Is It Friday Already?

Where did this week go? One minute I’m posting the word challenge photos, the next it’s Friday and I haven’t posted a damn thing. October is always busy, but this October seems to be overwhelmingly so. I could use a couple of more hours each day.

In less than a week, I’ve learned how to do needle turn appliqué, finished a prayer shawl and started another one, packaged up 6 shawls from other members of the group for giving out, had an MS check up where we decided to put me on yet another medication, met with a financial advisor, made a quick trip to the grocery store and forgot stuff so I’ll have to go again, picked up a sack load of food from the farmer’s co-op, and I still have a couple of more things to do.

But I got to mark a lot of stuff off my To Do list and that felt pretty good.

The meeting with the financial advisor wore me out., going through all our paperwork to give him an accurate picture of where we are was exhausting. We decided that since Al may retire from the AF in a few years, we might want to go over what we’ve done so far and see what else we should be doing. It’s still pretty early in this process, and it takes all my brain cells to follow what this man is saying. I’m the stereotypical girl/wife who glazes over with talk of investment plans. Al just laughs at me because I can’t seem to understand the difference between the IRAs and the mutual funds. To me they’re just a place we put money that we can use later—like a savings account with better interest.

This meeting was a little upsetting, though, when talk turned to long term health care and life insurance. It seems that my diagnosis of mild MS won’t be much of a hindrance if I want more life insurance, but it’s going to be difficult to impossible to get long term health care insurance. We had an opportunity years ago to get signed up through the AF, but we didn’t do it. You just don’t think about things like the costs of disability when you’re in your mid-30s.

And part of me still feels I’m too young to be worrying about and talking about retirement. I guess I’m just not good at long-term planning. I’m a great daydreamer of what I’d like, but I’m not very good at the actual planning and execution of that plan. Plus, Al and I need to improve our conversation skills so that we can talk about what we want. Al seems to respond to whatever is happening at the moment; for example, we’ve been doing repairs to the house and there always seems to be something else to do, so Al doesn’t want to own a house anymore. He likes the idea of a condo or townhouse or something. This was quite a shock to me when he blurted it out over a pint at the pub, considering that for the last few years I’ve talked about having a small house and some land out in the country. Then there’s the “what to do after the AF issue.” Al takes on his Eeyore voice and says “well, I’ll have to work.” But I’ve talked about how I thought we should teach and take the summers to go to Scotland, or maybe I’ll want to open my own shop or a small coffee shop and he could work for me. Or I could get a dream job and he could follow me around for a while. That would be brilliant!

Luckily, we seem to balance out. If he got out of the AF, I’m the one who says, “We can go anywhere!” He’s the one who says, “I can easily move into a contract job and we’d have pretty much the same security we have now.” And I think, “then we can vacation any where!” Maybe not anywhere, but we could make a trip every now and then to my beloved Highlands and his beloved whisky distilleries.

Until then, there’s still laundry to do, groceries to buy, meals to cook, errands to run, and bills to pay. You know, that regular life stuff that never goes away. Maybe I should add housekeeper, cook, and personal assistant to my dream list?

Have a great weekend, y’all.