Retired in Iowa: Life in your 80's... still keeping busy!

by Mary Z
(Iowa)

I am an 81-yr old female retiree living in the State of Iowa in the USA.

My life is not very busy but yet the days go by quickly. I live with my 83-yr old husband who, of course, is also retired.

We live in a small home in a small community and still are able to take care of ourselves, our home, and our yard and garden.

In the summertime, we like to spend time out side working in our yard. Every spring we plant a very small garden, which normally includes lettuce, carrots, onions, potatoes and tomatoes.

Last year we tried the "topsy-turvy" tomato planter. It didn't turn out the best but we are going to try it again this summer.

And I have a lovely flower garden that has different blooming flowers year round. This spring the crocus and daffodils have been so beautiful. Sometimes they come up and then we have a hard frost and the plants get damaged, but this year has been perfect.

During the winter months, I spend a lot of time on my computer doing surveys, sending e-mails, reading the news, playing games, etc. About two to three hours are spent every day on the computer.

It is something I am quite familiar with as I have been using a computer for over 30 years, and I enjoy it. Doing the surveys on the internet makes me a little spending money but it takes a lot of patience as the pay is very minimal.

My husband and I are also avid readers so I usually get four books from our local library and we read those in two weeks, and then I go back and get some more. Very good way to spend our time.

Several times a month I substitute for the City Clerk of our small city as she has lots of meetings to attend. Also when she goes on vacation, I work at City Hall. This also brings in a little money for those extras that are nice. It is quite an easy job as it is only six hours per day and usually she doesn't have a lot of work for me to do so I can read a book or play games on the computer. Lately she has been teaching me a few of her other jobs and they keep me busy.

Another way that I keep busy is following my grandchildren in their sports activities. We have been blessed to have some good athletes in our family and they are so much fun to watch. However, that will end soon as our last grandson is a freshman in college this year and he is playing on the baseball team of the small college he goes to. He has proven himself to the coach and has been starting on the varsity baseball team as a freshman and so we will be going to his games when they are close enough. We had a grandson who played soccer at a Division I college until he graduated last year and we attended many of his home games.

As you can see, I do live quite a full life in retirement. We have seven children but only one of them lives in the same town as we do. The rest live in nearby states and California so we don't get to see them as often as we like.

This summer we have a family vacation in the Ozarks in Missouri lined up for the second week of August and that should be lots of fun.