Joie de Vivre; Alegría de Vivir

Frozen fountain on our patio

We've all heard the stories. An older person finally retires, ready to rest and full of plans. Once faced with limitless leisure time they freeze up and don't know what to do with it. The next thing, we hear about them going back to work "just to keep busy."

During the first few months of my retirement, we were moving from New Hampshire to New Mexico, so my time was taken up with that chore for a while. Once the boxes were unpacked and the curtains hung in our Clovis house, I started doing all the deferred reading I had longed to do after years of being immersed in children's literature. Adult books! Library trips once a week! Books by the armload!

It took a while, but I eventually looked up, bleary-eyed, from the books and realized that I wanted to be with people. And so it went, step by step. I found some volunteer work, a wonderful women's group, and new friends.

Now that we are in Las Cruces, my list of things that I want to do keeps growing and growing. I want to learn more about:

• Digital photography
• Digital movie making
• Speaking Spanish
• Quilt making
• Spinning
• More knitting
• More reading
• Blogging
• Bird watching
• Star gazing
• Animal tracks
• Local geology
• Desert gardening
• Archeology
• Local history
• Oral history

I want to explore:

• Las Cruces restaurants
• Mesilla Valley wineries
• The Rio Grande Theater
• The Fountain Theater
• Garden centers
• Museums
• Libraries
• Art galleries
• The University
• Local parks
• Ethnic grocery stores
• Mountain and desert trails
• Older neighborhoods

There's probably more on my list of things to do, but I'm just relieved to get this much written down for future reference. As I try all of these things, you'll be reading about them on my blog.