i was thinking last night

i need to be realistic if i do actually want to eventually enjoy a little bit of retirement before i kick off from this life....i don't come from long lived and healthy genes and i don't live a healthy, stress free life. i already can kiss early retirement at 55 good bye...i may or may not be able to realistically try at 60...only if i get really tough with my money and slow down on the rescue thing. my mother, my grandmother and my only aunt, all died of cancer before they hit 70...the chances of me developing ovarian cancer and following in my mother's footsteps are one out of two.

i don't want to become a dinasaur in rescue..long past effectiveness but still taking in more and more....we are taking in tomorrow...three new cats. they are part of a hoarding seizure...many are unadoptable and i feel bad for only agreeing to take in three but we can't stretch any further for more....and i have already finally decided...i am not going to let saints grow any bigger.

i will always push myself to help every animal i possibly can but now i need to start lowering my expectations of how many that means.

i want eventually to have a couple of years where i can get out of bed whenever i want to and not have to stop to check on breathing or scout out puddles as i step over an obstacle course of a ton of sleeping leaking bodies just to have my own much needed pee.

i want a couple of years of not having my home as grand central station 7 days a week. i want to be able to lay on my couch at noon one day and just watch a movie or read a book while the rain spashes my windows. i want to have a life where the next thing on my "have to" list to accomplish thankfully is more than 30 or 45 minutes away.

i want to be able to actually be excited when my phone actually rings because it will probably not ring much any more except for a few close friends and family.

i have been a fulltime caregiver, personally and in my career since the birth of my first child at nineteen...i have never not worked..my first job was at 14 and except for 6 week maternity breaks i have never not worked fulltime. even when i was in nursing school..i was a fulltime student, caring for three kids and i worked night shifts to pay the bills.

i want a little bit of a life where i don't "have to...." any more. i don't want to hear the sad stories, i don't want to feel responsible, i don't want to "fix" everyone's problem that they want me to solve. i don't want to have to think about all kinds of shit that no one ever needs to think of..i just want a couple of years of toddling around being totally useless and responsibility free. and mostly i want a life where i am not dependent on anybody because as it stands now, my dependency on others is frightening to me.

you can love your life but still look forward to it changing. i want to stop havng to grow bigger and better. i want to stop being desperate for more help, more support, more money, more space to keep saints moving forward and growing..i am finally looking forward to shrinking.

age has a habit of doing that to you...i cannot live with death as often as i do and not understand that life as i know it does not go on forever. i do get tired, i will get wise, i do see my own mortality creeping up on me when i look into the animal's eyes.

so..i am shooting for retirement at 60...that gives me 8 more years to figure this out responsibly.