It’s official: I now live in a nursing home. A warehouse for the old and dying.

It’s called “assisted living.” I get assistance. Lots of it. The nurses will even assist me in the shower.

When I was younger – a lot younger to be sure – that sounded sexy. Now, it sounds frightening.

Over my dead body that will ever happen.

I don’t like it, but it’s necessary.

Three decades of diabetes, declining vision, two or three heart attacks, more eye surgeries than hair on my head, stints to keep my heart arteries open, more appointments with doctors, than dates I ever had with the opposite sex and a new hobby: I’m a professional nap-taker.

Mornings start early, I have my breakfast in my apartment. I like to listen to the news while I’m getting started. It’s a small studio apartment. I lived in my last apartment for 10 years and knew where everything was because I put it there.

This time, my son and his wife, plus a granddaughter, moved me into the new apartment and put things away.

Each morning, I start the day looking for a bowl for my Cheerios and making a cup of coffee in the microwave.

The nurse comes in to give me my medicines: pills and insulin injections.

It doesn’t matter whether I’m dressed or not. I try to be wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt all the time.

I spend a lot of time at the computer while I can still see a little.

Also, my eldest granddaughter and her boyfriend gave me an Amazon Alexa voice controlled speaker for Christmas. All I have to do is ask “Alexa” the time or to play some favorite music and she complies.

I have dinner and supper in the dining room with the other assisted living residents.

The food is good, but there’s not much conversation. Mostly, it’s about the food and weather.

Nurses come and go: seven times a day.

My son and his family visit often.

My granddaughter is a regular, too.

My daughter and her children visited Easter Sunday and took me out for dinner and a car ride on a beautiful spring day.

I used to have walls decorated with pictures of my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I couldn’t see them, but it felt good knowing they were there.

I’m 75 and alive and teaching myself how to start over in life.

Ten years ago, I was chasing the news and writing columns for the Austin Daily Herald. Now I’m preparing to have every nurse’s aide sign a non-disclosure agreement about what they see when they enter my assisted living apartment at an Austin nursing home which shall remain nameless.

I’m retired and I still miss it.

Blindness is winning and I am losing.

I still read the Herald online … a little. The Veterans Administration supplied me with a computer application that expands the typeface and reads it aloud to me, but mainly I’ve become a professional nap-taker.

I’ve got a great family, who check on the Old Man and don’t complain when I tell them an old newspaper war story that makes less and less sense each time I repeat it.

People frequently ask me, “Didn’t you used to write those crazy columns for the Herald?” I tell them “I never let facts get in the way of telling a good story!”

For the record: John O’Rourke and Bonnie Rietz were my favorite Austin mayors, Tom Purcell my favorite Austin City Council member, Dick Cummings my favorite Mower County Commissioner, Dan and Joan Hooker my favorite donut-makers, Duane Klingerman my favorite Austin policeman, Tommy Mullenbach my favorite Mower County character, the meatloaf special at Bubble’s Cafe in Adams my favorite sit-down meal and the smell of newsprint and the sound of news presses the best part of being a reporter.

Feel sorry for me? Don’t be ridiculous. Memories make me a very rich man.

Did I ever tell you the one about the trip I made to Washington, D.C. thanks to friends at Adams or the sweet sounds of Ole Hanson and Everett Vermilyea at the Mower County Old-Time Fiddlers Contest at the Mower County Fair?

No sense mentioning how many celebrity tractor pulls I lost driving Oliver tractors.

Now remember this advice or I’ll write another one of these five years from now:

Don’t stop reading a newspaper and when they stop printing for a day, let them know you don’t like it.

Oh my God, there’s another nurse at the door.

I hope I have pants on.