Saturday Blues

I have had several people ask me am I enjoying my retirement. Most days it is okay; others it sucks. I have had a lot of time to reflect over my life. I once wanted to write a book entitled, "A Grasshopper In An Ant World". That would sum up my life in a nutshell. I don't have a lot and don't want a lot, just to be able to do some of the things I wanted to do. Unfortunately, in this society that takes money. I wasn't one that prepared well for retirement and it is painfully being shown to me daily. I don't have a car and that also makes it difficult to do things as I live in a city that does not have the best mass transit. Even though this is a major metropolitan are, due to the different cities and counties that cross each other it is hard to get around. In  KCMO the buses run on a pretty regular basis and if you can get over there you can get around better than you can if you live in KCK or Johnson County. In KCK you have two buses that run and the one I need to use only runs every hour on Saturdays and not at all on Sundays. All the major shopping is in KCMO, on the western edge of KCK and in Johnson County (JOCO). There are no buses in JOCO on the weekends and the last bus I use runs about 6 PM on Saturdays. Due to the limited number of buses running, you need to get up at the crack of dawn and if you miss a bus you'll be waiting for an hour. When you are going to pick up only one or two things and you spend 4 hours doing it, that's frustrating.

Depending on friends and family all the time gets old as well. You begin to feel like you are a burden on them and you still have to wait. Wait until they get there, wait until they are going, wait for them to do their shopping. Then there is the thought of constantly asking them to take you somewhere and feeling like sometimes you shouldn't have to ask. They know your situation, why don't they ever ask, "Do you need to go somewhere?". They do ask if you need something, which is nice, but only if they are going to a specific place. Well enough of that. I did get a chance to get out and pick up a few things I needed and feel a little better now.