And So, I Return to Blogging, Mischief, and Mayhem

 

I had grand plans to redesign the blog,  pay for a higher level of Typepad, learn how to code it myself, and certainly get a new header, all before I posted my first Official Retirement Post. 

Ain't happening. Not right now. Turns out retirement is busier than work!

But here I am! All retired and stuff. 

We sold the house. And the screened porch (sob). And the garden (at it's height - sob!).

We now have an apartment downtown in our city. It allows dogs, which is a major issue, obvs.  We dodge a ferocious pit bull and a multitude of small yappy dogs in the elevator and lobby in order to walk these poor animals a million times a day. And by "we", I mean mainly Mr. Pom. 

Mr. Pom is working only a few days a week as a consultant to his company of 17 years. He enjoys knowing that the second day he works each week is his Friday. 

The sorting, discarding, packing, and hauling was a horror. This was the house we lived in the longest (17 years) of our marriage. I was very grateful that we had three major long distance moves prior to this as I cannot imagine what we would have amassed had we not. Children were summoned to pick up mattresses, cars, school stuff, clothing, and various storage stuff that we all keep  at our own parents' homes until they were sold. 

Tons of goods were distributed to the Salvation Army, friends, and relatives. Heirlooms were given to sisters and children. I need to return at Christmas to my block and leave our sanitation workers a case of expensive champagne for their matter-of-fact hauling away of a football field of "stuff", including large dressers, mysterious metal stuff we inherited with the house, and boxes and boxes of all the things we hold dear until they are out of sight and out of mind for ten years and we can't imagine why we saved them. 

The garden, alas, cannot be packed up. Our bronze fennel by the front door attained a height of over six feet and has burst into glorious blossom. I ran by the house over the weekend to pick up a package and the plant looked like a Chinese silk screen. I was too shy to stand there and take a pic.  The Russian sage was positively sprawling. The purple rudbeckia was in full bloom. The blue star thistles were shining. And the huge oak hydrangeas had just begun deepening into that amazing shade of rose. 

Ah, well! We have half an acre we intend to plant in Cape Cod, so onward and upward!

Thus far, we are scooting up to the Cape for four or five days between family events. And this summer is full of them! Beautiful, wonderful events. 

I will be back as regularly as I can between dragging fearful dogs into elevators in order to go for walks, figuring out how to use the money card in the laundry room so we don't spend 9.60 to dry a load of wash, and opening up boxes in search of various items, which are always in the other place. 

Breathing a sigh of relief that I will never ever ever have to spend the rest of my law career asking people how many acupuncture needles they received,  how long they remain inserted, and writing a five hour report about it.

I am yours truly, 

Retired!

 

P.S. Typepad and the MacBook Air appear to hate each other in re inserting photos, so sorry for words only right now!