RETIREMENT AT 60 ?

FUN MONDAY - A day

Mama Rehma's challenge is :

Your Day: please describe to us your typical weekday, from when you wake up until when you go to bed, what do you do to get you up and going, how do you wind down in the evening and what happens in your life in between those times. For some of us, the drama is in the mornings and evenings and for others, it is during the day.

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My days all year around are now the same, because I don't work anymore, I only realize that it is sunday because all shops are closed.

I could describe my normal days like a pearl necklace, they are all the same.

I wake up, do my yoga exercises under the watchful eyes of 2 to 4 cats, push on the button of the perculator, feed 5 hungry cats, evenutally pick up a dead mouse out of Rosie's food bowl, take my cup of coffee and sit down at my computer to read emails and check if the posts I had prepared the day before were published at the right time.

Around 10 it's telephone time, chatting and updating news with my friends, after that shower and getting dressed. With the help of usually 2 cats I make the beds. If there is some time left I go shopping then we have a little lunch usually in form of bread, cheese and Italian ham, while watching a little crime story we had recorded before.

Mr. G then retires with two cats for a nap. I am busy with my virtual life, and in real life, in summer a little garden work, in winter usually nothing. At 6 pm I shut down my computer for the day, prepare the evening meal, eat, watch TV and go to bed.

This sounds pretty boring, but of course I also go out photo hunting, have my painting course, meet my friends, visit expositions, and wherever there is something going on in a town I am there. Belgium is so small that you can do all in one day. You drive 250 km (155 miles) in all directions and you are in Germany, Holland, Luxembourg or France.

Householdwise I am very lazy. I put the washing machine on from time to time, no ironing anymore since Mr. G. is also home and I only buy things which don't need ironing. I also push the button of the dishwasher when it's full. For cleaning I have Janka once a week, who takes care of us as if we were two children.

And for the moment I am here in Egypt enjoying the sunshine ! Retirement is nice !

THE EXCITING LIFE OF A RETIRED COUPLE

As many of you know we have 5 room tigers and therefore should be mouse free. Theoretically at least. But our cats are different, they kindly bring them home, they are as hospitable as Count Dracula.

Yesterday night I woke up because a bird chirped in my room. I found this rather strange, switched on the light and saw cat Rosie, waving with her tail and looking under a pile of cushions I had thrown on the floor. Now instead of getting up, chasing Rosie away and safe the poor mouse, I thought tomorrow morning the mouse will be gone or I will find her corpse or skeleton one day in an insolite place.

The next morning I saw Rosie running left and right and looking under my wardrobe. I called Mr. G. and declared we still had the mouse in the house. Immediately he started a big saving action. He folded a newspaper to a cone, kneeled on the floor (all bones cracked) and looked together with Rosie under the wardrobe. The mouse was sitting there peacefully and looked at them with its little eyes. Mr. G. asked me to take a broom and chase her out, but in this crucial moment the phone rang and I had to pick it up. When I finished the mouse was gone and Mr. G. swearing in Italian, tried to get up on his feet, he is rusted a bit, but we didn't need a crane or the firemen.

I went shopping. When I came back, the mouse had moved into Mr. G.'s room, under his bed and was this time intensively watched by cat Pookie. Mr. G. kneeled down again to pray and catch the mouse, without any result.

After this exciting morning, we spend a mouseless afternoon. But then came the News and while we watched some clowns who made speaches in the UNO, the mouse suddenly appeared at the door and walked quitely across the room to settle down under an armchair, probably to also watch Khadafi and the other idiot.



and that's what I saw from the sofa, isn't he/she cute ?



meanwhile my cats where sleeping happily and didn't care about the mouse or News.

Mr. G. considered to safe the mouse again, but with the cats around that would probably have turned into a tragedy for the mouse. So we decided for the night to close all living room doors and leave the window door open just the space for a mouse body.

Now the big question is : Is the mouse still in the house, or did it smell the fresh air and went out ?

We decided to keep an eye open. Being retired is a real hard job !

SMILEY SATURDAY - Retirement occupations

More participants here

Since Mr. Gattino is retired he has discovered a lot of new things to keep him busy. For example the letter box, now it's him who takes in the mail and then he complains bitterly that besides useless advertisings, there are only bills and from time to time a postcard. Poor man ! I know that the same bills arrived since 40 years.

He also has discovered that light has to be switched off in order to keep the electricity bill reasonable. So what he is doing now he checks behind me if I have left a light on and then he is totally happy when he discovers that I forgot to switch off the light in the bathroom. So as a loving wife I entertain him by switching off the light when he is in there pretending that I thought I had forgotten it. This is good for his blood pressure.

Never had he looked at phone bills. Now he does it, not for the amount of the bill, but for the length of the conversations ! Then he would say "You talked for 6 and a half hours with Ilona (the bill arrives all two months) and you see her at least 3 times a week, what the heck are you talking about ? " I only know that it must have been very important otherwise we wouldn't have talked that long.

The worst is his occupation with the cats ! Each time a cat crosses his way or sits in front of him peacefully washing her face, he thinks that she is hungry hurries in the kitchen to feed the poor thing. The poor thing to be polite, sniffs a little at the food, turns around and tail up disappears in another direction. "Do you think she is sick ?" he worries. Since he is retired all our cats became more "round" !

When I think that I married a man who didn't care about electricity, mail, bills, feeding cats, and wondering about the length of telephone conversations, I think retirement changes men !

THURSDAY THIRTEEN

13 Quotes about retirement

1. “The trouble with retirement is that you never get a day off.”

2. “Don't simply retire from something; have something to retire to.”

3. When a man retires, his wife gets twice the husband but only half the income.”

4. “When you retire, think and act as if you were still working; when you're still working, think and act a bit as if you were already retired”

5. “When men reach their sixties and retire, they go to pieces. Women go right on cooking.”

6. Stay busy [when you retire]. If you are going to sit on the couch and watch TV, you are going to die.

7. Don't act your age [in retirement]. Act like the inner young person you have always been.

8. Retirement, when every day is Saturday!

9. Retirement takes all the meaning out of weekends.

10. One of the problems of retirement is that it gives you more time to read about the problems of retirement.

11. Retirement . . . is when you stop living at work and begin working at living.

12. Retirement: The time in your life when time is no longer money.

13. In retirement, I look for days off from my days off

MY BLOGGING TYPE

Your Blogging Type is Confident and Insightful

You've got a ton of brain power, and you leverage it into brilliant blog. Both creative and logical, you come up with amazing ideas and insights. A total perfectionist, you find yourself revising and rewriting posts a lot of the time. You blog for yourself - and you don't care how popular (or unpopular) your blog is!

What's Your Blogging Personality?

I found this somewhere on a blog and tried it out and this is the result. The only thing which really isn't true is that I am a perfectionist ! I am not at all, quite the contrary. I write I don't think and I publish.

When I discovered blogging and started posting I did it for myself without thinking farer. I had finally found something which made me really happy : writing ! Of course I wrote before but that was in a little note book which nobody could read, but know I write on Internet and people even read what I write. That makes me happy. Now when I get up in the morning I have the head full of plans. I have to hunt for pictures for different themes, and to think over what to write. This keeps me busy and I love it. When I had to leave the "active" working world it hadn't been easy for me. I got depressed, I felt useless and had far too much time. Now with 4 blogs to run and still participating in the real life keeps me more than busy !! My days are filled, I learn a lot and I see a lot too. Now I can say that being retired is great ! I started a new life !