Retirement Should be Practiced First

Most of you know that I am on an extended vacation with my husband right now.  We have been away about a month and a half so far.  It’s been lovely.  Really lovely, but…

This time away has been sort of a practice period for us.  My husband is about to officially retire and as I worked for him and the business he is letting go of, I too will be out of work.  Hmm, so every day together huh, this should be interesting.

Actually, it’s been surprisingly easy to adjust to so far.  Being on vacation is different to being at home though.  You just feel differently while on vacation.  You give yourself permission to relax more.  And relax we have.  At home we used to be in bed early each night and out of bed early each morning.  Now we see midnight every night and we are struggling to get up at the crack of nine every morning.  What’s happening to us?  We can’t blame the time change anymore.

We used to snicker at some of our already retired friends who meet each other for coffee at Tim Horton’s daily.  Now we’ve caught ourselves going to Panera’s (great coffee house chain here) almost every day.  We have the special Panera customer card on our key chain for swiping and consequently we “earn” at least one free coffee or pastry every week.  It’s hard work but someone’s got to do it.

Keep in mind we still have our jobs and there are some responsibilities that have followed us here.  We each have a lap-top set up in our office sun-room, but if the outdoors beckons we have no trouble walking away from the computers. Sometimes even during emailing a response and while in mid senten…

One bonus side effect, apart from being really well rested, is that we are both getting into shape together.  Biking, running and trips to the gym are more frequent than when we were at home.  Enjoying these things together is new too.  So that’s good.

The lack of real responsibilities could become a bit of a problem though.  We noticed this when we discovered just how excited by garbage day we both have become.  Seriously.  Garbage day is huge for us.  It’s the only thing that we have to remember to do and down here it’s twice a week.  (I may write about the lack of recycling habits that require huge garbage cans to be emptied twice a week here in FL – another day though.)  Garbage day is our job, our regular scheduled responsibility and we don’t want to miss it.  We are conscientious about our garbage duties.  The night before the “big day” we make sure all of the trash cans are emptied into the gigantic outside bin, and then we roll the monster to the curb.  We do this the night before you see, because the garbage truck sometimes will show up before nine am and well, you know.  One night, we were just settling into bed when I gasped “OMG, tomorrow is garbage day and we almost forgot to put the bin to the curb!” So we both jumped out of bed and strangely energized, we ran around emptying trash cans.  As John rolled the beast to the curb I looked around and noticed nobody else in the neighbourhood had their bin out.  We were a day early.  The excitement of garbage day had crept up a whole day early.  Sad right? C’mon you can say it.  We have become sad old people who obsess on petty routines.

We both agree that a project is needed.  What that “project” will look like is still unknown but we both agree it is necessary.  Practice makes perfect as they say.  We’ve dipped our toes in the water and agree it’s safe to jump in now.  Retirement…er…new adventures here we come!