Retirement Stuff

Happy COVID/Texas Winter Fail/Hunkered Down First Anniversary to Us

/ Tracey / 10 Comments

If we can survive this, we can survive anything. Here is the proof.

Speaking of proofs, here is the artist’s concept for the custom t-shirts I had made for our anniversary beach trip to Galveston. It was cancelled by the vacation rental owner due to freezing weather, lack of electricity and probably frozen pipes. The t-shirts turned out very nicely. I just wish I’d known the Texas winter was going to be such a failure….I would have added some icicles to the design. We are planning on setting up the tripod to take pictures if we ever get out of the 20’s F today.

So, what have we been doing?

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Remembering The White Wave

/ Tracey / 19 Comments

Over lunch my husband and I were discussing our trip to the grocery store. We couldn’t believe the price of pork tenderloin had doubled since last week, or how many people weren’t wearing masks. “Remember when we used to talk about our vacation plans?” he asked. YES!

The Ombak Putih, aka White Wave, awaits us.

How I long for those discussions and experiences, in addition to talking about what’s for dinner and how long it will be before we get vaccinated. I’m amazed at how focused he can be on on the latter. Cheers to him, for that is the single greatest step back into the world of travel. We don’t just miss traveling, we miss planning it! Suzanne@Picture Retirement covered this phenomenon beautifully in the opening of her blog “Then and Now.” I thank my husband for reminding me to finish blogging about our last international trip – a month long trip that took a year to plan and book. Some of the planning challenges were logistics, shopping and packing for multiple climates and activities, getting vaccinated for tropical climates and achieving fitness goals. I even hired a personal trainer to make sure I was feeling my best while traveling to the other side of the world.

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Moving Forward

/ Tracey / 17 Comments

Plans to move to the Pacific Northwest squashed. Travel and socialization on hold. Definitely haven’t felt like writing. Taking a tip from a fellow blogger, I started looking at photos from last year’s travels. Celebrating 60 and finally embracing my status as a retiree, I was excited about the international travel we booked. But I stopped writing half way through the year. Moving forward, it’s time to write again. I took a writing workshop this week called “Mining Memories” through Thurber House to give myself a “jump” start!

A mob of kangaroos crossing the road in Western Australia.
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Egg Trouble

/ Tracey / 22 Comments

A friend suggested I add an item to my blog menu; Weird Little Problems. When I find the patience to sort through the latest changes in WordPress, I’ll do that. Meanwhile, there’s this one – egg trouble, or shall I say MORE egg trouble.

There’s something about weird little problems that give me a boost of creativity, or cause me to lose my shit – rarely both. But this is one of those times. I’ve had problems with eggs before. I wrote my first blog about Eggs Trapped in a Berndes Pan over three years ago. A lot has changed since then. And a lot hasn’t.

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Pandemic Dreaming: The EOQ of Toilet Paper

/ Tracey / 20 Comments

Today is my three year anniversary of blogging. I picked up this hobby after early retirement and started off writing about weird little problems. Now weird problems are turning up in my dreams. Some of these quarantine stress dreams have taken me back to old career dilemmas. As a supply chain manager with demanding production requirements, I was warned never to run out of anything! One of the commodities we tinkered with repeatedly was toilet paper. Limits on storage space and variable work forces kept the Economic Order Quantity in constant check. Living and dreaming through this pandemic have taught me that none of the versions of that EOQ formula are relevant. I now know the answer depends on how many cats you have, what brand you are talking about and whether there are suitable substitutions.

Photo by Chris Amaral Published by Avanti Press, Inc.
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Lessons From 6 Feet Away

/ Tracey / 16 Comments

We live in Texas. A BIG state. It’s not hard to practice social distancing. We are lucky compared to friends and family in New York City, Seattle, and San Francisco. Still, we are under a stay-at-home order. Our challenge is, which home? We are newlyweds. Plans of consolidating homes and moving to a new house are on hold while we assess the impact of the pandemic on the market.

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Artistic Wonders of Waste

/ Tracey / 15 Comments

Having just completed my second full year of retirement and getting ready to marry/combine households, my latest hobby has been trying to purge items from my home without generating waste. I’ve gotten quite good at selling, donating, regifting, recycling and repurposing. My main hobby, however, is travel and I’ve noticed a trend in the use of abandoned items to serve greater purposes.

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What I Wish I’d Known About Retirement – Your Invitation

/ Tracey / 12 Comments

I just celebrated two years of not getting up for work. I didn’t have solid plans for what I was going to do instead. My plans shifted like sands on a windy beach. I knew I would spend more time traveling and volunteering, but the rest of the time has been a lot of experimentation and a little bit of frustration. I’ve written quite a bit about my retirement revelations here on WordPress, so what’s knew? I didn’t realize, until recently, that I’m not as uniquely confused about retirement life as I thought. There are other women out there blogging about retirement transitions. Other women without kids and grandkids searching for their next in life. Other women dealing with the loss of their corporate identity.

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