Life is lived on levels and arrived at in stages.

I used to have dreams that I died at my desk. Once I turned in my notice, I don't have those dreams anymore. <Grin>

One of the most interesting thing to me while I awaited the final days, were the  questions that everyone felt necessary to ask me, or warn me, not sure what the points were.  They asked me such things as:

• Once you retire, what are you going to do about your identity that is so dependent on work?

• How will you relate to your relatives and friends who are still working while you are living the life of an aristocrat, sometimes known as "The Life of Riley"?  

• What will you do with your new-found leisure time if you have never learned how to enjoy leisure activities?

I think people either meant well, where jealous, just mean spirited people in the first place, or they want you to tell them the answers so they will know what to do when they retire.  Everyone had a story about a parent, uncle, friend etc., and what happened to them when they retired yada yada yada. 

 As they all imparted their wisdom, I kept thinking in my head, the best thing you can do is ignore them, but please by all means regale me with your pearls of wisdom.

So the final week finally arrived!  If you think it was hard working before, you can well imagine how my last week was. My team was awesome; they had arranged a party almost every day of the week. Tuesday at the main campus, Wednesday we went out to lunch and Thursday a party at the Jamboree building. I was very touched at how many people came by to wish me well.

One of the things I had casually mentioned was the only thing I wanted for retirement was my office chair.  When we purchased Herman Miller chairs for the campus, 12 years ago they brought in a sample chairs, one such sample had remained in my office for12 years. The chair needless to say had sentimental value to me. I felt since it didn’t cost the company anything, the request was reasonable, right?

So the gang went out to lunch to our standard place the Pizza Kitchen, and they gave me a funny gag gift, it was a horn for my golf cart, too funny!  

Well during all of this I learned, of course after it was too late for me to benefit from the knowledge, when you officially retire for SS, it only has to be your birth month. I thought I had read somewhere that you could not retire until after your birthday, so I stayed two weeks longer than I needed too! Argh you have no idea how mad I was at myself for this, really, I could have left on June 1^st!

The last day finally arrived!  I went into the office on Thursday, said I am not going to come to the office tomorrow, I will just do my official meeting with HR, get my final checks and I am out of here. Yahoo! So Thursday afternoon, my boss called me into a conference room for our final hand off, keys AMX and VISA cards, computer etc. Then the whole team came in and walked me to the elevator.  As I was going down to the parking garage I was thinking to myself, well darn I didn’t get my chair and that was kind of anticlimactic.  

As I went to get in my car, I said what the heck; it was completely filled with balloons, so much so that it was impossible to get into the car.  As I was pulling out my cell to call the team, Viola they arrived with the ding of the elevator, all laughing hysterically. So we began the fun task of clearing out the balloons, and one of them said did you see in the back?  As I opened the back to clear the balloons, I saw my quilt from home, wondering what the heck, how did that get in there?  During this whole thing I was trying to figure out how they had got into my car, since I had locked it.

They fessed up, it seems that one of them drove all the way out to my house in Banning and got the keys and quilt from BFF Hubby!  Pretty sneaky! As I removed the quilt, low and behold there was my chair.  I can’t tell you how happy that made me.  Off I went with the best sendoff ever!!

The fun and  celebrations continued as my Mother in law and BFF hubby not only had a birthday party for me, they also threw a retirement party at Sun Lakes!  It was pretty awesome!!  I was so relieved my retirement was finally here!!! So here I am, finally arriving at the exact  place in my life where I should be ,right now! I’m happy and I’m scared, but that makes me know that I am being challenged and the best is yet to be!!

Stay with me, as we traverse through this retirement journey, or "my longest coffee break."  I'm just sayin’