Retirees or Working folk?

I'm a "semi-retired" Registered Nurse, married to a retiree and have a normal suburban house on a normal size lot. I have annuals, perreniels, veggies, roses, trees, ferns, potted flowers, hanging baskets and RABBITS. I manage to spend perhaps 2 hours on-line a day, and most of it here on DG.
It just seems that there are many folks here who are on multiple forums with so much knowledge to share, that I wonder how they get all their gardening chores and normal activities of daily living done.
My normal day starts about 7am and doesn't end until about 7-8pm and I'm NOT working and have no children at home!
Let me in on your secret for being able to share so much and still get your work done! ;>)
Kris

Kris.... I retired about 18 months ago. Now I wonder how I ever found time to work and still do so many of the things I love!!!

My day starts early like yours, and working ends about the same time, except for some reading in bed, or maybe a movie on TV.

I never seem to get everything done that I want in a day but I also have increased my driving time for errands now that I live in the boonies.

Retirees here also, at least DH is. I was always a stay at home Mom. I think that we have less energy than we once did so that slows things down a bit. We also take on more unnecessary stuff than we would have before retirement. For instance, our garden used to be a mow it, weedeat it and forget it garden. Not any more! It takes hours to tend to all of the beds, etc. That is part of our unnecesary fun things that we have taken on, however. Spending a day out going to garage sales or just junking wouldn't have been something we would have done in the past. I think that I would have been insane to have spent as much time as I do now on the computer. It is a hobby and I can do it if i want to without feeling guilty and that is the nice part. Starting my own website, http://thegatheringplace.myzf.com/, certainly wouldn't have been something I could have spent time doing. Come on over and join us there if you also have a little spare time each day. I am thoroughly enjoying getting to really know the people who are making that their home away from home or from DG.

Working folk here.

My DH and I have our own business....and are partners in another one. We have 4 acres...most of which gets mowed, a veggie garden,flowerbeds and containers. I'm in charge of another website and on the board of a reigonal non profit organization.

I work for the State of Michigan, and we are really slow right now. They let us play with the internet as long as we use common sense-no porn, etc! So, most of my on-line time is during the day. This sounds like I don't do any work. The fact is that when we're busy, we often work all night until 2 am or later. It's just the nature of the job that it is feast or famine with the work load.

9-5er here! But I always have Dave's in the background. hehehehehehehe...

We are counting down towards my husband's retirement - 2 to 3 years. We talk about it every day - can't wait. We live in So. California but love the east coast. We are looking at Virginia as a retirement spot but we want to look at the Carolinas again.

I get up early and stay up late - never have needed much sleep. I keep our home and yards looking good and I really appreciate being able to stay home to do so. I also have an active social life - lunch and shopping with friends several times a week and my husband and I do a lot of things together - he is off 4 days a week. As one of my friends told me the other day - "You'd be painting your house and gardening with a respirator rather than stay idle." Its true. LOL.

Springlover,maybe we live in opposite parallel universes. I'm a 13 year retiree married to a "semi-retired OR.Rn", living in an abnormal suburban house on a normal size lot. The good weather scenario is: up at 6:oo, coffee on the back porch surveying the yard and garden,inside for the morning paper and crossword puzzle, off to YMCA for cardio excercise,shower,weed,water, admire the seedlings, maybe a trip to the nursery for a plant or two. And it goes on.Then several sessions at DG,dinner,read,t.v.?,and bed. Who has time to work with all of this fun? The time on DG has been creeping up to the point where there isn't much time left for T.V.. What a shame.

I work fulltime. I am an RN in a local hospital. I am still years away from being able to retire (sigh).

Full time work.

and full time gardening, and full time wife, and as close to full time friend as I can manage, and volunteer for Science Fairs and Odyssey of the Mind, and edit for the Gutenburg Project and um... gosh, I'm busy!

1st yr retiree and can't imagine why I worked so many years!! I am busier now than when I worked. Get up early and walk the gardens in my pj's (neighbors get a kick out of it!), come in and visit DG, breakfast and then back out to weed, dream, and fertilize. Can't imagine what fascinates me with the sprinkler, but I find myself staring at it for hours!! Clean my folks house one day, help a cousin who had a stroke another day and simply enjoy life! No more rat race, however no more times of blowing $$$ on wild things. All things in perspective I guess!!

Gee, I'm somewhere in between. I got laid off work and have applied for unemployment. Now if I can just stretch that until next June, I will retire.
I have been so busy, partly meeting Employment Security Commission guidelines and running our county's archives 2 days a week, but also I am working for my political party this year; first time ever. I decided I needed to quit grousing and do something so I volunteer at Headquarters 2 mornings a week. Today we are going to have a table at the 4th-of-July downtown celebration, so I will be there.
It has rained so much that I have done little gardening but at least my bruggies are coming along nicely and I am beginning to see buds. When I do manage to get outside, I am mostly pulling weeds and cutting off rotting rose blossoms that never got open.
I am also quilting when I get time which is nearly never...

Stay-at-home-mom here. (Former hard-charging mid-level manager for a big company; decided to exit the workforce four years ago, when we moved back "home" to Tennessee.) Three kids (one just graduated HS and will attend a state university located here in town; the youngest is going into 4th grade this fall; middle child will be a sophomore.) Having older kids means I don't spend my day running around changing diapers and keeping them out of mischief, but I still spend a lot of time chauffering them to and from sports and other activities, and worrying about what mischief they might be thinking about getting into!) I volunteer at DD's school one day a week, and teach third grade Bible class on Sunday mornings, and we're active with our church's youth group and a group of people our age. (We call ourselves "the highlighters" since we're not old enough to be "Silver Streaks" but we sure aren't part of the "College/Young Professionals" ;o)

My day starts somewhere between 5:30 and 7. On weekdays, I hit the coffee pot (always first!) make a quick hot breakfast for DH, and pack his lunch, then spend a few minutes at DG sorting and prioritizing helpdesk questions and other things that came in overnight. Then there's the morning shuttle (school, swim team practice, etc.), then back home for a couple hours online - usually PDB stuff.

Outside for a bit of puttering around the gardens, back in when it gets too hot, handle a few more inquiries/questions (see a pattern developing?) then housework or gardening work. Before I know it, it's afternoon, and time to pick kids up from school (I LOVE summertime when afternoons can be spent gardening and/or poolside!), then before I know it, it's dinnertime.

After KP duty is done, I usually spend a few more hours online (I can catch a favorite TV show at the same time, if I want) or read a book. Usually my day ends around 11 pm, when I check emails and helpdesk inbox one last time, then hit the hay. Years of working 60-80 hour weeks permanently "cured" me of being able to indulge in sleeping late (plus growing older does that, I suppose.) So for the present time, I think I've "gained" a few hours each week that might have been spent in a pleasant slumber when I was a decade younger ;o)

Being a site administrator DOES take up a lot of my otherwise free time, but it's (usually) a lot of fun to interact with would-be members and subscribers ;o)

I'm a 39 yr old former corporate manager from the Aerospace field that got tired of the rat race and having little time for my kids (DS was 9 and DD was 5 at the time). I worked in Marketing/Customer Management. I quit my corporate life in Aug. 1995 to work "full time" on DH & I's budding home-based business in the remote control hobby biz. DH is an engineer and started the home-business on the side pursuing a hobby interest. DH & I are a good balance of skills for our own business in that what he lacks I provide and vice versa. DH quit corporate life in Mar 2001 and we enjoyed a blissful year or so working together at home and having the luxury of being there for the kids all the time. We eeked out a living but some times it was difficult. We had no health insurance and then I ended up pregnant. That was a worrysome time!

In Oct. 2002 we realized we had to "formalize" our business and needed more people to run it, so leased a building, went into debt big-time and bought the needed machinery and hired my BIL and SIL to start. Within a month my mother joined us from the same corporate world with her background in manufacturing. Now we have 22 employees in 18 months time and are working hard again.

I've been working towards cutting back my hours AT work and generaly get up around 7-7:30 am and spend a leisurely few hours around the house in the morning with my 2-yr old doing some household chores (sweeping, laundry, dishes or run some errands) and spend usually an hour on DG catching up with the morning's DG posts.

I drop DD off at a in-home daycare around 11am and head to work until 5:30. I'm the business manager which means I coordinate all the administrative aspects of the biz while DH focuses on the technical side of things (production, engineering, customer tech issues). I do payroll, human resources, financial planning, and fight fires in the customer arena and process issues within the business between the different depts.

I'm home by 6pm aftering picking up my 2yr old and my 14 yo DS and 10 yo DD are home. I fix dinner and usually once or twice a week DH makes it home in time for dinner, but usually doesn't get home until sometime between 8-10pm. I spend time gardening after dinner (oh I forgot I usually photograph my gardens this time of year either upon arrival home @ 6pm or in the morning around 9-10am). If it's hot or rainy or winter time I then jump on DG and do email, scatter in some laundry and other chores (bathtime for the youngest, etc).

Weekends are spent running errands, yard work, activities with the kids. DS is in to sports from Fall to Spring so usually have games every weekend.

It gets to be pretty frantic and frenzied at times, but I can really set my own hours and DH & I hope to sell the biz in 5-10 years and retire at 50 or so.

I keep trying to retire but the pension doesn't come in for another few decades for me.

I do exactly what I please with each and everyday, that's the benefit of working for yourself with no children to look after or husband to compromise my time with. Trouble is the bank keeps paying money out for my electricity, gas, telephone, internet service, house rent etc, not to mention business costs and it keeps wanting to be topped up with more money! Soooooooooo as long as I keep the bank fed with cash, I can do anything I like with my time ;)

Baa - what do you do for that cash the bank's always wanting?

As little as possible for as much as possible ;)

I run my own little business

LOL!!! Such a secretive gal you are.

I don't want to be accused of advertising :)

We're dairy farmers - out standing in our field and never without work!

Actually, I've "retired" due to health considerations, but my DH is milking more cows than when I was working full time with him. We have 55 milkers and regularly milk around 45, the balance being dry while waiting out the last 6 weeks or so before giving birth and starting all over again.

Stan's day starts at 4:45, mine a little later, but almost always by 5:30 - old habits are hard to break. I'm still finding it hard to get myself into a real routine. During the school year, our grandchildren get on and off the bus here and that gives my day some structure, but with our crazy meal schedule and Stan trying to get the workaholic of the new millenium award, it's difficult to find any kind of a pattern in my days.

I check the weather online a couple of times a day for the farm, and sneak into DG at the same time to look in on things. My posting is less and less, but I try to keep up with the Farm Forum, Roses and Garden Talk, a couple others. My gardening is somewhat along the same lines - out to hang up a few workshirts and pull some weeds, plant some new acquisitions, move something, you get the idea.

This spring, I found myself doing a lot of quilting for a baby boom that we seem to be having in both Stan's and my family - our youngest daughter, his nieces, my niece, and a cousin all in the space of 5 or 6 months. We also have a niece getting married - what's come over this bunch!!?? lol But it put me back into sewing and now I'm making myself some clothes, working on some quilting projects that have no obvious purpose in life other than to be, and of course making some baby clothes for the soon to be grandson.

This is going to sound odd, but it is very hard not to be up to my eyes in the farm. Choretime still comes around, but I don't have anything to do, aside from occasionally putting the cows in the barn. I always feel just a bit at a loss.

Well, I'm a teacher and have the years to retire but just don't feel that I am ready to do that right now. My better half is a teacher (former chemical engineer but left to go back to farming) also but when asked always says "farmer". We have a few hundred cows and we bale hay. In fact I just got in from raking and he is finishing baling for the day. We must make hay while the sun shines (it has been raining at least once a day for two weeks now). We have two more fields cut that we will bale tomorrow. He'll probably cut at least 50 more acres this evening for baling Mon or Tues depending on the sun. Jenny

I am up at 5 am to do a few things before my 2 hr commute to my advertising job in Toronto. I am a council representative for Aboriginal people in the eastern district on the Aboriginal Peoples Council of Toronto. Wed. nights are native beading classes at the Native Centre of Toronto. Otherwise I am home at 7 pm. Out in the garden before my day begins and last thing at night. I love to feel the dirt under my feet and my hands.
Some women get excited about fashion or jewellery.......I go over the top for dirt and rocks, seedlings and fertilizers !!!!!!!! What can I say?? haha
WANTED; One good man with a horse. Please send picture of the horse ! or a truck will do............

Farmers never retire, as wellyou know Kathleen!!! You know that, if I got the chance, I'd still be doing something too LOL. Mr Cropp (yes I know) my first bosses dad, was well into his 70s, plastic hip and the rest used to come out and do his chores. Used to frighten me witless when we went fencing because he always insisted on wielding the sledgehammer with me holding the post! (never missed once thank goodness, I can still hear him saying 'Why're you flinching girl? Anyone would think I was going to miss') I spoke to one of their neighbours a year or two back ... he's still doing the occasional chore 14 years on!

You can never retire from farming, it's gotcha in it's clutches!

LOL, Baa, I was milking cows when Stan and I first started dating! You don't think that's why he decided to farm instead of becoming a nice electrical engineer, do you????

I still keep my eye on the girls, we did milk weights Friday night - most of them are doing rather well, even if I'm not out there everyday to encourage them.

Actually, the gardening is a good substitute. Keeps my hand in with growing things and almost none of my plants have ever stomped on my feet or tried to squish me or rip an arm out of its socket. Although there is that thing with the rose thorns. Cyber gardening is quite painless, and look at all the great people I've met.

We are working wishing we could retire. There's always the money issue. I take little retirements along the way. That's because work gets slow periodically. I save enough money along the way to fill in the gap, then when it starts to get tight, I start taking the calls for painting more houses.

Right now it's really really hot outside and I am on an exterior paint job. I get up at 6, feed the dogs, birds and fish, wander the yarden to see what bloomed overnight, give the new plantees a little water to last the day, then off to the job by 7:15. I'm 50 now and female and whether it's just an excuse or really hot, I put in about 5-6 hours and head for home. Sit in the a/c waiting for the sun to go over the trees, do mine or DH's books on the other computer, pay some bills, check in with DG and go outside for another roam in the yarden. Pull some weeds here and there, move an unhappy plant, let the dog run and tear up the sod, sit down have a beer and watch the birds bathe in the twilight.

I gave DH a new grill for his BDay so he has become the chief cook now. I will do clean up after dinner. Watch some TV, hit the pillow and try to read for about 2 pages then give up and sleep.

We live in the suburbs so there are no milking the cows or bailing the hay (although I am no stranger to those tasks), the day still goes by too quickly.

We'd like to wean off the work and spend more time on the boat in the Keys, but that dollar weed in the yard won't pay the mortgage. LOL
:^)))
Molly

langbr do you happen to have MY husband for customer for your RC models??? LOL

My DH and I were forcibly "retired" the end of Feb this year. At first we thought we were devestated but miracle of miracles, it was the BEST thing to ever happen to us. DH is 61 and had planned to retire next year anyway. For a couple of weeks I'm still 58 and had planned on working with and for my husband until *he* retired. He worked as an engineer/plant manager for a major insulated glass company and for 20 years I was his "executive assistant." Once I saw the pressure and stress he went through on a daily basis, it was easy to see why he never talked to me. :-D

So one the first of March we both needed something to occupy our minds and time. He went straight back to his first love, flying (if only in the form of building RC airplanes) and I went back to my first love, gardening.

A year ago when the news broke that our plant was to be shut down we had to make some serious changes in our life. We had several pieces of property that we needed to sell and get all our "stuff" back together. We built a new home on a piece of our original property and moved into it last July.

Since then, we've built more, added here, amended there, retired and started enjoying our life for a change. And Dave's Garden has most definitely been one of *the* most pleasurable "additions" to my life.

~julie~

Julie - your story inspires me! I can only hope that my DH will retire to his RC flying (it's a job now and not so much a hobby) and that I can retire to gardening. Isn't it funny how even across the generations we find so much in common with our fellow man. What a delightful story and ending to it -- all things work out for the best in the end. Brenda

Hey Brenda, email me with your business info...Eric wants to hear ALL about it! :-D

~julie~

Julie - You've got mail.

Molly, I HAVE met you and would not have thought you are 50, LOL! (Of course, not many believe that I'm almost 64, either!)

Kathleen... Farmers NEVER retire, but sometimes have to slow down!

Julie: sounds like it has been a "Blessing" indeed!

Thanks Brenda...you have RETURN mail! ;-)

darius, it really *has* been...and I'm loving every minute of it.

Re-tire, we never get a chance to un-tire!!!

Darius, you are very kind, a boost to my ego when I need it....LOL

:^)))
Molly

I'm working full time (for now = facing possible layoff after 1st of year). I work 6:30-3:30 and then come home and try to spend a couple of hours doing something I like to do - like gardening, stained glass, mosaics, etc. Then, when DH gets home we usually lounge around until it's time to feed the kids (4 cats!).......I never have the time to do what I want to do....I wish there were two of me - one to work and one to play!

I am a 8 hour a day computer analyst facing a layoff soon like many of you have already experienced. I would love some free time for a while from the rat race to focus on my DH and DD and of course gardening, but not at the expense of no income. I'm actually checking in to re-education toward an RN like some of you have mentioned that you have.

I think it would make more sense to be retired when we are young and have lots of energy to focus on family and hobbies; then when we are older and less energetic, we should enter the workforce! Just a dream, but wouldn't it be nice?

I tell people that I am a rocket scientist. I suppose that is not entirely false. I am an engineer at a facility that makes rocket engines. DH is an unemployed rocket scientist. My health is not good and I think I can improve a lot if I could live life at my own pace, so I plan to quit after DH finds a new job.

I work for a local semiconductor factory where we build chips for commercial purposes. I will be celebrating my 20 yr. anniversary there in 1 month. Although the job is easy compared to some that others have, it has a high level of stress, with emphasis on the numbers we make.(chips we ship)..I guess many of you can relate to that..its all about the money..LOL

We work compressed shifts..3 days one week and 4 days the next..12 hour days. Makes for long days, that 4th day is a killer, believe me, since its all on the feet type work, a lot of walking around. But if I look at it another way, I only work half the year.

I just turned 61 this year, need to start looking at numbers to see how soon (or not) I can think about retiring from that place. When I was younger, I was a stay at home Mom, so don't have a lot of past history of paying into social security..this is going to hurt me now.

Other than having foot problems, I think I am relatively healthy....(other than being overweight *sigh*). Re-married my ex hubby last year after being divorced for 30 or so years, he is retired military, he is a big help with the tough jobs around here. We garden together, he says I think up things to do and he does them....LOL Actually thats not far from the truth, but I will never admit to saying it..

earthling...LOL...I can identify with your last paragraph, ENTIRELY! :-D

I'm really enjoying reading everyone's posts. I hope this thread goes for a long time yet.

~julie~

Retirement? It's about 14 years still to go. We call it superannuation here in the Government sector. The limit is 60.

I'm employed in a reputed food technological research institute for 22 years in the technology transfer dept. This is from where I get access to the Internet, making my own spare time as and when it is available. A "cyberslacker" (new term coined recently), as you may call. So, my stints at the Internet are interrupted and sometimes in fits and starts. We have common terminals and sometimes someone will be waiting their turns in the 5-6 terminals that our staff use for various browsing/downloading jobs. I normally come and use the DG, mail and google for any search. Ours is an half past eight to half past five, Monday through Friday schedule and that is why you don't see me on Saturdays and Sundays. I don't have a 'puter at home (yet).

As I read these posts, I am saddened by how many people are still being forced to take early retirement or face layoffs. Its unfortunate that soon there will be no jobs (other than the minimum waged service jobs) for anyone living in the US..once the country looked up to by the world. Too many of the better jobs are being sent overseas where the wages are lower..I understand the need for companies to make a profit, but I wonder if they understand that if no one has a job, who will be buying these products or services that they want to make such profits on..??