Getting Ready For Retirement by Starting a Side Business

It's been a long time since I wrote on this blog. 

Taco Tuesdays at Rubios

What have I been busy doing? The regular: work, family. My son finally got engaged, bought a house and now they are busy remodeling. I can't even begin to fathom what they paid - $688,000. I paid $37,000 cash for mine. It's a mobile home in a beautiful park. We have a lake, tennis courts ( I don't play ) and a swimming pool (I hardly ever get in.) But the place, the grounds I mean, are beautiful. Every day I thank my lucky stars for the wonderful life I have. It hasn't always been this way, in fact we have struggled a lot. Especially with health. My husband has really bad asthma. I had high blood pressure and for some weird reason I developed panic attacks. I tried a lot of different remedies. Then finally I found essential oils. From here I learned about Functional Medicine (Dr. Mark Hyman). I also got very involved with supplements and Herbal blends and remedies.

Now I'm getting ready for retirement. We don't have an extravagant lifestyle. In fact we are very simple people. Our idea of a good time is Red Box, or the cheap $4 movies at the local theater. We live in a really cute and quaint town called Brea. It's small town that sits right at the end of North Orange County and L.A. County, just about 7 miles from Disneyland. Anyway since we live in SoCal just about anytime you want you can walk outdoors and just get outside, or head to the park or a hike and spend no money at all.

For retirement I plan to continue my Nature's Sunshine business. I started NSP out of necessity due to my health. Believe me I was shocked when I found out I had high blood pressure. It took me forever to figure it out, plus I had packed on 50 extra pounds from the time I was in my mid-forties. I am 63 now and finally the weight is coming off. I did a total body cleanse that started with the colon and intestines. From here I moved on to the kidneys, then from here I moved on to the liver and gall bladder.

Have you ever head of "Fatty Liver"?  Yup, that was me. Anyway things are so much better now.I can enjoy myself as I prepare for retirement because I am now in excellent shape. I work in a major bank and most of the stories I hear are so sad, because most people lose their ability to work and their money due to medical and physical problems. I never want to have that happen to me and so I'm grateful to have found NSP.

I hope you are having a wonderful life!

Eva

p.s. here is a pic of my neighborhood:

Workplace Harassment

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend.  She confided in me that her boss had been harassing her.  She didn't use these words but that's what it amounted to.  She said that she asked for help and he chided her for it, saying things like "You've been here a long time...you should know how to do your job."  When she pointed out to him that the rules are changing constantly, he stared at her and said (with venom):  "Why don't you retire."  It wasn't a question, it was a statement.  As she was telling me this story I could feel my blood boiling and I recalled my own incidents of workplace harassment and how I handled them.  Being a hothead, I didn't handle most of them well.  Some jobs I just walked off.  Others I told them what I thought.  There were some times where I was more reasonable and said something not so stupid, but not many.  I'm not a hothead most of the time, primarily when there is an injustice.

So, the question is:  Have you ever been subjected to workplace harassment, and what did you do about it?

Greatest TV Couples

There have been some great tv unions:  Lucy and Desi, Coach Taylor and Tami (Friday Night Lights), Archie and Edith.  Really great characters and people you can really relate to.  But  my all time favorites have to be Ralph and Alice of  The Honeymooners fame.  I think a description someone wrote of the series is the most apt way to describe this show:

"A bus driver and his sewer worker friend struggle to strike it rich while their wives look on with weary patience."

I remember watching episode after episode where Ralph would threaten Alice with a punch in the kisser that would send her to the moon.  The look on her bored, weary face was priceless.  In honor of the upcoming Valentine's Day and to Ralph and Alice here's a Youtube clip.


Update April 2015-

The YouTube Video has been pulled and we can no longer view it. So sad. It was a great video.

My friend Mickey Smith

I have never fancied myself a good writer, a fast one yes, but not necessarily a good one.  So there's always the hope that even if I'm not a good writer maybe at least the fun things and the interesting people I have met in my life you will find noteworthy.  So to start things off I'd like to tell you about my friend Mickey Smith, the great love of my life, as it's called.  Mickey was born into a family of people who worked in the outdoors; fishing, camping, whitewater rafting.  Mickey's father was a pioneer in the whitewater commercial outfitting industry and owned a company called Adventours Wet 'n Wild.  Mickey started rafting with his Father at an early age and his expertise was quickly apparent.  He just always knew exactly where to place the oar so that the raft would glide effortlessly even in class V rapids.  Mickey was also an accomplished kayaker, spelunker and rock climber.  Handsome with blond hair and piercing blue eyes he was also quite shy.  But get him out on a river in his raft and he was home and in his element.  He would take every opportunity to show you a new rock, a new plant, where the sun would go down, the best rapids, the best hikes.  The outdoors is where Mickey reigned.  I was with Mickey when his Mother died.  I can still see him at the campground where we had the service. He was crying and I always remember that even in his tears he managed to look over my way and mouth 'I love you'.  The last time I saw Mickey he was seeing me off on my latest life adventure - my move to Baja Mexico.  I recall the day I crossed the border from Mexico into the United States on a day visit to retrieve mail and do some shopping.  There I was sitting in the parking lot of the mail center reading the words from my friend Carolyn:  "Darling, I have sad news...."  Mickey died in the presence of his sister Glenda and his fiancee.  I was not there.