Murphy's Law, Bio Rhythms, and How to Tell When You Are Ready to Retire

Long, long ago, back in the days of floppy disks and 40MB hard drives, I brought a program home from work to put on my little Apple LCII computer. It was a shareware program that plotted the bio-rhythms of your body. It was a neat little program that by using your birth date could tell you how your body was prepared to handle things emotionally, intellectually, and physically. After I put in my date of birth the line graph would display three colored lines in an upswing or a downswing. I found it interesting that the three lines rarely coincided. I never really understood how it all worked but it was fun to see if my brain cells were performing as good as I could hope for, or if perhaps, this was a bad time to try and appear smart. That little program disappeared along with my LCII, but I carry it in my mind like an old joke to be brought out when stupid things just seem to happen.

Flash forward 30 years..... when we've had a week when 'stupid' seems to surround us like a shroud.

Larry claims to be semi-retired. He claims just as often that he wants to be fully retired, but circumstances just aren't making that happen. In the winter, 'semi-retired' is a distant term for him. Although he doesn't travel as much as he did, he travels a good bit. Last week he was nearing the end of his LAST business trip this winter and looking forward to being home....so he can get ready for a cruise. More travel, but definitely the right kind.

Saturday, I got a call. 

"I've lost my driver's license." This isn't good when you have to fly back from Dallas in three days. Airlines count on that ID, or a passport which he has, but not with him in Dallas.

The next day, he called. He had located his Driver's License at a local restaurant and had it back. YAY!! Excellent news.

Following this good news he returned to his hotel room and sat down to watch TV while gnawing on some beef jerky....and broke his tooth. Fortunately it was just a corner and not a painful piece, but still not good news.

While he was mulling his options over, he got an email that his flight home had been upgraded to 1st Class!! At least he could smile a broken-toothed smile. 

While he was relaying his latest ups and downs to me over the phone, the vision of that old bio-rhythm screen played in my head. Obviously his physical (tooth) and intellectual (driver's license) lines would have been plummeting on my computer screen. Things really weren't going his way. He was tired and ready to come home. 

The day he flew in I was in Atlanta and we met and came home together. We did a few errands, and stopped at Applebee's for dinner. We arrived home in the dark and got the car unpacked just as a storm blew in. "It's been a long day," he sighed, "But I'm done!" 

The next morning I realized I had left my phone, and my leftover dinner in the car and went out to retrieve it. 

There was the final sign; this boy is ready to retire.

Larry had left the driver's side door wide open.....his side of the car was soaking wet.... and there was an open, empty styrofoam container on the floor. My steak was gone. 

(Happily, my phone had been tucked into the pocket on the passenger door and was fine, but I'd like to know what critter stole my steak!)

Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. And it has. Let's just hope we've run the full course of the crazies so that our upcoming cruise will be all upswings!