The plans of a retiree.

(past winter-water submerged garden)

When you retire, your calendar changes.

You no longer have five days on, two off.

Your calendar is now filled with frequent doctor'a visits, dates when your social security check is deposited, and the chores associated with your present weather patterns. 

Last winter, this garden plot was was under water for months. Hence the many activities that followed in the spring, when everything was dug up, removed, cut and disposed of, to make room for planter boxes that are elevated and moved to higher ground. Our calendar from that point on indicated these phenomena and how everything else in our lives had to subjugate to that!

What was divided between work and fun, now is divided between fun and dread.

Yes, five days, or five weeks of fun, against a month in crutches, a week on cereal and water before you have enough money to go to the grocery store to pick up coffee and milk again; the dread of something braking in your body; something else in your house that needs fixing. 

(We lived in Southern Calif. most of our adult lives. Now, we realize that maintaining a house is quite different when the weather is so harsh!)

  

I hear the price of meat will skyrocket because of the drought in the Midwest. The price of fish is already up because there are dead zones that are now off limits to fishing. And, in a situation like our port, too small to get automatic dredging to maintain the dwindling fishing industry, we are looking at many folks losing their livelihood, in a town where there are few jobs already.

Those folks who travel and talk about the next journey between journeys are rare birds.

Most retirees I know journey to the next town, to stock up on essentials. Their long-distance travels are necessary evils, like visits to hospitals, specialists.

We usually take a trip down to California during our wet winter or spring. We manage to get ourselves organized enough to close our home, and travel down to visit our son and family for a week or so. We count that week as our yearly vacation; and if everything works out, they can come up and visit us in the summer when our weather is better than their weather.

Long term planning?

Sure!

To continue using our limbs and all our organs.

To continue to enjoy eating the things we love before something interferes with our digestion.

To keep our vision and our acuity so we can continue to drive and get ourselves around.

And, to see the world......