Life as "retired"

 Yes, I am now retired!

5-months ago. It was weird at first; seemed like I was just off work for a few days. 

I had to drive to southern California for most of the month of April, which added to that 'on vacation' feel. 

The first long trip in over two years. It was something; gas was very expensive but even more so in California! 

I was glad to take our Rav4. I had been planning to take our truck. However, just a week before, we'd taken it in to get checked out, which was a major expense and a wait for the parts, so I took the Toyota. It saved a lot of money, although I planned to take the truck and the small trailer for a room instead of moteling it. 

With the high cost of ..... everything!, would it have saved as much as I'd hoped? Probably not in reality, but it worked as it did. As the Rav4 is a hybrid, I was able to get an average of 37 mpg, and that was keeping the adaptive cruise control set about 66 to 69 miles per hour which is plenty fast, even with much of the I-15 being 80 mph in Utah. If it is 80, many are doing 90 or 100! 

No, thank you!! I'll take getting there on less gas and alive over flying on the highway any day. 

Overall, adjusting to retired life hasn't been a big deal. I'm able to be way more active, not on the computer daily, hence no posts for a long time. 

But as I can, which is a bit difficult with the record hot summer this year, I'm getting projects done that we always kept putting off to try to cram in on the weekends and still couldn't get them done. 

While yes, our region, the "inland empire" of the pacific northwest, has not had the 110 and higher temps of last year (2021), it has been overall record heat by the number of weeks the temps have been 90 and above! That also is a trend in many parts of the USA this summer too. 

In those 'olden days' when we had moved up here, summers were usually mostly in the low to mid-80s for the summer with a week, maybe a week and a half tops of upper 80s and low to mid-90s. 

In 2019 it was pretty warm but then stayed in the 'normal' range mostly. Last year the last week of June was the "heat dome" that was literally killing people from Oregon to Canada because it got so hot that the above-mentioned 110 degrees (43.3 C) range and hotter was even here! And with the heat is dry, dry, dry. 

It gets you nervous when your property is mainly trees, like ours! With the climate change, we have trees dying from the heat that, while they are providing winter firewood when we cut them down, is still a hazard to house and garages should they fall or catch fire first. 

Stacy is doing fine; we have dogs again. The first time since 2006 when we had to bring our kid's dogs with us when we moved from California as they had moved away and couldn't take them. 

Two miniature daschhounds 'doxies.' Trixie has been with us a year tomorrow and is 14 months old now, and Sterling is 7 months old, and we've had since the spring.  

We actually got Sterling as a puppy for Trixie since we felt she was not having any good times as when I would check on her during the day using the "Alfred" phone app that makes your phone, or an old phone like I did, a camera to monitor the house. 

I'd check, and after we'd go to work, Trixie would just sleep all day long until the time we were supposed to get home, then get all excited. 

We felt it wasn't fair to her, so we found and got Sterling. It worked great, and they are inseparable now. 

Trixie is the black and tan doxie on the left, and Sterling is kind of brown/gray and tan on the right. Taken yesterday morning! 

It has been interesting having fur babies again. It had been so long, and we didn't often have puppies as we got many of the dogs we had over the years from working in animal control. 

You do kinda get used to not sleeping in at all, getting up often during the night to take someone out to go 'potty.'  But it isn't bad. We just can't have the doggy doors we used to have in California due to the Raccoons, skunks, and cats around that would also take advantage of such an opening to check out the inside of the house. 

No, it is nice to have them, and they enjoy traveling with us too. They adapted quickly to traveling in the truck and sleeping in our RVs. 

This is good since we have been traveling again when Stacy has had to go to Boise or some other town for her meetings. Since I'm retired, we all now go and take an RV to stay in.  

It is so nice to have your own bed, bathroom, food, and room! RVing is the only way to travel for us! And we have our choice, the Winnebago Micro-Minnie travel trailer, small but can stay almost anyplace, and our Jayco 5th wheel when we want the room and more comfort or when the grandkids go since it has a bunkhouse for them to sleep in. 

They both have solar power now too. We got a solar set up last year for the Jayco, and last month (July 2022), we got a similar solar set up for the Micro-Minnie. 

We can now stay almost anyplace with either trailer and use the RV like we are always plugged into A/C current.  

As it was so hot coming back from getting the solar install done in Reno, Nevada, it was so nice to be able to stop at a rest stop and be able to run the air conditioner to cool down the trailer while we ate. Sooooooo nice!!!! Own food, own room, and able to be cool now too!

Well, I know there is a lot to talk about, but for now, I'll end it here. 

Till next time, Tad