A Post-Retirement Wednesday

Another peaceful day at our house. With the packing completed, except for the last-minute packing to do the night before we leave, I have time to work on the second leg of our trip. We plan to leave Gilbert, Arizona on April 10^th and head toward Lufkin, Texas to visit family. We are committed to only driving 5-6 hours per day so will take three to four days before we make it to Lufkin. I am waiting to hear from family in the area before planning further.

Joe spent part of the day working on valuing his tool inventory. When there are over 1500 items to value it translates to days and days of work.  This is the third day he has been at it, and he told me he took several long breaks today to "rest his eyes." I suspect this is code for watching You Tube machine shop videos. 

I had lunch with my friend Deb today at Maria’s Cantina. This was the first time Deb had eaten at Maria’s and I fear we both ate tons of Elizabeth Burden’s tortilla chips so couldn’t finish our lunches. We did save room for flan. A good friend is one who shares the belief that you must save room for dessert! As usual, I enjoyed my time with Deb, and it ended up being a 2-hour lunch (possibly longer).

This evening Joe and I had dinner at Kitchen 428 with our dear friend, Mary Ellen. It is always lovely to see her and spend time chatting about grant writing, Dancing with the Stars, and catching up on how mutual friends are faring among other topics. As we were driving away, Joe was astonished that dinner was 2 hours long. Ha-ha! That is normal for me and meals with friends these days. Unless my luncheon friend has a job...

Joe and I started our morning with a conversation on how nice it is to go to bed when we are tired and wake up without an alarm. Somedays we are up at 4:00 am and other days at 7:00am. Tomorrow Joe will have to get up early as he has an 8:00 haircut appointment. Not me, though, I can sleep as late as I like. I have had a few mornings where I have crawled out of bed at 8:00am. The world didn’t end.

So much about retirement is freeing for us. We have been early risers for years, now we have more options. The early bird may get the worm – we don’t want no stinkin’ worms. If we want to get up early, we can! We found that when we car camped, we would wake up around 6:30am. This is still later than our pre-retirement schedules of 3:30 am for Joe and 5:00 am for me.

My granddaughter, Charlotte, is still trying to make her Girl Scout Cookie goal of 1000 boxes. She still needs to sell 265 boxes with 11 days left to sell. If you are still looking for a cookie source, you can order from her at:

https://app.abcsmartcookies.com/?fbclid=IwAR12gj5CHzVUEzG23U0cplD5s7QZez5sd4n2JuJdo5Kpk0bhHGxob8JUlEM#/social-link-landing/e985b5a3-cc55-4a3b-af4a-77f17668f818

There is also an option to donate 6 boxes of cookies at the same link and Charlotte gets credit for the boxes.

Until tomorrow!