RETIREMENT

Well I’m on week two of my ‘retirement’ and I’m pleased to report that it is getting easier. After working for 6 years, at the same job, I was kind of looking forward to lounging around doing bugger all. As they say ‘Be careful what you wish for’.The first two days were spent trying to get my house into some sort of order. I hadn’t realised how out of control it actually was.

The Spanish Dingles live in a very small, little bungalow, for us it isn’t so remote but I guess to the average urban dwelling person, it may be described as rural. Its only 5 a minute drive from the main road and five minute drive from there, to the nearest town. Its approached via an old river bed which even when we’ve had the dreaded gotta fria (severe flooding), didn’t really flood, which was a bit disappointing, getting stuck in would have been a good story. The river bed is in quite good shape really with no pot holes or major rocks but the average person still finds this approach a challenge, which we’re quite pleased about as that means we don’t get any unexpected visitors.

The house itself, is like a small box really, we’ve started renovations and have a perfectly functional bathroom, of a good size, which now houses my new washing machine, which is still causing great excitement as it’s the first time I’ve ever had a new one and its performance has to be admired, everything comes out sparkly clean and smelling beautiful. I caught Rich gazing longingly at it, for ten minutes last night, on the pretense that he was ‘just checking’ it was working OK. I should explain that the reason he was checking was because our house doesn’t have mains electric, we rely on a generator which, to be fair has been very reliable but can only be turned on by Rich when he gets in from work, as to turn it on you have to kind of stand on one leg, with one arm in the air, whilst rubbing two wires together, pressing a button and saying a prayer! It’s definitely a blue job!

Our lounge is a very small, long, thin room, which we have tiled and painted but it needs painting again as the light grey paint was a mistake and just makes it look dirty.  It used to be a bedroom. We have a nice log burner in the corner which heats the whole house in the winter and two red leather sofas which we recently acquired, second hand, from knock off Nigel. They are very comfortable and soft and best of all don’t show any dirt, although since retirement  I think I may have caught OCD as they get cleaned at least twice a day. I get quite upset if anybody dares to actually sit on them, although as I write, Princess LuLu Luna Garside is beside me snoring her little head off and dribbling.

The kitchen is a makeshift affair with some very dodgy cupboards, a tiny sink, gas cooker, which you have to stand, holding the knob in, if you want to grill anything and we have a large fridge which of course only works when the generator is on, in the evening.  I’ve sussed the fridge problem though. I put bags of ice in the freezer and anything important, that needs to stay cold, you know, like wine, now lives in the freezer compartment. This works well until the weekend, when the genny is on during the day and you forget the wine is in the freezer and it pops its cork and empties itself,  causing big blocks of wine flavoured ice which mixed in with the odd fish finger crumb, isn’t very nice. The floor is concrete, has a big kind of crack in it which attracts all sorts of nasties and needs to be swept and bleached at least three times a day, as it attracts flies. We have a beautiful old farm house table in the kitchen which we never sit at, as we eat on our laps and don’t ‘do’ visitors very often, but it does fill a space and is quite useful for unloading your shopping onto, before putting it away. Today I’m lucky enough to have the genny on to do some washing, so I’m making full use of the electric situation and have put the bread maker on. I love the smell of fresh bread, although I can’t eat it due to my strict, retirement diet.  The machine doesn’t seem to be working, its making a few grunting noises but very little is actually happening. I knew I should have picked the one up that I spied at the bins yesterday, near my parents house!

We also have a very small bedroom. It has a kind of built in bed which is made of breeze blocks. It’s quite handy for storage but the mattress doesn’t fit, so  it kind of hangs over the edge and you have to do a kind of shuffle to get to the right hand side of the bed, which is quite tricky in the night, when slightly pissed, partially blind and totally un co-ordinated! The mattress is amazing, it’s a hand me down from my parents and is memory foam.  It got slightly damaged one day last year, whilst I was at work. Somebody and I’m not blaming anybody in particular, decided they would teach me a lesson for leaving them alone and broke into the bedroom and you have to be quite strong to prise the door open, jumped on the bed and dug a nice big hole in the mattress. I’ve turned the mattress around so the hole is at the foot end and sleep on the left now.  I share this room with the Chihuahuas, Rich de-camped,  due to Betsy and I snoring too much.

We had a sort of outside entertainment area and as we don’t ‘entertain’, Rich blocked it in and made it into a huge bedroom, recently and promptly moved in. He’s in his element with his huge tv and surround sound but when visiting one night I found it a bit disorientating getting out of bed onto the sloping floor! I nearly fell over. I won’t be doing that again!  I’ve also noticed, when cleaning the room, which I now do everyday, that he’s even wired up his own 12v fridge to keep his beers in!!!! It’s a real man cave.

Outside we have a beautiful bar with built in BBQ/plancha, table and chairs, sofa and a fire pit which looks great and we even used it once. We sit outside most nights, getting bitten by mozzies and during the day I drape my washing over the furniture to dry. I must erect a washing line!

Anyway after gaining control of the house, all I had to really do was keep control and ermmmm read books all day. After day two of this, I was climbing the walls! I couldn’t imagine spending the rest of my life like this. The house got on my nerves and I saw every single fault with it and believe me there were many. The flies did my head in, crawling all over me, I couldn’t watch tv as no electric, I had a car to go out in but no money and to top it all off Rich was coming home knackered and just wanting to watch TV and not talk to me!!!! I really had to sit down and give myself a good talking to. I had 3 options:

1.       Whinge, moan and whine about the situation, to anybody that was stupid enough to ask me how retirement was going and then be thoroughly miserable.

2.       Become a raging alcoholic.

3.       Get control of my life and make the most of the situation.

Although option 2 was quite tempting,  I decided on option 3. I always planned on getting my weight back down and getting fit and healthy again and have been dieting or should I say changing my lifetime eating habits, for 5 weeks now and have already lost 1 stone 1lb!

 I’ve started taking Ice (big white dog) out for a walk every morning at 8.00am, done 2 mornings now! Lol. I don’t really enjoy any form of exercise but I’m now mucking out the paddocks everyday (Naked farmer is now redundant) and I’m determined to keep up the walks. Its only for an hour and I don’t enjoy getting hot and sweaty but I’ll keep on with it until I can managed to jog it. I have to admit, Ice isn’t so keen. She almost ran and hid from me when I produced the lead this morning, I could easily have joined her!  I can’t manage taking the Chihuahuas out, they are far too unruly!

 The house is obviously in top form and I’m also seeing Harry most afternoons and we have little outings out. We braved the beach last week, not my favourite thing but I did enjoyed it. We were going again today but Harry left the factor 50 at Grandads yesterday and I’m not going out without it. We have a little list of things we’re going to do.

After re-claiming my laptop from work yesterday I’m going to start writing more so watch this space…………………………

Yep, think I’ve got a grip on this ‘retirement’ lark!