One of the jokes and truths about retirement is that you lose track of the days of the week and the months of the year. If one does not have a mandated schedule, everyday becomes a Saturday with chores and errands, but nothing really essential to complete. Since my retirement I have started another list. It is a learning list --- things I have learned from recent observations since my retirement.
1. Every day IS Saturday. There is just no pressure to get everything done before dinner, because tomorrow is, after all, Saturday!
2. Some of the working friends and family are jealous, so you have to be very low key about your new life. The more mature former working mates are more than happy to smile at your pleasure. And, of course, the really young are so happy that they are not old like you even though you do not have to work and they do. They would not trade places with you for a second.
3. Some days it does feel like you are free-falling. Free-falling is both exciting and scary...so you don't think to much about the end of the fall.
4. Yes, you do realize that the ultimate change ahead is death. And yes, you do think about it. But not often or with too much trepidation. After all, today is just Saturday.
5. On day 5 of my retirement I actually felt a teeny, tiny bit of trepidation about not having anything important to do...while gazing at the creeping phlox beneath my oak tree that feeling soon passed.
6. I spend more time observing since I don't have to be thinking about managing my time. Remember all those old people you see sitting at the mall or park who steadily watch the busy people hurrying by? I am now one of those old people.
7. Sitting at an Austin Grill eating a pre-midnight dessert on Friday evening I was watching dozen of couples of all ages 'dating.' Lots of eye contact and lots of joking and some flirting even among the 50-somethings. The place was full and busy and I found it hard to realize we are in a recession. Clearly this recession has not hit the restaurant trade in this area. I have several months yet to see how my retirement budget is going to work.
8. Sitting in the Pannera on Saturday morning savoring my coffee latte I watched a group of attractive women in their late twenties gathering at a table for some meeting. Some knew each other and some didn't, and watching the body language and the banter was interesting and reminiscent of another time in my life. Most of my observations now bring back such memories.
9. My daughter's retirement gift to me is several hours with a fashion consultant. Close your mouth and stiffle that laugh. Yes, I love her to death and I have learned in my many years of gift recieving, that gifts you get from others that seem odd are actually gifts the giver would like for themselves. This woman will visit my closet and tell me what works (perhaps that black tank dress) and what doesn't (certainly that navy blue flower bordered mini I bought in Hawaii ten years ago) and then we will go shopping together so that I can buy clothes...silk pajamas, perhaps, because I think she will frown on those elastic band sweat pants I have had my eye on.
10. I have finished two books already. House Lust, which is certainly a thoughtful look at our real estate addiction in light of this mortgage crisis and Eat, Pray, Love which is was a quick and fun read about a tremendously insecure woman who seems to find her place in this world. I am now reading The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri and Into a Desert Place by Graham Machintosh. With my eclectic tastes in reading material, I will have thousands of books to read in my retirement.
11. Industrious things besides reading include washing the four rattan chairs and table that were stored in the garage, laundering their cushions, mopping the tile floor of the newly finished basement, and dusting everything in the basement including the elliptical glider which I have not returned to using as I promised...using energy to clean the damn thing, but not exercising on it, that says a lot about me doesn't it?
12. I have always loved the end of the day after work, anticipating the slow exhale as the sun heads toward the horizon. Now the late afternoon arrives with so much more peaceful acceptance on my part. Yes, the melancholy of goodbye to another day is still there, but the anxiousness about stuff undone for tomorrow is no longer eating at the edges of my mind.
I certainly thought that I would have more time and more motivation to blog after retirement. But that is certainly not the case. Blogging becomes one of the "I'll-get-to-it-later' activities.
Spring is planting time and I have spent a good part of my days starting the container plants on my deck. Since I am being lazy this year, they are all from purchased plants. In the future, I anticipate being more frugal and starting from seeds. I am an addict when entering the garden/landscape stores. It is as if I have been given a shot of some drug that suspends time and makes me need to see every planting table, pot and greenhouse section of the store at least three times. I wander and dream among all the treasures for sale . The trees are particularly enticing. Finances and deer that eat everything I plant are putting a healthy break on the purchases. Hubby and I have to figure out a fence system or see if the deer are being more tentative now that we are here full time.
Frugal YET!..we buy a water fountain that is so heavy it took four men to lift it into my husband's tiny trailer. There it sits until we figure out where in the back yard under the deck we want to put it. There it sits until we figure out how in the hell we are going to move it ourselves! It was 50% off since it was last year's fountain design. My mind boggles at the thought that even fountains have styles that come and go. The intricate pattern which may be over the top for some folks, reminded me of my days in Indonesia and the temples overgrown with jungle vines that we visited.
I also bought a number of herbs --- rosemary, sage, various basils...one patio tomato to compete with those hubby has in his garden
We also bought a calmondin orange tree. We had one of these many years ago in our other house. It produced wonderful flowers in February which filled the house with fragrance like the breath of an early spring. Then I harvested hundreds of tiny lemon-like oranges for drinks, baking, etc. The tree got to be about 6 feet tall and I had to give it away when we moved. Now I have a new one foot tall tree with blossoms on my deck waiting to re-establish the pattern.
I also bought a Kafir lime tree. I spend too much of my time hitting oriental markets looking for Kafir limes for my cooking. They are a rare and delicious treasure. And now I have a three foot tree filled with blossoms on my deck that has just been re-potted. Both trees will have to be moved inside next to the south facing window and pruned judiciously each year and re-potted every few years. AND moved back out onto the deck every spring. But, the rewards will be well worth the work involved. Thus the addiction begins once again.
(I will post pics on my other blog.)
Onward and Upward
For a number of months, if not a number of years, I have imagined my first day of retirement. I kept thinking that the very first thing I would do would be pretty much nothing for a long time. Remember the movie (and book) The Da Vinci Code? The first victim uses the symbol of Vitruvian Man as his clue upon his death. I have always been intrigued by that image created by "the Roman architect Vitruvius. Vitruvius, a proponent of the Sacred Geometry of Pythagoras, designed temples based on the proportions of the human body, believing them to be perfect." It seems to represent Mankind's way of trying to merge with the 'imperfect' biology of the planet. In some way, that has been my nemesis...always trying to get to that level of perfection that brings peace. This is why I need to work on meditation, exercise, gardening...so that I find the inner perfection that is the only real perfection.
For some reason that symbol has floated in my mind for years --- this was one of the images NASA sent into outer space to identify mankind to the aliens. It is a mathematical representation of mankind, but to me it represents the essence of the human being with that full frontal, open armed 'take me as I am' stance.
I kept thinking I would like to take a bare space on the floor of my house the very first morning and actually lay down stark naked in exactly that position with a sort of yoga attitude and "reach" for my potential once I had acquired my 'retirement freedom.' I imagined this numerous times...but, I didn't do it. Maybe because I had done it in my mind so many times. I don't know.
I do know, that once you have free direction and lots of free time, you are who you are and will end up doing what your true self tells you to do. I am a busy bee. I can only be happy when surrounded by organization. The first day I was on my feet all day getting my closet in order. I had brought down the winter clothes last month and they remained hung or piled in arbitrary fashion. I separated clothes to be pressed from those to be mended. I found that shoes were everywhere and I threw many out. My plastic bags of shampoos, creams, etc. that I had stored at my daughters house added to the large collection of stuff I had already put in various containers here at the house. Living in two places means you forget what you have and end up with too much stuff everywhere. I cleaned out the medicine drawers and threw away hundreds of dollars of expired concoctions and remedies.
At the end of this long day of lifting and sorting, I 'rewarded' myself by cleaning all of my jewelry. I have a small collection of silver necklaces and earrings that have not been polished in ages. I washed the pearls and other natural stones. I sorted out the amber. I do not own any valuable jewelry---diamonds, rubies, gold, etc...but have a number of pieces acquired over the years of natural stones as reminders of trips, etc. I took a trip down memory lane with each of the pieces.
Then I started the first of the laundry loads. As the end of a beautiful spring day eased in, I poured a glass of wine and headed out to my lovely deck to look at the water through the 'green mansions.' Hubby and I were amazed at how lucky we are at this time in our life and pray that this luck holds.
6. I spend more time observing since I don't have to be thinking about managing my time. Remember all those old people you see sitting at the mall or park who steadily watch the busy people hurrying by? I am now one of those old people.
11. Industrious things besides reading include washing the four rattan chairs and table that were stored in the garage, laundering their cushions, mopping the tile floor of the newly finished basement, and dusting everything in the basement including the elliptical glider which I have not returned to using as I promised...using energy to clean the damn thing, but not exercising on it, that says a lot about me doesn't it?
