My Tireless Retirement – Week 150

 

Winter has arrived.  A little late as this is the type of weather we typically have in January, not February, but okay.  Last Friday I was awakened early by my boss asking me if I wanted to stay home since the overnight storm had dumped four inches of snow and they weren’t expecting much traffic at the senior center.  I said “Yes!”.  And then she contacted me half an hour later to tell me my fellow employee’s babysitter wasn’t able to get to her house that day and did I want to come in after all?  “Yes!”  I jumped into my snow boots and headed out in my coat and pajamas to shovel the driveway.  Then I warmed up Cecil and he got me to work safe and sound.  I had no doubt.  I worked all day then headed to the library to pick up more books before meeting friends for dinner and a live performance one town over.  Then home before temperatures dropped and made everything icy.  It was a pretty good day!

 

I took the weekend off.  I relaxed, read my book, did some writing, watched some TV, snuggled with kitties, ate some good food, drank some wine and just enjoyed being at home.  It was really nice.  I have a friend that absolutely hates to be home.  I can’t even wrap my head around that.  My home is my sanctuary and I love it.  Sunday I did a load of laundry and a little bit of meal prepping as well as a little bit of housekeeping before getting back to that book and finishing it up.  For me, it was a perfect weekend.

 

I worked Monday afternoon and all day Tuesday.  On Tuesday I escorted two dozen seniors on an excursion into the mountains for a sleigh ride into a herd of elk.  It was a lot of fun.  We stopped for lunch midway to the elk herd destination, hopped onto a great big sleigh and went to see the elk herd and then rode back to the senior center.  It is days like this that make me really happy that I have my little part time retirement job.

 

Wednesday and Thursday I didn’t work as I’m now on my three work days a week schedule and I am enjoying that quite a bit.  Wednesday I ran errands – the bank, dropped off the glass recycling, etc.  Thursday we got a nice little snow storm.  I pulled out a large 10# bag of potatoes I had in cold storage and processed the majority of that bag into frozen steak fries.  Then I spent the rest of the day quietly relaxing.  I did some writing, a little bit of crafting and read.  While the snow blew and fell outside I was quite warm and cozy inside. Plus!  Now I have plenty of fries in the freezer ready to enjoy with some upcoming meals.

 

Throughout the week I focused my meals around using stuff up so nothing goes to waste around here and things are getting used up.  Last Friday I had put a bone in chicken breast into the slow cooker after seasoning it with lemon pepper and allowed it to slow roast.  It was the perfect topping for a couple large dinner salads I made.  Sunday dinner was to simply thaw out a small NY Strip steak I had in the deep freezer, make myself a baked potato and a small salad.  It was so darn good!  I had rice in the freezer and some leftover diced ham so I made a batch of fried rice.  I also made some more egg rolls using up some cabbage I had shredded last week and another half pint jar of pork sausage in my LTFS to go with the fried rice.  I enjoyed the fried rice and egg rolls twice last week.  Overall, I had a lot of variety as I used up this and that.

 

What kept you busy last week?  Did you get snow?

 

FYI - My retirement week runs Friday through Thursday