As Ian Sees It

   Golden years?  Don't think so Tim.  Freedom comes with a price, you know.  And as often as not the price you pay for the freedom you worked for and planned for the bulk of you career comes with the health problems associated with the progression of aches and pains.  With parts of the body wearing down and the growing need for medications.  The aggravation of waiting lists for replacements of knees, hips,  and so on.   The realization that your children's adult problems are more stressful than their childhood problems.   (Cause even though they are quite capable of handling them, they are still your children.)   Okay, I'll admit retirement has some definite advantages.  Like not working.....forty to fifty five hours a week.  Like having the time to do things you never dreamed of, like shovelling snow when it falls and is still soft rather than on your day off after you backed over it a hundred times.  Like golfing w...

        While I would like to say "Far be it from me to flog a dead horse"  or that I am redundant, that I repeat myself, that I write things over and over,  I am afraid some things are just too good not to pause and enjoy.  A very short time ago I related to you, my online therapists, that I would be attending a luncheon with members of my troop.  Troop 4 '74 in recognition of our fiftieth anniversary of being sworn in to the R.C.M.P.   Well I attended,  and I spent about three hours with five of those guys..........AND IT WAS FREAKIN AWESOME!!!!!   So allow me if you will, this one last indulgence.            After hearing the boys who were living in British Columbia were planning a luncheon in Merit, B.C.  My better half told me I should be there.  Her reasoning?  Well I suspect she thought she could do her spring cleaning without having to do it around me.   But officially she si...

   I am afraid my age is catching up with me.  I have a bad foot requiring surgery,  which has led to a swollen knee.  So just as the weather calls me to our yard,  to our garage, to warm and beautiful walks down to the lake,  I am seated in the basement with my MAC while an ice pack thaws against my knee.  And while there are more productive things I could be doing,  a little on line therapy seems to be in order,     I am a sucker for nostalgia.  The things that bring it back.  The things that make me feel a certain warmth.  The smell of a horse barn.  Canvas ankle runners.  Two sticked popsicles.  Archie Comics.  Tinny tunes on an a.m. radio and thousands of songs from childhood, youth, and younger adult years.  News papers.  Old t.v. shows.  It makes me miss the sounds and smells and excitements like Santa at the Bay, or the toy department in any department store.  Local t.v....

     We just got back from yet another road trip.  Not because a month in California isn't enough travel.  Not because a house full of family over Easter isn't enough holiday experience.  Our trip this time was to old familiar territory for a very different reason.  We attended a funeral.    The funeral of a person I don't think I ever met.  But funerals aren't just about those who left us.  They are also for those loved ones who remain.            I have been through this before:  In 1975 I was posted to Outlook, Saskatchewan.  I was there four years.   In 1976 I married Carol and brought her there.  In the fall of that year,  we bought our first house.  Carol landed a casual job with the Prairie Pioneer Lodge.  And there, she met her first friend,  who was also her boss.  The boss thing?  Well I don't think that ever factored into the friendship. ...