Month: June 2024

How do you want to retire?

My mom always said, “It’s a work a day life honey.” I am still in the trenches of my work a day life here so it’s hard to imagine. I will say Sunday nights and getting up between 0330-0400 are getting harder and harder though.

I hope to be healthy when I retire. I hope to be able to watch my children raise their families. I hope to travel; Europe, Alaskan Cruise. I will read. I will be able to exercise every day instead of a few days a week. I will find a biblical study course and a craft to get into. I will do all the things I don’t have time to do now.

I will sip my coffee on a snowy morning at home and thank Jesus I don’t have to drive in it to go take care of patients anymore.

What’s the oldest thing you own that you still use daily?

I have an old t-shirt from the hospital that I went to nursing school at. It is soft and cozy and has become my favorite shirt to wear to bed.

The irony of this is that I have only recently learned the hospital and school of nursing buildings that I attended nursing school at were demolished almost 10 years ago! When you are young, you think everything will remain the same after you leave a place but it never does. You think you can always go back, but you can’t. I knew that after graduation my school was to merge with a nursing school down the street to form a large college of nursing.

This May marked the 30th anniversary of my graduation from nursing school. Naturally when I received an email from the new school about their homecoming this fall I took a stroll down memory lane and started googling the buildings and that’s when I saw it. I found some nice pictures of the whole medical complex the way it was when I was there and even showed my kids.

The letters on my t-shirt are starting to fade but my memories of that time period of my life in that hospital and school of nursing never will.

What is your favorite season of year? Why?

I enjoy all of the seasons. They are a cycle. The shedding of winter coats and the blooming and rebirth of spring. Longer days, tank tops, shorts, flip flops and lemonade on a hot summer day. A lake. A beach. Falling leaves, the golden hour, autumn colors and hot apple cider as the weather gets cooler. Winter though is my favorite. It is the stillness that I appreciate. The silence of falling snow. Crisp, clean air. A time to hibernate, to go within and prepare for a new year and spring. I love the peaceful energy that Christmas lights and pine bring into my house during the holidays.