A Return To Normal

If I gave you a detailed description of how I spent last week, no one would call me “Mr. Excitement”. It was a very low key week and that is exactly what I wanted. Of course, the weekends that began and ended my time off were a little more hectic because of a munchkin that stayed at my house. This past Saturday my granddaughter, also known as “Miss 1000 Questions”, crawled in my bed at 7:30 AM after her Dad dropped her off on his way to work. The first thing she said to me was “Paw Paw, what is the tallest tree in the world”? I thought for a moment and then replied, “I think it would be the Redwood trees in California”. She replied, “I don’t mean what species is the tallest, I want to know what tree is the tallest in the world”! Unfortunately I could not identify a specific tree on the planet that would qualify as the world's tallest tree.

Most of the week I did very little. I slept eight hours a night and many afternoons I took a nap. I went to bed at my usual time and I got up early. After my morning rituals that are mostly taking my medicine and insulin shot for my diabetes, I would go downstairs and out the front door to the end of my driveway. There I would pick up my morning paper and head back into my house to make a pot of coffee. Being able to read the morning paper, in the morning, while leisuring drinking coffee and enjoying music is a simple joy that I truly love. After the morning paper I would read a few chapters from "The Land of Painted Caves" by Jean Auel. Sometimes later in the morning or afternoon I wandered around in my yard and talked to the birds and squirrels. Thoughts of work rarely broke through the force field I had constructed around my mind. I didn’t even leave my house for four days. It was exactly the kind of week that I had hoped for but rarely experience. I jokingly referred to the week as "Retirement Training". Besides enjoying the pleasure of doing very little, and only what I wanted to do, it was also a time to seriously ponder how I will really spend my time when I do retire from full time work.