November 9 2013

November 9 2013 Greetings My Friend, Two bedrooms are now painted at the MI house. We took the color back and asked them to put more white in it. They did but we still added more white and it is ok. It is almost the color range of eggshell white we like, not quite but almost. The one bedroom is staying the first color. The rest of the house will be the new version of the old color with more white. The girls are excited to have us around all day. Mindy is so needy that she crawls into my lap as I am painting the floor molding. As I move around I move her with me and she is content with that. Our calendar is starting to fill out rather nicely. I will go with MB to Celebrate Recovery and visit some old friends from there one night. Junior will hook up for diner with a college buddy one night. On another night we will meet friends for diner and Saturday is our granddaughter’s homecoming dance. There is a good chance a friend of the family will join us as we enter into our granddaughter’s festivities. My guess is that we will leave on Sunday. That part is not set in stone right now. Junior called the gas company and we will have heat tomorrow. It is nice that the weather has been on the warm side but today it is cooling off a lot. We may see if we can borrow a heater for the night or even go buy one. We will see. Junior is sleeping. Mindy is snuggled right up to him. I am on the other side of the bed working on my computer. This the most comfortable position for keyboarding at present. Daisy is curled up in the other corner of the bed nearest me. Our little family is preciously quiet and it warms my heart. I am happy that today we got started earlier. Noon time is good. Today we had Mr. Chicken for lunch and it was yummy. We ordered take out and brought it home to eat. That worked out real nice to be honest. We will be quiet for a couple of hours then we will begin to work again. That is the way work in retirement seems to be for us. Now that I’ve got this pattern down it truly is nice to work at things at a slower pace steady pace. My kitchen is a long way off from being done and frankly I am good with it. I am anxious at the same time but along with that I am good with slow progress. This more patient “Janet” continues to marvel me. We found a blanket with an eagle on it. We bought it and we have figured out where the blanket will “live” when we get home. It will go into the TV area on one of the walls. We both liked the idea so at present that is the game plan. It is getting hard for us to communicate about which house we are talking about as we get things. It is funny really but more than once we have had to differentiate about which house we meant as we have bought things. Most of the cleaning and painting things are for the Redford house. The “pretty” things are for the VA house. A time or two there has been some overlap so we realize that and explain the house from the start now. The anger with the missing things from our home for me has fairly much passed. At this point I bring it up to report what has happened. The anger and frustration are fairly much gone and for that I am very grateful. Our property manager wants to take the guy to small claims court so I truly hope we will see some of our money recouped. We will see. The main focus at this point is getting the work done and visits with friends and family. That is a much more pleasant thought process if you ask me. I like that this does not have to be the “worst ever” experience. It is bad but the drama side is so unnecessary and frankly it feels nice. MB is back to work and our visits will be more in the evenings when we don’t have other plans. She has about 2 more years before she retires and I hear a lot of the same struggles from her that I was having. We both have worked a good portion of our adult lives. We have enjoyed being working women, mothers, wives and keeping our household running. It also seems to have taken a toll on us as well. Her husband was an alcoholic my ex was an abuser and we are wore out. P another friend owned her own business and taught at the college near her. She too is worn out even in retirement. M was let go when she fell and broke her ankle. On a recent vacation she commented that it felt good to just sit and sleep while they flew instead of doing some work for her job. Our generation was the first generation of women who have worked at a job, was a wife. Some even were single parents or single and kept the home “fires” going. The more women I talk with in our age range the more I see how wore out we are. I think back to our parents’ generation and the women slowed down for sure but were not as wore out. Mom who had to work and support our family was worn out. I wonder if we have truly made great strides. I also think that if we do the same work as the man then we should get the same pay. Mom kept being told they could not pay her what they paid a man because a man had to support the family. Excuse me, Mom was supporting a family. I guess that is where I picked up my women’s lib thought process. As the years have ensued though I find myself wondering how much help “women’s lib” has really been. As I watch the women of my generation struggle I begin to really wonder. I don’t have any answers but I do ponder this from time to time. May God bless you and keep you make His face to shine on you. Love Janet