For a big part of my life I have been a big city elementary school teacher and a curriculum writer, a stay at home mom, a dog mom, a sports and school chauffer, school volunteer, housewife and homemaker, home project planner, hostess, scrapbooker, and amateur photographer.
Now that I’m in what I consider the transition years, many of my above occupations are in the past. I’m still a mom, but as a mom of an adult son, there is not a lot of chauffeuring in my schedule. I’m still a dog mom, currently with a brand new puppy. I’m still a wife, but hopefully, as my husband cuts down on his work hours, I will be more of a wife to a husband, and less of a wife to a house!
Lake Life
Since Covid I have been living much of the time in our vacation/retirement home on the lake. We purchased this in 2008 when we found that my husband’s 70 hour a week job would likely not allow vacations and we decided to have a 1-2 year experiment with an additional home on a lake. We are still here on the lake! We are also still in the big city. Sometime in the next few years we will need to make a decision about a permanent location for our retirement years, and about how to adapt the home we choose to our retirement needs. Since we love both areas and both sets of neighbors, this will be a difficult decision. So, if our dining room looks vastly different in the tablescape pictures, it’s because I am still doing tables at both houses. If our outdoor pictures look very different, its because one house has the lake behind it and the other house has the “lake like” black bottom pool. But either way, we spend as much time as we can on the water, in some form.
Reflections
Reflecting on my life, I have wondered what drew me, a former “scared to death of the water girl” to the lake in the first place. I think I had an unusual start for someone who would come to love the water, because as a child I was very afraid of the dreaded “Deep End” of the city pool. After failing swimming lessons for a number of years, I had a life guard/swim teacher who made it his mission to convince me I could float, and slowly but surely, I learned to swim the two widths of the pool that were a requirement to be allowed to go off the diving board. Water became a source of fun, adventure, time with friends, the best part of family vacations, one of the highlights of church camp and a wonderful place to reflect on the Creator and life.
As I go through the expected and unexpected changes in the “retirement” years, I look forward to delving in to some of my previously begun hobbies, such as making tablescapes, decorating for the holiday, travel, home projects, boating and finding ways to make new friends, while keeping the old. I hope you will journey with me, and that in the process, I will get to know you as well.
Wishing you many blessings as life brings transitions your way!!!!
Patty