The “Perfect” Life: I was destined to marry a boy from my hometown, have 2.5 children, a station wagon, a ranch-style house with a white 4-plank fence around it and be a school teacher or a nurse. This was defined as “happily ever after”.
When I was 18 years old, I had only two aspirations. The first was to be what is now termed, a “flight attendant”. Back then it was “stewardess”. The only class I truly loved was geography and my only fantasy was traveling to all those places I had read about. So many years later, I still have that grade school geography book on my bookshelves, even though the countries have changed names, politics and leaders more times than I could ever have imagined. I came from a farm near a little town in Kentucky where not a one of my immediate family, during my childhood, had ventured further than Lexington, Louisville, Frankfort or eastern Kentucky. My mother was a well-read individual with many books on her shelves. But no one ever left my hometown unless they had to and then they hurried back to it as quickly as they could.
When I started this journey of researching my paternal family name, I did not expect to find so many derivations of the spelling nor the number of people with that last name between 1795 and 1930 in Ireland. I also did not expect to find them in the locations I found either. I had been under the (obviously wrong) impression that my ancestor(s) came from what is today called the Republic of Ireland (Co. Cork). As it turns out, they are pretty much completely from today’s Northern Ireland. Of course, back in the day, it was simply Ireland. Most of the time in the census of the United State, they just stated they were from Ireland, if not born in the US. 
A few years back we started discussing the retirement options. We decided I should take social security at 62 while Mike continued to work. After he reached 66, we began to revisit the questions again. Since most of his work is performed as a contractor (i.e., not FTE) in 6 to 60 month gigs, it is easy to put off the retirement decision each time a contract expires and a new one starts. 
When we went to Sintra, not long after our arrival in Portugal, we wandered the village, looking at the houses, homes, Airbnb and shops near the train station. I was not as on top of my game as I would have liked in order to be able to enjoy the town. But I was hungry and thirsty. We had a late start on the day as well. 
This whole time of our vacation, all the festivities seem to be leading up to the 12th of June – St. Anthony’s day of honor. I have been reading up on this since we came here not knowing about it. St. Anthony of Padua (12 th Century) is the patron saint of Lisbon. He was originally from Portugal but spent most of his life in Italy. However, the Portuguese are proud of his heritage.