Retire In Style Blog Too

I knew I was totally free of work when I began wondering if it was Monday. Really, what day of the week it is doesn't matter. In spite of that way of life, I still love Fridays. Anyway....Monday was a lot of fun this week. I made a recipe based an experience in Santa Fe a couple of years ago. I think it was Carol Cassara that brought it to my attention. She talked about baking cauliflower with a sage flavored butter. I can see the restaurant she was talking about. I love Santa Fe. And the dish is absolutely delicious. Cauliflower photographed in Woolworths store in Melbourne, Australia (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Roasted Cauliflower Coat the bottom of a baking dish with olive oil Place washed and disassembled cauliflower in a baking dish.  Crush together sage leaves, chives, garlic, salt and olive oil. Rub cauliflower with the mixture. Cover Bake at 350 for one hour. Yum! You are going to love it. I found a picture of a very small house online yesterday that I loved. I want to...

Ann is the co-founder of Midlife Boulevard. I was looking at Facebook today and I noticed that Ann Paris is speaking at a Type-A Parent conference in NYC.  The conference is for parents that blog.  It all sounds so exotic and appealing. I love NYC and all that it offers. So Ann's trip got me thinking about how I see myself in the "parent-type" scenario. See I think of the Type-A parent as above average. Their children sparkle with accomplishments and not only belong to everything they are the star in the show. I have know women that spent a great deal of time being sure that their daughter dated the coolest guys and the their sons leaped the highest on the track team. They were Type-A all over the place. I always felt just a little intimidated. We just average people. No rock stars here! I will admit that is has all turned out pretty good for us. My children are rock stars in their worlds now. Maybe it was because we were average people doing the right thing day after da...

The lovely thing about living in Oregon Wine Country is that every small trip can turn into a vineyard tour. I don't recall having a plan for that day but as we drove home to Hillsboro, Oregon from Corvallis after our grandson's graduation at Oregon State University  we found ourselves on the backroad. It was a beautiful summer day and we are retired so we have a lot of time to do as we want. We wandered up Oregon Highway 99W which runs north and south through the Willamette Valley west of the I-5 corridor. The pace is slow and the wineries are plentiful. It was just a matter of take your pick ! In this particular case we happened on to Illahe Vineyards near Salem, Oregon . Illahe is a relatively small vineyard with a setting that took my breath away. While we did buy a couple of bottles of wine, the biggest treat was the way the winery left everything out in the open so the whole process was visible. A very old Tommy Dorsey record was on the turntable and we just wandered a...

English: Manufacture of self-sealing gas tanks, , . (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I have often thought about pretense.  According to Barbara's Questionable Dictionary of Words, the word pretense  means: pretense : The act of pretending to do stuff while not doing them at all. "The pretense of cleaning was all she could muster. It was evident when you walked through the door   she had never cleaned anything." Back in the day, women talked a lot about cleaning this and that. Spring cleaning, fall house cleaning and scrubbing floors was actually the subject of conversation at any gathering for women. Washing on Monday, ironing on Tuesday and then the week moved on from there. I always loved the idea  of cleaning. But the truth is my husband and I had not spent more than a month together as husband and wife that I figured out that cleaning and being a working women was not easy! In fact, from the first weekend until this very day, my goal has been to find easier ways t...

I am at the age when each day seems like the last. The routine dominates each day and time slips through my fingers. However, on those days when I am not busy with the routine, time creeps and crawls. The trick is to not waste the time by losing it in the routine while keeping everyday  full of purpose. Sunday is the day that brings these kinds of thought to my mind. We have always looked at each other on those very slow days and said, "Sure seems like Sunday!" Back in the day Sunday was a day of rest and a whole day of "resting" made us hungry for the week that lay before us. Our first park model back in 2008.  But I have a few ideas to keeps the Sunday drags away. Brayden at age 2...he is now 7 The Japanese Gardens, Portland several years ago! Change is probably the most important factor in a long full life.  Even changing the path you take to the grocery, golf course or church can make a difference. A new perspective on your world creates a bigger vision of you...

Did I say I was going to keep my hair gray FOREVER? I am so sorry. I think I misspoke. Or I have been misquoted. See, nothing is forever in my life. The thing that keeps me thinking and acting (to the chagrin of my children) young is change. I love change a lot. Lynne Morgan Spreen posted a quote by Blythe Danner yesterday on her Facebook account. The quote by Danner was, "I feel much more confident at 72 than I did at any younger year. I feel more liberated. When you've been on this Earth this long, life just gives you permission." I agree with Danner - almost totally. While life may have given me permission to change my hair color or wear purple, I began working to give myself permission very early in life. I wanted to live each day while dancing in the rain. No one could actually liberate me if I didn't liberate myself first. Forever is a very long time I think. Waiting for life or family or even God to give a me permission to be myself would have been a big mistak...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I don't know about you but the glamor of creating my own greeting cards has lost it's luster. I like to go to the store and buy something, sign it and mail it. I had forgotten how simple it really was. And, everytime I go down that card aisle, I learn something new about aging or being a teen or what a woman wants or life in general. We are in that graduation season now and our little grandson broke his arm. We also have a few birthdays in June/July, all of which we will never remember until it is over with. Needless to say we are on the hunt for the perfect cards. As a result I know stuff about greeting cards. You can learn about misfortune from greeting cards. I saw the card today that explains why bad things happen...it's because life sucks . It must be true because I saw it in the greeting card section of a big box store.  There are very few belated birthday cards and if you do find them they are on the bottom of the rack. I am a little older,...

2014 Remember back in the day when you were so cool nothing impressed you. The moon could turn purple and you would just sniff your nose and start a conversation about your new shoes. Well, let me tell you, I must be getting younger because it is getting very hard to impress me. I am so cool. For example, my husband told me yesterday about a couple that has been married for 70 years...a very long time in my book. But then he said the woman was 86 and the man was 87. That was where I ceased to be impressed...anyone can be married 70 years if they get married when they are 16 or 17! All they have to do is keep a job, raise a family, not kill each other and live long enough. I mean really, what is so impressive about that? I often tell you that you will get old and you may as well get over it but I do not tell you HOW old you will be. My friends seem to be on the way to living FOREVER and it would surprise me if my husband and I did not follow in their footsteps. Living to be 86 or 87 doe...