Old Age... Can you deal with it?

My wife says that having reached the age of seventy and having had a hip replacement last September, "I'm not to climb up ladders or do anything silly."
I can understand part of her thinking as she's mobile but disabled (MS). If I ended up immobile, as I was for six weeks last year following my hip operation, She can't drive and doesn't want a situation where I might be laid up in bed.

I need to replace the roofing felt on my tea-house later this year. The building is still water-tight but I'm looking ahead. It's not a problem, it isn't that high and it's easy enough to walk around on the top of it. But she's not having it. I've got to get "youngest son to do it" (the poor chap doesn't get a lot of spare time, but would willingly do it as I've helped him for years with house renovations each time he's moved)... while presumably I stand and watch.

Apparently, replacing the chimney cowl when we had a new gas fire fitted eight years ago when I was 62 was OK, (The fire people wanted to errect scaffolding and charge me for it, I should coco!) and then again (ladder up to the flat roof of the lounge extension and ladder up to the gutter of the roof, walk carefully up the thick concrete rough-finish tiles, perfectly safe, dead easy) to change the TV aerial on the same chimney five years ago when I was 65, was OK.

But "70" has been determined the "cut off age."

Anyway...

I happened to mention this to a golfing pal a few days ago. He and his wife are about five years younger than are we and my wife knows them well.

Later, the conversation between my wife and myself went like this;

"Richard had the roofing felt on his garden shed changed last year."

"I bet they got someone in to do it."

"No they didn't."

"Well he's younger than you."

"Lorraine's sixty-five"

"What's that got to do with it?"

"Well she's the one who changed the felt."

 

Actual age is less important than mental age or physical fitness age and if you feel up to it I think you should do it.

My mum can only walk using a frame at 87.

Her sister at 92 still climbs (2 step) ladders and changes her own curtains.

Part of the reason being the older one has lived alone for many years so has had to do for herself AND has had no one to tell her she shouldn't or do it for her.

Use it or lose it I say!

With YOUR argument though - remember in terms of life expectancy your pal's wife is more than 5 years younger than you - and, I suspect, physically fitter and more agile than her same age husband.

 

Sadly, my neighbour has just passed away at the ripe old age of 91. She was active right up until her last illness and had running battles with her children - who are themselves getting on a bit - because they would keep hiding her stepladder as well as all the fun lethal tools she employed to keep the house and garden spick and span. One summer a few years back, she kept moaning because her son was supposed to come around and clear out her gutters, but kept cancelling. The guttering on her bathroom extension was badly clogged and she could see it from her bedroom each morning, which wasn't improving her mood. One day she got so cross that she simply armed herself with a broom, climbed out of the bedroom window and lowered herself onto the extension roof. This involved dropping, SAS-style, several feet onto a sloping roof which consisted of slippery slates. Once out there, she gave the gutters a damn good thrashing, climbed back into her bedroom and told her son not to worry about helping -she'd done it all herself. I shall really miss her.

 

Nah!

It's just that he'd rather play golf.

Anyway if he did do it "It wouldn't be right."
We've all been there haven't we?
Men I mean.

 

Since i Retired, i have found i have less time to myself than when i was working .
i have three daughters who all have gardens and husbands who (ALL WORK HARD ) .
so my wife and i have a full (ROTA ). i maintain all the gardens my wife does the domestic tasks, like hanging out washing/hoovering / we also pick up the kids from school at finishing time
take them back to our house for their tea. they all get picked up at 5 o clock :yho:.
so we have a very busy monday - friday. the weekends great :yho:. then the phone rings :(.
"could we watch one or two of the kids" as they have been invited to a friends house .
as i say it is all a matter of how fit and mobile you are . the age of 70 is not a magic age where you should sit in cotton wool saying (I AM SEVENTY I SHOULD NOT BE DOING THAT!!!!).:(
just think the day before you became 70 you were in your SIXTIES music

 

We've three kids, one lives round the corner with his partner and her fifteen year-old daughter, they've a low "maintenance" garden, they need one as they are away every week-end possible in their VW Campervan.
Our other two children live the best part of 200 miles away, one in Canary Wharf (no kids) and the other with three kids, in West London. Not often called on for baby sitting duties, except when we visit a few times a year.

But I agree about time. I took early retirement twelve years ago, since that time, I've taken up golf and am quite reasonable at it and I've learned to play both alto and tenor saxophone. I've played "leccy piano" for years.
My latest hobby in the last two years has been vinyl jukeboxes. Now I really can't see how I ever had time to go to work. Though having said that all my major garden projects were done while I was working.
However, these days there's none of that working 'til midnight on DIY projects as we did when we were young. Now I don't start on anything until 10.00am want an hour for lunch and I pack up at 4.00pm (like a "proper" tradesman).

I get someone in now to do the decorating. None of that balancing on the ironing board stretched between the hall window and the first floor bannister to do the "long drop" of wallpaper on the outside wall of the stairs.
Though I did five years ago enjoy constracting a lowered false ceiling in the kitchen, fitting the spotlights, moving all the electrics and doing the new floor and tiling once the kitchen fitters had gone.
I've no major projects on the board. There's not much more I want to do with the garden. However, I have been looking at those old-fashioned arcade pinball machines, the ones with the "flippers" that use the huge ball bearings. But it might not come to anything.

 

I guess from that point of view I suspect it is more about who can see it needed doing in the first place then! :thumb: Men a very good at doing a **** job if it wasn't something that they wanted to do in the first place!!!!! :hehe:

AND
From your last post then why not get someone in to do it if you can afford it. Spend your time doing the things you WANT to do. It's not 'creative' or 'challenging' to do a roof in that way - just a job that needs doing.

 

Actually, rereading it all, You don't really want to do it yourself - but you resent being told you can't, or you want to pass the buck, 'I would've done it but I wasn't allowed'


:hehe::wink:

 

Well, it's a lot to do with resenting paying through the nose for a job which you can do yourself, sometimes better. I can do the tea-house roof for around £150. A roofing contractor would want between £500 and £750. I can also chose the brand and quality of roofing felt and how it's done.

We had our bathroom re-tiled eight years ago. It's not bad, but I made a better job with the kitchen.

I can't say I actually really enjoy doing these jobs, but I get some pleasure afterwards knowing I've done it myself and that it's "right" and it'll last. Or as I say now "see me out."

Frankly I get a bit tired of rejecting the "cowboys" who try to con people of my age who think you don't know better. Some fail to appreciate it's not that you can't do it it's that you just don't want to do it.

One came round a couple of years ago saying they were doing ridge tiles on houses in the road and he could see ours needed doing.
I explained to him that I'd done them myself fifteen years ago and I'd checked them again when I was up there recenty changing the TV aerial and they definitely don't need doing. So "No thanks!"

 

Reading some of these posts, I can't help feeling that we drew the short straw when it came to parents. No one ever offered us any help when our boys were small. Aren't you a nice lot! My in-laws think they have been exceptionally magnanimous over the years because they have usually hosted some sort of Christmas gathering. One year, after we had dragged two small boys away from a nice warm fire and all their new toys and announced that they were damn going to Grandad's freezing mausoleum whether them liked it or not, we arrived to find that the (basic) Christmas dinner had been cancelled. A couple of family members had pulled out a short notice, so Grandma had decided it wasn't worth cooking the turkey! :hehe::hehe:

 

When I was about 40 years old a wise women said to me, just wait the aches and pains will start at 50. I thought, yah right. But they did, just a little here and little there.
The motivation wains some, with peaks and valleys. Thank goodness I have a close friend who is 70 years old, who can say yep your normal that is what happened to me. And she's full of energy, at least seemly. But as I still work full time 40 plus hours outside the home, I try not to chastise myself much. And I get the basics done and the gardens look decent, not anally perfect, but decent. Husband promises in about 3 years I can retire. The main thing about retiring here is getting covered by health insurance. You get covered at 65 years old by the governments, or you pay monthly to a private health insurance company. We did find one reasonably priced one for my husband as my work one had raised beyond acceptability (I had covered him for years)
My husband has a small business, and has to pay his own health insurance, the government does not assist in anyway for small business owners, not even a deduction.
Both my parents had arthritis, my one finger is starting to change, I knew if anything I would inherit that from them. From time to time I look to research to see if they developed anything to slow it down.

 

In my old house, i had a next door neighbour ,who was a retired Station Master with British Rail .
He retired at 65 yrs from the railway,his daughter got him a job with the travel agent she was employed with. he was a well educated man very polite and always well dressed, you know the type he would not answer the front door without his tweed dress jacket on. he was employed with the travel industry till he was 80 yrs. in his last few years of employment he was sent abroad to grade hotels for the travel company. he was all over. Russia, Egypt , India,Spain to mention a few.
NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT:thmb:. I COULD DO THAT GEEZA JOB:D . music.

 

I hope no part of her cautionary words were to do with the hip replacement, Doghouse, because there is absolutely no reason you shouldn't do things like that if you've regained all your mobility and strength. Read this article Knee Replacements Not Harmed by Most Sports. It applies to lots of other endeavours and activities as well; and also applies to hips! :thmb:

Apart from which, tell her that 70 is the new 50! I shall be 70 next year and I'm still working and I intend to still be working in 2020!

BTW, only six weeks for your recovery? That's amazing - do pm me and tell me about it.

 

No probs Daisees, I was back driving six weeks after my operation and playing full rounds of golf two weeks after that.

It's just that my wife gets a little concerned as she wouldn't be able to cope if I were to have a debilitating accident because of her MS.

For anyone who's not had this operation but feels that they might benefit. I'll start another topic

 

one thing about knee replacement, LADIES, if you have not heard. Is to make sure they use a women's knee. In the past they have used the size for a man in women.
Just make sure you point that out CLEARLY.