My Early Retirement Control Center

 

That's a photo of the desk area in my home office. The rest of the room is neat as a pin, scouts honor, but my desk area always looks like it's on the brink of becoming out of control. To be fair, my husband thinks it is out of control, but I disagree - I know precisely what and where everything is, and more importantly, what it's there for.

Crafting a stimulating and satisfying early retirement lifestyle doesn't just happen - it takes a lot of behind the scenes time and energy. I spend a considerable amount of time planning out our travel schedule and our at-home schedule, which is much of what you see scattered around my computer in the photo. From left to right, in a semi-orderly circular fashion, here's what balls are in the air this morning:

• OLLI college catalogs - I check these daily to see what classes we have time and interest in attending.
• Wild Words from Wild Women calendar - I have no clue what day it is until I sit down and take a look at my funny little daily calendar, a gift last Christmas from my husband. Today's quote: "Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement."
• Small notebook I use to track my exercise routine and weight. I'm a bit unhappy with this notebook at the moment - the trend lines appear to be heading in the wrong direction!
• My daily spend notebook, which I use to track all of our transactions. I make one checkmark when I've transferred the entry over to our budget spreadsheet, and a second checkmark when the transaction has cleared the appropriate account. 
• Our ballroom dance studio's monthly group lesson schedule.
• A timer for the lemon squares currently baking in the oven. These are the best lemon squares ever I swear. I modified the recipe slightly to increase the amount of lemon filling, which made a world of difference. Mike loves it when there are baked goods either on the counter or in the freezer to pack in the sack lunch he takes to the college, so I do my best to accommodate. (See recipe below)
• A flyer for Spellbound with Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman, this week's free classic film showing at OLLI.
• A scrap of paper reminding me today is the last day to order a photo book online at Shutterfly in order to receive a 50% discount. I really need to hurry up and finish my photo book on our recent trip to China! 
• Next month's read for one of my three book clubs (Peace Like a River by Leif Enger in case your curious). I got it free from the library of course.
• Scraps of paper listing interesting things to do in Encinitas, Palm Springs and Malibu, the next three locations we'll be taking our trailer to.
• A cruise ship brochure. I'm always on the lookout for a good deal . . .
• Our earthquake policy renewal. It went up - a lot - and I need to chat with my agent to discuss possible alternatives.
• A TravelZoo dining voucher for a winery in Temecula that we'll be visiting during our upcoming Encinitas trip. It's out as a reminder that I need to call and make reservations. I am not a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants person - I make reservations for everything.

I manage our activities via my online Google calendar. Since it resides "in the clouds," I can share it electronically with Mike, and vice versa. It provides much of the functionality I used to utilize at my job via Microsoft's Outlook, or at least as much as I need to keep our little retired household of two moving along.

If I look at this all from the perspective of my pre-early retirement office routine, not much has really changed. The items I'm handling are slightly different than before, but the ongoing initiation, organization and timeline demands are pretty similar. I very much enjoyed organizing my schedule and staying on top of my projects at work, and I still enjoy doing the same in retirement here at home. I spend about an hour at my desk in the morning doing budget entries, organizing our calendar and reading up on my favorite blogs, and then again for another hour or so in the evening catching up on my email and doing future travel planning.

So what's on your desk currently, and how you go about organizing your life in retirement? I'd love to know.

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Best Lemon Squares Ever

6 Tbl butter

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup all purpose flour

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3 eggs

1 & 1/8 cup granulated sugar

1/2 tsp finely shredded lemon peel

4 & 1/2 Tbl freshly squeezed lemon juice

3 Tbl all purpose flour

3/8 tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 350. Grease an 8x8x2 inch baking pan. For cookie base, in mixer, beat butter on medium speed of electric mixer for 30 seconds. Add 1/4 cup sugar and salt; beat till fluffy. Stir in 1 cup flour. Pat into bottom of pan. Bake in oven about 15 minutes or till slightly and lightly browned around edges.

Meanwhile, beat eggs till mixed, just a few seconds. Add 1 & 1/8 cup sugar, lemon peel, lemon juice, 3 TBL flour and baking powder; beat about 3 minutes or till slightly thickened. Pour over above baked layer. Bake in oven for 25 minutes, till lightly browned and just set in center. Watch carefully at the end so you do not overcook! 

Cool completely. Cut into squares and top with sifted powdered sugar if desired. Makes about 16 - 20 squares, depending on how you decide to cut them.

These keep for about 3 days with minimal loss of texture, and they also freeze beautifully for later enjoyment.