Annual Evaluation - 2014

Another year has gone by and isn’t it a wonderful thing when you can look back on 2014 and say “wow, that was a terrific year”?

I had 9 months of routine, with working in an industry that was going through a crisis.  I worked with my brother on a number of construction projects around the homestead and I prepared for my new farming venture from getting day old chicks and raising them up to be star producers, well ahead of their peers.  I learned a new craft (card making) and started a new health regimen.  I took a chance on myself and went into early retirement and after three months I can say I am quite successful.  No crying over spilled milk for me.

I did not do any travelling this year and yet I feel as though I have had a lot of adventures, perhaps by living through my friends’ experiences.  I’ve done a lot of reading about Poland in anticipation of my trip next summer.  I’ve also done a lot of reading of “old time” books, and pondering the question of old time values, wondering why society has strayed so far from those values.  I’ve spent a lot of time this year just wondering about world events, media coverage, the complete blitz of celebrity love-ins, a lack of society’s moral compass, and what an ordinary person can do to effect change.  I don’t have any answers except one, be the best person you can be, let the rest fall in place.

For the last couple of years I have found myself irritated at the constant stream of awards that the entertainment industry gives itself.  It seems to me that it starts in January and doesn’t stop until Christmas.  There must be a dozen different music awards, then there are the television awards (daytime and night time), then there are the People’s Choice Awards, the Golden Globe, the Oscars, all the Canadian award shows, until I am so fed up I refused to watch any of them even the Oscars.  I think it’s time the industry slows down and takes a look at itself and I think it’s time people start to consider if it’s healthy to hand out awards because a celebrity hiccupped in China. 

And to top off my thought on this year, I say shame on Hollywood for making a movie about assassinating a real person and calling that entertainment.  Not your best moment.

2014 at a Glance

Winter renovations; quarterly blood donations; spring break in B.C.; niece graduating from fashion school; Henriettas arrive; Bambi sprints through our life; birthday celebration; first egg; golfing; one of many retirement parties; becoming a farmer (or lady of leisure):                                   
 


Powder Room to Jewel box




Quarterly Blood Donation

                                        







Spring Break in B.C.

Niece Brit at April Grad









Henriettas are born




 





First Egg
 



Retirement Brunch with colleagues

Farmer Sanne

 

Contemplation

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I got to this stage of my life, Early Retirement and still have no real answer.  It’s as though one day I just thought ‘carpe diem’ and went ahead and did it.

I’ve certainly been planning and preparing for this time of my life for a considerable length of time, a good 8 or 9 years I believe.  I am aghast when I hear of people who retire even later without any plan.  A friend of mine mentioned a chance encounter with a 71 year old gentleman who had recently retired, without a plan and persisted in asking her (a philosophy student) “what is the meaning of life”?  What an incredibly naive question to come from someone at that stage of their life!  Even if my friend had an answer, that answer would only be valid for herself, not for anyone else. 

After our conversation I thought about this gentleman and all the other people who go through life thinking retirement will give them all their dreams, almost as though it were a pill that constant dieters wish for, that “instant gratification”.  Well folks, I am here to tell you that there is no magic bullet that comes to you sudden like at age 65.  Recalling Barbara Walters’ summation on her special about Living to 100, she felt that what all her subjects had in common was a joy of living.  Perhaps for some that is “too cheerful” so I will modify my thought into saying that what makes life interesting is just that, finding that there is something interesting in the world every day.  That could be meeting someone new who has interesting conversation, it could be a terrific new book, it could be an experience you’ve been wanting to do all your life but either didn’t have the time, means or opportunity to test.  The worst thing a person can do for themselves is to sit in a rocking chair and let life pass them by, figuratively and literally.

Not everyone may have satisfaction in a structured day, week or year but one should have a purpose in getting up in the morning.  Last night I was thinking about my mother’s generation of housewives, women who married, raised children and kept house.  They didn’t have any sort of a retirement plan; they just continued doing what they had always done, well past the age of 65.  Then I got to thinking about my generation which is perhaps the first generation of women who almost universally left high school to either go to college or go directly to work, with the thought of working after marriage and after children.  We are the first complete generation of women who have worked for over 40 years and are now entering retirement age and there is not a lot of information about “how to do it”.

I am still studying and thinking about retirement for women and have not made any conclusions but I have a feeling that the format being used for men is not really the right format for women.  Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, remember?

 

Merry Christmas and Happy Birthdays

My first Christmas Eve in Canada was spent at a neighbour’s home while my parents were at the hospital awaiting the birth of their daughter Jill.  A year later Little Sister died of pneumonia and ever after Christmas has been very difficult for my mother as she always remembers the little daughter that is no longer with us.  For years none of us even knew the birth date of Jill so we had no way of understanding why Mom was a bit of a Grinch at Christmas time.  It wasn’t obvious when we were really little but by the time we older ones were teenagers we were aware of “something”.

Today I would just like to send out a special message to all our loved ones in Heaven.  Gone but never forgotten, we love you.

Copyright Alert - My Poem

A Woman of a Certain Age

I am a woman of a certain age

Life demanded I earn a wage

Now I begin to see eyes pass me by

No longer young, no longer spry

I am a woman of a certain age

 

Mirrors of the soul tell no lies

I’ve let the laughter, and the cries

Etch themselves upon this face

Living and working at a hectic pace

I am a woman of a certain age

 

Spring, then summer, now it’s fall

Looking back, was this life too small

Faded cheek, sagging jowl, tiny lips

Little bulges here and there, yes

I am a woman of a certain age

 

I am a woman of a certain age

I’ve crossed thru life, it’s been my stage

No rehearsals, no reversals

Living with mistakes, living with joys

I am a woman of a certain age

 

Yet don’t write me off just yet my friend

It’s only the autumn, not yet the end

There’s still a dance left in these feet

My life’s not over, I accept no defeat

I’m a woman of an interesting age! 

Sanne         Nov 15/2011

Jumping Jehoshaphat

Either I am getting old or my fall off the ladder last January was so traumatic that I was rendered amnesiac as to what I was doing on the ladder in the first place.  Just to go back to the beginning of this observation, all was calm on Friday morning as we prepared to start our Christmas baking and decorating the house for the festive season.  After making a lovely “statement floral arrangement” I wanted to put my Christmas angel on the buffet to counter balance the drama but do you think I could find my box of Santas and angel?  I searched high and low for 3 days, triple checking every rubber storage tub I had, crawled under beds, climbed up on ladders looking on shelves, including the one where I subsequently ended up finding the items!  I could see nothing because I was looking for a box.  This morning my brother looked up on my bedroom shelf and asked “what’s in those bags at the back” and a glimmer of a memory came back to me.

Ranting, raving, and feeling utterly baffled for three days now I feel relieved but also a little concerned, is old age catching up to me or can I put this on the fact that when we were cleaning up that shelf last year I ended up crashing off the ladder and whacked me knee so badly that I hobbled around for almost 10 months?  I’m kind of going with the latter but I can’t help being a little doubtful.

All I can recommend is “mark everything down and don’t, I repeat, don’t lose the list”!

Beige or Grey

A comment from yesterday’s blog on navigating good and evil made me think about different shades of right and wrong.  So if I sneak a cookie from the cookie jar is it a light grey crime but if I take a nickel from the emergency fund does it become dark grey?  What is a white lie and when is it getting murky and beige?  

Last night I was pondering religion and I had a thought “I’m not afraid to meet my Maker” and then took the thought deeper.  If we have been raised to believe in God but as we get older we decide that religion isn’t for us, how far astray can we go before we are “lost”?  Every religion has its own take on that answer but I wanted to look at it from my own personal perspective.  For those who are deeply religious there really is no middle ground between white and black; there is no beige, grey or any other colour; either you believe or you don’t, period.  I thought about what the Universe would feel upon my death, if at the last moment I said “I believe” and I looked deeply at the answer – nothing.  

I don’t like to tell people what to believe and certainly I do not feel that I have any answers, much less the right answer when it comes to God, religion, or beliefs.  I think our world is complex but at the same time it is very simple.  It is made up of human beings and the greatest Right in the world is to live by the Golden Rule given out by Jesus Christ “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”.  In other words, don’t do harm to anyone.

This morning I was watching “To the Contrary” and one of the topics was campus rape and for once all the women around the table were of one accord; they felt that there should be no statute of limitations on rape.  As one of the women most aptly explained it is a life altering crime that can take years to overcome (if indeed it can every really be overcome).  Gloria Steinem spoke about “humanizing masculinity” just as feminism was humanized which I thought was a very good way of saying how men can change.  Statistics are not available on whether the crime has escalated in recent years because for decades rape has seldom been reported but no one knows what that percentage could be.

Which brings me to the final comment – just because Bill Cosby has been a well loved personality and is now an old man, do we give him a pass if indeed he is guilty of the acts all these women are now reporting?

White

For a month I have been staring at a white page on the screen attempting to summon a topic of interest and this morning looking out at the glittering white world I thought “make it a fresh start and stop being stressed”.  So here I sit thinking about new beginnings which is appropriate for various sundry reasons.  Christmas approaches, retirement stretches ahead, stacks of books, piles of resolutions and a multitude of projects all await.

All of which are material things but what about new beginnings for civilization, for mankind, for the earth?  Will there ever be an opportunity where there will be a “new heaven and a new earth”?   Every Sunday morning I listen, not to a minister preaching the gospel, but Bill Moyer discussing topics with individuals who are ostensibly seeking the greater good for America if not the whole world.  Afterward my thoughts go inevitably to the same old groove, why do we never learn beyond a certain point?  Why does it seem that just as there appears to be a turning point towards a good life for all some greedy movement pushes us back into the dark ages?

I don’t mean to be dismal about where mankind is and where it’s going but it does sometimes seem incredible that humanity does not seems to be able to kick Greed in the teeth and say “no more”.  It seems incredible that we can identify the good guys in any story but when it comes to real life we seem to be lost.  Abel is good, Cain is bad; Tarzan is good, white hunters are bad; Luke Skywalker is good, Darth Vadar is bad; the Starks are good, the Lannisters are bad; in all the stories that battle good against who of us votes for the wicked one?  The fact that books like The Hunger Games, Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings and other books of their kind are so popular is because people identify with the fight between right and wrong, good and evil, rich and poor so why do we fail in our daily lives?

Someday all of those who identify with Good will put up their hand and say “no more” and it will be an unstoppable wave.  We know the White Hat always wins in the end.

Mid-Season Evaluation (on TV)

My mother has discovered Lawrence Welk.  You know you are old when you have discovered Lawrence Welk.  Even back in the day when Lawrence Welk was on Saturday nights his music was “old”.  But curiously enough my mother made some comments that rather resonated with me when she was evaluating the difference between watching The Lawrence Welk Show and Dancing with the Stars (which she thoroughly enjoys).  She said that the people on the Welk show were very dignified and dressed lovely.  Then she said “and people in the audience listen, dance or clap in a respectful way.  There is no screaming or cheering.  It’s refreshing.”

When did society become so raucous?  When did entertainment have to be so interactive and riotous?  It becomes a slippery slope from noise, to cursing, to downright immorality.  And that is what I am noticing more and more as seasons bring on new shows.  Here goes some of things observed this season.

How to Get Away with Murder – I started to watch this series because I like Viola Davis but from the very first episode I thought “nope, not for me”.  How can I take seriously an attorney who is fornicating in her house/office with a police officer and who doesn’t lock her doors and thus her students can walk in on her doing the deed?  Really?  I should have known this was going to be an unrealistic look at “powerhouse women” when it’s from the same producer as Scandal. 

Stalker – so here’s a police officer from NYC who transfers to Los Angeles to come on the special force looking into stalkers.  Guess what, he’s a stalker himself.  Does every cop have to have a weak backbone?  [I quit Blood Blues in the first season when “Danny” started bobbing a “perp’s” head in the toilet – and he was supposed to be a good cop.]

The Mysteries of Laura – this one is supposed to be comedic but again, we have the couple divorced with the ex-husband is messing around with stray women who wander into his ex-wife’s home --- in front of  6 year old twins.

Forever – so far this one has my approval as nothing rotten has come out about the lead character (yet).

These are the only new shows I’ve watched this season.  I like bad guys to be defined from the get go.  I don’t like to see flawed heroes unless they are redeemable (think back to “Tess of the Dubervilles in high school English, remember Angel?).  For example, in Person of Interest the heroic characters are all flawed in the beginning but they are now fighting on the side of Good.  Some series I simply refuse to watch based on the commercials.  Shows like Blacklist where the lead character is a dyed in the wool bad guy.  Are we supposed to go “oh yea” when he does his nefarious worst? 

I guess what I am trying to say is that pointing out that people are flawed is not really news and glorifying these types is not adding any value to television.  I’ll continue the conversation tomorrow with a discussion on where we have come in the last 50 years of our “civilization”.

Retirement Quizzes

I have now taken so many quizzes and tests on retirement that I am exhausted but one thing I know for sure when I say I am ready for retirement I mean it one hundred percent.  All the tests prove that I am not willing to go back to work, I am reluctant to volunteer and I basically would like to just do what I want to do.  No surprises.

I’ve almost finished a month in retirement and looking back on these weeks I can say I have been supremely happy.  I feel very satisfied with what I have been doing these weeks, there is a sense of accomplishment there without any feelings of simply killing time.  I noticed a number of the questions on the various quizzes asked questions about how time would be spent in retirement, phrasing around lazing about or killing time.  I could tell these were loaded questions that would not be good to answer yes to but I honestly could say that this is not what I would be doing or feeling.

So far there has been a sense of purpose in the tasks performed but at the same time in the back of my mind there was anticipation for what was to come once the autumn tasks were completed.  I sincerely hope that the anticipation for what is next will be well worth the wait.  And as I work away I am busily thinking out themes.

The best is yet to be