Lazy Football Afternoon-This Week In Retirement

Today is a gorgeous Colorado 72 degrees, and tomorrow, Colorado style, it will be a high of 33. Even so, here I am, sitting on my sofa, watching the  ultimate rivalry that is the Dallas Cowboys and the Washington Redskins. What can I say, it's football Sunday, folks.  And try as I might, I could not get up in time for church this morning, meaning I will head down the road at six thirty for a quick evening service.

While I will share much, much more about this in the coming weeks, I've been spending some of the past week and especially this "quiet Sunday" re-imagining and re-evaluating my retirement. Or at least certain portions of said retirement. Every so often; it's time to make sure life is in sync with priorities, for lack of a better word. So it has been with me. I have not been feeling unhappy, in fact I've been feeling fairly challenged overall. But I have not been spending my energies where I would most like to, and I feel I may have been pushing myself in directions I was not meant to go. 

For one thing, I've had things continually on my goal lists want to do lists that I am consistently simply not getting done. Heck, I'm not even starting them. And I've come to realize that except for travel (which I deliberately mainly set aside for two full years and will resume in 2018), and working out/Physical Therapy (never will I love working out), if it's not getting done, then maybe it's not meant to be done. Just to give one example, I've been talking about writing a frugal retirement book and a craft book, for well over a year. Other than a brief outline, nothing has been done. It may well be that I am simply not meant to write a book. At least not at this moment. So while I'll keep that "notebook' on my desk, I'll no longer challenge myself to work on it. Especially since my goal was to have mainly new material rather than just a republishing of old posts.

Other than that this has been a fairly quiet week at the old homestead:

As I mentioned elsewhere, I watched the final season of Shetland, and have returned to watching Hinterland. When it comes to reading, I took advantage of my Kindle Unlimited member ship and plowed through some of this easy to read series of romantic mysteries.  I'm now about to begin the book Nomadland, upon the recommendation of some other bloggers and readers. Oh, and on Wednesday I had book group , but the group choice was The Girl On The Train which I had already read, so I only needed a quick refresher.

Creativity wise, I'm partially in the middle of a few projects.  My creativity method of getting things done is what a friend once called "dovetailing" various parts and tasks. In other words, I'm liable to cut out several different projects at once (a table runner, Christmas napkins, a yoga bag), then sew all the basic pieces or tops, and then do the finishing (backs, buttons and the like). I may prepare three or four pieces of art and then work on them piecework style as well. So in addition to working on all those tiny two and half inch quilt pieces, I've spent time on a Christmas table runner for the table in the "fireplace room", pillow covers that will match my daughter's decor, and holiday napkins that have.....wait for it.......Christmas Llamas on the front.  

On the knitting front, I've put my gold and rust yarn aside and begun work on a fall wrap-albeit not in fall colors. At some point along the way I reminded myself that while those fall colors were pretty, a full eighty percent of the time I wear green. Or olive green, blue, turquoise and teal-with the occasional brown and rust (gold is on my list for Christmas). Hence this new project, which will be a 20 by 70 inch wrap with lots of fringe.  So I now have a project for me and a project for someone else in the works. 

Food and cooking wise, as I shared elsewhere, I've not done much this week at all. I made the soup last weekend, my sister made the huge pan of lasagna a couple days ago, and we've either eaten those things or other items frozen and on hand. In fact, my Thursday night dinner prep was all store bought instead of made. I grabbed a frozen lasagna, rolls, bagged salad and Halloween cookies from the deli for the group.

This week will be more intense. As I mentioned in my last post, my church is having a post Halloween "Day of the Dead" type of dinner with street tacos and such. In the interests of remaining with the theme, I plan to make Mexican wedding cookies, a chocolate cake with cinnamon and cayenne, and perhaps flan. I also will be doing a bigger shop (that includes eggnog), and getting an order from my friends at Schwans.

I did my normal volunteer and social gigs.  I spent a half a day at my transitional homeless shelter for women. As I learn more and more about senior poverty, I realize that many more of these women are "seniors" than I first thought, and also that many were homeless much longer than I thought (you have to be homeless for much longer than a year to even get into our program). What's truly sad is that many of these women have family that neither see nor support them (and they are not all addicted or mentally ill by any means). They aren't even senior orphans, but they are still alone. Also I provided dinner on Thursday as mentioned above (but plan to step back after Christmas) while attending a program on refugees from Burma.  On Wednesday I went to one of my two monthly book groups, met up with all my knitting friends and then had a carotid artery sonogram. What I day, I tell ya!    

In other news around the homestead, I've decided to take advantage of Amtrak rail pass opportunities this spring by purchasing a 30 day, 12 stop max rail pass. I've spent the last two years settling and exploring the local and near local in Denver, my son will be post surgery at the end of January and it's time. More later. Also , my son will be looking at apartments and possibly moving cross country after another full year (depending on grad school). Since he probably will not be able to take the dog, we are slowly transitioning to make the dog more "mine". Easier said than done he sleeps with and walks the dog, but we're working on it. And finally, as part of my "re-imagining" I am being ruthless about posssions and purchases.  More about that later.

While this was not my best week ever with Swagbucks or other earning tasks, I did end up sending  $25 earnings to my checking account and a $25 and a $5 card to Amazon, so I am content with that. And finally, last year we had six separate door rings so this year we are re-thinking the candy thing. There are kids in the area, in fact an elementary school at our dead end, I just think the kids are doing other things these days!

And now, I'm off to enjoy a little bit of that sun before the snow. Before the sun that will come back on Tuesday. Hey, it's Colorado!