{"id":3374,"date":"2018-11-03T01:48:28","date_gmt":"2018-11-03T01:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hurnifamily.com\/?p=3374"},"modified":"2018-11-03T01:48:28","modified_gmt":"2018-11-03T01:48:28","slug":"au-revoir-octobre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hurnifamily.com\/au-revoir-octobre\/","title":{"rendered":"Au revoir Octobre"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have a love-hate relationship with the month of October. I love all the October birthdays (including mine), Indian summer, and brilliant fall colors. I hate the end of summer, cold windy days, and Halloween. (It’s fine as a fun day for children but adults have wrecked it with ridiculous decorations, adult parties, and gruesome lawn displays. Can’t we just leave it simple for small children?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this October was a bit more love than hate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. On the first of the month I became eligible for Medicare, ending a two year period of paying for expensive COBRA coverage. Woohoo!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Turning 65 a few days later was kind of fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. I also reunited with some of my West Sub classmates for a mini-reunion near Witchita, Kansas. It was really sweet to spend a couple of days with a fun group of friends, nurses, and believers while we laughed over memories and shared our current stories. Some of the women who came had either not been to a reunion for quite some time or ever. It was really fun to reconnect with each one. My friend and neighbor, Cheryl, and I took an extra day to road trip to the reunion, stopping at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and the Amana Colonies enroute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The Willow Tree Angel is carrying a lamp similar to the ones we carried down the aisle at graduation. This was a gift from one of our classmates at the reunion. I officially hung up my stethoscope today!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

4. And last but not least, I officially retired at the end of the month. My last day was actually November 2nd (today) because I signed up to spend one last work day with Dr. Cheff, my main doc for the first 9 years at Elmhurst Medical Associates. He spent the day teasing me about how awful retirement will be* and predicting that I will be back in 3-6 months. A lunch time potluck and lovely gifts and cards made it a special day. I came home with a full heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I chose the french spelling of Octobre to emphasize the “re” in both reunion (back or again+union = back together again) and retirement (back + draw (tirer) = to retreat or withdraw.) I like the play of words that defined this October for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* Dr. Cheff’s description of what I can expect in retirement is a huge, cold, dark, windowless and damp room with a slow sound of dripping water. Inside there would be absolutely nothing, complete emptiness except for John and I looking at one another. I insisted the room would be full of light, fabric, sewing machines, a loom, books, my computer and my grandchildren. (He did come back and say that maybe he was being overly negative \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have a love-hate relationship with the month of October. I love all the October birthdays (including mine), Indian summer, and brilliant fall colors. I hate the end of summer, cold windy days, and Halloween. (It’s fine as a fun … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hurnifamily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3374"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hurnifamily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hurnifamily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hurnifamily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hurnifamily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hurnifamily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3374\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hurnifamily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hurnifamily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hurnifamily.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}