At The End of the Day, Dad Is Still the Boss

Being allowed the opportunity to take care of your parents is a benefit of retirement.  A lot of people would probably disagree with me.  Let's face it - most people don't say, "I can't wait to retire so that I can take care of my ailing parents."  But when you witness the pain and misery of someone you love while they are being taken by a debilitating disease, you wish desperately to do anything to make it easier for them.  I wish I could have retired soon enough to have been able to take care of my mother.  She passed away 19 months ago from Parkinson's.  I wish I would have been able to be with her on a daily basis when her health was rapidly deteriorating.  Fortunately, my dad was there for her every day and he took extremely good care of her.  I was able to travel on weekends to be with her, but that was not near enough for me.

I was fortunate to have very loving, positive, warm, family oriented parents who were not only in love with each other but also love their children and grandchildren more than anything.  Lucky for me, I still have my dad.  "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime."  That was the parenting style of my dad.  In our home, we were given the skills to complete a task then we were expected to accomplish it and do it well.  My parents built confidence in their children by giving us opportunities along with support and encouragement.

My dad has had a couple of set backs with his health lately.  Fortunately, my calendar was clear and I was able to stay with him for a few days to help him out and watch over him.  Sometimes this requires me to "boss him around" a bit.  "Dad, drink more water," "Dad, get out of the heat," "Dad, slow down and get some rest," "Dad, get an appointment with the doctor."  My dad does try and appease me when I come to visit.  He allows me to take charge (to some degree), while joking to his friends about how "bossy" I am.  For an 85 year old gentlemen, my dad is in great shape and is extremely self-sufficient.  But for the times that he has setbacks, my brother and I are a great tag team of support for him.

Like many of you, I like to spoil my dad.  When I visit him, I clean and organize, we beautify my mom's and my brother's gravesites together and I join him in social activities with his friends.  I also try and involve him in activities with my friends.  When he comes to visit me, I schedule get-togethers with the kids so he can see his grandkids.  Yes, he does allow me to come in and kind of takeover - to a point.  My dad is competent, very wise and is still a great influence on my brother, me, and our kids.  He now has two great-grandchildren with two more on the way.  With God's grace, he will be a tremendous influence on them as well.  When my dad speaks, people listen.  At 85, he is still highly respected by his family and members of his community.  When my dad is in the room, he gets the attention.  My dad is the patriarch.  He is and always will be The Boss.

Aging Gracefully

When it comes to aging after 50, there are those who age, and those who age gracefully.  As life expectancy continues to increase, people after 50 want to look and feel better for the the next 35+ years.  We all want to look great as we age, we all want to be that man who is timeless or that woman who is on point from head to toe and carries herself with grace.  What's the secret? What are these graceful agers doing differently than everyone else?  It's not so much what they are doing as it is what they are NOT doing.

If you want to age gracefully, it's a good idea to avoid:

• Salt - as we age, our blood pressure naturally increases, at least for most of us.  Keeping your outside young and healthy starts with keeping your inside young and healthy.  Aging gracefully starts with taking care of the inside of your body.  Eating less salt prevents heart attack, stroke and a decline in cognitive functioning.  While you are avoiding salt, increase your fruits and vegetables.  Remember, aging gracefully starts from the inside.
• Sedentary lifestyle - it's easy to get too comfortable on the couch watching TV once you are retired and you have more time on your hands.  As I have mentioned in earlier posts, try to keep moving.  Exercise, work in your yard or garden, walk, do chores, do some type of physical activity if you are able.  Your cells need oxygen, your joints and muscles need to keep moving.  
• Negative attitude - I have read numerous articles citing studies that indicate that positive, happy people live longer and are less prone to mental decline than negative, unhappy people.  Getting rid of stress and emotional baggage will help us age gracefully.  For the stress you can't control, focus on managing it with exercise, sleep, healthy diet, and avoiding the negative attitudes of other people.  Keep smiling!  We wrinkle less with smiles than frowns!
• Excess sun exposure - expose yourself to healthy Vitamin D in moderation.  But if you are a sun worshiper, you might want to rethink that.  Too many rays without protection can cause lines, wrinkles, sun spots, loss of firmness and elasticity, not to mention skin cancer.  Your hands and face get the most sun exposure so give them a lot of protection.  Try and hit a happy medium between enough sun exposure to make healthy Vitamin D but not so much that it's damaging.
• Overindulging - avoid smoking, alcohol, sugar, fat, anything that is too much of a "good" thing.  A poor diet can increase free radicals in your body which can damage your DNA and age you.  Alcohol dehydrates your body, both inside and out.  It makes your kidneys work over time and robs your body of Vitamin A, an antioxidant critical for cell renewal and turnover.  Skin that dries from the inside out wrinkles quicker than nice, moist skin.  Smoking displaces the oxygen in your skin and reduces blood flow which makes your skin dry and discolored.  It also depletes nutrients including Vitamin C which repairs skin damage.  

We have new fashion rules for aging gracefully.  Mature women are no longer expected to cut their hair, spray it into a helmet, and cake on the makeup including the matronly pink lipstick.  Today, people take better care of themselves and age is just a mindset.  You're as young as you feel and there is no reason why your outside can't match your inside.  Don't be afraid to wear your hair a little longer and when you start sprouting an increasing number of silver strands, try highlighting instead of an overall dye job.  Some bangs might be a fun and sassy touch and if you like to wear your hair up, wear it loose - don't pull it back tight.  Wearing it loose can make you look sophisticated!  Wear less, or at least lighter, make-up.  Caked-on makeup tends to accentuate and even add to our wrinkles and lines.  Don't be afraid to wear a fun graphic T - just pair it with nice jeans and a cute jacket instead of distressed jeans.

Guys, let your hair grey naturally - it looks distinguished.  Go to a barber or stylist that will give you not only a neat haircut, but will also trim those stray hairs!!   Dress with finesse and make sure your clothes fit properly.  Take care of your appearance.  It's easy to start dressing like an "old man" and start shuffling around like you're on your way to the senior $1.99 special!  Be careful not to dress in fashion geared toward the younger crowd - these styles don't wear well on older men.  In other words, keep your shirt buttoned up and wear your baseball cap with the bill facing forward! 

Last but not least, keep up with all of your health checks.  Remember - we age from the inside out.  Instead of fighting aging, embrace it with grace, style and confidence.  What are some of your tips for aging gracefully?

                                  My daughter, Kristina, and me at my retirement party.

Trip Planning

How were we able to plan trips before we had the internet?   I am grateful for travel websites, such as Trip Advisor, and travel blogs.  Since I have a couple of grand babies coming, I have decided to plan 3-day trips only for now (not including my jaunts to AZ) until next summer, at which time we will do a full family vacay (grands and all) to a beach house.

My next 3 day getaway will be to Galena, IL with a friend and co-retiree,  a teacher who worked with me for many years.  She is a new retiree, we retired together on June 3, and we decided to take at least one fun 3-day trip together during our first year of retirement.  Our first choice for a 3-day trip was to the Parke County Covered Bridge Festival in Indiana.  Little did we know, we would have had to book accommodations for this trip no later than last May, if not before.  OOPS!  We both agreed that Galena would be a great back-up plan!

After much discussion about the Galena trip at a breakfast outing, we decided that I would do the research, create an itinerary and email it to my friend for approval.  After googling "3-day trips to Galena," I was introduced to a multitude of websites and blogs with dozens of suggestions and reviews.  The first website I perused was Trip Advisor, a favorite travel website of mine, with reviews and links to other websites.  I have used Trip Advisor in the past to find hotel and restaurant suggestions, descriptions and reviews and have not been disappointed.  Trip Advisor includes other travel tools as well, including Things To Do, Trip Ideas, Forums and more...  Although the Forum and Things to Do tabs on the Trip Advisor website are very helpful, my favorite sources of information for things to do are travel blogs.  For example, we are booking a Ghost Tour while in Galena, an idea I got from a travel blog, not Trip Advisor.

For our trip to Galena, we will have a nice mixture of shopping, historical and informational tours, food, cocktails and entertainment.  Who doesn't love shopping and food mixed with a little bit of history and cocktails?  One of the best things about traveling as a retired person is that the trip won't be chock-full of tourists since we are traveling during the week.

Five of the six restaurants that we are choosing to visit on our trip are in the Top 10 of Galena according to reviews from Trip Advisor.  I chose the restaurants according to type of cuisine, ambiance and of course reviews from other travelers.  When traveling with a family, you will also need to consider price.  Our 3rd day will be our Spa Day - it's great to go home nice and rested right after a great spa treatment!  There are 3 great spas in Galena - the spa we chose is right in our hotel.

Any trip I have ever taken - from a week in Disney with my family to a 3-day girls' trip -  has an itinerary, a result of my Type A personality.  Although my trip itineraries are always extremely flexible,  they make me feel like we walk away from the trips satisfied that we did everything we wanted to do.  Of course, I NEVER do an itinerary for our beach vacations.  When we go to the beach house, we are on the "no schedule" schedule!

I am loving the planning and the anticipation of our Galena 3-day getaway.  Part of loving retirement is putting my strengths to use.  Hmmm... maybe I should become a travel agent!

        Galena

Loving Late July Without Anxiety

It's the down side of July.  If you are a teacher, you know the anxiety of the down side of July.  As a teacher, I would see the first "Back To School" sale announcements in stores, usually right after July 4, and my entire body would tense up.  For the rest of the summer, I would have an overwhelming feeling of "I didn't get everything done I needed to get done over the summer."  That feeling would hover over me like a big dark raincloud.  It's not that I am or ever have been a procrastinator, but there are only so many hours in the day.  Think about it - closets and cabinets to clean, windows to wash, house repairs to make, gardening, etc. not to mention for many of those years, I had children at home!  June and July were the two months I could set aside to complete projects around the house and every 2 or 3 years, take a vacation with the family.  For the many years I taught summer school, it was just July.  Yikes!

As a teacher, once the first day of school would hit in August, my calendar was consumed until the last day of school in late May or early June.   The first two weeks of August were always dedicated to attending meetings to help get school started and of course decorating my classroom. One thing that makes the teaching profession different from many others is that when teachers come home from school each day, they have several more hours of work to do and many times lose their weekends as well.  As you can see, the short few weeks we have in July (sometimes June) are very precious.

This year, I am happy to say that when I saw the first "Back To School" sale announcement, I felt no anxiety.  I did not feel my body tense up with fear that my summer was too short, that August had come way too early.  As I reviewed my calendar today, I realized that I have events scheduled every weekend between now and August 20.  Normally, this would cause me great stress and anxiety.  Not today - I felt completely ok with my full calendar.  It was a great feeling not to have a time clock ticking away at my summer.

I am loving that I don't have to rejoin the Rat Race in August.  I am loving that I can travel a few hours to be with my dad, who is having some health problems, and I can stay as long as needed.   I am loving that I can spend Wednesdays with my daughter, the one day during the week she doesn't have to coach her cheerleaders.

I am loving that this week, my 7th week of retirement, I realized that I am no longer having heart palpitations.  My doctor said it was stress - guess he was right!

Loving Retirement!

Golf Anyone?

I like to play golf occasionally - once a week is great but I don't mind missing a week either.  I guess I would call myself an intermediate golfer.  I am not a beginner, but I'm definitely not golf tournament material either!  I first played golf at around the age of 12, played in high school, but then got busy with life - college, job, marriage, kids - and didn't really take it up again until about 5 years ago.

My favorite golf game is what I call the "Do Over Game."  When you play the "Do Over Game," you hit two balls instead of one and play your best ball - every time you hit.  It's rather like playing Best Ball with yourself.  When I golf, I golf with another retired teacher I have known for many years and who is also married to a good friend of mine.  He lets me play the "Do Over Game" because it helps me improve my game.  For me, the best thing about the "Do Over Game" is that it makes playing golf a lot less stressful.  Each summer, I go back to my hometown and play golf with my family in the Northwestern Memorial Golf Outing held in memory of people from my high school that have passed away, including my brother.  That is a Best Ball Tournament and is a great social outing!

Are you required to play golf when you retire?  Of course not.  But I find it a leisure activity that you can do with other people that also has many health benefits.  My favorites are the executive courses - 9 hole courses with mostly par-3 and par-4 holes.  I walk the course using a pull cart so that I get health benefits out of playing.  Here are some great health benefits of golf:

• Exposure to nature:  Being outdoors reduces stress, anxiety and relaxes your body.  It also increases exposure to Vitamin D, which reduces the risk of depression, heart disease and cancer.
• Social relationships:  Golf fosters social relationships since it is a low key sport and has opportunities for interaction with the friends you are playing with.  
• Burns calories and keeps your heart rate up:  With all of the walking, swinging and movement you do for a minimum of 2.5 hours, you can burn up to 1000 calories with a single game.  Your increased heart rate decreases your chance of heart disease and lowers your cholesterol.
• Keeps your brain active:  Increased blood flow to the brain, using strategy, eye-hand coordination and mental alacrity stimulate your brain and can delay mental illness such as dementia.
• Low-risk injury sport:  Golf is a great way to keep your muscles engaged while limiting the risk of physical injury.
• Better sleep:  Being outside and active always make for a great recipe for a good night's sleep.  Getting a deep sleep at night is necessary for cell regeneration and of course keeping our youthful appearance!  
• Positive Mental Attitude:  Being outside in the sun and nature, being with friends and moving around release endorphins which makes you happier.  

If you have never played golf before, it's not too late to start.  You can either rent a set of clubs or purchase a set.  You can get a decent set without investing in a small fortune.  Start out by going to a golf course or driving range and just hit a bucket of balls at the driving range using various clubs.  After that, try chipping and putting from the the practice greens.  I spent the first few weeks of the summer practicing once a week at the driving ranges and practice greens before I actually played a round.  If you are really serious about taking up the sport, most golf courses have golf pros who give private or group golf lessons.  Another fun alternative is a fun getaway to golf camp.  Several of my retired girlfriends attended Golf School for Women and had a great time!  

Whatever your interest, whether it be golf, yoga, walking or gardening, keep moving the best you can and move every day.  Don't be afraid to try new things - you may be surprised.  Golf is an activity that allows you to try it at a very low level if you tend to be intimidated by it.  It's also a great way to infuse something new and different into your exercise routine.  I'm a big believer in varying your exercise routine.  If you do the same thing over and over, you get stuck in a rut and boredom can set in.  For me, the next hurdle is spinning.  I haven't tried it yet, but I'm going to!  I will let you know how it goes!

 

        My family and me playing at the Northwestern
        Memorial Golf Outing.            

Revisit Your Top 10

Last month, I created a Top 10 (actually 11) list of hobbies and interests that I would like to explore during retirement.  As with any list you create for yourself - whether it be a to-do or a goal list, checking in with that list from time to time is important in order to stay on track.  After revisiting my Top 10 list, I concluded that my activities and daily routine were in-line with my goals.  

Starting my day with leaving for the gym no later than 8:30 AM has put me into a successful exercise routine - #1 on my list!  Whether it be taking an exercise class or meeting a friend for a workout, I leave by 8:30 AM daily (taking Sunday off) to go to the gym.  If exercise is important to you, put it into your daily routine.  Don't exercise as an after thought or as something to do to fill your day.  One reason I like to start my day with exercise is because I feel that the increased oxygen gives me more energy-a great way to start the day.   Also, if you exercise first thing in the morning, you don't have to stop a project you may be working on later in the day or talk yourself into going.  Exercising first thing in the morning wakes up your body and starts your day out with a healthy activity!  

Food#2/Gardening#6:  I haven't started canning salsa just yet, a little too early for that, but I have been trying out new recipes, among them rhubarb bread and strawberry-rhubarb crisp with my fresh rhubarb, loaded potato salad, lasagna rolls, zucchini muffins, sun-dried tomato jam, and various roasted vegetables.  My husband and family have been reaping the benefits of my new interest in cooking.  An interest in cooking always goes well with an interest in gardening if it includes a vegetable garden. I am definitely enjoying my garden.  It's so much fun to harvest the vegetables and prepare them for meals while they are still fresh.  Thankfully, the deer and bunnies are leaving my garden alone.  (I'm positive that next year's garden will be even bigger!)  

Writing was #3 on my list - I've been writing this blog - besides that, I am getting ideas for a book (or 2).  Regardless if you get published or if anyone even reads your writing, it's therapeutic.  Writing relaxes you and helps you organize thoughts.  It's also a great outlet to express your creativity.  

I took an opportunity to hone my photography skills #11 when my son and daughter-in-law came home and we had numerous family gatherings.  It was a lot of fun snapping pictures of the family.  I am definitely more of a people photographer than a landscape photographer!  I do enjoy taking pictures of faces.  (Great practice for when my grand babies arrive.)  

Finally, I would like to address #8 on my Top 10 list - Create.  My new sewing machine arrived this week and I signed up for a couple of sewing classes.  I chose the Brother CS6000i.  It seemed to be pretty user friendly without investing a small fortune.  I haven't sewn anything since my kids were little and I would occasionally use my mother's machine.  Of course my new one is computerized so it should be a learning experience!  

When I put my Top 10 List in place, I decided that my family was first and foremost.  This week, I spent a lot of time with my family.  My Top 10 List was slightly ignored.  I am fine with that - that's the advantage of being retired.  You can put things on hold when something extremely important to you comes up, which in my case is my family.  

Whatever is on your Top 10 List, don't forget to check in from time to time, re-evaluate and do what makes you happy.  This is your time.  

                                                                My new sewing machine

The Right Choice

The decision to retire was made 4 years before I actually retired.  During those 4 Pre-Retirement years, I had doubts, sadness, second thoughts and plenty of feelings of loss.  I do believe those feelings were completely normal.  I started teaching right out of college.  With just a few years into my teaching career, I took on a leadership role with my local Teachers' Association as well.  That and many other leadership roles led to a 9 year stint as the local President.  Throughout my career I had successfully raised two wonderful children while continuing my teaching, my leadership roles and earning my Masters' Degree plus.  At home, I did all of the laundry, cleaning, vacation planning, most of the cooking, and even a lot of the yard work.  My days were full of professional responsibilities, meetings, running the kids to and from activities and hosting plenty of family gatherings on weekends.  I had created a professional life for myself with dozens of colleagues and work friends.  I had also created a stable domestic life for our family.  I had become the perfect image of a Supermom and I didn't know a life without a crazy and busy schedule.

Before retirement, my husband and I had not been empty nesters for too long.  Although my oldest child has been on her own for 6 years, my youngest has only been gone for two years.  I never really had the opportunity to settle into the empty nester life before transitioning into my retirement life.  After I made the decision to retire, it all started to sink in that my life was going to change dramatically - good or bad.  I had plenty of teary moments when my family and friends asked me what I was going to do when I retired.  These teary moments weren't caused so much by my inability to answer the question as they were by the stress caused by this impending major life change.  I decided to put my faith in God that this was the right decision and that He would direct me to where I needed to be - hence the "no plan" plan.  Every time someone would ask me what my retirement plans were, my response was, "Wherever God takes me."  I'm sure this sounded like a "no answer" answer to many people.  Of course I'm not saying that my life is 100% in God's hands and I am going to wake up every morning just "flapping in the wind" until He tells me what He wants me to do for the day.  That's definitely not how I roll.  My plan is to create my schedule with the things I love or am interested in (my Top 10 List) and to make sure it is flexible enough that it can be changed for a bigger cause.

My husband and I recently received some wonderful news that makes me feel that my choice is the right one for me and that the timing for my retirement is on target.  My daughter and son-in-law AND my daughter-in-law and son are both expecting.  In other words, both my babies are having babies! Being a wonderful grandmother X 2 will be added to the top of my Top 10 List!  It's time to slow down, stop and smell the roses, and enjoy the people I love.  So - that's the plan.  Retirement was 100% the Right Choice!

The Art of Decluttering

Most likely, at the top of the list of every new retiree is cleaning out closets and an overall house decluttering.  At least, they are definitely on my to-do list.  Like my mother, I am not a fan of clutter.  I don't like a whole lot of knick-knacks (dust collectors I've always called them) and being in a clean, non-cluttered environment is important to my emotional well-being.  But a misconception that a lot of us "anti clutterers" have is that the solution to having a decluttered home is to be highly organized.  Not necessarily true.  How many of us have stacks of neatly organized storage containers full of things we neither use nor want?  As I was cleaning and decluttering my front foyer closet this week, I realized that I had two large storage containers full of baseball caps and had no idea why I had decided to keep them at the time I had stored them.  It occurred to me that before I did any type of cleaning and organizing, I had to discard.  Unless it was a baseball cap near and dear to someone's heart, like my son's Mickey Mouse cap with autographs of all of the Disney characters, or by all means any White Sox cap, off to Goodwill they went!  

I recently purchased a digital copy of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up:  The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo to use as inspiration as I embark on my decluttering project.  One suggestion from that book that I found extremely helpful was to go into the project with the mindset of organizing/decluttering not by space but by category.  How many times have we organized an office supply drawer in our kitchen filled with pens, pencils, paper clips, etc. only to find yet another set of office supplies in the office or den?  Years ago, my husband and I decided to keep some of our kids' toys that were still in great shape for use by our future grands.  I realized as I was cleaning the walk-in closet in my son's bedroom (now an office/guest room) that we had been storing some of those toys in there as well as some in the closet in our basement.  With the old mindset of organizing/decluttering one space at a time, it would be likely that I would organize toys neatly in the bedroom walk-in closet and then again in the basement closet.  With the new mindset of organizing/decluttering by category, I organized all of the toys only into the basement closet after I decluttered both closets.  By doing that, it helps with putting things away after the decluttering process is completed.  If there is a toy out, it gets put away into the basement closet.  No question.

Another point the book makes is that half of the cluttering problem is "can't throw it away" and the other half is "can't put it away."  After going through the process of throwing away (which isn't a problem for me), then it's easy to "put away" if there is only one place to put things.  Unfortunately, if your spouse is not part of the decluttering process, you will have to get them into the same mindset.  My husband tends to lay things down where it's convenient for him to grab.  This habit circumvents the whole mindset of one specific place for every object and makes it impossible to have a tidy house. Part of the project is moving him along into a different mindset.  

So far, after a week, I have finished clothes, toys and books.  Not too bad.  Next is office supplies and eventually I will spend a considerable amount of time on pictures - that's a whole other topic.  I'm a big believer in "work smart-not hard" and I definitely don't want to spend a good amount of my retirement years organizing, cleaning and re-organizing!

Quality Time

One of the best things about retirement is spending quality time with your adult children.  My children and their spouses are very busy with their careers so when I was working, we had to coordinate our schedules.  I was as much a part of the rat race as they were.  It was nearly impossible to find time to spend with my kids.  My son lives in another state so our time together always included travel.  Additionally, his job requires him to be accessible almost 7 days a week.  As a teacher, my options on travel dates were somewhat limited to summers and holidays such as Christmas and Easter.  My daughter only lives about 45 minutes away, but teaches and coaches so coordinating our schedules has been frustrating.  Spending time with my family and being there for them are priorities.  I am hoping that retirement will allow me the luxury of only having to coordinate with their schedules since mine will be more open.

This week, I spent an entire day with my daughter baking.  Each year, she and her husband spend the 4th of July at his family's lake house and she likes to take goodies for all of the adults and kids (it's a big family) so we spent all day baking.  The 6 hours we spent baking didn't seem like 6 hours since we gabbed the entire time.  For me, it was a great day with my daughter - baking, gabbing, laughing and stopping for a cup of tea every once in a while.  We topped off the day with our favorite thing - shopping.  Although we were exhausted at the end of the day, it reminded me of so many just like it that I used to spend with my mother.

Soon, my son and his wife will come for a week long visit.  I will have the luxury of dropping everything I'm doing that week to spend time with them.  There will be no meetings or trainings that will come between me and time with my family.  Although my family has always been a priority for me, it was often times difficult to juggle work responsibilities with family time.  I am so very thankful that I don't have to do that anymore.  Comments my children have made make me think that they too are looking forward to a time when my schedule is more flexible for our time together.

I lost my mother about 18 months ago.  She bravely fought Parkinson's Disease for a long time.  I would give anything to have more time with her.  My father adored her and misses her every day.  Sometimes being alone gets difficult for him.  Although my brother tries to keep him pretty busy, I try and make the 2.5 hour trip by train as often as I can.  It's so much easier to do that now that I am retired - another advantage of retirement.

During the Pre-retirement Stage, people ask you, "What are you going to do now?"  As I have mentioned before, I would respond with my best answer, "I am on the 'no plan' plan."  In other words, I have a list of projects and interests, but I want nothing to do with an inflexible schedule.  As a relatively young retiree, many people commented that I was a great candidate for having a second career.  Most likely, they knew I wasn't ready for the "rocking chair on the front porch" as my father would put it.  They knew that I wasn't yet tired of working and am still extremely ambitious.   But after having a scheduled life for my entire life, I am ready for an unscheduled, flexible calendar.  Of course, I won't be out there just "flopping in the wind" every day, getting up every morning without a plan for the day, BUT I will be able to easily "tweek" my schedule to accommodate the needs of my family when necessary.  Looking forward to it.

My family:

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