Retirement is What You Make of It:

A few of you have asked how Roger's retirement is going.  Well, Roger has been retired for almost a month now.  He's set up his new office, above, and
has achieved a mixture of starts and completions of projects that have been percolating on his to-do list.                                       

First was the door leading out of the back of the garage to the backyard.  Where there used to be a wall, a door, steps, and light now fill the space. Check!

Second, Roger painted the exterior of Daniel and Grace's home in Centerville.  When we
sold this house to them, Roger had promised
the next paint job would be on him. Check,
Check!


And then something new added to the list.
As you can see below our mailbox met with
an untimely demise.  Speculation was a car
backing up, a dry ice bomb (this from our neighbor boy) or death by misadventure (kids

playing around and pushing against
it from the mailbox next door).  The
misadventure is our favorite as, without pointing fingers, we think we know who did it.

Roger piled up the debris so at least
we could receive our mail.  The idea
was to leave it there this way for awhile hoping someone would come forward.   Apparently the "don't ask, don't tell" rule applies to mailboxes as well.  No one came forward.

So Roger cleaned up the mess, stowing the
broken brick under the trampoline in the back yard.  Livi came running in one day last week, very concerned, and informed us that a
mailbox was under the tramp she was jumping on.  My contribution to all this - I planted the flowers! Check, Check, Check!

Next on the list was cutting sod with our son-in-law Rob.  They wanted to redo some areas around their fence line, as well as remove the wrong sod planted a few years ago with sod to match the rest of the lawn.  Roger helped so Rob would
bring the sod cutter up to our place
for Roger's REAL next project, below.

One reason for putting in the new door was to be able to keep our garbage cans (trash bins) out of the garage.  So, we now needed a walkway to get the cans from the back of the house to the road for Monday morning pick-up.  Sod cut and rock delivered ( 9 tons of it!), Roger was ready to start.  As you can see they delivered it to the road and Roger hand carried it all to the driveway, sorting sizes as he restacked.

The walkway is going very well and
I often go out to direct and try to explain how another stone would actually do a better job.  After he runs me off, he gets back to doing an absolutely fabulous job.

All in all this retirement thing is working out great for me and our kids.  As soon as the list is completed, or at least shortened, the road trips can begin.  We've got a number of them planned over the next six or so months and when they start then true retirement will to.

Roger is fond of quoting a "Red Green" (a show from Canada) line:  "If the ladies don't find you handsome, at least let them find you handy".  My husband is both handsome and handy!