crowbelle's Diaryland Diary

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Turning the Corner

TURNING THE CORNER

Happy April Fools, but no joke.

April is "turning-the-corner month" for me.

Will it mean I produce more regular entries in my journal? Probably not. I've finally come to the realization that I've gotten my life so finely tuned to being about as uninteresting as is humanly possible, that this is the reason I am so negligent in writing in this journal. Which, I hate to say, is how I like it!

I have found that living an "interesting and varied" life brings problems, heartaches, and misery - at least it has done with me, so I have been meticulously trying to uncomplicate my life over the past few years, so that now I have a strict regime of working, eating and sleeping, and not very much else exists in my daily schedule. Oh, I should add, smushing with puppies... never forget the puppies!

Oh, once a week I go food shopping, but I don't do any other kind of shopping any longer. We are less than 10 years away from retirement age now, and the thought of living off our retirement savings is playing on my mind more and more. I was never a "saver" before I married Paul, but he has turned all that around for me. He has always been a "saver" and that's the only reason we own Crow Cottage, because if had been left up to me, we'd be renting some hole in the wall somewhere, barely able to scrape by!

But we aren't. We live in a nice little cottage, in a modest sized New England city, next door to the town where we grew up, and are both working at jobs with which we are, for the most part, content. Lobstering and typing. Not fancy, not earth-shattering, not overly important, and not glamorous. But it's enough for both of us, and we are not more ambitious than this.

All I ask out of life now is to be able to live out the years left to us on what we have managed to put away. A lot of young people don't seem to have a clue about this dilemma that hits after one turns 55 or so. The countdown has begun for us. We don't have a "lifetime" any longer to plan and save for it. It's almost here!

Thanks to my dear Paul, I am now the proprietor of not one, not two, but three retirement accounts at various places, and I feel a lot more secure for that. And recently, I've just joined a 401K at work where they take out a set amount of money each week from my paycheck, so I can stop worrying about saving up each year for my annual contribution - it's already there! But that means a small cut in my paycheck each week, which I will have to get used to.

Actually, I've been debating about whether I should turn in my small SUV for a more economical and smaller automobile. The oil prices have been going up and up, and I heard today on the radio that $4 and $5 per gallon is not out of the question for the future. That would seriously put a dent in my budget each week. Not that I drive a lot, but as it is now, I spend about $20 every week or so on petrol, and that's all I really want to dole out for that item. In England, when we go for holiday, the price is more like $6 or $7 per gallon of petrol, and it's very expensive tooting around in our hired British car for two weeks. In fact, the car and the petrol for our two week holiday, costs more than the cottage or the plane fares!

So, money is on my mind lately, and the safe accumulation and organizing of it for our "later years," which are right around the corner now.

How did that happen? How did we, the baby-boomers, get to be almost retirement age so quickly?
Where did life go?

Working, eating, sleeping... and living - that's where, I guess.

It's April - finally.

Spring has arrived, but the weather hasn't belied that until just recently. We have a few brave bulbs poking up through our earth in the garden, after the long-standing carpet of snow has finally melted and mostly disappeared here. It was a long long winter for us, and as always in April, I am ready to see leaf buds on the trees again, and to listen to the cacophony of the birds around here making their nests, under my air-conditioning unit and around the garden and woods. They are so industrious about it, bringing in snips of branches and twigs, and even dog furs, to line their nests, in anticipation of producing an egg or two.

I suppose the skunks will emerge again, and haunt us on our nightly walks with the dogs, too, but we'll just have to remember about them and beware...

Once you've been skunk-sprayed (or your dogs have been skunk-sprayed) you tend to be very careful when out on a nightly walk!

That's it from here. Just wanted to welcome in the great month of April, and to jot down some random thoughts on things. Until another day..

Cheers,

Bex

8:26 am - 01 April 2005

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