Like The Queen
Whatever happens to strike my fancy, but surely some sort of fiber content.

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I'm already retired (achieved early when my company merged with another and I was downsized) and I'm using this part of my life to do some things I didn't have time for earlier. I've traveled quite a bit and look forward to doing more of that. Meeting new people on the trips makes them more enjoyable. Just this week I learned of a program where you can volunteer in Spain to speak English for a week to people who need to be fluent in English for their careers, etc. You pay to get to Spain and the first and last nights in a hotel but your room and board for the week between are paid for and you can't speak Spanish to be accepted. What a great way to go to Spain! Got the Elderhostal catalogue yesterday and what a wealth of opportunities to learn about a host of things and travel at modest cost at the same time. If I can do any of these, I'll be staving off Altsheimer's while I'm having fun. I think we just need to give ourselves permission to approach things with a child-like wonder.

By Anonymous Anonymous, at 11:03 AM  

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Saturday, March 26, 2005  

It’s a quiet morning in my world. I zipped through my morning routine so quickly I have time for a blog entry after all. I must be on the road by 8:45 and I hadn’t thought I’d even have time to post.

It’s a suitably gloomy day for staying indoors. We’ve had such a cold wet spring that I might have resented a golden sunshine Saturday spent in the bead cave. Instead, I’m getting a little more weather permission to stay inside. The closest thing to sunshine promised us by the weather dot com guys is partly cloudy on Wednesday. Other than that it’s 10 days of rain.

I picked up the baby sweater yesterday and got those sleeves attached. I’m knitting my way around the widest part now and have about 15 more rounds to go before I begin decreasing. I’ll do that in the purl stitches so that this wide flat ribbing narrows towards the neckline. I hope to have a pair of wee booties and even a cap done before April 12 when the baby shower will welcome a special guest of honor. Miss Ruth Margaret decided to come yesterday instead of in May. The word is she was indignant at being whisked off to the NNU, kicking and screaming. Happily, the line of foot stomping shoulder shrugging H women is still going strong.

This new generation is flowing in like the tide, a ripple here, a lapping wave there, then a little ebb to give people a breather. All my life my ambitions and fantasies, my focus, was on becoming AMother. I never had any daydreams about LifeAfterKids and in fact, the ones I have now are fairly pale. I enjoy what is happening in my world and when truly exciting events, like TheWedding, enter the picture, I can be as swept up in the excitement as the next person. But I don’t have projections about what comes next, or deep powerful longings. I will be glad to retire, but I’m in no hurry to skip the next 13 years either. I am just made that way. The big deal was having my children and ... well, my children turned out to be one boy who is now a man and it’s his turn. I’m blessed that GD really is a Darling and I am going to have a powerfully good time when they start a family. I’m doubly blessed that they live near by.

It’s just that I don’t know how to daydream about this second part of my life. I can choose goals and achieve them. But that’s more like ticking off items on a list than dreaming of rosy futures. It’s fun, too. I love strategic planning. I sometimes like to carry out those plans. But they are not the same thing as fantasy daydreams, that glowy misty magical horizon that edged my youth. And since all my fantasies were about becoming something I was biologically intended to become, it isn’t really much of a surprise that my daydreams did come true.

Since my retirement from Momdom, though, sometime in the summer of 1994, life has been much more serendipitous, much less predictable. The things that have popped up on my radar screen have been unknowns, strange and surprising. Who would have thought I would have been the entrepreneurial force that would bring Internet access to a rural community years before the dot com revolution? Who would have believed I would spearhead a million dollar campaign for a new library in a county where 40% of the adults didn’t graduate from high school? Whoda’ thought I’d discover spinning wheels - much less own two?

When I hear about the “wonder of childhood” I always bite my lips closed. No point in arguing about something so subjective. Childhood was not that wonder full to me. It was an ordeal I had to get through, made easier by retreating into the pod. My young adult life was the fulfillment of the promises I made myself, back when I was 7, though their fulfillment was fairly predictable. But this second half of adult life is the one full of wonder, amazement and strange new things. For sure, today’s offering will be ... beads!

posted by Bess | 7:28 AM
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