Tag: haiku

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4th Friday Retirement Adventures – August

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).

Art borrowed from a Facebook posting

Retirement II Haiku

it’s a fresh chapter

new adventures, living strong

~ sing love like Dolly!

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Loungewear Spree

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.

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The Bean

The Bean in Eastman,

Georgia: perfect spot to write

a forthcoming book

Here’s a secret I’ve been holding back: Dad left an unfinished manuscript, and it looks like it’s going to make it to print. For years, he’d been telling folks that he was working on a book. He shared snippets here and there of the plot line and the general story, rooted in the setting of a second home he and Mom owned along the Sapelo River down in McIntosh County.

At his funeral and visitation services in June 2025, many people asked what would become of the book. My brother and I searched his computer and found a few threads of story ideas for this book, but nothing more than a few scattered breadcrumbs. And then our good family friend Nick Doster, the last person to sit with Dad before he died and who brought him the Braves cap he’s buried in, produced an outline with story notes.

More like a piece of bread than a breadcrumb. But still far short of a loaf. Then, Nick offered to work with me to finish the book….which, really, felt more like starting the book by sowing the seeds of ideas and hundreds of tiny quilt squares together to see where the patterns emerged. Like me, Nick is always reading and writing. His most recent book is a western, and he has been talking with the screenwriters about a screenplay, which has consumed a lot of his time lately. Getting to retirement has consumed a lot of mine. So for about six months now, we’ve been working here and there, chatting on weekends and plugging in August as the time we’d get together to do our first productive round of editing of the whole manuscript.

The Bean in Eastman, Georgia was the halfway point for both of us, so we picked a day and met there. We took over the coffee shop and the free wifi yesterday to chisel away a few more steps toward the finish line. We’re still far from finished, but the fun of writing is another part of retirement that makes me happy. These large chunks of time to be able to write and think and edit are a great way to spend a day.

Today? A little more editing, a search for more comfortable swivel stools with backs for the Mahjongg table, a morning walk on the treadmill before it’s too hot, and a great movie my aunt recommended on Netflix for later this afternoon: Arthur the King. I’m so glad I didn’t wait to retire – – what a blessing to have the gift of time to spend the days doing what we love!

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Birdwatching at Lake Lanier

The white speck at the top middle is two male woodpeckers vying for territory.

Lake Lanier in Georgia is a hotbed for Red Heads. By that, I mean the red-headed woodpeckers that seem to be everywhere. I think I saw a dozen at least – – full families of moms, dads, and kid red heads. It happened on Site 60 as I was doing bird observations from my picnic table at Camp Margaritaville. This is one type of woodpecker that has not been seen at the Johnson Funny Farm, so seeing these birds in rich abundance was a thrill!

As if that weren’t enough, I glanced over my shoulder to see a juvenile hawk scouting a tiny yellow bird for a morning treat. It saw my movement and flew off, granting the smaller prey a release from the threat of becoming a meal. Perhaps the smaller bird knew that the threat of the hawk was greater than the threat of the human – at least in the bird world.

I like to use Merlin and eBird together to count birds in an area. I have Merlin “listen” to find the bird calls and identify them, and then I use binoculars to find the birds whose calls are detected. I also notice many birds that are not picked up by sound, as in the case of the hunting hawk – and those are recorded as well, but only if I’m sure of the type of bird I’m seeing. Then, I record my counts in eBird for each observation. I usually listen for a half hour to an hour whenever I do a count.

Birdwatching

I wonder sometimes:

am I watching the birds, or

are they watching me?

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Mahjongg 102

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!

My winning Mahjongg: 13579

Our amazing teacher (left), Christian, (center) and me (right)

the thrill of winning

a Mahjong game with real tiles

~ true euphoria!

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Virtual Author Conversation with a Brazilian Thriller Writer

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

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Jimothy the Zinnia

Jimothy, the Seattle raccoon who is different from other raccoons in physical stature, is taking the nation by storm for his unique level of cuteness and combined raccoon confidence in the way he carries himself in spite of the double-takes from those who spot him. You can read all about him here.

My sister-in-law across the farm has grown the most gloriously beautiful zinnias this summer, and she brings me bouquets and sits on the porch for coffee – – a joy of farm life, and even more so in retirement! But on her last visit, she said there was one in the basket that I’d have to figure out what to do with – – perhaps cut it down or something, since it was different from the others.

When she handed it to me, I smiled – and immediately, my mind went to Jimothy. Here was the Jimothy of the zinnia world, and it needed a spotlight place on my counter where I could see the beauty of the uniqueness of its stem. So I rinsed out a Oui yogurt jar, filled it half full of water, named it Jimothy, and propped it up next to a bottle of dish soap. This is my favorite flower of all – there is not another one just like Jimothy in the entire world, and he’s right in my own kitchen.

Jimothy the Zinnia

here he came to me:

Jimothy the zinnia

uniquely his own

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Resfeber

Humorist Erma Bombeck titled one of her books When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It’s Time To Go Home. It’s a compilation of hilarious travel essays and global anecdotes. We haven’t been anywhere far away since I’ve retired, and already I look like my passport photo. It was renewal time, and while we don’t have any definite plans yet to visit Iceland or Ireland or even Canada, we like to keep our options open just in case the opportunity arises. My brother and sister-in-law took a Viking cruise out of Amsterdam down through French Wine Country a couple of Augusts ago, and they’ve been urging us to consider a river cruise. My heart leans toward Iceland or some Scandinavian place where I have to bundle up like a real Viking just to breathe the air and can go inside to cozy up by a rip-roaring fire.

Sometimes, the dream is as exciting as the reality. There is a word for this: resfeber. It’s a Swedish noun that refers to the feelings of all the excitement of travel before it ever begins. If I ever write a travel book, it will have this word somewhere in the title or subtitle.

I’m feeling sparks of resfeber this week because when our latest Georgia Magazine came out, I did what I always do: I thumbed to the section of upcoming events throughout the state and discovered that The Long Run, an Eagles tribute band, would be performing at Lake Lanier in Buford, Georgia on August 22. I snapped up two tickets and reserved a lake spot campsite at Margaritaville so we can drive the Wayfarer up on Saturday and take our Schnoodles to a new place we’ve never camped, full of all-different smells for them to enjoy. I do think that this is what they love most about being camping dogs – – taking in the world through their noses.

Next, I’ll make sure our Eagles t-shirts are clean and ready to wear. We got matching ones when we flew out to see them perform at The Sphere in Las Vegas this past February. We’ll wear those to see the tribute band.

Resfeber.

I might just spend the day planning a trip.

resfeber takes hold

I open my Road Trippers

app and start planning…..

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Kindred Spirits Book Club

Book Club T-shirts

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.

We were missing one of our sisters at last night’s club meeting at our local coffee shop

reading together

strengthens our sisterly bond

of Kindred Spirits

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Rag Quilting in Retirement

Whenever a new grandchild is born, I dust off their great grandmother’s Bernina sewing machine and start cutting rag quilt squares to welcome the baby in style. My mother left me her treasured Swiss machine from the company named for the Piz Bernina peak in the Alps. It’s the same one she taught me to sew on, and while I’m not the excellent seamstress that she was (nor will I ever be), I feel a deep inner joy knowing that the same machine she used to make our clothes for decades is still being used to make quilts for her great grandchildren. I hope she’s smiling with pride as she gazes down from Heaven!

A lot of times, it’s hard deciding on a rag quilt theme and colors, but this idea came easily. Since Oakley Finn and I share a birthday (July 8), I chose stars and stripes for America’s 250th. There are also narwhals on one of the square designs, and one with waves too, because these grandchildren live in coastal South Carolina and love ocean and sea creatures. Even though there are not any narwhals making the trip from arctic waters down to the Lowcountry waters, I think they fit into the scheme of things just fine.

Retirement time allows for visiting family and sewing rag quilts, and I’m loving every minute of being able to do the things I truly enjoy! I feel blessed!

Rag Quilting

generations stitched

together, transcending time

where love knows no bounds

Our 8th grandchild, born on July 8th, weighing 8 lbs, 8 oz. – the 8th member of his family!

Today is the first day back for students in our school system in Georgia. When I started feeling the tug to retire throughout last school year, I said to a few friends, “If the stars align, I’m thinking about retiring.” Isn’t it ironic that on this first day for students, my sister-in-law Bethany sent me a reminder that this very morning there will be a planetary parade of lined-up planets! It’s as if we have moved out of the realm of the stars and into the planetary universe with someone upstairs nodding a big YES on this first day that I will not be in all the school traffic trying to get to work. I’m home – – living a more relaxed pace and loving it.

Screenshot