An unremarkable entry

   

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      I retired 10 years ago in June 2008. I thought it might be a good opportunity to look back at the last 10 years via the blog. I haven't reread all the entires but I've glanced at all of them. I have now been retired for 1/3 as long as I taught. In my first blog entry I made a list of what I was looking forward to in retirement. Some of the things I listed then I have enjoyed and continue to enjoy. Some of the things have completely fallen away, and I'm doing some things I never dreamed of. Some years I've written a lot and some years I haven't. I have repeated myself but not as much as I feared. So, here are some thoughts looking back at myself and retirement from 10 years in.

    

      I have enjoyed waking without an alarm, although there are still many days when I need to get up at a certain time to be somewhere.

     I am, at this moment, sitting in my pj's and have just finished a cup of tea. Somehow this never gets old.*

     I love making things in the shop and I never thought I'd be learning to build a ukulele. Some of the twists and turns of life are absolutely delightful.

     I haven't been really good at going for walks lately. Since I stopped participating in half marathons I've been a lazy lump. It's a good thing that I get my heart-rate up while planing or sawing by hand and that I stand most of the day while working in the shop.

     My bike is still a delight and I don't get on it as much as I should. This year I have been on it more than either of the last two years.

     I haven't watched TV and we have given up our cable subscription, not without a fair amount of arguing with the cable people who wanted us to keep a basic subscription for only $10 a month. Richard eventually prevailed, telling them we really didn't want to pay $120 a year for service we never used.

     I continue to enjoy tea (I still haven't acquired a taste for coffee) and lunch with friends on a semi-regular basis and I have ridden transit with a friend who is also retired, just because we can. We recently went to the zoo to see the pandas. I don't get my money's worth out of the seniors' transit pass but it's handy to have and it's my contribution to the infrastructure of the city.

     There have been some major changes. I never did get to Drumheller to see my aunt before she died. Richard's brother died last December. The house no longer echoes with budgie burble and cockatiel whistles. All those birds are gone. Instead we have Odie who whistles, has a repertoire of English phrases, and still bites me and draws blood although not very often.

     There are new noises in the house. Richard has retired in the last year and he tends to think out loud so I'm never sure whether or not to pay attention. We get along companionably and each enjoy our own spaces. I often go into the shop for hours, put on an audio book and become totally absorbed in the story I'm hearing and what my hands are doing. Both Richard and I tend to use headsets when listening to music or watching YouTube videos because our tastes are not the same. We have a couple of YouTube channels we habitually watch usually around mealtimes, and after almost 32 years of marriage, we are as silly as we ever were.

     In the past 10 years we have visited Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, England, Costa Rica, Spain, Portugal, Holland, and Morocco. We have largely confined our holidays to school holidays which is a surprise but we have a number of commitments that run from September to June each year.

     We have bought a new car and a new-to-us camper van. Meanwhile I continue to drive my reliable 25-year-old Toyota Previa van. It's getting a bit rusty but as long as it runs reliably and the dealer can still get parts I'm keeping it. It hauls wood, both from the lumber yard and bits of trees given to me by friends. It  easily hauls bicycles and 7 people, although not at the same time.

     We have redone our basement and are very happy with the result. We keep looking at the kitchen and the upstairs bathroom and thinking about renovating them but, at the moment, it's more fun to travel and we intend to do that as long as we can. In the next few years I expect we'll decide to cut back on our September to June commitments so that we can get away more in the off-season but, for now, we are content with our schedules.

     Who knows what the next 10 years will bring. I hope it will bring more delightful adventures. I know the next decade will bring rough patches. I've lived long enough to know that such times are predictable even if the nature of them isn't. I hope I can learn to be better at enjoying the day-by-day offerings that life has for me. And, I hope that some year, I'll actually achieve my goal of 24 blog posts. The only year I hit that mark was the first one.

I'll keep you posted.

Ukulele ready for the top binding

List of what I looked forward to when I retired in 2008

• Going to bed and sleeping until I wake up.
• Sitting in my PJ's with a cup of tea looking up whether Celestial Seasonings still makes the cool brew ice tea.
• Hanging out in my shop making boxes and firewood.
• Going for a walk in the middle of the day.
• Taking my bike out and pedalling to the zoo to take pictures.
• Riding the bus around the whole loop.
• Going to a movie in the middle of the afternoon.
• Having coffee with friends.
• Having lunch with friends, the same ones or different ones.
• Taking courses perhaps in watercolour painting, or djembe.
• Thinking up projects to build and then building them.
• Being able to make appointments during the day without having to call a sub.
• Lying on the couch and reading a book all day if I feel like it.
• Actually watching TV, although it is so far off my radar I'll have to make a point of it.
• Touring around the city taking pictures of the fall colours.
• Having to actually pay attention to school zones.
• Getting back into the gym habit so I can run some more half marathons.
• Eating when I'm hungry instead of trying to fuel up for four or five hours.
• Being able to go to the bathroom without having to do a safety assessment first. (Is anyone likely to punch anyone while I'm gone? What if the principal phones when I'm out? What if there's a lockdown?)
• Relative silence well as silent as it can be with two budgies and acockatiel. Getting in the car and making a trip to see my aunt in Drumheller.

*If you're looking at the time of the post I did leave it and do other things including getting dressed before coming back to edit and post it. ;-)