Friday

When you're young, do you ever think about what a day would look like once you retire? I never did that. I may be glass half full in my every day outlook, but in the long run, I did half-believe that if I daydreamed about retirement, I'd jinx it and conk out two days before its commencement.

But then, five years ago, I thought -- hey, it may happen!

A year later, I retired.

People wonder if they will be bored once they let go of their job.

Ha!

Here is a summary for you of a day in the life of this one retired person. Much of it is standard stuff for someone who no longer keeps to a work schedule: getting up without rushing, taking a walk in the middle of the morning, chatting about this and that with Ed throughout the day. But other stuff -- well, it's part of my uniquely crazy setup. My very special and very full template, with some extra excitement thrown in, because days never unfold in a totally predictable manner. A day where I'm left panting, and I didn't even have grandkid care responsibilities!

Panting? How so?

Well, in addition to all that calm retired person stuff, and after a breakfast with Ed...






... I spend time with a friend (I was late... here she is, waiting)...






My friend and I sip a late morning coffee then take that lovely, blustery walk.

There ends the calm stuff.

Throughout the day, I must keep up  with my mom, who had taken a turn for the worse last night, then recovered, then had a set back, then recovered once more.

Throughout the day, I also have to keep up with the cats. Seriously -- the unrewarding cats. I thought that we were currently feeding two. Today I find that there are actually five: Stop Sign, Dance, and then three babes -- clearly the most recent litter of Stop Sign. So we were wrong about Tulip the Maine Coon -- he was way too big to be part of this year's litter, whereas these three look exactly to be two months!





In addition, I meet my new doc (my old one moved to Montana because, well, she said it's all in the mountains) -- lovely person whose smile lights up the room.

And I grocery shop for the weeks I will be away. Bags, of food. Mostly for Ed.

Somewhere in there, I attended the performance of the young dancers enrolled in the one-day summer unicorn dance camp. Snowdrop is one such unicorn!






Talk about a person who lights up the room with her smile!






Kids, cats, bags, lives -- how many were going to St. Ives?

(Most of life can be summarized with the help of a nursery rhyme.)






Writing? What writing? I haven't even done my ten minutes-a-day of French reading lessons for many, many weeks.

But in fact, retirement had never looked this beautiful in my pre-retirement musings. I just wanted to rid myself of work pressures. I got so much more.