Day One hundred: Late and tired

It's amazing what a clean kitchen can inspire, dirtying it. After my blog entry for yesterday I wasn't tired enough to go to bed and get effective sleep, so I cleaned up the kitchen. When I got up this morning I was inspired. After my high fiber breakfast, oatmeal and All Bran, I made Mango Black Bean Salad. Then I mixed up some Almost No Knead whole wheat bread, which I just finished baking tonight. (Of course I had to try a slice while it was still warm. It was good.)

I attended the third in the series of four Retirement webinars. The main topics of this particular session was health and finances. I shared the name of the book that my youngest daughter recommended to me, Work Less, Live More, for the finance discussion. I shared the name of the book that my wife got me for health, Food for Life and a book that I just bought for myself to learn how to meditate, Opening to Meditation, for managing stress, although I haven't had any since my Life after Layoff started. As my investments keep sliding I may develop some though.

While I am learning stuff, the best part of a webinar is that I am taking them while sitting at my dining room table looking out over my back yard. Now the yard itself isn't that much to look at since I have not taken care to dead head, fertilize, and sometimes water the plants, but when I do water, I fill the bird bath. And it is the bird bath that is the focus of what I enjoy in the back yard. There are a lot of birds that use it and the ground around it. They use it at a time most days that I would have been unable to see them had I been working and even if home would probably not be sitting at the dining room table. Who would have thought that I would be bird watching in my Life after Layoff. (Now most people associate bird watching with bird identifying. I'm just enjoying their antics.)

Before it got too dark, I also stunk up my front yard again. I'm getting better. This time I only stunk up the front yard and not me. Not stinking will help my sleeping tonight, well this morning.