Day One!
My first day was full of glamour and adventure. After a leisurely cup of tea with toast, I read and answered emails. Once dressed, I loaded up the PTV with a huge collection of plastic and all the cardboard boxes from my many recent purchases, and it was off to the landfill to recycle!
What a propitious start!
I love to use words like propitious. Another favorite is fortuitous. Oh yeah, and indefatigable. But you can’t go around talking like that. People look at you funny. Anyway. After the landfill, I tried to call “Trailers and Hitches” in Winder, Georgia (near Athens), and the connection (now there’s an old-fashioned concept) was so bad I told the lady I’d call back.
Do you see Spike on the driveway? He's a good boy and never goes into the road.
I went outside and sat in the chair under the redbud tree. The crew GOT OUT OF BED to wander around the yard.
I had all the hitch info I might possibly need with me. I rang the place again and after struggling to identify myself and to give the reason for my call, I gave up and told the lady (who sounded like she was in a perpetual cough), “Never mind. I’ll drive over there so we can talk.”
“WHA – A -T?” “I’ll DRIVE OVER!” “O-cough-KAY!”
I did manage to complete several other calls of a mundane nature, one to the Social Security office. As I was punching in the number on my cellphone I stopped, thinking, oh darn, they’re closed on Saturdays. But wait, it’s not Saturday, it’s Thursday!
See what I mean about every day is Saturday when you’re retired?
I puttered around the house for a while, mainly sorting stuff into categories: stuff that goes to Goodwill, stuff I throw away, stuff I give to certain people, stuff that stays in the house for Felix and Julio, and stuff I keep. This sorting task is taking forever! It’s not just my things. I inherited the stuff of my parents and an uncle when they passed on. This includes several items that may have historical value from WWII days, collections of things like belt buckles, Civil War artifacts, and mountains of photos. I’ve been working on this task over a span of months. It takes a long time because memories and emotions surface in a rush and I have to put it all aside for another time.
I’ve been preparing for my getaway for several years.
Long ago I emptied the house of furniture except for a table and chairs in the kitchen and the furniture in my bedroom. For about two years my living space has been restricted to my bedroom. (Of course, I use the bathroom, silly, and the kitchen sink and refrigerator!) The other bedrooms have been empty a long time. I’ve become accustomed to the echo in the house. “Bridget! Stop that! Bridget stop that Bridget stop that Bridget stop . . .”
I figured this was practice for living in a small space . . .
. . . although my bedroom is probably four times the square footage of the interior of my Casita! And, no doubt, it is huge considering the living spaces of families all over the world. A reader asked in Comments a few posts back, “How are you going to live fulltime in a Casita with two dogs?” We’ll have to wait and see. I know one thing for sure — where I go, they go. Back to my first day of retirement . . .
The Georgia heat stopped me about three o’clock.
Spike is handsome from any angle! Um, I don't think this is Bridget's best side!
So I took a nap in the breeze of my oscillating fan! When I awoke I was so hungry I hopped into the PTV and cruised into town for lunch, no supper. . . lupper? The evening was spent reading my new book, surfing the internet, listening to the radio, and contemplating my good fortune. I slept soundly . . . with the alarm turned off.
And that was my first day of retirement.
rvsue
Hi Sue, saw your blog link on Fiberglass RV & came over – I stayed & read for awhile because while I’m nowhere near retirement, I am a dog-camping, fiberglass loving, former Athenian myself 😉 I want to recommend that you get yourself a Doxie scanner for your laptop. It’s barely bigger than a 12″ ruler, costs $150- (which makes it 1/1oth the size and 1/4th the price of other ‘home’ scanners), and it does a great job. I love having scanned copies of my dog’s rabies certificates, my car title, everything in my wallet, and so on. I’m slowly scanning & shredding old paper docs, and love the reduced clutter. Also, check out DropBox & Evernote for an online, free ‘cloud’ storage spot that you can use to back up your laptop whenever your online. Best of luck!
Hi, Julia!
Welcome! Looks like we have a lot in common. I haven’t done any dog camping yet. Maybe you can give me some tips in that dept. Thank you for the info on scanning. At this very moment the idea of spending 50 cents is more than I can bear to think about, as you will see from my next post. Ergh. Car trouble again.
Thanks also for reminding me of the availability of free cloud storage. Cloud storage was recently introduced to me. I need to look into that right away.
Love it! I have to admit though I am positively glowing green with envy (and I mean that in a nice way 😉
Sounds like the first day of the rest of your life was spent in a most “sagacious” manner.
Kim
Hello, Kim,
I’m always pleased to see you are dropping by here often.
Yes, the first day was a good one, but as it turns out, it wasnt’ “fortuitous.” The second day was a bummer, as I will explain in a post. However, a bad day in retirement is better than a good day at work!
Welcome to retirement, it is a fun place to live. It takes a while to get used to the new lifestyle, longer for some than others. I had asked an older neighbor about how he was doing in retirement and he told me he looked forward to the sunday paper because it was bigger than the others and he knew for sure it was sunday:-) He lived in a bricks and sticks house and as far as I could tell didn’t do anything, like travel or belong to clubs or organizations. I thought it was kind of sad for him, his big deal that summer was he was going to paint the house, it probably took him all summer. That was not the way I wanted to spend summer so I made plans for a different lifestyle and went for it.
Happy Trails 🙂
Kay Julia
Well, Kay Julia, you wrote exactly why I’m going for this way of life, too. I couldn’t have said it better. You seem to be doing very well at it and enjoying yourself.
I don’t think I’ll have an adjustment problem. If I ever have to go back to work, now THAT would be an adjustment! Happy trails to you, too.
I don’t think you should let Bridget prepare her own meals.
Oh, no? I don’t think I should let Bridget EAT her own meals.
You are going to love, love, love, rretirement. Absolutely love it! We also have a Casita but are not full timers. We live in Texas on our ranch and we use the Casita starting in September and go, see and do as much as possible for as long as possible, that means until the first freeze. We also have a dog, he’s a Blackmouth Cur and is a guard dog. He stays home and “guards” the house. We live only 90 miles from the border of Mexico and have had problems, so he is/was our solution, kind of. We rescued him from a breeder/trainer at 9 weeks old (that’s is a horrible story) and it just so happens, he likes no one but us or any animals so we thought, “WOW! we rescue and he came with a job in mind”. Enjoy your travels and I really enjoy keeping up with your excitement with retirement, PTV, packing and finding homes for the other two fur-babies.
Safe Travels and Enjoy the Moment,
Carmen
Carmen! Welcome to rvsue and the canine crew! I’m so glad you are enjoying my little life here in Georgia as I wait, wait, wait , to get on the road.
Your comment is very interesting. Sorry you’ve had trouble living close to the border. I bet you could tell us a story about that. Hats off to you for the rescue! I was involved for a while in canine rescue, serving as a foster home for upwards to 7 dogs at a time. (No, they didn’t sleep in my bed!) It’s been my experience that a rescued dog will find some way to show gratitude, if allowed. All my dogs are rescues. Janie never eats a meal without coming to me afterwards and putting her face up to mine with the sweetest, tenderest look in her eyes.
As my trailer pick-up day moves into mid-summer I am becoming concerned about traveling in the intense heat of Texas. I am going to head for the hills of NM. Again, nice to hear you like this blog . . . Always good to connect with Casita people!
Thank you, Barbara, and congratulations to you, too!
Ok… I’ll keep posting dog photos . . .
” although my bedroom is probably four times the square footage of the interior of my Casita! And, no doubt, it is huge considering the living spaces of families all over the world. ”
I admit I briefly thought you a bit mad to be plunging from full timing in a roomy house to a 14X7 foot space with two dogs without any trial runs first. But then I ran into this full timer in a 13 foot trailer. Probably 10X7 living area.
http://www.fiberglassrv.com/forums/f69/the-new-and-hopefully-final-layout-46605.html
Now THAT’S compact living! I doubt she carries any pets, but there might be a goldfish in a baggy back in there somewhere.
BTW, the only person I ever actually met living in a 13 foot Casita also had two pets. But they were rats. :o)
Bob
I am a bit mad, Bob. That explains everything. I can continue to function in this state of madness because of my ability to adapt to circumstances, thus seeming sane to all except the most discerning eyes.