Just Another Monday

People keep asking me what I do all day long, as if retirement means your life is suddenly on hold and you become a piece of petrified wood. Truthfully that couldn’t be more from the truth. In fact, I can’t figure out how I ever managed to devote 50 waking hours to commuting and work.

Here’s what happened today – a fairly typical Monday I would guess.

I got up at 6:00 so I could sit with my meditation group on Captiol Hill from 7:00 to 7:30. It was a good sit, where the time flew by and I heard nothing of the outside sounds of morning.

I stopped off at Deborah’s office to have my blood drawn in preparation for a physical later this week.

I came home and practiced the piano for an hour or so. I’m working on Scott Joplin piano 4-hand duets with my friend Mary. I’m also working on a sonata by Antoniotti with Deborah, as well as a difficult Schubert sonata with Bill.

I tackled a small cleaning project, going through the drawer in the kitchen where we have been throwing everything we couldn’t figure out what to do with. Someone after some party had even thrown a Ziplock containing cheese into this drawer. It was not a pretty sight. I moved on and cleaned out the lazy Susan as well. I filled an entire trash bag with things that were old or bad or unnecessary. I found things that I thought were lost. There is something so gratifying about cleaning out even a small space.

I was inspired to cook something interesting for lunch, often wanting to have my big meal in the middle of the day these days. So here was the recipe du jour for let’s just call it

Chicken-Eggplant-Rice casserole:

– Cook one cup of brown rice in 2 cups of chicken broth.
– Saute 2 onions (chopped) in a small amount of olive oil.
– Add one pepper of any color and 2 cloves of garlic (chopped).
– Add one eggplant (chopped).
– Add 2 teaspoons oregano, ½ teaspoon thyme, ½ teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves.
– Add one can of diced fire-roasted tomatoes.
– Stir in the mostly-cooked rice.
– Add in a piece of leftover grilled chicken breast, cut into small pieces.
– Add salt and pepper to taste.
– Add in some fresh basil leaves.
– Put in a casserole dish and bake at 400 degrees until the rice is thoroughly cooked (about 20 minutes).

Serve with a fresh tomato-basil-mushroom salad topped with unsalted pistachio nuts and drizzled with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing.

After lunch I took the leftovers plus a spare bicycle we weren’t using over to my elderly dying friend Florence’s daughter, who needs a way to work off some of the extra energy she builds up caring for her mom. I had tea with Florence and Lydia. Florence’s sight and balance are definitely impaired, but she is still as smart as a tack. Utterly amazing for someone with an aggressive brain tumor.

I stopped at the now familiar Healthy Back Store, where we are on a first-name basis with the proprietor since we sprang for a Sleep Number bed on Saturday. The bed was delivered today and I was there to purchase an anti-allergy mattress cover.

I came home and admired the new bed, which is at least 6 inches higher than our last bed. I quickly filled the water pillow David had ordered for me, telling myself I now have no more excuses for back or neck pain. I’ll be floating my head on water and floating my body on an adjustable firmness surface. Many people would probably describe this as certifiably NUTS! But we shall see if it makes a difference...

Then I was off to yoga for a 6:15 class with my beloved teacher Leyla. It was a nice combination of working really hard doing lunges and a million down dogs and relaxing into restorative poses as we draped ourselves over bolster pillows. After you wring out your body in a twist over a bolster, you simply cannot have any tension left.

Back home I had a light dinner of cottage cheese and a green salad topped with a d’anjou pear.

Here I am with a rather late post describing a fairly boring (by many people’s standards) day. This is just one of those days that could have been any other day if yoga class didn’t make it a Monday.

So this is the unabridged answer to the question of what I do with myself all day long now that I am retired.

My husband just asked if it was more difficult to write something each day now that I no longer have work to bitch about. It’s not more difficult to find something to write about. It’s just that the subject matter has become much more mundane. There are no more meetings. I’m simply keeping company with a retired husband and two aging dogs. It’s not exactly a roller coaster ride, but the grass isn’t growing under my feet either. So far I’m not bored and I certainly have no regrets about leaving my job. In fact, I highly recommend retirement!