Joe and I have taken many vacations throughout our
marriage of almost 47 years, but many of the pictures are fading, or we have maybe
20 pictures of the same thing, much like the Grand Tetons of Wyoming that you
see in the photo above. So I decided to go through these years of photographs,
pull out the ones I want to save, and I'm scanning them and putting them in
this personalized notebook.
If you have read our story, A Life Time After Time,
and I hope you have, or kept up with this blog, then you know we started our
life in Ohio, then spent some wonderful time in Idaho, and now we find
ourselves in Vegas. One of these days, Joe
plans to retire from his job as audiologist at the VA Hospital. When that will happen
is still a big unknown, because he is still enjoying the job and loves working with
our veterans, taking care of their hearing and vertigo issues. I suspect it
will happen in the next year or so.
That is where the “Where go?” comes into play. We always feel like that is what our pups say
when we leave the house. I mean, we know our dogs do talk when we are not
around, right? But once Joe does retire,
we know we don’t want to stay in Vegas.
It’s supposed to hit 117 this weekend? What? This cold-weather girl does
not tolerate 95, much less 117. It’s not
so much the heat, because it is only about 3 months out of the year it gets this
bad. But Vegas is too big for us. It’s a nice town, and we have enjoyed our
time here. We have had the good fortune to have lived in a small, medium, and
large city. We both love the small town
life, even if we can't quite agree on the weather. You see, I love the cold and
snow; Joe likes the sun and heat, although even he does not like 117 degrees.
As he like to point out, “You don’t have to shovel sunshine.”
We thought about going back to Idaho, because we absolutely
loved it there and have made great friends there, too. At some point, more than
likely we will go back to Ohio, as most of our family and long-time friends
live there. Right now, though, we are thinking it might be fun to take a few
years and move to a small town where we have never been. It would be hard as
far as moving somewhere not knowing anyone, especially since Joe and I are not particularly
joiners. We tend to make our friends through
our work. That doesn’t mean we would move into a new town and never leave the
house—we would find a way to meet and make new friends, so I’m not really
worried about that.
Obviously, we have some serious researching to
do. Find the right state, the right weather
(if that is even possible), issues of cost of living, taxes, crime rates, friendliness.
There are so many things to take into consideration. A part of me wants to take the easy route and
go back to Idaho or Ohio. Then again, it might be fun and quite the challenge
to find somewhere completely new and unknown.
When I wrote my mom’s story, I titled it A Life Unplanned, because it definitely
did not go how I imagine she would have planned it. Joe and I have lived the same thing. We planned
on spending our lives in Ohio. Didn’t go as planned. We planned on living in Idaho until
retirement. Didn’t go as planned. We planned
on Vegas for a few years or so. Didn’t go as planned. Are you catching a theme here? I guess we shouldn’t
plan our retirement because I have this feeling—it won't go as planned!
Thanks so much for stopping by. As always, your support is appreciated. You can catch all of my books at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Patty-Seitz/author/B00U0KSQCO?ref. Remember to keep reading, keep writing, and enjoy your day!
