OCTOBER LULL

Happy Columbus Day weekend! Most of you will be reading this on a day off. A lot of our friends and family are talking about retiring soon, and so just to show you what it is like to be retired, and never have work holidays again, I am writing about out life here this month. This month of October is probably unique in its inactivity.
Things are sure boring around here. There are no neighbors and the weather is about the only thing that distinguishes one day from another. I love it! I remember when I was younger and I was warned that being idle was a bad thing. I took that to heart when I raised my kids and tried to make sure that they always had things at hand to keep them busy. But I am just now seeing the charm, the beauty, ah no, the glamour of being idle.
First off, there is no necessity to have to hurry through anything. If I want to take a dozen pictures, plant a new bed of flowers or take a really long walk, there is not much stopping me from doing that. There is no question of making food from scratch or not-we enjoy cooking leisurely with tons of fresh ingredients and as long as Steve will chop, I’ll clean the veges and cook them. Dinner can be on the table between 12 and 3. Supper can be between 7 and 9.
Most nights we eat supper in bed in front of the TV set watching the news. After that there is the big decision: shall we read, watch a movie, or a few episodes of the latest TV series we are in the middle of? We have gone through all of the Sopranos, The Seventies Show, and Scrubs. We are now alternating Red Dwarf, Family guy, and News Radio. Next time in the states we will pick up the latest of each of these if we can. But we really are not slaves to TV, it is just fun to see what is up on our own selected shows. Italian TV used to have Gray’s anatomy, Lost, and Desperate Housewives, which I used to follow religiously in season 1. Now there is only House and Sex and the City, two shows I enjoy, but not that much in Italian. They are on after 11 PM and I am usually reading myself to sleep around then. But if I did, that is one of the other joys of idleness. If I wanted to stay up until 1 AM watching TV or a movie, I very easily could without work repercussions. That is another big plus of managing your own time.
Then again, you have time to notice everything, no matter how trivial. Take the weather and the monthly moon phases for example. We are very attuned to both of these because they play such an important part of whatever activity we do the next day. Whether it is a walk (we have routes for short, medium, and long walks), planting or hoeing, laundry, or how muddy our lettuce from the market is, it is always noted. I never had time for that when I worked, barely sticking my head outside to see what kind of coat and boots I had to wear that day.
I guess for retirees like us who had to do what we had to do for so many years, the best thing is that the only people we need to consult is ourselves. We are learning to be selfish after all those years of saying we could not do things because of our commitments. Comfortable? Extremely! And, well, there is not exactly a glamorous part, but it sure feels luxurious to roll over and sleep another hour whenever you want to.