Survival Tips for LOL

I have some interesting (sometimes unorthodox) suggestions on how someone my age can survive on a limited income in a very expensive world.

When someone is suddenly faced with a situation brought on by one of the life partners suffering a stroke or other catastrophic event that takes away life as it was it’s time to put on your big girl panties and deal with it.

This usually occurs at or near retirement age. When my husband of 60 plus years had The Big One (I’m talking about a stroke) we were living quite comfortably in a new manufactured home set on a beautiful lot in a little town across Puget Sound from Seattle. We weren’t one of the well-heeled neighbors who had a gorgeous view of Seattle, Sound and mountains. We were in a wooded area and our view included the backyard of a couple with kids and grandkids who needed Grandma to furnish her backyard with a jumble of plastic swings, slides and sandboxes and the ever present trailer park laundry lines. Old bedsteads, miscellaneous chairs and other stuff cluttered the yard. But they were nice neighbors and everywhere amongst the debris she grew beautiful flowers in beds and hanging baskets. I treasured my view.

The house on a weedy hill in back of us was a haven for druggies and a suspected meth operation. These neighbors were extremely popular on certain days of the month (when welfare checks came in) and noisy cars with no mufflers streamed in and out of the yard to get their drive-in fix.

Otherwise, it was a normal all-American neighborhood complete with habitats for humanity housing and a few racing motorcycles. We tried to sleep through the flashing blue lights that showed up on a regular basis. We went about our business of ordinary retirement with Charlie working in his cave (a larger than life garage with workshop, bathroom and woodstove), and me toiling in my garden and making drapes for bare windows and other homemaking chores. I had a lot of practice in my working days and raising six kids in a waterfront home close by that we sold rather than go broke fixing it in our retirement years.

Traveling around the country and going south with the other snow birds to Arizona each winter made life interesting. We even purchased a home in Yuma, AZ but eventually got tired of the annual commute and all the work it entailed so sold out and settled back in the beautiful Northwest where we lived in a comfortable motor home until we decided to place a real house on the site.

Just before our 60^th wedding anniversary Charlie suffered a stroke which turned our world upside down. We thought he might someday recover enough to come back home but that was not to happen. We found an assisted living facility not too far away and began a new life. I learned many survival tricks along the way thanks to our six great kids and advice from counselors and friends. I will try to get these condensed into forthcoming blogs.