Another Volunteer Week Finished

It's been a busy week, but all the families who were staying at our church have now moved on to the next church where they will stay for a week. I cannot imagine how difficult that is, especially for the kids, getting used to a new group of people around them every single week.

This week's volunteering, while intensive, involved less time than the previous visits. I'm working on not being "needed" at least for my physical presence, as much as in the past. This week I opened the doors at five thirty for the cooks, left a little after six when their support people came, and was usually at home by six fifteen or so. After sharing my number and reminding everyone that I could easily be texted and that I  lived seven minutes away if all the lights were red! In addition to feeding the families and eating and chatting with them we also help them do laundry, get showers and act as a general resource as needed.

So while I was committed to an hour per evening and a couple on Saturday, it was not the five to eight or nine pm every night that I was doing when we began this program. Even though of course there is still the scheduling, arranging coverage and manpower and making sure there are no duplicate meals,  and being on call as needed. Our next  duty is not for a couple months. One of the reason I love this particular thing we do (as well as my part in it) is that it's intensive but brief, leaving space for other things in between.

As my Sunday recovery, I unfortunately missed church, chilled and watched football for much of the day, and made a gigantic pot of beef vegetable soup-made with so called stew meet that was almost minute in size. I guess that's what I get for buying the stuff that was one day ahead of the expiration date, which is always an experiment. We didn't actually eat the soup last night, we cheated and got pizza with football. Instead there is correspondingly gigantic Tupperware container of the soup. After I go to work out, I will grab freezer bags at the grocery, along with some tomato past to add body and some kind of bread and freeze in said Ziploc bags while saving enough for tonight and maybe tomorrow.  There is no recipe for this one, it's just stew beef, corn, beans, peas, carrots, onion and celery-along with vegetable broth, seasonings, V8, and I might add a little wine to tonight's reheat.

Today I'm actively sewing some sand dunes...glittery sand dunes.....onto that landscape quilt, while looking online for templates for things I want to add to the top-a starfish, pink shells, maybe even a tail of a fish coming out of the water. Or maybe I'll just free hand it all and see what happens.

This weekend I was involved in two retirement discussions online. The first chat was in response to a newly retired empty nester type who was wondering what she and her husband could do to avoid the boredom and enjoy each other's company without spending much money (one of them was still working). On that one I could write a book with a fair amount of ease, so I contributed a bit here and there.

The second discussion was in a frugal group, where the question was how my age has affected my frugality.  While I was never the intensive can my own food, garden, do my own home improvements, change the oil type of person, in general I was willing to spend time over money for a long period in retirement.  I still do to a large extent. But as I slowly move towards sixty nine, I realize that my so called money saving methods tend more and more every year to simply not buying things or getting things for less, rather than using labor (or time).  I'm also realizing that I'm willing to sacrifice some of that money for less time and labor expended on my part.

That includes getting my yard shoveled, paying the fee for grocery delivery, eating out when the cooking sprite is not calling to me on occasion, and just plain expending less physical effort, energy, and time on some things that I used to. I have entered that time of life.