Day One!
My first day was full of glamour and adventure. After a leisurely cup of tea with toast, I read and answered emails. Once dressed, I loaded up the PTV with a huge collection of plastic and all the cardboard boxes from my many recent purchases, and it was off to the landfill to recycle!
What a propitious start!
I love to use words like propitious. Another favorite is fortuitous. Oh yeah, and indefatigable. But you can’t go around talking like that. People look at you funny. Anyway. After the landfill, I tried to call “Trailers and Hitches” in Winder, Georgia (near Athens), and the connection (now there’s an old-fashioned concept) was so bad I told the lady I’d call back.
Do you see Spike on the driveway? He's a good boy and never goes into the road.
I went outside and sat in the chair under the redbud tree. The crew GOT OUT OF BED to wander around the yard.
I had all the hitch info I might possibly need with me. I rang the place again and after struggling to identify myself and to give the reason for my call, I gave up and told the lady (who sounded like she was in a perpetual cough), “Never mind. I’ll drive over there so we can talk.”
“WHA – A -T?” “I’ll DRIVE OVER!” “O-cough-KAY!”
I did manage to complete several other calls of a mundane nature, one to the Social Security office. As I was punching in the number on my cellphone I stopped, thinking, oh darn, they’re closed on Saturdays. But wait, it’s not Saturday, it’s Thursday!
See what I mean about every day is Saturday when you’re retired?
I puttered around the house for a while, mainly sorting stuff into categories: stuff that goes to Goodwill, stuff I throw away, stuff I give to certain people, stuff that stays in the house for Felix and Julio, and stuff I keep. This sorting task is taking forever! It’s not just my things. I inherited the stuff of my parents and an uncle when they passed on. This includes several items that may have historical value from WWII days, collections of things like belt buckles, Civil War artifacts, and mountains of photos. I’ve been working on this task over a span of months. It takes a long time because memories and emotions surface in a rush and I have to put it all aside for another time.
I’ve been preparing for my getaway for several years.
Long ago I emptied the house of furniture except for a table and chairs in the kitchen and the furniture in my bedroom. For about two years my living space has been restricted to my bedroom. (Of course, I use the bathroom, silly, and the kitchen sink and refrigerator!) The other bedrooms have been empty a long time. I’ve become accustomed to the echo in the house. “Bridget! Stop that! Bridget stop that Bridget stop that Bridget stop . . .”
I figured this was practice for living in a small space . . .
. . . although my bedroom is probably four times the square footage of the interior of my Casita! And, no doubt, it is huge considering the living spaces of families all over the world. A reader asked in Comments a few posts back, “How are you going to live fulltime in a Casita with two dogs?” We’ll have to wait and see. I know one thing for sure — where I go, they go. Back to my first day of retirement . . .
The Georgia heat stopped me about three o’clock.
Spike is handsome from any angle! Um, I don't think this is Bridget's best side!
So I took a nap in the breeze of my oscillating fan! When I awoke I was so hungry I hopped into the PTV and cruised into town for lunch, no supper. . . lupper? The evening was spent reading my new book, surfing the internet, listening to the radio, and contemplating my good fortune. I slept soundly . . . with the alarm turned off.
And that was my first day of retirement.
rvsue
rvsue and her canine crew 