Retire In Style Blog Too

Linda Myers over at Bag Lady In Waiting posted this on Facebook. I really need for everyone to read this and think about what we do to ourselves on a daily basis to make our life either better or worse. The simple choices we make will not only determine how happy we are but also how happy our friends and families are. Think about it. The one that hit me as being the most important is "What others think of you is none of your business."  How many relationships have been damaged because one of the people demanded to know that the other(s) really thought of them. Honestly, in the end we are what we are. There really is no one that can or will change all that much. All we can ever be is the best "us" that we can be. No more and no less. We need to make peace with that and find a way to live alongside others. How many times have I told friends to stop "thinking so much"? Lot and lots! They only make their pain or situation worse and nothing is gained. While the...

See, the thing is I love the holidays. It doesn't really matter about the stress or the traffic or even the money. I just love the whole thing from beginning to end. I think we such use the word " love " a lot more. So there you have it. I don't remember what year this was but I loved Christmas even then. I saw that someone actually " hated " Christmas the other day. There could be a lot of reasons why. But still, how could saying that word hate  out loud help. It seems to me that it is a word we should not use. Not that I follow my own advice all of the time. It does slip out once in awhile. A mistake was made in a statement by an acquaintance and a friend of mine said he had lied . See, I don't think that a mistake is a lie . A lie requires deceit and malice. It seems to me that calling someone a liar needs to be done with great care. But let me qualify this opinion because, even though I don't call my husband a liar , I will tell him his pants...

    The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time   (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Have you read this book?    The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time  by Mark Haddon has been out for a while now but I somehow missed it. A friend that taught for many years gave it to me...it was a Tuesday* gift so it was especially precious to me. She told me that I was one of the few people she knew that would like and understand what it was all about. I took that as a complement. See, this book is about a very unusual child that attends a school for children with special needs. His name is Christopher John Francis Boone and if he were a real person he would tell you that he knows all the countries in the world (and their capitals) and all the prime numbers up to 7507.  His personality has very sharp edges with likes and dislikes that rule his life. He will not be touched by anyone, not even his parents, he screams when he is afraid or in a place with too ma...

Ok, I admit it...I love HGTV. I watch at least one show almost every morning before I even get out of bed. Give me my TV and a cup of coffee and I am a happy woman. The episodes featuring small space living are all the rage right now. In Oregon builders are taking up the challenge and a lot of houses are appearing in the Portland area. My question here is "How small is too small?" What 100 square feet looks like. See, I think that 100 square feet is ridiculously small. That is a 10x10 room and I think that a bedroom needs to be bigger than that. But believe it or not some people are content to live in a place like that. Their needs are very little and they must feel safe with the walls very near. We live in a space that is 12 ft wide and approximately 35 feet long with an add on that is about 8 ft wide and 18 feet long. I really believe that this is the minimum that I am willing to live in for an extended period of time. The add on was just put on last year and I absolutely l...

Our friends in Arizona are very precious. We could not wait to begin this part of our life. Writing about our retirement and what is has and will mean to us has raised a lot of questions with my followers. I suppose being a snowbird is puzzling to many people. How do you manage two houses? Where do you go? How long do you stay?  And so it goes. There are so many choices these day for people that want to leave the cold in the winter. I want to talk about RV resort living today. A question I received yesterday went like this: Would love to be an AZ snowbird, but we can't wrap our brain [around] paying for lot rental for the six months we wouldn't be living there. We would be interested in any thoughts/advice about this. (We don't have an RV so would love to buy an older park model in a senior park.) Normally when people come to a RV resort like the one we live in, they will rent a park model or come in an RV.  Usually they end up buying a park model. Many of the units availab...

I have always wondered if I could really describe what it feels like to be a "snowbird". I am not talking about a person that owns a second home or travels all winter. I am talking people that fly south every winter to the same landing area. They are very like the Sandhill Cranes that have followed the same flight path since the beginning of time. Our Arizona home! It is a pattern repeated every year by thousands of retired people around the world. They all begin to get restless as the weather changes. That "other" home calls their name. I talk about this often here on this blog. Unlike people that go on vacation to the same place every year, we go home to the same place. There is a lot of difference. I suppose you need to do it before you will ever understand. It really isn't about the climate or the fancy frills but describing what is it about is very difficult. Oddly enough, the people that fly south often talk about how young they feel when the come to their...

We just made our journey from Oregon to Arizona. Several days on the road with my husband driving gave me time to think about things. For example, I am always a little anxious when we return to a house that has not been lived in for 6 months. Is it dirty? Did I leave such a mess of clutter so we won't be able to get in the door? And so on. Clutter stuck as I let it pass through my mind. I began wondering about people that are hoarders and how they can live in such chaos. In the best seller book by Marie Kondo called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing  the reader is asked to decide about their possessions. Do they love that flower pot an arrangement from the florist came in 15 years ago? And does the flower pot love being dusty and on the top shelf behind the can of nuts Aunt Phillipa sent a year later? If the answer is no and no, then out it goes. I, for example, cannot keep clothes that don't fit or are obviously out of date....