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2nd Friday Retirement Adventures: August

My cleaned-out work space on the last day

Retirement officially began two weeks ago, and there are both upsides (a more relaxed pace and lingering over coffee in lounge clothes and slippers on the front porch, for example) and downsides (lots of initial paperwork to replace life and dental insurance policies that don’t continue forward, for example) to this new chapter. At the beginning of my first week off, I used a green spiral notebook like the one in the image above to make a list of all the things I wanted to do — something enjoyable each week, blending in some new hobbies and routines as well.

Here are some things I’ve enjoyed in my first official two weeks of retirement, as teachers and students have returned to school:

  1. Mahjong – I went for lessons with a former teammate who is also a new retiree! We are learning together how to play the game with tiles. Unfortunately, we have also discovered the highly addictive http://www.mahjong4friends.com, an online game that has us both staying up late at night.

2. Rag Quilting – I created a rag quilt for my newest grandson, who shares my birthday. We drove down to coastal South Carolina to make the delivery and see our son, daughter-in-law, and our grandchildren who live there.

3. Morning Walking and 4. Yoga – I’ve started walking a mile each morning on the treadmill and dabbled in floor yoga and chair yoga. I seem to do much better with the chair yoga, at least while I build some stamina. Yoga looks simple and easy. It isn’t.

5. Friends of the Library Book Fair – My sister in law and I drove to Columbus, an hour away, to check out the sale. We each came away with just under ten books and spent about ten dollars. Not that either one of us needed another book. But I am in the process of reorganizing my TBR pile and increasing my reading time.

Holding out a bag, ready to fill it full of new books!

6. Local Bookstore Book Club and 7. Summer Reading Poetry Book Club – I have been in a fabulous book club with my Kindred Spirits Sisters at work, and we will continue to read and meet and enjoy book based adventures. This month’s selection is Dear Debbie by Frieda McFadden. I’ve also added a local bookstore book club (The Ferryman and His Wife by Frode Grytten) to my reading life and finished an online poetry summer book club (44 Poems on Being With Each Other by Padraig O’Tuama) hosted by a member of one of my writing groups as well.

The next couple of weeks will include two getaways in the Wayfarer, and I’ll share the adventures on those trips on the 4th Friday of August, along with a few other new endeavors. Everyone kept asking what I would do in retirement, and I’m so eager to share the ways I’m enjoying it! I have 100 things on my list…..

Retirement

it’s a new chapter

new characters, fresh-spun themes

~ keep turning each page!

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Chair Yogurt

Open Siggi's yogurt cup with spoon on wooden chair in kitchen

When my children were little and I attended a yoga session each week with a friend in my more flexible days, they called it my yogurt class. My grandfather, an old-school Southern Baptist preacher, believed that anyone who “does that yoga” was a devout Hindu. His son, my father, was also a Southern Baptist minister whose views were far more progressive and embracing of other people and cultures without threat that we would lose sight of our own roots.

I’m not over here spooning up yogurt in a chair, and I’m not abandoning my Christian beliefs. I can embrace the health and wellness offerings of a yogini who shows me the way to stretch and reach to improve my flexibility and mobility without jumping with both feet into another spiritual realm. I am simply a new retiree seeking new routines and ways of staying active, and as I’m regaining the time to enjoy the pleasure of morning stretching and getting my heart rate up, I’m trying to find my groove. I have already capsized my canoe once trying to do floor yoga, so after my morning mile on the treadmill, I tried chair yoga, and BAM! I feel like I’ve found a way to ease into the day with exercise that does not break my neck (or my spirit).

My older daughter recommended Yoga with Adriene on YouTube, and where I made it only halfway (11 minutes) through the floor stretching video, I made it all 17 minutes through the chair yoga video. I feel the blood pumping. Maybe it’s more mental than anything, and that’s just as fine with me if it is – – we all need that part of our health, too. But my skin feels alive, and I’m pretty sure I feel some synapses awakening in my head, re-igniting like those Fourth of July sparklers, celebrating the universe for helping them find life again from the far reaches of dusty closet corners where they’ve been forgotten for a long time. I feel the rush of energy to face the day, and I secretly hope my face will find the radiant glow so many retirees seem to find.

Here’s a 27-syllable title and poem to celebrate the day ~ one for each of my years in public education!

Namaste

I’m seeking

I’m searching

I’m stretching ~

exercise

on a quest

palms touching

elbows out

hands to heart

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Rag Quilting in Retirement

Whenever a new grandchild is born, I dust off their great grandmother’s Bernina sewing machine and start cutting rag quilt squares to welcome the baby in style. My mother left me her treasured Swiss machine from the company named for the Piz Bernina peak in the Alps. It’s the same one she taught me to sew on, and while I’m not the excellent seamstress that she was (nor will I ever be), I feel a deep inner joy knowing that the same machine she used to make our clothes for decades is still being used to make quilts for her great grandchildren. I hope she’s smiling with pride as she gazes down from Heaven!

A lot of times, it’s hard deciding on a rag quilt theme and colors, but this idea came easily. Since Oakley Finn and I share a birthday (July 8), I chose stars and stripes for America’s 250th. There are also narwhals on one of the square designs, and one with waves too, because these grandchildren live in coastal South Carolina and love ocean and sea creatures. Even though there are not any narwhals making the trip from arctic waters down to the Lowcountry waters, I think they fit into the scheme of things just fine.

Retirement time allows for visiting family and sewing rag quilts, and I’m loving every minute of being able to do the things I truly enjoy! I feel blessed!

Rag Quilting

generations stitched

together, transcending time

where love knows no bounds

Our 8th grandchild, born on July 8th, weighing 8 lbs, 8 oz. – the 8th member of his family!

Today is the first day back for students in our school system in Georgia. When I started feeling the tug to retire throughout last school year, I said to a few friends, “If the stars align, I’m thinking about retiring.” Isn’t it ironic that on this first day for students, my sister-in-law Bethany sent me a reminder that this very morning there will be a planetary parade of lined-up planets! It’s as if we have moved out of the realm of the stars and into the planetary universe with someone upstairs nodding a big YES on this first day that I will not be in all the school traffic trying to get to work. I’m home – – living a more relaxed pace and loving it.

Screenshot
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Night-Blooming Cereus

Several years ago, I was at the Saturday Market on the Square when I bumped into some friends selling a table full of plants. For ten dollars, I bought a well-established Night-Blooming Cereus, also called a Queen of the Night. It has long, waxy leaves and blooms only at night.

My husband reacted with humor and raised his eyebrows a little at me, wondering if I’d lost my mind. A flower that blooms at night? Who wants to stay up all night to wait for a flower to bloom in the dark?

Me. I want to see them bloom, that’s who. And more than a few times now, I have watched the petals unfurl in the dark, opening to reveal a miraculous work of natural art. After spending a day in the early part of retirement repotting all my plants that needed some TLC, I was amazed to step out onto the front porch to see that one plant (I’ve propagated the mother plant several times over the years) had six blooms. Six!

If I were curating a list of porch plants and taking all my friends plant shopping for the plants they never knew they needed until today, this plant would be at the top of the list. It never gets old watching these beauties bloom to take center stage in a world that rarely sees them.

Queen of the Night

a queen of the night

unfurls her beautiful soul

for all to admire

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August’s Spiritual Journey Thursday: Reflecting on Gratitude

This month’s Spiritual Journey Thursday (SJT), which happens the first Thursday of each month, is hosted by Linda Mitchell, who invites us to reflect on what we are grateful for in our lives. At the bottom of her post, there is a link to others’ blogs, and they are positively uplifting and inspiring for counting our blessings. Swing by and read them if you get a chance.

I’m a little late to the monthly SJT game, by like 4 days or something – which beats last month when I was a week late as the July host. I haven’t quite gotten my retirement routines in place and am still flying by the seat of my pants. But I’m flying, and I’m updating my calendar with the SJT reminders on my calendar.

My heart is grateful for the simple and most important things today. Here are just a few:

Gratitudes

for roots of home and belonging

for coffee and fresh eggs

for my childhood breakfast table

in my kitchen of today

for a fresh-clipped bundle of zinnias

from my sister in law’s garden

for time together with family

for a brother and sister in law who drove

five hours to bring me a coconut cream pie

at my retirement dinner

and friends who joined to share the evening

for watercolor painting with grandchildren

for seeing a grand-dog one last time in her life well-lived

for the warmth of my own dogs and so many in my heart

for books, for pens, for journals and memories to fill them

for writing friends, reading friends, travel friends….friends!

for deer at the salt lick in the back yard

for hummingbirds at the sugarwater feeders

for celebrating a new little grandson who shares my birthday

born safely in the tub of his own house

when his mother did not make it to the hospital in time

but most of all, for the gift of eternal life

for the promise of heaven, where we will all be together forever

when the roll is called up yonder.

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Yoga

Yoga

eleven minutes

I made it half the set time

before collapsing

Let’s just say I have some work to do. Some stamina to build. Some endurance to increase.

On the heels of walking one mile this morning, I squeezed into my yoga pants, rolled out my mat, and clicked on the Yoga With Adriene YouTube channel my daughter recommended, determined to feel the Namaste vibe and increase my elasticity of muscles and ease of mobility. After half of the session time, after coming back to my knees from Downward Dog and stretching an arm upward and behind me, I keeled over like a waterlogged canoe and gave up on the quest for deep inner peace through slow movement and bodily stretching for the morning.

I have a long list of all the things I want to learn, do, and try. Yoga is one new practice that I’m determined to stick with, and as I go through the steps of learning new and different things, I am reminded in powerful ways as a recently retired educator that learning, no matter the age and stage of life, is a process. I’m also convinced that you can teach and old dog new tricks.

This Old Downward Dog is looking forward to the challenge of growing and keeping the learning and living going full steam ahead. As they say: a body in motion stays in motion. And I’m determined to keep my canoe upright.

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Mahjongg 101

I have a looonnnnngggg list of things I want to learn and do in retirement. One is learning to play Mahjongg, a classic Chinese tile game sweeping the nation in popularity as it experiences a resurgence in its American form. I’ve seen groups playing it everywhere, including inside a Chicken Salad Chick fast food restaurant when I went in for lunch one afternoon. I’ve played a version of the game on my phone, but I’ve never learned the traditional tile game.

Until yesterday.

My friend and former teaching colleague Christian and I went together to the Griffin-Spalding County Library to take part in an introductory class taught by two ladies who came all the way from Augusta to teach beginners. They will be returning in a couple of weeks for the next session, and after two hours of strategy and rules in this new adventure, we both hurried to the counter to sign up for the next session.

We’ve caught Mahjongg Fever.

Mahjongg 101 Students

we both just retired

former teammates, always friends

learning a new game

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A Found Poem

Sometimes when I’m reading a book, I find a poem on the page. It’s addictive, and I can’t help myself – – I’ll circle the words and create a found poem. And yes, I do this directly in the book, and I write the poem on the page. If I place it into a Little Free Library or pass it along, another reader will stumble across a poem in all that prose – – and maybe it will bring a smile. I used to get in trouble for writing in books all the time when I was little, once writing my name in red crayon on the covers of all of them, and the badassery of writing in books has never left me.

Here is one from page 88 of The Ferryman and His Wife by Frode Grytten, translated by Alison McCullough.

Visions

past

the open windows

the astonishing visions

open through the landscape

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Where I’m Not

I’m always thrilled when my writing community members send me poetry prompt resources. I could sip coffee and read the prompts all day long. Audrey Gidman (audreygidman@substack.com) provided a poem for this prompt for inspiration for today’s poem: Read “I Am Not I” by Juan Ramon Jimenez (tr. Robert Bly). Write a short poem about/for the “I” who is not you but is walking beside you. A version of yourself, perhaps, or a separate self. Special thanks to Denise Krebs for sharing Audrey’s August calendar with me.

Where I’m Not

I’m not there

I’m not at that desk

in that cubicle

in that office

I’m not in that email thread

in that chain of reply all

in that blind cc secrecy

I’m not in that document

in those tangled thought-weeds

in that kudzu-strangled chaos

I’m not in that calendar

in that life-choking schedule

in that insane-paced rat race

I’m not in that meeting

in that half-charged screen energy

in that work-awaiting timewarp

I’m not in that webinar

in that can you hear me???

I’m not in that workshop

in that pen and paper jungle

in that wrinkled, wadded wastebasket

I’m not in that task

in that tsk-tsk-tsk

in that Wednesday-Thursday-Friday!!??

I’m not in that agenda

in that checked box

in that never-finished-never-enough-always-more place

I’m not there.

I’m over here in Retirement !

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The Strange Dream

Persistence of a Dream

for reasons I couldn’t explain

or simply chose not to

I kept having a dream where

it was the third quarter of

the Super Bowl and it was tied

when suddenly the

president of the NFL

casually sauntered down

one side of the field

and slung the head coach’s

clipboard and headset off

along with all he’d built

and directed him to a chair

he told him he was there to

serve a new coach now

but must be invited to

give feedback

next, he pointed to a random

fan and told her the game

was in her hands

before resuming the

time clock

after striding back

to his glass viewing box

…. play ball!