My Tireless Retirement – Week 105

 

Hello everyone!  I tell you what, I’m all about celebrating milestones.  This past week I celebrated my 2 year anniversary on my retirement, but even more important, on April 5^th & 6^th I celebrated three years post heart attack.  And!  The fact that I feel better and am doing better than I ever have since going through all of that gives me great hope as I head on into the future.  Go me!

 

Easter weekend was very nice and rather relaxing.  I had an entirely different menu planned out for that Sunday, however after the BFF came up with a ham and a request for my potato salad I quickly changed things up and I was glad I did.  Menu planning works best when you are flexible.  Our dinner was amazingly good.  I even baked a Dutch apple pie for dessert.

 

With it being registration time for summer activities it ended being a rather busy work week for me.  In fact, all of April is looking to be busy for me as certain programs are gearing up and they are shuffling employees around to meet the need.  They’ve got me well scheduled this month to help them out while they interview new employees in hopes of getting someone hired soon for the additional help they need.  In May I actually plan to take some time off just to be home and to do my own thing for a bit.  I love, love, love my “job”, but I also love my time not working as well.

 

After we finished up with the bulk of registration on Wednesday we were provided with lunch from a nearby restaurant as a thank you for all of our hard work.  We completed over 10,000 registrations, approximately 7,000 were done online and the rest were made in person or over the phone.  I think that was pretty impressive.  Along with registration I also finished up my work on the city’s property tax rebate program where I personally processed over 1300 applications.  I love the positive interactions with people the most, either on the phone or in person, so regardless of what I’m doing I do find the work rewarding.  Plus, it is ever changing so it doesn’t become tedious or boring.

 

Things I Did To Save $$: 

I did not do any shopping, go out to eat or go to the movies last week.  I was able to keep the main heat turned off and only used the fireplace for a few hours each morning, two days I didn’t need to use it at all. 

As I’ve been going through items I already have in my freezers and pantry I’ve been washing out the Ziploc and vacuum seal bags to be reused.  I was able to use the vacuum bags I’d washed and saved to put away the majority of the Easter ham I cut up and divided for future meals.  I used one of the gallon size Ziploc bags to place those vacuum sealed portions of ham into simply to help me keep them together and organized in my deep freezer. 

Last month I had purchased a two pound bag of frozen mixed veggies even though my plan was to only buy a single one pound bag.  Because it was much less expensive than the price to buy two one pound bags it just made more sense to do that at the time.  I took half of the veggies from that two pound bag and vacuum sealed them in one of the washed out bags for the deep freezer so I will have that for future recipes, mainly soups or a casserole of some sort.

 

Things I Used Up: 

As I’m making my grocery shopping lists this year, last year too, I’ve been using a pad of pretty floral stationary I’ve had laying around for nearly twenty five years.  Why I’ve been holding onto these pads of stationary for so long?  I could not tell you.  Yes, they are very pretty papers, but I don’t need to hold onto them and never use them.  I finished up one pad and will be starting in on another one soon.  I have to say it is kind of nice to use these papers for my lists. 

Condiments!  Oh my holy cow, did I ever have a lot of condiments in this house.  I’ve been making a concerted effort this year to use up a bunch of these items and not buy any more new ones until I’ve made a considerable dent in what I already have.  I have bought ketchup this year, but other than that I’ve not bought anything new.  Last week I was able to finish up a bunch of odds and ends of stuff in the refrigerator and add those empty bottles to my recycle bin.  Progress is being made!

 

Delicious Easter leftovers

Meals I Prepared: 

The first half of my week I reheated and ate leftovers, mostly meals I had prepared and frozen.  I made a delicious Easter Sunday dinner using up quite a bit of fresh produce I had in the refrigerator.  I made a small batch of potato salad, a pan of roasted vegetables and an apple pie.  I also baked a ten pound ham and put away most of it into vacuum sealed bags and into my deep freezer.  I had plenty of Easter leftovers to cover the remainder of the week.

 

Thursday was a gloomy, wet and rainy day so I holed up indoors and enjoyed myself being home all day.  I watched a miniseries documentary on the war of 1812.  I love all things historical and I was particularly interested in knowing more about this particular war as it isn’t as well known as some of the others.  Plus I had ancestors that fought in this war so I had felt the pull to learn more about it.

 

I hope you enjoyed a lovely Easter and a lovely week following the holiday.  Is spring springing where you live?  My tulips are about to bloom and I have blossoms on my fruit trees now.  It is still pretty chilly most days, but no freezing temperatures overnight, which has been nice.  Enjoy your week ahead my friends!