Red Letter Day

Today is a "red letter" day...for two reasons!

First of all it is New Year's Day 2019, and if you will look at a calendar you will see that the date is in red print denoting a holiday. It's also my red letter day...I am officially retired!

I spent a number of hours at the office earlier today finishing out the month-end work and leaving things ready for the new administration and a new year. As I turned off my computer for the last time, closed up the vault for the last time, and pulled the door shut behind me for the last time, I will admit to a few sentimental tears. After all I was in office for 20 years plus put in 6 1/2 years as a deputy before that, so I think I am entitled to a few parting tears.

But by the time I put my box of personal belongings in the car, the tears were dry and I was thinking ahead to what I was going to do when I got home. In case you were wondering, I made spaghetti for a late lunch! 

There are few times in life when everything changes in an instant, and of course, this wasn't an instantaneous change as I have been preparing for it for an entire year, and pondering on it for another year previous to that. However, this past year has seen more than the usual number of changes.

I have always maintained that my life for the past 26 years has consisted of work, church and home. Obviously work changed today. We began to attend a new church last summer, which has been a bigger adjustment that I realized it would be. And four weeks from today we will be closing up our home for a couple of months and setting up residence in our camper in Arizona, another huge change for us. So I am in the process of figuring out a new norm.

So what will tomorrow bring? I have mentioned this is some of my previous blog posts...if you can recall any of them since it has been many months since I've written a blog post. I think there was something about cleaning out some of the clutter and heading to Arizona, although I have to admit that I am forgetting too. But now that it is here, my goals have gotten much more specific.

I have a stack of several recipes that I want to try. Gluten-free noodles is the first one I want to try so that I can make gluten-free chicken noodle soup. There is also a recipe for chicken pot pie soup...obviously it's soup weather!

Another big job will be packing for Arizona. What do we need to take for food? What kind of clothes will we need? And I definitely need to sort through some yarn and put together some yarn combos for some afghans I want to make. We need to get prescription arrangements made and some doctor appointments arranged for. 

As I was eating breakfast the other morning I was looking at Pinterest and some of the decluttering websites on there. One of them really brought me face to face with the condition of my house. In the post there were before and after pictures of different places in the house that needed to be decluttered. It occurred to me that the before pictures would be an improvement over the condition of many places in my house. (Maybe I should take before and after pictures of my house as I clean things up to post on here. Or maybe not...I don't want everyone to see what a mess I have!)

So today is the first day of a new life for me. It is also the first day of  2019 for all of us. I hope that your 2018 was a good year, but I am wishing you even better for 2019. Better health, better finances, more happiness and greater peace and satisfaction. 

Happy New Year!