Sadie Hawkins Day

Happy Monday everyone! It is a bit of a dull and chilly day today, sandwiched between a really nice warm day yesterday and the snowstorm expected tomorrow.  

For those of you who remember, today being the leap day, is also Sadie Hawkins Day. This thought dates me, of course.  Sadie Hawkins came from the Li’l Abner comics, which ran from 1934 to 1978.  So, if you don’t go back that far, it’s the day when girls got to ask guys to a dance.  The Sadie Hawkins dance, of course.  Now, in this day and age, women often ‘take the bull  by the horns’ and ask guys out.

Women are quite liberated these days.  We can have a family AND a career--yay!  Somedays, I wonder the wisdom of that, but I certainly had both myself.  I understand from statistics, that women are more than half the workforce now and that there are more women graduating as doctors than men these days.  So, we fought for the vote and we fought to be able to work outside the home and we got it.  But, it is still believed that we are not paid as well as men doing the same job.  I don’t know if that is true in all cases.  I know that I was well paid while I was working. At least I believed that I was.

Things have changed quite a bit in the nearly 60 years I have been around.  I remember when I was applying to university, my mother told me that women didn’t go to university, they went to college and then got married.  Well, I did end up doing community college and got married about six years after that and the marriage only lasted five years, so I kind of felt like a failure in my mother’s eyes. I did, however, have what I felt was a successful career in the IT world and have retired with a reasonable pension, so life is good.

I had a conversation recently with a woman who told me that she was planning to have a career that would likely be seen as more successful than a man that she might marry.  Interesting!  She felt that it would make her more appealing to men.  Very interesting!  How times have changed.  I can tell you that I made more money than my ex-husband and he didn’t like that at all.  Have the attitudes of men changed?

I do know several women who make more money than their spouses, but I should point out that income should not be the only measure of success.  I am a huge supporter of blue collar jobs.  Office jobs were perceived as more successful than jobs where you work with your hands, but I also know that the trades really earn good money.  I also know that either type of job can have really good benefits, which is pretty great.

I still believe that you should do what you love and love what you do.  I beat that into my kids and it has driven their careers.  I know that some people are happier working with their hands, than sitting in an office all day.  A former coworker told me once, “you never work with your hands, if you can work with your head.” Another twist to the attitude of white collar jobs being perceived as better than blue collar jobs, but I have never believed it.

At the end of the day, you put a lot of years into life in general, and I can tell you from experience that it goes much easier if you are happy to get out of bed in the morning.  So, find something that drives you and make a career of it and if you want to ask a guy out, go for it!

I believe that God will provide and if you follow the path you are intended to follow, everything will work out just fine.  Have a great week and may God bless and keep you, all the days of your lives!

Happy Anniversary!

Happy Monday everyone!  I’m late getting this blog written because I got too busy re-organizing my bathroom cupboards yesterday.  I’m afraid that I not very good at resting on the 7th day.  I must work on that!

This blog is about two anniversaries actually.  First, this is my 100th blog!  Wahoo!  Who knew I would last this long?  I’m kind of hoping that folks find these blogs at least a little bit interesting.  I realize that I am a bit all over the map with topics and there is no consistent thread through these blogs, unless you consider ‘my life’ the thread.  I should go through all of the blogs because I think that there are really only about a half a dozen major topics--God, diet, re-organizing, retirement, family and books.

So, quite a few different topics, but I am hoping that they are at least somewhat interesting.  I know that I don’t lead a terribly dynamic or exciting life and now that I’m retired, it is pretty mundane, actually.  So, we’ll see how it goes.  Mind you, I am taking the deacon’s course this year, so I might at least try to be a little more inspirational.

The other anniversary is quite unrelated.  As of this Saturday, my honey Cavan and I have been together for 13 years!  Another wahoo!  I am retired now, as you know, and Cavan is expecting to retire in 2023, when we both turn 65. I believe that I have mentioned more than once that he works for himself.  It doesn’t bring in much money, but the small businesses that he does work for really depend on him.  When we are both retired, perhaps I will blog about our travels.

Well, another week begins!  I have two more closets to get re-organized and I’ll work on that this week because next week, it’s time to start on the taxes!  My two Amish Shaker hutches won’t arrive until late April, so I’ll leave the kitchen and dining room until they arrive.Then I shall be done and can move onto the next project!  So, I will have a gap between the taxes and organizing the kitchen, during which time I am going to record some of my stories for my YouTube channel.  It’s a good thing I retired, otherwise where would I find the time?

So, enjoy the last of February and God bless!

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine’s Day!  It’s a chilly, but sunny, Sunday here in Cobourg and I have a prime rib roast in the oven cooking low and slow for dinner.  It was really too cold to do it on the smoker.  I hope I can do it justice!  Cavan had slow cooked the first five ribs from the roast on the slow cooker for New Year’s Day and it was delicious!

I hope that everyone is having a lovely Valentine’s Day with their sweetie.  I sent cards to my daughters, as I do every year.  Here in Ontario, it is Family Day tomorrow, a day to spend having fun with your kids, spouses and/or parents.  So, we have back to back holidays.

My father is in Vancouver until Wednesday, visiting with my sister and the latest grandchild, on his way back from Australia, so I can’t visit with him.  My oldest daughter will arrive tonight, to spend Family Day with me and since she has Tuesday here as well, we are going for facials.  Tomorrow, we shall just watch some movies here at home.  My youngest daughter is at the library studying (I just chatted with her).  She has only a couple of months left at university.

All is right with my world.  I am very blessed, I must say.

I have done a bit more organizing this past week--really just my dresser (the top of it and the junk drawer). I have my closet and the closet in the front spare room to do and then I’m done except for the kitchen and dining room, which I think I mentioned I won’t be tackling until my shaker cabinets arrive, which won’t be until late April.

That means that I should be done most of it by the end of this month and then, of course, the first week of March will be spent getting my taxes organized.  I always get it done early because I generally

get refunds and that arrives as an automatic deposit within two weeks of e-filing my taxes.  Always a good thing!

Well, folks, I have some reading and relaxing to do!  Happy Valentine’s Day and God bless!

Retirement Update

Good Saturday morning!  We have snow this morning in the lovely town of Cobourg.  Not enough to use the stage two snowblower that we have yet, though, I’m afraid.

Since I have been finished work for almost three months, I thought I would provide a retirement update. I am still on my mission to re-organize stuff in the house.  I should point out that I am mostly meaning going through the stuff in closets, although the rearranging of furniture has been involved in the basement.

For those of you who don’t know my house, it is essentially a bungalow, with a mostly finished basement.  We have two bedrooms upstairs, along with the livingroom/diningroom/kitchen area, which is open concept.  Downstairs, we have another bedroom, an exercise room, rec room and office.  We also have three bathrooms, two upstairs and one downstairs.  My plan was to haul all the stuff out of the closets and get rid of what I can, and reorganize the rest.  This also included under the stairs and all the shelves in the utility room (the only unfinished room we have).

Okay, so that sets the scene.  In order to be able to actually relax in retirement, I wanted to declutter.  So that is my focus for this year.  I should point out that some of it I cannot do, because it is Cavan’s stuff (who knew you could have hundreds of different types and colors of computer cables?).  I should also mention that the garage needed to be done since I hadn’t been able to get the car into the garage since the first winter we were here.

So, garage done and the car in.  Cavan still needs to go through the boxes he got on shelves, but, we have room for the car.  Under the stairs is done and it now just hosts some boxes of stuff that belongs to my kids (including over 150 beanie babies!) and the Christmas decorations. The utility room is done, except for the work Cavan needs to do, which includes getting a server out of a box and mounted into the server rack, with the other servers and NAS boxes.

The new bookshelves in our little gym are done, which now includes the 32 empty cat bottles of wine in my collection.  The rec room is done--with all printers removed, I might add!  We also purchased and assembled a fireplace/TV stand, which makes it quite cozy.  The office is mostly done, but still needs a bit of work.  For me, it just needs some more filing of paper and for Cavan, it is organizing various computer bits like cables, monitors, etc.

I got the upstairs front closet done yesterday, noting just how many coats we own!  Some are going to charity, along with some other clothes that I have already pulled out of my wardrobe.  I will finish the clothing purge this weekend. I have put the lesser used items in the spare room closets.

So, lots done and yet a bit more to do--three upstairs closets, including the linen closet and the kitchen.  I have ordered two new Amish shaker cabinets, so I won’t do the kitchen until those have arrived, so I can organize it all at once.

If I get nothing but organizing and reading done this year, I shall be happy.  Next year, my focus will be organizing pictures.  My girls are in their mid twenties and yet, I still haven’t organized their school pictures.  I plan to scan the school pictures all in and create one big poster sized one with their post secondary graduation picture in the middle and the others all around it.  Next year.

It has been interesting to go from worrying about cyber security as a career, to just being concerned with what I have in my house, but I am loving the break!  AND, I am catching up on reading!

God bless you all and good luck with all of your home projects!