September 16, 2015

What Can I Live Without?

This last week has been a tough lesson in what I things I truly need. It seems every day something broke. First, it was my husband’s laptop. Then, the ceiling fan in the living room stopped working. The hot water valve in the guest bath clogged with sediment and there isn’t any hot water for the tub. The garbage disposal is making an awful ruckus and we’re afraid to use it. The tailgate on our pickup truck broke and we can’t open it. One of the automatic sprinklers isn’t working right.

The final straw: the coffee maker quit. I must admit I felt disheartened and started worrying about what else was going to go wrong, and how in the world we would manage to fix everything now that we are both retired.

We sat down and made a list of what needs to be fix now, and what can wait. In truth, none of it is urgent, except the tailgate on the truck.

We did, however, do some research on how to repair each item and found fixes for some. A system reset repaired my husband’s laptop. A YouTube video showed my husband how to fix the truck's tailgate. The parts were only $40.00.

September 08, 2015

The Not So Golden Moments of Retirement


It’s finally here, retirement. After months of planning and dreaming, the day has come, but my first few weeks weren’t the joy-filled, do-whatever-I want-time I thought it would be. Of course, I expected there would be obligations, tasks and chores, what I did not anticipate was being ill, needing a skin biopsy, and having partial laryngitis. Add in a computer crash, garbage disposal on the fritz, brand new dryer making odd noises, and a jammed tailgate on the truck. Sounds like too much fun, doesn’t it?

Retirement has been my golden egg, the place of peace and contentment, less stress ― in my imagination. I knew there would be bumps and a few rough places, but I figured those would be spaced a bit, not slam me right off the bat.