What I Wish I Knew Before I Retired
Don’t you just love on-line personality quizzes? You know, the ones where you answer a few innocuous-seeming multiple-choice questions—press enter—and voila—you are assigned a set-in-stone personality type (that may or may not remotely resemble the you that you know). The retirement versions of these quizzes claim to be able to determine your ‘retirement personality type’,… Continue reading What is your ‘Retirement Personality Type’?
I LOVE packing checklists – the planning, the organizing, the reassurance – and especially the checklist part. (Geek! Yes, I’m aware.) For our current road trip, we wanted to pack enough to be comfortable, but not so much that we felt weighed down. We would likely be driving for eight days in total and would… Continue reading Packing Checklists, Kettle Grills…and Our Big Road Trip!
Since I have recently posted a ‘love letter’ for my husband on this blog, in honour of February 14, this ‘valentine’ (of sorts) deals with the love and appreciation of country. I am no longer confident in my Canadian spellings. Is it analyse or analyze, amoeba or ameba (please don’t ask why I was trying… Continue reading Learning to be Canadian Again
So, you know the carefree, happy-go-lucky, come-and-go-as-you-please image that the word 'retirement' often conjures up? Enter Fido (or Spot, or Fluffy…or in this case, Cody) and that rose-coloured vision is instantly smashed to bits! Living in the land of retirees, we are completely surrounded by snowbirds, and other vacationers, heading off to California, Arizona,… Continue reading On Leaving Fido
My husband and I took a mid-week, overnight trip, about a two-hour drive away from our home. It was a last minute decision to explore another part of Vancouver Island. We had a great two days away and really enjoyed ourselves. During the drive home, my husband mentioned that he just couldn’t shake the feeling… Continue reading Retirement Guilt: The Art of Not ‘Shoulding’ Upon Yourself
When our youngest son came home for Christmas, he was displeased that our ten-year-old Husky only knew how to do two small tricks--sit and shake paw--the same two tricks that he himself had taught our dog over nine years ago. With the exuberance of youth, our son was determined to teach Cody a new trick--… Continue reading Expanding My Comfort Zone–Teaching Old Dogs New Tricks
“In life it is not where you go—it’s who you travel with.” Charles M. Schultz Today is my sixteenth wedding anniversary. As the number of years does not adequately speak to my depth of emotion, or the lifetime of adventures that my husband and I have shared, I almost didn’t include it. The main reason… Continue reading A Love Letter
In the time leading up to my retirement, if I had been given a dollar every time someone expressed disbelief that I would actually be content not working, I could have retired much earlier. “But WHAT will you do?” and “Aren’t you afraid of being bored?” were common questions. Focussed, organized, passionate and diligent, the… Continue reading Hope for the Driven Personality
I am currently watching the snow steadily stream down outside the window of my home on Vancouver Island. Although snow is not a common sight in this particular area, nothing surprises me here, which makes me love this small town (population 12,300) even more. Shortly after we moved here we noticed that so many other… Continue reading Location! Location! Location!
Somehow I am feeling behind on this blog even before I begin. I retired in June 2015 and had optimistically believed that I would have begun blogging that same month excitedly documenting my transition into retirement, and our lives back in Canada after 14 years living in Beijing, China. Two years ahead of time we… Continue reading Retirement Reflections…and Beyond
Retirement Reflections 