot of coffee in the old “Mr. Coffee” and be quite content. But then I realized that we were wasting a bit of coffee. I do not finish a whole pot. God, I’d never get to sleep with all the caffeine. So I began to make it one cup a time. My first reaction was to want one of those Keurig machines that make one cup at a time but then felt it odd to want to save some money on coffee by buying another expensive gadget. However I am not crazy about using the microwave for this so I put on the old tea kettle and set it to boil.
I sit and get everything ready and then watch the pot come to a boil with its shrill whistle to let me know it is ready to pour. I use the time to organize my thoughts about what I want to read or write or look at on the internet and always find myself surprised when the kettle begins to whistle. I found myself smiling at the whistle this morning, letting it go for a couple of seconds, letting it call me a bit longer. It was good to hear it, it was good to sit there smiling and enjoy the start of my day.
I just love the tea kettle whistle...
4 comments:
Ah, Pat, watching water boil--nothing like it. You won't have time for that stuff when you get to LC, so enjoy it while you can.
Oddly enough, I was just suggesting to Bill this morning that we pretend to be worker bees who had to go to work tomorrow morning. Then, once we got that really sick feeling in our stomachs, we could do a happy little retirement dance and kick back knowing we could actually sleep in all the way to 6:30 AM on Monday if we wanted to.
It might be time for a post on your latest timeline. We are patiently waiting, you know, but we won't live forever!
I wasn't able to check the follow-up comments box the first time, hence this superfluous comment.
I would pay real money to see you and Bill do the "happy little retirement dance" especially if it were live in Las Cruces. Will work on a timeline post this week, promise!
After your comment about each generations technology - no, I'm not going to chastise you for going backward - I have consciously tried to keep up with the technology (having real trouble feeling the need for twitter).
But I get the tea kettle thing entirely.
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