Nice to meet you. My name is Tom. I’m a sixty three year-old single male nearing self-imposed retirement and wondering what to do with all this time. I’ve got good genes (mostly) and if I stay off the sauce I may well make ninety like my Dad. But what to make of these idle hours? I know how to do many things, work wise. I have run hospitals, managed HMOs, sold residential real estate, peddled insurance and, when booze got the better of me, reached my career nadir by returning lost luggage for an airline. I am now a chef, some would argue cook. With a $3 per hour pay differential in this over-saturated market the distinction is moot. But if you really want to know the difference between a cook and a chef (other than the degree to which their egos can be tolerated), I have concluded it can be reduced to this: a cook follows a recipe and a chef follows his instincts. There. Pithy. I like pithy.
Other than cooking, few of my work skills seem transferable to a productive retirement. And my knees are reminding me that bustling around a kitchen may not work out forever. As I look back, I remember that the most pleasure I ever got out of being industrious was in rehabbing old things – especially living spaces. I worked extensively (mostly the landscaping) on a 55 year-old adobe in Fresno, gutted and remodeled a 1928 Tudor cottage in Pittsburg, CA and laid 500 square feet of beautiful Indian slate in a fixer in Edmonds, WA. In every case, I took great pride in those projects and often found myself staring at my completed handiwork…beaming. Though I have made lots of mistakes in my life, the one thing I can say is that I have always left my living spaces better than I found them.
My Pittsburg Fixer-upper
before
Bullet hole in front window, overgrown yard, typical 2008 era failed flip underwater
after
Note “For Rent” sign in front window
before
None of the appliances worked and it took weeks to strip and refinish the cabinets
after
Now here’s a space I can work in.
While I admit I know nothing about restoring a trailer, isn’t it just a small house ? (Riiiight)
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