Dear Diary

I am so ashamed to be such a bad blogger. But I do have a good excuse. I changed jobs and retired. Or I retired and got a new job. I don't know, I'm so confused. It all happened so fast.

Let me back up and start over. Last March I completed 30 years of service in the Virginia Retirement System. This means I could retire with full benefits. I have been rolling that idea around in my head for some time, as the benefits are kind of nice and there is no real reason to wait to collect; in other words, the monthly benefit does not increase if you wait to retire.

But, being a young-ish person, and having a child in college makes it kind of hard to be without full-time employment. I do like working. I just wanted to work somewhere else, doing something else.

I learned about a job as the records manager at a law firm. It sounded like a hard job, and I really was not looking for a hard job, since I have been working for 30 years now, doggone it, but my husband said I should go on the interview to at least find out about it. So I did. It sounded interesting and I was invited back for a second interview. All went well with that one. They made an offer, I said I need x amount of money and they said OK. Next thing I know, I am filling out retirement papers, and telling the people I work with that I am leaving. Golly, that was hard. By my last week on the job, I was an emotional and physical wreck. Also around this time, I hurt my shoulder, so I was not in good shape at all. And I only had 4 days off between jobs. People, if you do this, take as much time as you can between jobs. Trust me on this.

During my "retirement", I visited my son at college and 3 three grandchildren. Here are some photos:

I hope you will forgive me for not writing in almost a month. I promise to be regular after this.

I enjoy my new job and think it will be a good fit. I left behind some very fine people and that was much harder than I thought it would be. I thank them for their support and kind words during this time.