Livin' the Dream

Welcome to the first post on my blog all about being retired.  I plan to share what we see and what we do now that we don't have regular full-time jobs.  Along the way you may find musings about my passion...quilting and quilts.

I retired the middle of September after 25 years as a firefighter.  My partner, Mr. Bill, is retiring in March from the Cambridge Fire Department but until then, he is permanently on vacation .  We have talked about spending the winters away from New England for the past several years and finally...we have arrived.

To be honest, this is not exactly the dream.  My dream would be having enough money that I didn't worry about how much was coming in and going out.  We would live in a beautiful home, with lots of space and light, overlooking the ocean.  We would walk out the door and have our feet in the sand.  And, of course, there would be no hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes...

In reality, there is probably enough money but not so much that worrying about it has been resolved. We live in a small condo that I purchased six weeks before Hurricane Charley was sucked into the Peace River and destroyed most of the area, along with my little condo.  Although that was a very stressful time, the majority of the condo was replaced thanks to the very expensive insurance I was paying for.  The fact is, we don't overlook the ocean, our front view is more condo buildings and in the back we see the rear side of a small shopping mall.  The only sand in which to place our feet is where the grass doesn't grow.

No worries!  We are so happy to be here in Port Charlotte, FL and away from the cloudy, gray, cold, snowy Maine for the winter that we have nothing but smiles, smiles, smiles.  The hardest part is being away from family and friends for several months, but all are welcome to visit.

We arrived a week ago today.  Since then we have walked every day, joined a gym, been part of a huge volunteer orientation at the animal shelter, returned to the South Beach Diet, visited a great little area called Fisherman's Village, made a few repairs to the condo (Mr. Bill did those) and shopped for something nearly every day.  Last night I finally got the sweatshop up and running (my sewing room on the lanai).

That's all I have for now.  I hope you enjoy keeping up with us via this blog.  Be sure to feed the fish when you visit.

Thanks for stopping by...
;o)