I'm Retired! Now what?

April 11, 2026

Last weekend was the first Easter Sunday of my retirement.  What’s so amazing about that?  Well, nothing really except that the proceeding Friday marked the first official paid holiday that I WILL NOT be getting paid for in nearly 37 years!  I will say one thing about my past company, and that is the glorious fact that we got a lot of paid holidays, which included Good Friday.  Whether I worked them or not though, was an entirely different issue.  Margaret and I spent our career as hourly paid, compressed shift workers who worked the front end of the workweek.  This meant that she worked the A shift grind of 7:00 am to 7:00 pm Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and every other Wednesday, and I worked the B shift graveyard 7:00 pm to 7:00 am Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and every other Saturday.  And if a holiday (even Christmas) fell within our chosen work schedule we worked it.

I can’t remember how many times we celebrated our country’s independence or the birth of Jesus Christ or the beginning of a new year by toiling away at our job, testing integrated circuits.   I’m not complaining though because we got holiday pay for it.  So basically, we celebrated all the before mentioned events by getting double pay!  Some might say that’s even better than a Fourth of July cookout or a New Year’s Eve party!  In the same festive mood, if the holiday fell upon our days off we got holiday pay even though we wouldn’t have been working anyway.  By the time I was calling it quits we were getting over ten paid holidays a year whether we worked them or not!  Now that’s festive in any culture!

With all that being said, it was kind of weird seeing Good Friday come and go without getting that wonderful holiday pay.  But it was also kind of cool to wake up Easter Sunday morning and say, “I don’t have to work today!”  Okay, we didn’t do anything for either day, but it’s still kind of cool and weird all at the same time.

Since diving into this crazy work schedule of working every Sunday my church attendance has pretty much plummeted down to nothing!  And I’ve always made the claim that once I retired, I would like to start going to church again, but I’m not sure where I would even start.  That’s an entirely different subject for another day though.  I do know that I just don’t want to start on Easter Sunday.  When I was a regular church goer, I always thought it was a bit strange that some folk’s church attendance would hit one Sunday a year, and that would be Easter.  Now I realize that’s better than not going at all, and that ONE Sunday might have changed their lives forever.  However, that wasn’t going to be me this year.  I’m guessing that my jump back into the church world will begin on some generic, nonholiday, normal Sunday.   

As far as I’m concerned, Easter is probably not the most celebrated of Christian holidays (Christmas is still king there), but perhaps the most important (Christmas is still pretty important though).  However, when I was a kid, we didn’t really celebrate Easter that much at my house.  Going to church every Sunday was just a normal part of our lives.  So going to church on Easter Sunday wasn’t that much out of the norm.  As a kid I’d go to Sunday school and try to stay awake during Sunday morning service (many times not successfully) because I was so tired from staying up watching TV the night before.  Then we’d go home where I would generally spend the afternoon napping because I had stayed up watching TV the night before, and this was followed by going to church again in the evening.  Then after we’d get home from Sunday evening church, I’d rush to do all the homework that I had put off during the entire weekend.  If we did anything differently on Easter Sunday opposed to any other Sunday, it came when my mom cooked a ham instead of the traditional Sunday roast.  And that was basically our Easter Sunday every year.  There wasn’t any socializing or special events other than the normal Sunday stuff.  However, when I was a little kid (toddler to early teen), my mom would go to the maternal effort of stuffing an Easter basket full of all kinds of unhealthy goodies for me and my brother, but once I got to a certain age (probably around fifteen), she figured if I wanted to rot my teeth and subject myself to all types of stomach aches I could go out and buy my own goodies.  I would imagine that way of thinking probably falls in line with most parents. 

Regardless if we were getting paid for this religious holiday or not, Margaret made an impromptu Easter basket full of goodies for her youngest grandkid Legend.  Okay, it was an Easter basket, absent the basket and was basically just a bag loaded down with enough candy to rot out the teeth of even the most diligent brusher and flosser.  Legend had just turned eight a few weeks ago so she figured that he was still well within the “goodies” age range.

The original plan was to stop by her son Michael’s house to drop off the tasty loot, but for some reason he was working that day.  Michael is Legend’s father and is a tattoo artist who usually doesn’t work on Sundays, but for some reason he had a few special appointments for Easter Sunday.  Apparently, there are those who had chosen the most sacred of Christian holidays for a little permanent body art.  With this in mind I figured Michael would be spending the afternoon spreading the Easter vibe by laying out some tattoos of crosses, crucifixes, or images of Jesus Christ.  They guy can tattoo a pretty good Jesus.  I’m seen his work concerning our Lord and Savior.  However, when we did finally see him that day, he told me that the preferred tattoo for the day had been skulls.  Okay, I’m not getting the Easter significance there, but Legend seemed to like the bag of goodies that was delivered to him.  The eight-year-old might have even gone so far as to look up from his iPad a whole three times while we were there.  Such would be hailed as an Easter miracle!

Before we made the trip over to Michael’s house, we decided to pop by Margaret’s daughter’s house for a little socializing as well as showing off Margaret’s new SUV.  Margaret’s daughter is named Monica, and unlike her brother Michael, Monica’s job consists of keeping books for local companies and doing their taxes.  In her mind, Easter Sunday holds the glorious sign the tax season is almost over!  She was thrilled that her mom had a new car, but the fact that we had actually broken down and shelled out the money for a new ride basically blew the girl’s mind.  The real mind-blowing part of the visit came when Monica’s eighteen-year-old daughter Nadia showed up and wanted to know where her bag of Easter goodies was.  Margaret had just assumed that a senior in high school wouldn’t care about such childish treats.  Nadia’s dad merely laughed saying, “You’re the one who wants to be considered an adult so bad.  Well, this is all part of it.”  I suppose adults (even teens) need chocolate too.  Next year I’ll try to remember to get the teenager some Easter candy.  Hopefully by then, I’ll be carrying out such a feat after I get out of church.