HAPPY ANNIVERSARY TO ME!

A year ago today, I posted for the first time to this blog.  I remember being so nervous writing and writing about what?  I knew that I wanted to start keeping a "journal" about how and why Ray and I decided to retire to Panama.  I am a journal keeper of sorts anyways (I kept a journal about Carly and for Carly for fifteen plus years of her life), so it just made sense to put it all down on paper.  Or the way it's done nowadays would be on the computer for anyone to see.  I wanted to make sure I had the etiquette down and along the way, I started reading other blogs and taking notes.  One year later, I have had to change the blog to be more about life in Virginia up to our retirement rather than what I am researching and discovering about Panama.  This is because Ray and I have visited Panama twice, made friends and connections (virtual and not) who are living in Panama and almost there, hired an attorney (so we think), and now it is more getting the paperwork together for our VISA and a waiting game.  With Panama, it is always a waiting game.  So Happy One Year Anniversary to me!  Okay, since Ray has blogged twice, it is his party, too.

This week has been a definitive one for me in regards to getting Ray out of here (work, the commute).  I had the opportunity to have dinner with friends in Northern Virginia on Wednesday night.  The restaurant is 40 miles from my office.  I was driving opposite rush hour traffic and on a Wednesday (Thursdays can be very bad both directions).  It didn't matter.  It took almost seventy minutes to get to a wonderful place with excellent food and conversation with friends, but the traffic!  Noise, congestion, construction, stop and go--I had the convertible top down which didn't help.  I was tense.  I am not used to driving in that anymore.  Ray makes the commute daily.  I don't blame him for leaving the house at three am to avoid even half the crowd.  Now with the construction for HOT lanes, the HOV (High Occupancy Lanes) lanes that he can catch before five am aren't even open.  When I was driving home from dinner, the HOV lanes should have been open still going southbound.  NOT.  What a mess.  Barriers on both sides, no shoulder lanes, and all this to go on for another year.  We will be out of here by the time it is all completed.  I need to give Ray more of a life!  I was thinking though "well, if you just moved north once Carly has moved on...".  But it wouldn't matter.  I would still be in the rat race, still having to work to afford living  north and having Ray staying with his job for our health insurance.  No thanks.  When I had a new patient this past week, age 90 with dementia, and I couldn't treat her since she hadn't taken the required antibiotic prior to her appointment, I was super happy (she has had hip replacement and one hour before a dental appointment some physicians still want patients with artificial joints to take an antibiotic to prevent infection--the rules keep changing on this, but when I called her doctor, I was told "yes, pre-medicate her)!  Yay!  She is a deaf woman and very vocal (she can't
 hear herself chanting and singing), and I was just burnt out.  I didn't feel like doing the job.  A big sign that I am "done".
Back to my traffic woes though.  So I told Ray I am just so sorry, and I understand his going to bed at eight pm and will try to be more understanding when, on the weekends, he is falling asleep by ten.  This past week I-95 has had not been shut down once going northbound during the morning rush hour due to tractor trailer and motorcycle crashes, or twice, but THREE times it has been closed down!  Lanes closed to medivac people out of there!  Back ups for ten plus miles!  Two out of three happened at Quantico, VA.  The other one was a bit more north, but again, anyone leaving Stafford (my town) has no way out of the mess.  My eight minute commute (due to the back up of getting on 95) was twenty plus the other day (I know, don't take pity on me).  Patients canceled and no showed.  Employees late.  Just a phenomenal week of a mess on that highway.

Not only do we hear Quantico Marines and the "bombing",  but those living near these huge steel rods hear banging every fifteen minutes.  These will be to upright an overpass someday.  

HOV lanes nice and open.  Not so great on the main lanes.

The left side is what Ray sits in at the end of his day.  The middles is future HOT lanes to our neck of the woods.

I realize now even more and keep telling myself and others that with these accidents (there have been fatalities), with my dinner to celebrate a friends final chemotherapy treatment before major surgery due to Stage 3 cancer, and with finding out in the past year that two friends and one relative have cancer, it really seals the deal that life is super short and unknown.
Now looking back on my anniversary year of being a blogger, oh what a year.  Carly is almost done with graduate school (a year ago I was blogging about going to her undergraduate ceremony) and has signed on with Fairfax County Schools to work as an elementary school teacher.  She is dating someone.  She will be home in a few weeks for who knows how long.  Her best friend is marrying in July.  There have been cancer scares for long time friends.  We have taken many trips including two visits to Panama.  Clyde and Terry Coles are true friends now and not virtual.  They helped us connect with other friendly faces while in Panama.

With Terry Coles

Also in the last year, I have expanded my online reading of quite a few blogs.  I have many people I will want to connect with once in Panama and settled.  I have been reading first and foremost about Clyde and Terry and their life settling into Chame from Texas eighteen months ago, another blogger is a stay at home dad that lives in Panama City, there is a woman writer and her husband that are settled in David, another woman and her husband that have retired to Pedasi, along with a Canadian woman who writes about her life in a new house in Pedasi, also a woman blogs (rarely now though) from Panama City about her not really loving life in PC while her husband works there for another year or so, a young teacher that moved from Arizona to teach  music in PC, a woman and her husband and traveling and blogging and have stayed in three different locations in Panama and then moved onto Costa Rica and are figuring out where to settle (if they will settle anytime soon) and finally another woman that owns a restaurant with her husband in Gorgona.  There are others that keep me up to date in the Boquete area and then there is Don Winner (Panama Guide) that keeps me current with PC news.

Starting today,  I am having a big celebratory week with this blogging anniversary, my birthday coming up, and Mother's Day (Carly's graduation day!).  When I think about the past year, I have not only learned a great deal about Panama (who would have ever thought!) and the blogging world,  most importantly I have found love and support from my family and friends (though some may not like the idea and are saddened by our idea of leaving, they are trying hard to be happy for us), and my relationship with Ray is strengthened all the more with our commitment to being there for one another, staying sane and focused, in our quest to dramatically change our lives!  Wonder what my two year anniversary post will be about?  Stay tuned!