Retirement has ended up really treating my wife and I well.
And that was not exactly a foregone conclusion.
In fact, there was quite a bit of trepidation when it came to leaving where we came from to move south. We were worried we’d miss our family so much and not fit in down here. Plus, we weren’t sure that we would be able to stand the summer and all the HVAC cooling that goes with it. However, as soon as we moved into our new place, those fears began to dissipate. First, we loved not having to deal with a gas furnace to stay warm. And there are virtually no heating costs for us during our ultra mild winters. That said, the summers and all of that HVAC cooling did take some getting accustomed to. But the transition to life in the south and a life of retirement came far more naturally than either of us expected. We both gravitated to our shared and separate interests. My wife turned our property into a showplace with landscaping and gardening. She is a master at this. I turned to my books and my outside activities with a passion. We both spent far less time inside the HVAC cooling than we thought we would. But one weekend while my wife was out of town, I tried to weed some beds close to the house and almost killed the HVAC equipment. I thoughtlessly tossed a tarp over the HVAC cabinet to knock of the remaining debris and then forgot it. Thankfully, I realized what I had done an hour later before my mistake choked out the heat pump.