This blog is written by Lee Gale Gruen to help retirees, those soon to retire, baby boomers, and seniors reinvent themselves in this new stage of their lives called retirement. Her blog, public lecture, and new self-help book on senior reinvention are titled: Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement Years: Find Joy Excitement, and Purpose After You Retire. Her memoir is: Adventures with Dad: A Father and Daughter’s Journey Through a Senior Acting Class. Books descriptions follow her blog below. Both books are available at Amazon.com by clicking here and here. Her website is: LeeGaleGruen.com
CHITCHAT: I was recently interviewed in Authority Magazine, an online e-zine (a magazine published in an electronic format on the internet), on the topic: “Second Chapters: How I Reinvented Myself In The Second Chapter Of My Life.” Here is the link to the interview: https://medium.com/authority-magazine/lee-gale-gruen-second-chapters-how-i-reinvented-myself-in-the-second-chapter-of-my-life-14eba2cf7a07
Now, on to my blog:
I love to hang around hardware stores; I always have. They contain such fascinating items for building and repairing anything you can think of. Engaging with the store clerks helps me learn about the gadgets I’m encountering. When I was a young bride, I’d frequent hardware stores to help in decorating our new home. So often, a clerk, usually an older man, would advise me to have my husband come in so he could explain it to him.
“My husband has ten thumbs,” I’d snap. “I’m the mechanical one, so explain it to me!”
Okay, maybe it was only eight thumbs, but his strengths favored his mind, not his fine motor skills. I remember the day we bought the crib for our soon-to-be-born first child. After choosing from all the beautiful ones on display at the baby store, we were handed a box to take home and assemble. My husband insisted on doing the job; isn’t that what a new father is supposed to do? I could see that he was screwing it up, but whenever I tried to offer advice, he got mad. We had a big argument over that one. When he went to work the next day, I took it all apart and reassembled it correctly.
I often go to Home Depot which is the largest home improvement company in the country open to the general public. Its locations all look the same: a cube of a warehouse filled with most things to fix or upgrade your digs. It also operates in Mexico and Canada.
HD has aisle after aisle with such intriguing signs as: plumbing, electrical, lumber, garden, storage, shelving, hardware, fasteners, doors, bath, kitchen, fencing, mowers, lighting, insulation, tools, and the list goes on. Each intrigues me. It’s better than the proverbial candy store lusted after by kids. I can’t wait to find out what wonders are there. I’ve written before on my adventures at HD. (See my blog of May 27, 2019 titled: “Watson.”)
A friend calls it my therapy. In fact, she renamed the store “Home Therapy.” She’s right, and it’s a lot cheaper than ongoing sessions with a psychotherapist. Don’t tell the Home Therapy management, or they’ll start charging me an entrance fee. So right now, after walking the rows at HT for the past few hours, I’m sitting in my car in the parking lot writing this blog.
Unfortunately, HT, as wonderful as it is, can’t measure up to the hardware stores of my youth. Those independently operated, mom and pop gems didn’t have merchandise in little plastic bags with the manufacturer’s paper label on them, forcing you to buy a dozen screws when you only needed two.
Most of them have gone under, driven out by big chains like HT. However, one that held on for almost 100 years before closing in 2017 was in Santa Monica, California, near where I lived for the first 75 years of my life. It was called: Busy Bee Hardware. When you walked into Busy Bee, shelves seem to go up to the ceiling filled with anything you could think of to aid in construction or repair. Yes, they had some items in the plastic bags with the paper labels, but many of those were dusty, having been there for eons it seems, just like the store personnel.
My favorite section of Busy Bee held their hidden stash. Strange little gadgets were sequestered in the wall of tiny, wooden drawers behind the counter that seemed to go on forever. Anything you could want or imagine was certainly there.
Today, I was searching for a very odd item. I had bought an antique lamp which I love. However, I’m planning to top it with a taller shade. That requires a taller harp (the wire apparatus which forms parentheses around the lightbulb and holds up the shade). The modern harps fit on the lamp, but the little threaded screw sticking up from the top to which I must attach the finial to hold the shade secure has a narrower diameter then the receiving end inside the lamp’s original finial. I had a similar situation with another old lamp, and it had an adapter inside. I’ve since learned that said item has a name: a lamp finial reducer. You simply screw it into the old finial and, presto, the inside threaded portion is narrowed, ready to screw onto its counterpart on a new age harp.
HT does not stock finial reducers. Apparently, they’re not a highly sought after item–go figure. I am sure that if I were able to visit Busy Bee Hardware and explain my problem to a staff member, he/she would go behind the counter, open one of those mysterious drawers, and pull out exactly what I need. Oh Busy Bee, I miss you.
Not everything new and shiny is so wonderful. Sometimes the things we used to take for granted and are now gone were better than their current replacements–at least those requiring finial reducers et al.
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SYNOPSES OF BOOKS BY: LEE GALE GRUEN
Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement Years: Find Joy, Excitement, and Purpose After You Retire (self-help): Not a one-size-fits-all approach, this self-help book for retirees, those soon to retire, baby boomers, and seniors offers an individualized, detailed guide to assist readers in discovering activities and pursuits in this new stage of their lives called retirement, based on their own likes and comfort level. I learned the secret the hard way transitioning from retired probation officer to actress, author, public speaker, and blogger. Audience members at my lectures on senior reinvention requested a book on the subject. This is the result, and it contains the content of those talks and six years of posts from this blog. CLICK here TO PURCHASE FROM AMAZON.COM.
Adventures with Dad: A Father and Daughter’s Journey Through a Senior Acting Class (memoir): After retiring at age 60 from my 37-year career as a probation officer, I mistakenly enrolled in an acting class for seniors. A few weeks later, my mother died, and I invited my grieving, 85-year-old father to come to class with me. This is the true story of our magical journey attending that class together for three years, bonding more than ever. I wrote the comedy scenes we performed onstage twice a year in the acting class showcases, and all six scenes are included in the book. I eventually transitioned into the world of professional acting. As my fledgling, second career started going uphill, my dad’s health started going downhill. I would recount to him each of my new experiences while I sat beside his bed at the nursing home where he resided in his final years. CLICK here TO PURCHASE FROM AMAZON.COM.
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Reinventing Yourself in Your Retirement Years 