Taking a day off from life…

Taking a day off from life….

Those of us who jumped in to the retirement life, know that we are busier than we were before when we worked.  And some of us, has wondered, how did we ever get everything done that we needed to get done, when we were working and still doing things at home.   The answer is… you did a band aid job of the what the home stuff was. 

You did the heavy duty jobs on weekends and vacation time. That is why a lot of people didn’t  do much vacationing in the older days.. There were quick trips to grandparents home, if they did not live in the same state.  That was a car trip, with food and snacks and drinks in a cooler.  And when you left grandparents house… you had your cooler filled by grandma… fried chicken, maybe some salad.. fried potatoes and cookies freshly made… for your trip home.  These were usually once a year or every other year. Depending on how far away it was…  And if they lived close by, then there were project days on the weekend, to help out grandparents at their home.

Once you retire, after you catch on, that all projects don’t have to be done in 2 days or 6… you break up the different parts of the project and you can slow it down. Even go to lunch with friends.. as the project will still be there tomorrow morning..  That is the good part of retirement. The hard part is saying NO, no thank you, I really don’t have time for that.. when some one tried to sign you up for volunteering for THEIR favorite charity or what ever…

But one of the things that makes me laugh at the newer generation… is they seem to think their two days off are THEIR DAYS OFF…  my guessing is from life as well as the job.. Because they will tell you, they don’t have time to fix this or that.. or get a project done on those two day off.. BECAUSE IT IS “MY” DAY OFF…  And no way, are they doing even an hour or two after work… just too tired….

So those of you over the age of 70…. Did you do little to nothing on your weekends or after work?  What about YOUR parents..  I know my dad would work on some of his projects for a couple hours .. some times after he ate dinner… He figured an hour here or there, was less to do on the weekend.. And if we were really lucky, and he had a couple hours free on Sunday… we got to go to the beach in the summer time.

After my dad retired, he still was working, because they had a horse farm.. So the summers were full of haying..  Prepping for getting the grass tall enough to cut… cutting, tossing it and if the weather co-operated, they got it loaded and in the barn in those few days… There were fences to mend… there was the fields to plow up…  And there were horse shows on the weekend.. Some times one day …some times the whole weekend.

In the winter it was not as busy.  I saw some wood carvings down in the basement in his work shop… when I was visiting from the West coast… I told him how cool I thought they were.. and asked.. how come you never did these when we were growing up…. And he looked at me and smiles..  “when did I have time?” Between work and keeping our place together… there was never time..

Guess he didn’t believe in Days off from Life…