The good and the bad of working part time after retirement

I’ve done this for two months now--almost.  It’s nice to have the extra money for bills and other things and that’s definitely an upside.  But I have to say that even a part time job at my age is tough at times.  It leaves me worn out most of the time.  Would you believe it takes me about ten minutes to get out of my car once I get into the garage after driving home?  After standing up for six hours, my legs don’t want to move and are content to stay put for a while.  It’s those nights that I wish dinner would fix itself.  LOL

Of course, this standing for work isn’t helped by the fact that I’m up and down cleaning this house and working in the yard on my day off.  I declared war on all the spiders on Sunday and spent three hours in my courtyard getting all the webs up and spraying out there.  Now if I can just get up enough energy to do that patio in the back, which is twice the area of the courtyard.

The other downside to working is being called to fill in at the last minute.  “How fast can you change clothes and drive over here?”  Oh my!  I’m not used to that at all.  I don’t mind picking up an extra shift, but more notice than that would be nice.

I also about froze to death last week when I had to work outside the dairy coolers all day.  That was my fault though for not taking a sweater to work.  Luckily, someone had left a sweater in the back, so I borrowed that for my last two hours.  It was excessively big, but I didn’t care.  I would have taken a blanket or anything at that point.  My teeth were beginning to chatter and I was cold from head to toe.  I usually sweat in the store.  I never know what the job is for the day until I arrive for work, but it’s busy and the time goes by fast.

On the upside, it’s fun talking to all the people you see during the day, the co-workers are all great people and will pitch in to help me if I need it, and the boss is fantastic.  So you can’t beat that.  I learn something new everyday I’m there.

On another note, I took my car to the shop today for a new starter so will be using my neighbor’s vehicle to go back and forth to work until I get my car back on Thursday.  It’s been acting up so I don’t want to take any chances with being stranded.  Winter is coming and, along with that, the shorter days.  It’ll be dark when I get off work soon and I hate that but it’s beyond my control so best not to stress over it.  That’s all I would need is to be stranded in the parking lot after dark with a car that won’t start.

Taking all this into account I’m wondering how I’m going to work on my NaNo project in November.  I have so much on my plate this year.  A little voice in my head is telling me I can do it, but so far I haven’t listened and signed up for it.  This would be my fourth NaNo (National Novel Writing Month), but right now 50,000 words is looking overwhelming, especially since I can’t seem to get my mind wrapped around a story theme yet.  More on this later.  I promised myself I’d try to get to bed earlier and here it is almost midnight again.  Sigh… I guess that’s not happening for me.