Retirement and the Next New Normal in Our LIves

5 more working days, but who’s counting, till my husband retires (again), and I have to come up with another “new normal”. I have reinvented myself so many times over the years as we’ve moved around the world to new bases, gotten new jobs and responsibilities, made new friends, had to learn new communities and cultures. We’ve had year long separations in the past and then had to re-learn how to live with each other and who will take over responsibility for what (I loved it when he went to Germany and the boys and I stayed in Miami for a year – he told me to send him “any bills I didn’t like”. I didn’t like any of them, so I sent most of them to him). But this time, will be “different”. While he still intends to spend a lot of time working at the family farm in Jefferson County, he’s also going to be home a lot. With my job as a Realtor, there are times when I work from home in the morning, typically at the kitchen table – talking to clients, doing paperwork, setting up appointments, etc, then go to the office in the afternoon. I’m use to it being QUIET when I do that. While I can hear the birds singing out the window, I don’t have people walking into the room and wanting to start a conversation or making noise getting something to eat or drink. More importantly, I don’t have people turning on the TV or the stereo in the other room. Now my husband likes music and I understand that, but what I don’t understand, is why he feels compelled to turn on the TV in every room when there’s a football game on, so when he walks between rooms, he can keep watching it. Worse is his turning on the stereo and then going downstairs to his home office and turning on different music there since he can’t hear the music he turned on upstairs when he’s down there. He keeps telling me that he put CDs that I would like in the upstairs stereo, so it’s not “HIS music, it’s mine”. I keep telling him if I want the music on, I will turn it on myself, but he still persists in turning it on then leaving the room. I like QUIET. I like talking to myself in my head as I work through the pros and cons of different issues or when I’m drafting out something in my head before I sit down and type it. I like hearing the birds, they remind me to be calm and thoughtful of my surroundings. This is going to take an adjustment on both our parts. I’ve started giving him a “Thou shalt not” list: 1) No forwarding junk emails 2) No planning on my being the one who is home for contractor appointments (I have conveniently scheduled the HVAC fall checkup when he will be home to deal with it) 3) No planning on my being the one who sits at the DMV every time the license plates need to be renewed. 4) No automatically assuming I have nothing planned that day, he should ask me first if he needs me to be somewhere at a certain time. 5) I’ve told him to keep in mind all the things that his newly retired friends started doing that he rolled his eyes at and NOT DO THOSE THINGS. We’ll see. I figure it will be January before it really hits home since there are things planned for Oct-Dec that will keep him busy.