Blessings

Retirees say they are busier now then when they worked, and before I “retired-HAH” as my daughter refers to my alleged retirement. However, I often feel I don’t get done what I want to accomplish each day at the same time being aware that my mental to do list is not realistic.

Today I happily worked on my novel. After not being satisfied with what has been happening, my heroine Peggy has taken a temp job she likes after being fired from a bank where she hated working. She will meet with her niece and her reporter boy-friend to plan her next steps in her anti-war drive. Meanwhile sister Katie is heading for Florida with her husband to look at houses. Katie doesn’t want to move, but her husband is fed up with New England snow. Progress. The words still don’t go deep enough, but I know each day when I go back to polish the sentences will be strengthened.

I’ve solved the time consuming mailing of my newsletter W3.It has taken too much time to send it out of my 7000 subscribers, but I need to do one more to tell them I have created a new blog http://wisewordsonwriting.blogspot.com I know I’ll lose some readers, but I will post once a month. I transferred the old newsletters from my web site.

More important I caught up on paperwork and emails, including setting up my new journal. Barbara and I split outside chores, she taking my letters to the post office when she mailed her toothpaste orders and I took her old thrown out clothes and mine to the recycling center.

Then a trip to the train station for my ticket back to Geneva next week, about a five minute walk. A lot of things are coming up there that I don't want to miss, a play, a master writing class, a night of readings, a birthday party for the sister-in-law of my Swiss gentleman friend, plus a mini vacation with him. I will be busy when I get back.

I felt I earned the café sit at La Noisette across from the church. The outside tables have an African print in golds and rusts. The tables are blocked from cars by planters. The plaza across from the church (see http://www.argeles-sur-mer.com/ for a photo) is surrounded by old houses. Two men, their shirts off and their bronze skin cover muscles that should be only on models, lay red roof tiles against the bright blue sky.

I read my book SEA GLASS as I sip my peach iced tea in the warm afternoon sun and listen to the buzz of French conversations around me. Two women, one in a red shirt and the other in green, order syrups, mint and strawberry, with bubbly water. Franck, the owner, serves them in reverse order and they joke with him they ordered the colored of their drinks to match their shirts.

I need to get back to my to-do list: needlework, the newsletter, the novel, checking e-mail, reading various political sites, and some research on my future Syrian novel and a project that has been bouncing around in my mind. There are articles I need to write. Barbara is coming for dinner, although it will only be pizza bought from down the street. There is no way I can do it all today, and I tell myself that is all right. Stop beating myself up for trying to do so much, but the problem is not the shortness of the day, but the great number of things that I find so enjoyable. And if it is stupid feel guilty for not doing it all, there is a larger awareness of how lucky I am to be doing so many things I love.

Tomorrow is another day. The one thing on my to-do list that I can’t forget is be aware of how truly blessed I am.