Getting happy

I haven't posted since forever because there was such a flurry of activity with retiring, the holidays and now packing and getting everything ready for the big adventure of moving to Las Vegas for 3 months.

 We leave Monday morning.  I am getting excited.  The feeling of being retired from work still has not hit me.  When will I realize that I don't have to deal with a broken copier, frantic co-workers whose lack of planning is supposed to be my emergency?  I think it will be a gradual realization.  I have noticed, however, that the nerve tic of my eyelid is gone!  YAY for that!

It's hard to decide what clothing to take with me for a 3 month trip that seems to traverse all of the possible climates.  It will be cold when we leave and even cold in Las Vegas in January.  Then it will be more springlike in February and warm in March.  And then if we decide to go to Mexico, too, I need to pack clothes for REAL hot weather. 

We got these special bags in which to put our clothes and then we suck the air out to make the bag smaller and presumably more packable.  But 15 bags of clothes that have been sucked, is still 15 bags of clothes.  But anyway, I need to pack clothes for 4 nights for the drive there in addition to all of the clothes for 3 months.  I am trying to just have a couple week's clothes and rewear them until I'm sick of seeing myself in the same old thing!  I think there is a benefit to being a nudist (which I am not).


One of my big fears is hubby and me arguing or becoming cranky with one another because of too much togetherness both in the car on the trip or just in general because of being around each other so much now that we are both retired.  Not sure how this is all supposed to work.   But one thing I'm sure about is that we are so fortunate to have the ability to take this trip together and in relativity good health.  Friends our same age are becoming terribly ill and even dropping dead!!

My Dad is elderly and we live 3 hours from one another.  When I call him, he tells me that it makes him sad that I will be so far away from him for 3 months.  Then I feel guilty that I'm going.  He doesn't seem to recall how he and my mother used to travel the world and not care if I missed them during those trips or if their parents felt sad they were traveling.  What I do know is that there are people who ave lived their lives trying to please others--their parents, their children, their spouses.  I was like that once, too.  Then one day came the realization that only I can make me happy.  I am responsible for my own happiness!  I had been waiting around for others to cause my happiness and it never happened.  Then one day I took control of my own happiness . . . my own destiny to whatever extent I could.  I got divorced and remarried.   I got happy.  Retiring and leaving for Las Vegas on Monday is making me happy.