So many months have whipped by, all the while I’ve been thinking time was standing still as we waited for COVID19 to be finished. It is not.
Spring, summer, fall of 2020 and now parts of winter into the new year of 2021 has continued to see Hubby and I adjust not only to Covid and world events but to our first year of retirement together. Somehow insignificant to the the rest of the events but for us, two little peas in the pod, we’ve been sorting it out.
Officially Hubby’s one year anniversary of retirement was January 23/21 and we would have liked to be not here, not in the rain of the west coast of BC – however, we are well, we are safe and we pray for the end of the pandemic. We are doing our best to do our part in complying with restrictions, guidelines and try to remain optimistic for the future.
It was not in the realm of our plans to be hanging out together, every day, sometimes all day for months at a time but we found ways to entertain ourselves. I discovered just how handy the Hubby can be when he is not occupied with concerns with employment work – much of that focus has shifted to fulfilling the job lists, created by me. Job lists, I might add, that just seem to add one or two as one or two are completed.
We have, and I use that term ‘we’ loosely because in truth, as creator, director and distributor of the job lists, Hubby seemed to end up with a large bulk of the tasks to do. Some living-room furniture has been painted, our bedroom walls painted, bedroom furniture rearranged, digging of gardens accomplished, moving some garden path paver blocks two inches to the left, and a drainage issue resolved after severals days of work in the rain. I had nothing to do with the drainage problem – that cropped up all by itself.
On my end, no slouching has happened, as I’ve been creating projects of my own, such as the one in the fall writing an article for a new local blog. You can read it here: https://surreywritersnorthof60.wordpress.com/2020/10/21/mailboxes-on-24th-avenue/
I was to be in a small artist/artisan show in December but it was cancelled due to the Covid restrictions and I had to decide what to do with the several paintings I had worked on and hoped to show.
I started off this year, on January 1st by selling a painting. There are a few of them hanging in a local coffee shop so there was a bit of a learning curve there, choosing which paintings, pricing, hanging, and telling my inner critic to take a long hike.
Hubby and I are getting ready for a grand-baby to arrive in the spring of 2021. One of those recent projects has been to sort through a dozen years of my son’s education papers, report cards, personal stories and getting rid of what he’d likely call the trauma of the school years. After a couple weeks of making decisions of what to toss and what to keep, I now have a nicely sorted bin full of milestones of years…to share with the grandchild. Perhaps the son will someday enjoy hearing about his own wildly creative imagination in storytelling as he made his love of snowboarding come to life, how boring his teachers were, on rougher days, how bad he thought the school system was, how much he loved volleyball, his friends and finally in Grade 12, after graduation how much he was going to miss the closeness of his friends and all the life activities they shared. It’s been a lot of years since that graduation, like 18 years, of me the mother storing several bins of memories – his memories.
Because of Covid, but really not thanks to Covid, neglected tasks have been accomplished. I have in the past, been a facilitator/participant of a program called Freedom Session. I had books with hundreds and hundreds of pages of writing, of processing life that needed to be sorted, some kept and the rest shredded and let go of. That task was a couple of weeks of work, physical and emotional but oh, so freeing, once done.
Our daughter has also noticed how handy Hubby is, in her case…Dad. He’s been the helper of in house drainage issues, car troubles problem solver, the go to guy to put on snow tires, and all around big heart and listening ears for the many adjustments needed in a Covid year.
There are a few more indoor tasks to be accomplished by Hubby and myself and the spring outdoor list is under development. I have big plans for Hubby.
I hope he’s ready.
Living in Truth 