After 36 years with my current employer I am officially retired. The first morning that I didn’t have to go to work I had breakfast with my parents. Second item on my list was to start walking. Easy task for most people, but up to now, a challenging walk for me has consisted of going from my office to my car and then from the car into the grocery within 15 minutes. Keeping a realistic perspective of my physical abilities, I decide that walking to the corner and back would be a reasonable goal for my first day. That is a whole 5 houses down to the corner and then all the way back. I’m taking the Flea Taxi with me on this part of my retirement journey since she needs the exercise too, but mainly because I don’t think she will show me up to badly. She is our 9 year old buff color cockapoo who is about at the same physical level as I am. I started out walking slowly since this was a new frontier for my body and I didn’t want it going into shock even though my brain was already ripping down that path. Flea Taxi thought she had landed in heaven with all the new things to smell so she was trying to drag me along faster and I must say she did a magnificent job of watering things along the way. It was a blistering 95 degrees and 105 percent humidity, of this I am certain, because by the time we got to the corner we were both withering from the heat. Do you know how sad it is to see a grown woman shoving small dog out of the way to get to a mailbox post first because it’s the only shade to be seen? Flea Taxi barely moved the rest of the morning and I think she was actually glaring at me when I’d walk through the room. Third on my list for the day was going to water aerobics class. It was fun and I like a guy in uniform as well as the next gal, but I didn’t really want the rescue squad joining our class in the pool, so I didn’t push things too hard. I only had to have a little assistance from the receptionist to sign out. Once she lifted my arm onto the counter and put the pen in my hand I was able to handle things from there. I think my first day went really well.
Day two started with meeting friends for breakfast and shopping. More like the retirement I envisioned.
I made it to all my water aerobic classes, got a Mani and Pedi, even though I needed assistance to get my sore self into that big tall chair, did more shopping and had dinner with a friend. It was a great first week. Who would have thought that retirement would be so tiring? Once I rest up over the weekend I’ll do it all again with gusto!
