Monday Morning Feb 17 #Valentine's Day

We do most of our living between Friday night and Monday morning.  Monday morning is the time to reflect on the weekend and get back into our week day routine . As I get older it becomes more difficult to get myself  moving on Monday morning.   I guess that is part of what retirement planning is about - letting go of the weekday routine and spreading the rest of your life over seven days!





Monday, February 17, 2014

Valentine's Day is over for another year.   I detest how commercial this day has become.  The marketing and advertising world has created this hype of what love is and how it should be celebrated.    Always portrayed as two beautiful heterosexual couples madly in love and the only real way to express it is through the gift of "hearts on fire" diamonds.  This serves no one but retailers and alienates many in our society who don't line up with those manufactured ideals.

Love has many forms and faces in our lives and I totally agree it is to be celebrated.  Genuine and authentic celebrations of love are all around us at Valentines.   I just wanted to acknowledge a few that I encountered during Valentines 2014:

Ellen Page's speech at the Time to Thrive Conference in Las Vegas on Valentine's Day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hlCEIUATzg#t=21


The Sunday New York Times Book Review section dedicated to Love.  One of the features was to ask contemporary writers what literature had taught them about love.  There was a great quote from Ann Patchett:

"Literature has taught me that love means different things at different points in our lives, and that often as we get older we gravitate toward the quieter, kinder plotlines, and find them to be richer than we had originally understood them to be"

My most favourite example of an authentic and real valentine moment was the Valentine's card received by our friends, James and Cathy from their daughter Olivia:

And, of course, dancing with my husband on Valentine's night.

Monday Morning Feb 10 #Let'sTakeTheLongWayHome

We do most of our living between Friday night and Monday morning.  Monday morning is the time to reflect on the weekend and get back into our week day routine . As I get older it becomes more difficult to get myself  moving on Monday morning.   I guess that is part of what retirement planning is about - letting go of the weekday routine and spreading the rest of your life over seven days!





Monday February 10

Tonight is bookclub.  We have been meeting for many years - a group of us - our members change over time -  but always we have the same thing in common - we love books.

Tonight we will discuss Gail Caldwell's Let's Take the Long Way Home.  A beautiful book about writing and friendship and loss.  

This blog is about emerging seniors.  There are few of us who get to this stage in life who have
not experienced the loss of a close friend or people that are "pillars" in our lives.  There is no easy solution to working through such grief.  And certainly no book will provide an answer.  However, Let's Take the Long Way Home is an eloquent and wonderful story that would touch the hearts of anyone who is or has had to walk that path.

Monday Morning Feb 2 Snowbirds

We do most of our living between Friday night and Monday morning.  Monday morning is the time to reflect on the weekend and get back into our week day routine . As I get older it becomes more difficult to get myself  moving on Monday morning.   I guess that is part of what retirement planning is about - letting go of the weekday routine and spreading the rest of your life over seven days!






We just returned from a two week vacation - Caribbean cruise - and a had  a wonderful time and grateful for the opportunity for a reprieve from winter.  Certainly I feel rested - how could you not since cruising life is certainly all about being spoiled- by the service, by the food, by the entertainment.  I also feel rejuvenated and  more upbeat having escaped the dreariness of our Canadian winter.

I was especially interested in the many retired persons on the ship many Canadian or from the U.S. North East or Mid West.    Snowbirds taken flight down south for a little sunshine.
Many were on back to back cruises (two in a row)  I met one couple who were on the ship for three consecutive weeks.  Another couple spent two weeks on a Carnival ship got off the ship and the same day boarded our ship for two more weeks of cruising.  
There was one couple sailing with us that had just finished sailing four months on the ship and had four more months before they departed!

The cruise director told us about a women on another Royal Caribbean ship that has been sailing for three years!  Fascinating - figures it is cheaper than a retirement home!

With all of the reward programs, sales, etc , consecutive cruising is not a bad option for an extended stay vacation in the sun.  These sophisticated cruisers  had different routines and strategies onboard and in the ports to stretch their dollars.  

We met a retired couple on one of our stops that earlier in their retirement did  winter cruising but changed to extended stays on the islands  having discovered some real bargains - they were on St. Kitts for four months this winter.

For my retirement years, I hope I am fortunate enough to be able to spend some of the winter in a more southern part of the world.  My retired shipmates have inspired me to explore the variety of options that are out there.

This was our first back to back cruise and hopefully not our last.  All I know my favourite day on board was the day that everyone else on the ship was leaving and we were staying!