Patchwork Prose and Verse
It’s time to play. I’ve learned the basics, played in practice, and taken good notes. I have the card and the desire to play. Now it’s time to join a group.
After 101 and 102
comes 103
Mahjongg open play~
And all the things……
the groups
the days and places
the tables
the tablecloths
the mats
the tiles
the lamps
the bags to carry it all in.
And so it begins.
Retirement officially began four weeks ago, and there are both upsides (travel in the RV) and downsides (having to replace a wheel – not a tire – on the RV) to this new chapter. At the beginning of my first week off, I used a green spiral notebook like the one in the image above to make a list of all the things I wanted to do — something enjoyable each week, blending in some new hobbies and routines as well.
Here are some things I’ve enjoyed in my first official four weeks of retirement, as teachers and students have returned to school (#1-7 I blogged about two weeks ago):
1. Mahjong 101
2. Rag Quilting
3. Morning Walking
4. Yoga
5. Friends of the Library Book Fair –
6. Local Bookstore Book Club
7. Summer Reading Poetry Book Club
The past couple of weeks have included two getaways in the Wayfarer along with a few other new endeavors. Everyone kept asking what I would do in retirement, and I’m so eager to share the ways I’m enjoying it! I have 100 things on my list…..so I continue sharing the list:
8. Postcard Poetry Fest – I signed up to send at least 31 postcards out to those who joined the Postcard Poetry Fest 2026. I have written over 31 original poems and have mailed them to my assigned recipients. It has been exciting receiving postcards from all around the world – many with original works of art on them by the artists. I’ll share the postcards I mailed and many of the ones I received in the coming months.
9. Wayfaring to FDR for camping….and…..10. Wayfaring to Margaritaville for a concert – We went to our favorite nearby state campground for a weekend on a remote campsite and enjoyed the fun and frustration of an unplanned hike. The following weekend, we took the Wayfarer to Lake Lanier to camp at Margaritaville RV Resort and saw the Eagles tribute band The Long Run. We rented a golf cart to get to the venue, and we learned the next morning that Boo Radley is not a candidate for riding in the golf cart because he cannot mind his own damn business and loses his mind and acts a fool.
11. Mahjong 102 and Free Play – I added a new segment of learning Mahjongg by attending the second course of lessons and engaged in an evening of open play at the McDonough Truett’s Restaurant with my friend Christian. We are riding around places meeting new friends and sharing the joys of “going Mahjongg.” I won my first game last Friday, and Christian swept all three games the night we drove over to McDonough.
12. Zinnia Arrangement – my sister-in-law who grows zinnias has brought me several batches, and I love arranging and rearranging them in my mother’s pitchers. I received an extra-special arrangement when I checked the mail last week. My friend Glenda Funk from Idaho created a watercolor painting of zinnias when I wrote a poem about them, and she framed the print with my poem as a retirement gift, along with a gorgeous boho blanket from Natural Life, a really cool pen and toothbrush holder, and a bracelet from Thailand – and the most heartfelt card ever! I shed tears of joy opening it, thinking of my friend who is so giving and has been suffering such pain in her leg lately. These are treasures I will cherish – so personal and meaningful.
13. Fabric Postcards – I’ve been working on creating fabric postcards for Postcard Poetry Fest for the next round. I sent out a few to see how they would hold up in the mail, and my small group of Stafford Challenge writers all received them and they held up fine.
14. Porch Sitting – I’ve enjoyed late morning coffee with my sister-in-law Bethany and an evening visit with my friend Jayne, who brought me a retirement t-shirt gift. Porch sitting and visiting is a great way to adjust pacing.
15. Lounge Pants Spree – I ordered lounge pants for each day of the week so that at least I could change into clean pajamas each day, but I ended up keeping only one set. I’ll add them more gradually so I can be sure of the fit instead of ordering online. My writing friend Margaret is changing my thinking, though. She says she replaced loungewear with activewear, and perhaps I should consider the same. There are some yoga pants that do not fit quite as tight as leggings, and those would work for me better than the tighter fit.
16. Novel Writing with Nick – I met a friend and fellow writer in Eastman, a couple hours south of here, to go through the first round of edits for the unfinished book left by my father that we are co-authoring. We look forward to bringing this novel to print in the coming months.
17. Kindred Spirits Book Club – I have a Goodreads personal goal of 60 books this year – – (it’s fitting….it’s the year of 60)…..and my Kindred Spirits sisters (missing one of us in the photo below who are the regulars) and I met at our local coffee shop to discuss the August selection: Dear Debbie by Freida McFadden. Our book choice for September is The Sideways Life of Denny Voss. Currently, I’m finishing Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth and I can’t turn the pages fast enough to see what happens next.
18. Barnes and Noble Virtual Book Club – I was looking for a way that my daughter in Nevada and I could connect in a book club, so we participated in the reading of a Brazilian thriller author’s latest book, The Secret Dinner. We downloaded the book on a Tuesday and had 48 hours to read it before the Barns and Noble Monday Mystery event. It’s definitely a great way to participate with family readers across the miles. The novel was disturbing in its subject matter, but reading outside the comfort zone is what readers do sometimes.
Over the next couple of weeks, we will be busy. One excursion that we will take this weekend will likely be one of my favorites of all time….. (hint: It will take place in Nashville, Tennessee on Saturday night).
Retirement II Haiku
it’s a fresh chapter
new adventures, living strong
~ sing love like Dolly!
I took a loungewear
shopping spree on Amazon
(returned every pair)
I took a loungewear
shopping spree in a Walmart
bought the pumpkin spice……
For six months leading up to retirement, I dreamed about loungewear past 9 a.m. like on Saturdays. I’ll always and forevermore get up early, before the sun usually – – no alarm clock needed. I’m wired up that way, unfortunately. But what I enjoy about weekend mornings (now weekday mornings) is not the sleep; it’s the sitting around in comfortable clothes. Lingering over coffee. Writing and reading. Eating breakfast slowly before walking on the treadmill.
So I figured that in retirement, I would be needing a pair of lounge pants for each day of the week. I thought back to those younger years of Day of the Week underpants. This was going to be my retiree’s version of Day of the Week lounge pants. I found a 70% off sale and ordered 5 pairs of the soft, flowy cotton knit kind that have pockets and thick elastic waists. I didn’t care that some were Christmas at all – I’d wear Easter egg pants in October with a non-matching soft t-shirt and my hair going every whichaway without a passing thought if it meant comfort and value.
But when these lounge pants arrived, I discovered they “don’t make them like they used to.” These lounge pants were “new and improved,” and they didn’t fit me like my watercolor dot pair and my paisley pair. So back to the store they went, and I went on an in-person spree to find a suitable pair at Walmart.
The pumpkin spice pattern and color caught my eye, and I even added a top so I’d have the full set – – an actual matching shirt instead of an unquestionably long-worn cozy unmatched t-shirt. That way, if the Amazon guy shows up before I’m dressed, I’m still halfway presentable. Or so I figured. When I put on the shirt, it’s a cropped shirt. My midriff shows, and this is not a good thing. These remind me of my harem pajamas I had when I was little and every girl wanted to be Barbara Eden in I Dream of Jeannie.
Someday, I’ll have a selection of loungewear that checks all the boxes. That day is not today.
For today, I’m in a comfy pair of blue paisleys with a faded gray v-neck t-shirt from a group event five years ago.
And for today, it’s the only loungewear I need. I’ll sip my coffee, breathe in, exhale, and remind myself that I can double down on the days wearing three pairs of lounge pants and the math works just fine that way.
My friend Christian and I attended our second Mahjongg class on Friday, August 21, and it was so much fun! We knew we were addicted to the game when we found ourselves playing online after our first session and sharing our wins against the bots at http://www.mahjong4friends.com. Playing on the computer helped us learn strategies for playing at the 4-player table with real tiles. After the first session in one of the public libraries in our region of rural Georgia, we were barely out of the parking lot before we ordered our own Official National Mahjongg League 2026 Mahjongg cards each player must have to play and began watching Facebook and YouTube tutorials on the game.
By watching the tutorials and playing online, we’ve discovered more purpose in the Charleston and how to navigate that part of the game and also how to sort our tiles after the breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert draws. We know how to find our “neighborhood” on the official 2026 card, and how to select our “street,” or line to be played. We’ve had an amazing teacher, and I won my first game and got a tiny duck to celebrate the win.
Our next step is playing in the Open Mahjongg days where we show up with our Mahjongg cards and find a seat at a table with others there to play the game. We’ve cleared our Friday afternoons and look forward to all the excitement of this game that has taken firm hold of us!
the thrill of winning
a Mahjong game with real tiles
~ true euphoria!
Retirement affords time to do those things I’ve been meaning to get around to doing, and one of them is attending more virtual author events. As I searched for upcoming opportunities, I discovered that Barnes and Noble has a Mystery Lunchtime series, and I signed up to hear Raphael Montes discuss his latest book – The Secret Dinner. I hopped on to order the book, only to discover that it would not be released until two days prior to the event. That left one option: Audible. Neither my small town library nor our local bookstore would have the book available in hard copy in time for me to get it.
One of my daughters decided to join in on the book talk Thursday and reminded me on Tuesday, release day, by text: Do you have your audio? Today’s the day! I used an Audible credit and began listening. I was not prepared for the ride of this book.
Jeneva Rose, American author of thrillers, moderated the discussion. She introduced the book and the author, and the discussion began. She asked questions of the author, including the ones we added to the Q&A.
With such a dark subject matter in this book, I was not expecting the laughter and joy of this author. I enjoyed his Brazilian accent and his way of putting things in such an enjoyable way, and I enjoyed the time reading the same book with one of my daughters and having the time to talk about it with others. Even though we are many states away, it’s a great way family members can share our common love of reading and participate in book clubs together even if we aren’t sitting around a bookshop on couches to talk about what we loved most about a book. And what we liked least about it, too.
reading has a way
of reaching across the miles
to keep our hearts close
Once a month, our Kindred Spirits book club meets at our local coffee shop on the Zebulon, Georgia courthouse square to discuss our monthly pick. Last year, we chose our next book month by month when we met to discuss the current book. This year, we each brought two book choices and created a schedule for the year so that we could read ahead if we finished our book ahead of time.
We are a group of six colleagues who became reading sisters through shared interest and choice, and even though two of us have retired and one has taken a position in a different place of employment, we still come back together to read, discuss, and have adventures together.
We discuss reading guide questions, but we always ask what the book inspired us to do and how it changed our lives. Generally, there is some kind of adventure that follows – whether it is to see the movie or do some kind of activity mentioned in the book. For example, after reading The Book Club Hotel by Sarah Morgan last December, we decided to take our own girls’ winter getaway and will be doing that in January 2027 to a place a couple hours north of where we live, where there will be a big fireplace so we can lounge around sipping coffee or Kindred Spirits cocoa concoctions and have girl time in our pajamas and talk about books and life and go shopping. We haven’t named our book-related adventure for Dear Debbie yet, but we all decided that it will not involve infesting anyone’s rose garden with Japanese Beetles or using poppy seeds to impair anyone’s faculties. Nor will it involve visiting any fraternity houses.
If any readers have suggestions about what to consider reading for 2027, please share! We follow Goodreads and The Book Girls and are always looking for our next great read.
reading together
strengthens our sisterly bond
of Kindred Spirits
Our host today for the third and final day of the August Open Write at http://www.ethicalela.com is Joanne Emery, who inspires us to write poems about being deep in nature and the sensory and inner feelings associated with it. You can read her full prompt, and the poems of others, here. My poem today will follow the photos of our trail walk we took on Saturday.
Over the weekend, we took our two four-legged sons Boo Radley and Ollie to F. D. Roosevelt State Park for a quick getaway in the Wayfarer. While there, we took a hike along Mountain Creek Trail, and even though it was hot, the shade provided a respite from the extreme temperatures and the heat advisory in effect.
We like to start the day at the top of the mountain with a picnic breakfast overlooking the valley below Pine Mountain. Where many campers cook full breakfasts on outdoor kitchens, we like to take the easy route and buy coffee and muffins at the registration center and find a picnic table. The boys expect bites of blueberry muffin, and sometimes we cave in to their pressure.
The hike begins with Briar and Boo Radley in the lead, and Ollie and I follow. We make sure they stay on leashes in case we encounter other critters – human, canine, or reptilian, or other – on the trails. On Saturday, we did not meet or pass one other person. In fact, the trail was eerily silent of birdsong, traffic, voices, and even rustling of leaves in the wind.
The different types of mushrooms are always fascinating to me, including this one that is a shelf/bracket fungus that is either turkey tail or a lookalike. We also saw several patches of bright orange colored chicken of the woods and oyster mushrooms as well.
F. D. Roosevelt State Park has a naturalist who offers foraging classes on occasion when mushrooms are bountiful, and I have always wanted to attend the session and learn more about mushrooms and their benefits. I would still be reluctant to eat a wild mushroom, but I’d love to learn more about them.
Getting across the bridges is always interesting. Boo Radley hesitates and sometimes decides to go around the side. Ollie never hesitates and always turns around to be sure I made it across safely once he’s on the other side (how your dog tells you you’re old without telling you you’re old). Even though they’re schnoodles, they have the sense of adventure of sled dogs sometimes – they put themselves in four-wheel drive and pull us along.
They like to play in the streams, and as long as the water is running clear, we let them. On Saturday, they took drinks and walked around to cool off when we took a short break to let them play in the creek.
The natural ferns speak to me in whispers of my mother, reminding me I’m fortunate not to have crippling anxiety, my father echoing her: stress is a killer, I can hear him say. But not in these woods, not on this trail, not deep in nature. Nature heals.
I’m surprised I remembered the fairy tree door, but I knew when I reached the top of one hill that it would be on the other side. Sure enough, it was there, protecting the forest treasures inside – fairies, woodland critters, swag for those who take one and leave one.
And I kept watching for signs of fall in all the heat. Here and there, dotting the trail, were red or yellow leaves. I picked up several fallen acorns and put them in my pocket. I reflected on yesterday’s post about Noah and his wife, and the hope God sends in leaves. Yes, my answer is clear: God does still send hope in leaves. Ask and ye shall receive.
On Mountain Creek Nature Trail, Saturday August 15
Boo Radley leads
Ollie follows
four-wheel drive kicks in
along the trail
splashing in creeks
crossing bridges
inhaling fresh air
underfoot crunch of pine needles
and acorns giving us
out-of-office peace
resetting the focus
to the moment
with each step
deeper and deeper
into the woods
red leaves bringing
the hope of autumn
Yoga
eleven minutes
I made it half the set time
before collapsing
Let’s just say I have some work to do. Some stamina to build. Some endurance to increase.
On the heels of walking one mile this morning, I squeezed into my yoga pants, rolled out my mat, and clicked on the Yoga With Adriene YouTube channel my daughter recommended, determined to feel the Namaste vibe and increase my elasticity of muscles and ease of mobility. After half of the session time, after coming back to my knees from Downward Dog and stretching an arm upward and behind me, I keeled over like a waterlogged canoe and gave up on the quest for deep inner peace through slow movement and bodily stretching for the morning.
I have a long list of all the things I want to learn, do, and try. Yoga is one new practice that I’m determined to stick with, and as I go through the steps of learning new and different things, I am reminded in powerful ways as a recently retired educator that learning, no matter the age and stage of life, is a process. I’m also convinced that you can teach and old dog new tricks.
This Old Downward Dog is looking forward to the challenge of growing and keeping the learning and living going full steam ahead. As they say: a body in motion stays in motion. And I’m determined to keep my canoe upright.
I have a looonnnnngggg list of things I want to learn and do in retirement. One is learning to play Mahjongg, a classic Chinese tile game sweeping the nation in popularity as it experiences a resurgence in its American form. I’ve seen groups playing it everywhere, including inside a Chicken Salad Chick fast food restaurant when I went in for lunch one afternoon. I’ve played a version of the game on my phone, but I’ve never learned the traditional tile game.
Until yesterday.
My friend and former teaching colleague Christian and I went together to the Griffin-Spalding County Library to take part in an introductory class taught by two ladies who came all the way from Augusta to teach beginners. They will be returning in a couple of weeks for the next session, and after two hours of strategy and rules in this new adventure, we both hurried to the counter to sign up for the next session.
We’ve caught Mahjongg Fever.
Mahjongg 101 Students
we both just retired
former teammates, always friends
learning a new game
One of my goals in retirement is to exercise for 20 minutes at least 3 times a week. They say a body in motion stays in motion….so I’m heeding the words of all the wellness experts and listening closely to their sage wisdom. This morning, I walked a mile on the inheritance treadmill Dad pulled from the river house rubble a decade ago. No injuries happened in the walking of this mile, and if my children are reading, I’d like it to be noted that I held on to the handrails and double-knotted my Hokas.
Firing Up the Treadmill
I pulled it out from
its corner on the porch
turned on the overhead fan
wiped it down
plugged it in
fired it up
stepped out
put one foot in front of the other
and began the journey
with a single step
Common Threads 