Tuesday 4-It's About Time

 

Time...

Hi! Welcome to Toni Taddeo's Tuesday 4. Toni has moved on to higher ground but we keep her memory alive.

Let's consider time....

1. When you say "in a couple of days" what time period are you thinking? Is your time exact or fluid?

I guess it all depends on what I am referring to...if it is a specific thing that I am planning to do, then my time is exact, but I would probably state exactly what day it will be.  If it is in reference to something I am thinking about doing, like housework...it can be very fluid..."in a couple of days I will dust the house..." might mean anything from tomorrow to whenever I get around to it.  Case in point, for a while now I have been wanting to replace the mini blinds in our bedroom.  They were very very dusty and grungy on the outside of the blind that is next to the window. We never open those blinds because that side of the house gets a lot of bright sun during the day and it makes the room too hot if we open the blinds. And of course, one never opens the blinds in a bedroom at night, right? Not if it faces another house or street, that is. So, for a while my thought was to replace the blinds because they were old and yucky (they came with the house) and I thought it would be easier to just replace them than to take them down and try to clean them. And so I finally got around to buying new ones to replace them. I thought it would be a simple take down the old and fit the new one into the same bracket and not have to do any changing of the hardware.  Wrong!  The new blinds needed a different kind of bracket to hold them and would not fit into the old brackets. This would require making new holes in the wall and screwing new brackets in different places to hold the blind.  Our house is a manufactured home, and the walls are not as thick as regular drywall.  Plus the stud boards are farther apart, and anyway, long story short, it was going to be a much bigger deal than we thought to put up these new blinds. And so, after looking at the old blinds more carefully, I decided they weren't so bad after all. So I finally got around to taking them outside on the back porch and hosing them down really well. Thankfully the dust and grime came off quite easily. Why didn't I do this sooner???  And now, "in a couple of days" (or whenever we get around to going the 15 miles back to town), we will take the new blinds back to Walmart for a refund. Thankfully I didn't mess them up too much taking them out of the box, etc. and I saved my receipt.  LOL.  

Oh, and of course one thing led to another in this process of taking down the blinds...everything had to be moved away from the windows first, and then that revealed other places that needed extra cleaning of dust accumulation where the vacuum cleaner doesn't always reach on a regular hurry up and vacuum the floor kind of day.  Yeah, I think I need to be more specific when I say I am going to dust in a couple of days and stop putting it off...as you can probably tell, housework is not my most favorite thing to do. I'd rather be outside watching the birds or sitting here writing to you...  Oh, and now my goal is to do one room at a time and take down the blinds and clean them really good like should have been done long before this.  Two windows down, seven windows to go..."in a couple of days..."

2.Does time get away from you? How do you handle time?

Yes, time does get away from me. Now that I am retired, I am not as concerned about time to get up, time to get to bed, etc., except on days when we have specific appointments or church, etc.  However, my husband is the time-keeper here. He keeps me on schedule pretty well. Like right now, it is 7:14 a.m.  Normally we sit down together by 7:00 a.m. and have our morning devotions, and then I fix breakfast, after which we get dressed for the day and go take care of errands, etc., and then come home and have lunch usually by noon.  When it comes to mealtimes, he likes to eat at specific times every day and gets "cranky" if we get too far off schedule. LOL.  Supper is normally around 5:00.   Anyway, I've used up my time to keep writing here this morning, so I need to take a break and come back to this later. If you don't see this until this afternoon you will know that I was having to stay on task and get other things done first. LOL.

P.S....we just got back from Walmart, and yes, I took back the blinds that we didn't want. Now I am back here trying to get this post finished before noon. But this keeps distracting me:

Bluebirds and squirrels...

Squirrel having an acorn snack on our back porch...

Mama Bluebird sticking her head out of the house to check on the whereabouts of the squirrel...

Squirrel on the bird bath, talking to his friend "Bobby" The squirrel,

But actually he is calculating how far of a leap he would have to make to get to the bird feeder from there.

I think he's decided it would be a leap too far.  The "baffle on the birdfeeder" has been working just fine in keeping him off of it.  But he keeps trying. You gotta hand it to him...he's very determined.

I think Mama Bluebird is sitting there laughing and saying "silly squirrel".   I'm surprised she didn't come out and bop him on the head.  That's what they usually do, but she could see he was more interested in the birdfeeder than he was in the birdhouse. So she gave him a break today. LOL.

But this is why I don't get much done.

3. People say time is short. Then why do you do so many things you don't like and so few of the things you do like?

Well, life gets in the way. We have to eat, we have to have clean clothes and a clean house. We have to shop for groceries, we have to maintain our yard and other essentials. We have to go to the doctor. We have other errands that need to be run on a regular basis...car maintenance, etc., etc. We have to sleep.  You'd think when you are retired you would have plenty of time for all of this and also to have fun too.  Well, I've learned that if you want to do things that are fun or hobbies, etc., you have to plan for those things.  You have to allow yourself the freedom to pursue things other than the mundane from time to time.  Frankly, we haven't really learned how to balance all of that yet. We do take walks every day, weather permitting. But with the gas prices the way they are, any kind of trips or vacations are pretty much out of the question for us right now. We live on a very fixed income. That's probably the real reason we don't do so many things we would "like" to do. It takes money. Pure and simple.

4. Do you have enough time to do the things you want to do or live as you would like to live?

I am sure we could have enough time if we planned for it.  But like I said in #3 above, time is one thing, but having the money to do things is another. We did not plan well for our retirement, due to a lot of circumstances beyond our control.  We are very thankful for what we have, however. God has provided a very nice roof over our heads and a lovely place to live. We have good health (for the most part), and we are managing without having to go back to work.  We have plenty of food to eat and we are thankful for having good friends and family nearby. Our church family is very special and important to us, and that is one of our primary sources of fellowship as well as worship. Having spent the majority of our adult lives in working in the ministry in one way or another, that has always been a major part of our way of living. Therefore, it stands to reason that it would continue to be an important consideration in our retirement as well. Our relationship with the Lord is more than just a "job" for us. He is the very source of our existence, both spiritually and physically. And so we are extremely thankful that He gives us the breath and health to live this life we are living. We really wouldn't want it any other way.

"From the rising of the sun 

to its going down

The Lord’s name is to be praised."

Psalm 113:3

Amen.

And now I am being reminded it is time to fix lunch. LOL. So with that I will bid you adieu.  Have a blessed and wonderful day.

Thank you to Annie for coming up with these questions each week for our Tuesday 4.  You are always welcome to join in HERE.