The Bloomin' Move

Ah \- to be 15 years old!

I spent my whole growing-up phase of life in the same home - a little two bedroom apartment in the back of my parents bakery on the Canadian prairies - small town girl, same friends all the way through school, summers filled with playing "Knock, Knock, Ginger" and bicycle trips out to the famed Chickadee Land.  I played in a sandbox filled with sand from the famous sand dunes (Spirit Sands) just north of our little town and still remember the fun ferry ride across the Assiniboine River before the current bridge emerged.  So, to find myself moving six times in the last 14 years is so not like me! Moves dictated by crazy relationships or life changes; pursuits of inner city living or escapes to the suburbs - they have added up.  I have learned some packing tips and figured out how to make a landing and decorate a house in 3 days, but, I have not yet found an angst-free path between the old and the new.

Me hiking at Spirit Sands

I have spent the last month either preparing for the move out of our current home or planning the set up of our soon to be new home.  I have learned to make decisions, stay the path, embrace the easy and breathe through the challenging.  I have also learned to lean on those who offer a hand or a shoulder - depending on the day!  Today, in the midst of the proverbial angst, I sit and visualize the view from my new home, imagine the fragrance of the roses blooming by the patio and can almost taste the tingle of the local Chardonnay and I just know, in that one mental picture, that I am home.

In my continual, lifelong search for peace, balance and tranquility, I have not always succeeded but in the attempt to avoid the unavoidable I have sold out dreams and sidestepped amazing opportunities.  I recently posted a picture - one of those proverbial Face Book sayings that really resonated within me:

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."  Anais Nin.  

I am BLOOMING!

In China - still hard to believe!

One CRAZY Shopping Trip

When I first set out to make this move to retirement happen, I was pretty sure selling would be much harder than buying. Then, with a 3-hour quick sale bolstering my confidence, I was filled with the anticipation of an easy/breezy buying trip as I packed for the BIG weekend and looked forward to coming home with a house in my shopping cart!  Famous last words?  Keep on reading!

I have been shopping online for months to find Retirement Home #1 to kick off my retirement this July.  I finally sent my criteria to our new Realtor-on-the-ground, Alina, last week.  After spending many months renovating our last house, we made the decision we wanted a move-in ready home, quiet neighborhood, two bedrooms, one-story with a decent patio/deck to enjoy the balmy, warm evenings that the Okanagan brags about.  Easy access to cycling paths and good wine were also high on the list.  That was the simple part!  Packaging all of this into a small budget was much more challenging.

We landed in Kelowna with our bags in hand and soon had the keys to the Chevy Sonic rental car in our hot little hands.  Wheeling out of the parking lot, I realized, REALLY realized, that this was actually happening.  I was retiring.  I was moving.  GULP.  An easy drive through Kelowna on a mid-morning Friday before the tourist crowds mingled with the locals, and we were on our way.

We whizzed by orchards with black, empty branches reaching the sky.  The vineyards were showing some signs of life as their keepers were spotted cleaning out remnants of last season and fussing over their "babies". We skimmed by beautiful lakes and snow capped mountains and then down, down into the Southern Okanagan.  Even with only the first blush of spring peeping out and showing off her pink or yellow blossomed-branches or shy tulips or more showy daffodils hiding in sunny corners, there was a promise in the air that just spoke to my heart.  The closer we came to Osoyoos, the more excited I became!  Vineyards stretched from mountain to lake and orchards filled in the gaps.  Closed and boarded fruit stands dotted the landscape preparing for the summer harvest of cherries, apricots, peaches and so much more.  Signs shouted Cukes, Tomatoes and Strawberries to our parched, Albertan souls!

Like little kids, we parked (diagonal parking, small town friends!) for FREE (Calgary victims!) and explored the downtown - Main Street!  Coffee houses, boutiques, Home Hardware and wine bars - my smile grew incrementally with each short stop.  We dined on gluten-free quinoa salad and headed to the resort where we had scored an off-season suite.

Welcoming Committee!

We dashed out to the complex of ranchers we had our eyes on for a sneak peak before our official visit the following morning.  We drove through the neighborhood and my stomach lurched a little.  Old people everywhere smiled and waved.  They stopped on the sidewalk to do a double take on the couple in the rental vehicle.  No lawn mowers in this mainly desert landscape - just pretty little houses in gravel-covered yards and friendly seniors dotting the scenery.  They all seemed so old, so quiet, so......retired!  Doubt overwhelmed me!  Maybe I had overstated our wish for a quiet neighborhood.  Perhaps I had been wrong in thinking 55+ complexes were a good idea?  Maybe I was REALLY wrong and I wasn't ready to retire!  I started re-thinking my many decisions and went back to the hotel with a lot of feelings bouncing around inside of me.  I fired a quick email off to our Realtor - "Alina, maybe we should expand our search!  Maybe the Casita del Sol is TOO quiet."  With grace, she agreed to try and add some properties to our afternoon search the next day.

The next morning we WALKED to our Realtor's office.  We had the advantage as her lovely smile was posted on websites and For Sale signs all over town.  Knowing we had the right person, we prepared for our tour.  The sun was shining as we pulled into the visitor's parking at the Casita del Sol.  We checked out BIG cedar decks with lake views and cute little patios for that proverbial sip of wine.  What to do?  The neighbors were awakening on this fresh Spring day with outdoor and garage chores galore.  They waved and smiled as we walked between houses.  The house I had been day dreaming about for weeks was everything it had promised to be.  My thoughts of too quiet or too old calmed.  I easily pictured us with our morning coffee listening to the birds flitting around the mountain landscape as I typed my latest blog on my laptop. Oh, joy - I was home!  I was ready to be a RETIREE!  I wanted to embrace peace and quiet and beauty near a lake in a valley surrounded by mountains.


We bought it - that very day.  Easy. Confident. Calmly.  I discovered how much joy I had been holding back when we were homeward bound and stopped in a little park in Kelowna to finish off our bottle of wine - from the bottle!  Toasting our new house and our new life - in the beautiful Okanagan.

Guiltless Giving

I read an article from the Boston Globe about the "gift that keeps on giving - guilt, that is" and laughed out loud.  With a downsizing move in the very near future, this has been a daily topic of discussion between my two brains - the Pragmatic one and the Nostalgic one ! 




The conversation often goes like this:

N-Brain:  "I think that every grandchild should have a tea cup from their great grandma - you can't give a stranger that precious bit of china commemorating the crowning of Queen Elizabeth II, for goodness sake!  My grandmother protected that delicate piece of memorabilia for what - 50 years!"  

P-Brain (love that little pun!):  "You have never sipped one cup of tea out of that cup since the day it saw the light of day!  It has been packed in a box for like 30 years now and moved along with you each and every time.  Let it go - it will be the perfect piece for a royalist collector somewhere!  Your grandchildren will thank you!"

Let me weigh in now that no one brain wins every debate - at least not in my head!  Tears sometimes blind my pragmatic self and ruthless energy sometimes pushes past a guilt-driven wish to pay the kindness (and memories) forward.  I expect my children daring to read this blog to smile on cue when I only seek to "pay forward" what my mother and grandmother paid forward to me! and then, say "thanks, but no thanks, mom" and hand it back!

So, how do you decide what stays and what goes?  If you have personally reached this stage, do you get the proverbial answer "not now, Mom, but maybe in 10 years" or "yes" when their eyes are glazed over to hide the "what  will I ever do with that " look.  Having delivered the full set of china to my nostalgic, sweet Oregon daughter, I am now prone to be ruthless and yet I dither away.

There is a lingering fear, from my perspective, that awful moment when I find out I gave Daughter #1's wished for item to Daughter #2 - hurting feelings, playing favorites, tossing the important stuff, gifting the ugly - I think you get it.  I will need strength of conviction and maybe a small glass of Merlot to see me through those moments.  I love you, daughters-of-mine, each of you , so very much - maybe so much, I will not weigh you down with my rubble!!

I think back to the scene following my own mother's death, when her much downsized possessions were laid out in full view and realized then that the most precious items were the much used aprons she sewed from dress scraps, the rolling pin she had saved from the bakery she and my dad had owned or the recipes - handwritten on cardboard saved from pantyhose packaging and envelopes - those are things memories are made of and not the lovely little tea cup living out its life in a box in the basement.

So, pictures have been sorted and can be discarded without guilt by the receiver.  The china will be gifted or given away.  The jewelry has been labelled.  And this weekend, the dishes will be sorted.  Pictures of keepsakes will be circulated and all can speak up for what is up for grabs.  The following weekend, the charity of my choice will receive the remaining pieces - and DONE!  Or almost anyway.  I anticipate I will still be anguishing over some long ago crystal glass or bowl.  Perhaps there will be room in our new home for one box of guilt-free gifts and memories! 

Decision Day

To INFINITY and BEYOND!

When do you know?  I have asked this question many times over the past few years.  As one by one friends and family members retired, I waited for an opportune moment and then quizzed them.  Great answers one and all!  But no one could tell me when I should retire!  If you know me well, you will know that my laptop is filled with worksheets and numbers - almost as full as my head is!  I played games with crazy numbers that jumped all over the place - escaping from my spreadsheets, hiding in the tool bar on the screen or bouncing off face book pages or other blogs with similar topics.  I inhaled gargantuan meals of information that gave me mental indigestion and insomnia!  But slowly, I was able to bring order to my thoughts and corralled those numbers into logical columns.  Now, only the occasional one creates a hiccup!  

A close friend and colleague advised me last year at her retirement party that retiring is like planning to have children - if you wait until you can really afford them you will never have any!  I took that to heart and incorporated a more realistic equation into my spreadsheets!  This winter I spoke to a new acquaintance and asked my "question".  She was wise in hind sight and indicated she knew when she felt she had reached the top of her career and her future role was shaping itself through family and life events.  I added that into the calculations and finally my spreadsheets started to make more sense.  With a little more fine tuning and a majorly freezing winter nipping at my nose and toes month after month, and the decision became a reality.  I breathed deep, re-read my letter of resignation over and over and took the leap.  Four months and I will be sitting on the beach, digging in the sand, sipping the local wine and checking out the seniors recreation centre in the sunny Okanagan! 

I did not have that final piece of the puzzle until a few weeks ago - funny how the last piece falls into place when the timing is sorted out.  Once again, the exceptionally cold winter held some sway in the timing!  So now this - my LAST Q3.................

.....can become this - summer in the vineyard! 

AND THIS!

WATCH MY COUNTDOWN BEGIN!

Minimalism at Any Age

With the prospect of down sizing in the near future, I decided to tackle my photo albums.  I thought I would start out on a small project that would not mess up the house with piles of junk as I sorted and sifted.  What I didn't count on was the sorting and sifting through the memories.

Now, I know that most of these photos can be digitized and I am a big fan of the digital photography world where mistakes get caught and hidden before any money is spent!  But how do you decide which actual printed picture to toss and which one to save?  Really?!  Throwing out pictures of adorable grandchildren in several stages of birthday cake smeared from top to toe is almost like drowning puppies - well, maybe not but you get my drift.

The sheer size of my collection (which does not even include the old pictures of my own daughters childhood - those will be tougher) was enough to set my head spinning off my head exorcist style.  The family room couch was soon littered with piles of pictures I was systematically removing from albums by year.  I soon realized I would need to use some envelope system if I ever wanted to sit on the couch again within the month!  It soon became evident which years I had kids coming home for visits and which years contained weddings and births!  The height of the pile soon dictated the emotional investment as well.  So, now I have this little project spread out over every empty surface available.  Do I sort into kid-designated albums or just by year and deal with that later? Do I just keep it chronological and make subsequent albums?  Do I use themes  like grand kids or Christmas or ?  Yikes!

But, with iron willpower, I am moving forward to get this done by the end of February.  Every last printed picture is going into a well-defined album - I will not divulge the chosen system as I would hate to give away all my secrets to any child of mine checking out my blog today - but, it shall happen and memories will remain intact!  Sweet cherubs will continue to smile up at Grandma and saucy munchkins will continue to frown!  Daughter, Mother, Grandmother - photos contain the pixels of those moments but my heart, it is so much bigger than any hard drive - it contains the memories!

And I have only just begun.  Next - the kitchen!   Graduation Day must be just around the corner if I can commit to that gigantic downsize! Minimalist Grandma - here I come!

http://www.becomingminimalist.com/accomplishment-minimalist-kitchen/

Deja Vu

Seriously, how many times do you go to do something and your mother's voice rings in your ears!  I was getting dressed one day a week or so ago so I could trudge to work in -27 C temperatures and decided I would wear a long skirt which perfectly covers my capri-length leggings and I thought I heard my Mom whisper to me, "It is too cold to go without bloomers, Eileen,  You will freeze your skin!"  I almost giggled out loud.  Gone are the days of shivering in miniskirts at a Winnipeg bus stop or wading through knee deep snow with no winter boots.  I am the practical 60-something, dressing for comfort!  And my mom would be smiling at me with a "told-you-so" glint in her eyes if she were still here today!

Thanks Mom!  You live on!

I discovered I often do things without even thinking because that was the way mom did them: tape paper bags to my sewing machine to catch snippets of thread; cook beets only with the skins on; wear white only in summer; and never wear black to a wedding.  I could go on.  The brilliant day is when I hear my own daughters do the same thing!  Generation gap no more!  We become our mothers some day!  Oh JOY!

Just Up Ahead

Retirement used to be just over the next mountain, then it became just around the next curve.  Now I can see the sign post just up ahead.  My problem is that I am bouncing around on the details: when and where.  I have accepted soon!

In a previous post, I indicated YES, we were going to stay put, renovate, and live out the remaining years on the prairies.  Now? well, now that we have been living through -27 temperatures, we are thinking NO, let's look at something warmer.  Sigh.

I so relate to the 18 year old graduating from high school with parents and grandparents breathing down his or her neck - now what?  college? university? employment?  No wonder they retire to the basement and surface with backpack in hand and the graduating cash gifts going toward six months in Thailand.  Coming to terms with retirement is a lot like that.  There are so many scenarios to choose from - the decision is a life changing one and at this end of your life, there aren't too many do-overs available!

Narrowing it down to the important things helps somewhat - once the survival questions are addressed!  Now you may ask yourself if there is a backpack sitting in my front entry and cash stuffed in my pockets and I would have to say, not yet.  But if you checked my laptop you would find the www.mls.ca site has been visited quite often and the "favorites button" is flashing.  Excitement has replaced the fear I struggled with over the years - now I know I have enough to live on and even enough to travel a little - my eyes are focused forward and anticipation is building!

Late Blooming Boomer

So, let me hear you ROAR!  Too quiet, Baby Boomer-ites! We are the biggest, loudest and most influential generation ever - or so "they" say. We are heading into a longer old age than our parents experienced with higher expectations of what that might look like.  No sensible shoes and cotton stockings in my closet - well, maybe some "more" sensible shoes - but they sit alongside hiking boots and high heels!  I guess you could call me a late-blooming boomer!

I was dreaming about love and marriage when others were protesting on university campuses across our nation.  I was a stay at home Mom in the 70's and 80's when most were preaching emancipation for all of us housewives (like we were married to a house and not a man!).  I never burned my bra (thank God!) and I never took part in any libertarian march down any main street in Canada. Oh, I had thoughts and opinions and a voice, but I never held a placard or faced down a police officer other than over an occasional traffic ticket. And yet, I am a part of the very vocal generation.

Now that I have my head above water and my hands out of the diaper pail, I am blooming!  I launched into a career in education when I turned 40, progressed up the ladder of success to management in my 50's and now, I am hitting my stride and really feeling excited about what I could do to make a difference in my 60's and - boom - there's the beckoning of retirement just over that hill!   Do I or don't I?  When? And what will it look like?  I find myself gazing at a multitude of other blogs gleaning little glimpses of what retirement could be like.  I have discovered interesting alternatives to the status quo and out come the lists, the pro's and con's and all that my truly analytic mind embraces. The Top Ten Places to Retire or The Top Five Signs You Are Ready to Retire - I have read them all!   I have stacks of library books on the subject sitting beside my laptop at home and I can spend hours researching the "retirement; aging in place, boomer women" tags.

I conjured up a Plan A, B, C & D and then I stopped!  I only need Plan A right now!  Am I really ready for all of this - she who hesitates to take advantage of senior discounts because she forgets that she is already a senior in many restaurants or at  rental car places or for hotel bookings?  I feel better when they question me on my senior status - as in "I don't believe you!" than when they accept it without question!  Perhaps that is vanity but I think it is more that I just don't think of myself as a senior perhaps because I am not ready to give up what I love to pursue a new "love".  Yet.

So, I continue to hit snooze on my alarm Monday to Friday and shop for the office wardrobe every Fall because, right now, I am in that place where I can make a difference - and get paid for it!  I am keeping an eye on the "other side" full of promises of leisurely and cheap travel and passion fulfilled without pay but the bridge between this world and that one is still being built.  I am sure that when the final nail is hammered I will be ready to walk across and start my next "blooming" phase - perhaps I will be  "Boomer Spreading Her  Branches" or "Boomer Putting Down Roots" or "Boomer Pushing Up Daisies!"  No matter what, though, I will continue to be Boomer Blogger 'cause, that is where my keyboard takes me!