"What Do Retirees Do All Day?"

This morning in Yahoo! News I saw an article that appeared in “U.S. News” entitled, “What Do Retirees Do All Day?” According to the article, retirees (between the ages of 65 and 74) spend 9.51 hours on personal care activities. The personal activities included sleeping. I suppose that it could also include personal hygiene and related activities. Personally, I spend about 5 or 6 hours sleeping on a good night. Mr. Fixit sleeps a bit more even though he gets up at 2:00 am five days out of seven. He can fall asleep anywhere. He is a champion napper. Oh, I nap, too. Mostly it’s when my glucose levels go up. I spend about 30 minutes a day on the treadmill. Perhaps it would be more honest to say I should spend 30 minutes on the treadmill.

According to the article, retirees spend 2.26 hours on household activities. Yeah, right! There is cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping, and financial management (known in our house as bill paying). Mr. Fixit does the yard work, household repairs, car repairs, and he shares the shopping chores. I think we are doing more than 2.26 hours.

I noticed that there was no time allotted for Wal-Mart activities. If Mr. Fixit and I miss two days in a row, the manager of our local store asks the police to do a welfare check on us. Okay, that’s a joke! She does notice a drop in her sales for those two days though.

The article also reports that Americans in the same 65 to 74 age bracket watch about 4 hours of television a day. How can that be possible? I can watch 5 hours of “NCIS” each and every weekday. That doesn’t include the Wednesday marathon. Doesn’t everyone watch reruns of “NCIS”? Then we have 2 hours of “Bones,” and “Law and Order” is on around the clock.

Reading accounts for only 45 minutes a day for most elders. What do they think I’m doing from 2:00 am to 5:00 am when Mr. Sandman hasn’t done his job properly?

Then comes computer time. I spend about an hour and a half every day catching up on the news: local, national, and world. My day can’t begin until I read “Dear Abby” and do the crossword. I have to check my blog list to see who has some interesting and fun to say. Then every few days I spend a an hour or so posting to my blog. In the afternoons I hit my game mode. I have several sites to play computer games.

A lot of my activities overlap. I listen to more television than I watch. Most of the time I am on the computer at the same time as Gibbs is keeping me company via the TV. Or I can read and watch TV at the same time. I usually have a movie running in the kitchen while cooking and cleaning.

Then there are usually a few days a week when Mr. Fixit and I go exploring those backroads that we’ve never driven before.

We seem to be busier at this time of our lives than we were when we were both working full time and raising a family. I do enjoy the freedom though. We have choices we never had before. We can explore or Mr. Fixit can mow the yard. I can read a book or load the dishwasher. If we decide to explore or read a book, the grass will only be a little taller tomorrow and those dishes aren’t going to run away from home.