A Day In The Life....

Occasionally I am asked the question, "So what is retirement like?" I usually smile and respond, "I have no complaints."

It is no secret that I live a very low-key lifestyle. I do not zip-line in tropical rainforests. I do not take world cruises. I do not travel in an RV on adventuresome quests. I do not attempt RAGBRAI. And I certainly do not take sky-diving lessons.

As proof of my dull-but-I-am-not-complaining life, here is a sample day for me.

Monday, August 26

4:45 a.m.--Arise; Shower and dress; MAKE COFFEE!; Roll the garbage cans to the end of the driveway; Drink coffee; Put load of towels in the wash; Drive to my sister's house for an early morning walk despite the fact that it is a 1,000 degrees out and the humidity is beyond human endurance; Drive home after walking and sweating.

7:30 a.m.: Deal with a cucumber hostage situation and start a quart of sliced cucumbers for fermentation; Make peach cobbler due to overripe peaches needing attention; Scrape sticky mess out of oven after cobbler bubbles over; Fill hummingbird feeder with fresh sugar water; Drink more coffee.

8:30 a.m.--Read and respond to e-mails (mostly delete); Check on the weather (obsessively) and say good-bye to my garden as it sounds like life as we know it is coming to an end due to nasty storm possibilities; Put in another load of laundry; Catch up on Youtube channels because I simply must know if a group of through-hikers will make it to Canada on the PCT (It is looking dicey due to all the fires in the Pacific Northwest); Drink more coffee.

9:30 a.m.--Eat peanut butter toast and a banana; Work on Word Puzzles which might include Wordle (of course), Connections, Strands, Quordle, Octordle and Pilfer; Finish laundry; Read Destination North Pole by a South Dakota bicyclist (not the best book but has a few interesting moments).

11:30 a.m.--Prepare and eat lunch; Tacos are on the menu due to incoming tomatoes; Eat some peach cobbler with a scoop of vanilla ice cream (worth the mess in the oven, I think); Clean up lunch dishes.

12:30 p.m.--Unable to go out birding due to repressive weather....grrrrr....; Finish Destination North Pole book; Binge-watch a BritBox mystery (currently watching Grace); Putter at random tasks.

5:30 p.m.--Prepare dinner of burgers, fresh garden beans, garden tomatoes and fermented pickles; Enjoy another round of peach cobbler; Clean up dinner; Obsessively check the weather for latest timeline of disaster; Watch the Minnesota Twins play the Atlanta Braves (not pretty); Check the weather again; Determine whether it makes sense to go to bed due to the timing of the storms.

9:00 p.m.--Prepare for bed (yes, I go to bed that early); Check the weather, again, and decide to ignore it and let the line of storms do their thing without my assistance.

And there you have it, a day in the life of a retiree. I do not offer merch on my blog site but if I did it would be T-shirts that read:

Eat

Sleep

Do Boring Stuff

Repeat

I would also offer mugs that read:

Retired

And Not Complaining