Another fun week as a pensioner

I know I’ve said this several times to anyone whether prepared to listen or not but I love being on pension and it has officially been 7 months now. I am most grateful for being able to be here while I still have the health and energy to enjoy doing things.  I am thinking of those poor people who literally have to work until they end up in the hospital and the only rest, they ever had was the time in hospital before dying. This sadly is not necessarily due to bad planning on their part, life happens and takes its toll, not always for the better.  Referring to seniors whose kids died in an accident and then had to take care of the little ones, paying for the rest of their upbringing and not having anything left for their old age.  Life is not a game and I dearly appreciate the hand dealt to me.  Yes, one has to budget like crazy and simply being in need of something or wanting to change up something does not mean getting to the shop to buy it.  Suddenly you have to look at your budget, can we afford it this month or did we already spend the allotted money for that expense?  If spent, it means waiting another month BUT the quality of life is just so much better.  Gone are the days of deadlines, having to deal with staff absence or BBEEE crap.  You plan to do what you want when you want and if not finished, not the end of the world.  Hubby and I spend much more time together, even playing the same game on our phones when we take a time-out from whatever we were busy doing.

I only had one customer quilt to do the past week but it was such a lovely scrappy quilt that I’ve decided to make this pattern somewhere in the future.  I especially like the quilters’ decision to use brown as sashing’s.  I tend to always opt for black, white or cream. She used telephone directory paper to sew her coloured strips to before adding the sashing.

I used the open curl design on this which too was a part of the motifs in the Adria Good course I did.

Then last Sunday my daughter and I along with her little one went for lunch at an animal farm for kids and she told me she’d like to have a duvet cover with dinosaurs for the little ones’ bed.  Now I’ve never made a quilted duvet cover but as the saying goes “it’s not who you are but who you know” and luckily, I know a quilter who makes these all the time and she was so kind to drop one off at my house for me to take photos and thoroughly study.  After lunch I dug through my fabric and low and behold I found a dinosaur print.  Then I wanted to finish it before the little ones’ second birthday and party yesterday and burning a little late-night oil and getting up earlier I did it.

On this, I did another of Adria’s designs called the Wiggle Worm.

Oh, and hubby and I went for our first pensioner's meal on Tuesday.  Now, this is the part of budgeting that I love most.  Checking to see where and when you can get the best deals on most everything and the funny side to this was that this little restaurant only stays open until 6pm.  So here we went for supper already at 5pm and when we got there and I wanted to order wine, they informed us they do not serve alcohol.  I guess pensioners are not supposed to consume anything stronger than coffee.  So, we ended up spending exactly 45 minutes, finished our meal without anything to drink and returned home but the amount of food at that price was not to say ‘no’ to.  They even added us to their ‘What’s App’ list for future invites!  I also added an app on my phone informing me of the best deals at restaurants close to us.  I obviously lead a totally different life now.

Thursday, we drove to another friend’s house simply to drop something off and hubby in his dirty gardening gear initially didn’t even want to get out of the car.  Well, it didn’t happen and we sat chatting (with wine this time) until 9:30pm.  They too are beginning to think of going on pension but I don’t think they are quite ready to live on less but in the same breath mentioned they had a terribly bad year with the business and I couldn’t help wondering if things did not turn around soon if they’d ever feel ready.  I did however remind them that the level of stress that they’re undergoing is not worth the quality of life they could have even with less money.

Friday evening the older kids came over.  My daughter-in-law had a hectic Saturday planned (work and the little one having an open day at his new school) and was in need of wine.

Saturday, we had the youngest grandbaby’s second birthday party and the parents also decided to combine this with her dedication ceremony.  The two grandfathers did this with one reading from the bible and the other one doing the prayer and blessing.  I loved this intimate and private way of doing this.

With hubby playing golf this morning, I plan to clean my sewing room from top to bottom.  Yes, it is included in the weekly cleaning but it wouldn’t damage anything if it gets an additional proper treat.