WHAT DO YOU DO ON VACATION?


If you're a 40+ hour-per-week worker, your ideas may run toward:
- sleeping in till a decent hour
- taking little side trips in your state because you never get to do that until there's a break
- spending some time working on your house/cabin/boat/quilt/birdhouse
- eating whatever you like, whenever you like
- not cooking three square meals a day
- not shopping any more than absolutely necessary to keep body and soul together

If you're retired . . . well, that's a different kettle of fish. Do you even go on vacation?

Linden Hills Co-Op
Great mural on the outside wall

I did. I came to Minnesota to visit my youngest daughter. So far we have:
- been to the co-op for food
- been to Cub Foods for other food
- been to two used-book stores
- driven around three (or more--hard to keep track) lakes in the City of Minneapolis
- toured neighborhoods of old-money houses built when the cities were being founded (reminded us of The Great Gatsby era)
- bought and cooked pork roast, chicken (in various configurations), roasted vegetables
- spent an evening with my daughter's next-door neighbor, Jane, who provided wine, tea, coffee, and key lime pie, plus entertaining conversation; we took a platter of caprese to share (made with home-grown basil from a pot on the patio, served on little skewers)
- sat on the patio and talked; enjoyed a nice autumn day

Lake Calhoun

- read
- watched movies
- talked
- read some more, talked some more, watched more movies

That's my idea of vacation--don't need a new wardrobe, cruise liner tickets, itinerary made up by somebody else. . . .

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So  . . . how do you know you're on vacation?

Different sights, sounds, people, foods, scenery.
Different magazines and books in my daughter's digs.
No telephone ringing other than mine when my daughter calls me (we usually text, anyway).

Did you know you can survive without television? Microwave? Toaster oven? Socks you forgot to pack? (Of course you knew that . . . you've been on vacation, too.)

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Well, what's the point of vacation? A lot of the above can be experienced without leaving your comfortable rut.

Time away from a regular job may help you to reconnect with your self--your family--your interests that may have gone by the wayside. 

And if you're retired, you get a change of pace--new perspectives on people, life, yourself.

Thanks for joining me in Minneapolis!

At Sunnyside Gardens, across
the parking lot from the Co-Op