Time

I have often heard that people should retire to something, rather than from something. The idea seems to be that you will be bored, or at least unfulfilled, without a job. This wasn't terribly worrying to me, as I come from a family of "doers." On vacation we visit museums and take hikes, on visits we repair each other's houses or help them shop for sofas. No one sits around and lounges at the beach in my family. 

I noticed that when I told people I was retiring so that I could move to Spain, this gave them a satisfying narrative. I wasn't retiring to just sit around, I was going to live in a new country! (No one ever seemed to consider that if I was inclined to veg and watch TV all day on the couch, I could do that just as easily in Spain is in the US.) And I do actually intend to go to Spain. But I'm not in a rush, and I have ended up retiring from something. My job was stressful for me. I was good at it, most of the time, but it required me to be on, constantly strategizing, and always interacting with people. I am utterly relieved to be done. I already feel much healthier: I'm sleeping more, I'm exercising more, and I am rarely part of personal interactions that I have challenging. My friends tell me I appear happier. (And I really am! I can't shut up about it!) 

Now I can slow down. It doesn't matter if there are eight people ahead of my in the grocery line, I have time to wait. I can sit on the couch and read a book or surf the internet every day for an hour or two and still have plenty of time to get things done. The most wonderful part of retirement has been opening up time. My friend N sometimes texts me on as he's leaving the house, and I join him for a bike ride to his office. He's commuting, and I get some exercise and friend time. I can wake up and decide whether I want to weed the garden or clean the house or work on a sewing project or go to a concert. 

I feel so lucky to have time.

Holidays

Last week I was able to celebrate not one, but *two* religious holidays, which is a lot more than this atheist usually manages. My friends J, M, and J came for a visit, only a month after my visit to NYC, and we had a Passover Seder. I have not taken part in one in several years, and it was super interesting and full of delicious food. I did not realize that there are so many different versions of the Haggadah (the text that you read telling the order and story of Passover), and the one we used focused on workers' right and collective action, which was novel. 

J, M, and J are all experts at fitting into a single selfie.

I also sang in an Easter Catholic Mass for the first time. My friends N and E invited me to be part of their very small choir (as in, with me included there were seven singers) that sings just at Easter and Christmas. I had to practice a lot in the preceding month to learn the music as well as the others, but it was delightful to be singing difficult, Latin-text music again. Medieval music has such unusual harmonies. I have attended a few Catholic masses in the past, but this is the first time I really needed to know exactly what was going on and when to sing all the various parts of the service. 

Practicing with N and E the day before. They both had to crouch down to fit in the picture with me. 

Now it's back to boring old holiday-free life, which is actually pretty awesome too.

NYC

The trip to New York was marvelous. I was primarily there to see my best friend and her family, so we did the traditional touristy things like.... taking a carload of stuff to the thrift store, and staying at home to bake a birthday cake. Okay, those are not so uniquely NYC, but when visiting such a massive city you don't ever forget where you are - even in downtown DC I never have to navigate so many people on the sidewalk. It really makes me thing carefully about what life will be like in Madrid, and how a suburb might be a better fit for me, so that I can be exposed to slightly more greenery and slightly less pavement.

My friend J is an art teacher, and their current unit is graffiti. I love that the students are learning about art form they see daily. J took us on a graffiti tour, teaching us about some of the different types and some of the informal rules. For example, it's not okay within the street art community to graffiti cemeteries.

   Nu Yolk! Yes, I smiled the first time I saw this, even though it's on the level of a Dad joke.

I played tourist on my final day, when the rest of them were back at work and school. I finally had a chance to visit the Cloisters, a branch of the New York Metropolitan Art Museum. It is an excellent collection of medieval art, in a building purpose-built for this kind of art. It was marvelous, but I wouldn't take just anyone there. You need to really, really like medieval art to want to spend the whole afternoon looking at it. 

When I had an hours to kill, I used Google Maps to see what was nearby and found the Little Red Lighthouse. This is not one of those clever perspective photographs - the George Washington Bridge is just that massive. There was a children's book about it, followed by a campaign to save the lighthouse in the 1940's, and now it just sits tucked under the bridge.