The weekend after Halloween seems to be when everything changes around here. The leaves start to fall, slowly, so now there is routine raking; it‘s decidedly chilly at night and jacket weather still in the daytime; and finally the garden starts to die off even if there is no frost yet. Days are simply too short for tomatoes to grow quickly. Oh, and it is 63 days until the next great adventure, but more about that later. For now, we spend the days working and preparing for winter.
I‘m trying to get to a state where what I eat is sustainably healthy. In other words, I‘m avoiding fried foods and some things that are unhealthy for me (emphasis on some as there is still a lot of Halloween candy in the house). For breakfast I had a bowl of cereal, orange juice, and a banana. Lunch was P.F. Chiang‘s General Tso‘s Chicken, delivered. I should have ordered the lunch portion but I accidentally ordered a full dinner portion. As a result, I now have a stomach ache, something that isn‘t good because when I get a stomach ache from chicken it tends to linger on for a day. And finally, dinner just has not happened yet. I‘ll probably have something healthy when I get home like some fruit, maybe an apple or two. Definitely not candy.
Today was a mixed day of reading cruise blogs, work meetings and training (we‘re taking sales training that requires role playing), and yard work. I‘m actually rebuilding the surround to my garden bed, something which requires sawing 4×4 lumber to fit. So far I have managed to build more than half the new bed without sawing anything other than wood. And then there were a couple of meetings regarding my kids‘ mental health and a visit to the hospital for one kid who is on a mental health side quest. That‘s the way he puts it – it‘s a side quest. I‘m content with that statement and I am also looking at this current incident as merely a setback. We will be back to normal before long.
For me, Mondays are the busiest day of the week. Whereas at one time I would come home and collapse on Monday, instead Mondays are now fast and furious and extend from waking up early to an evening piano lesson, first one for my daughter and then one for me. I finally get to relax after dog walk around 9:30pm. The nice thing about this arrangement is it allows me to not contribute to society on Tuesday and Wednesday nights guilt-free. It also gives me a sense of accomplishment, the piano playing part at least. We‘re going on nine years of piano lessons for my daughter and about eight years for me. She is by far the better player once she learned how to learn and once my friend Jessica learned how to teach her. She does indeed have a very interesting way of learning.
Anyway, the conclusion here is I am focusing on the day to day for another sixty days along with some travel preparation here and there, and I am fine with this (I rarely focus on the day to day for this long). I am fine with this as we are embarking on a fairly significant adventure in January. We also have some other draft plans for adventures over the next three years akin to accomplishing a good portion of our bucket list in this time period. What we hope to accomplish is something that truly amazes me as we have built a life that allows this, yet we also have already accomplished so much.
For this reason I decided to start writing about it. I am focusing on a format that I think will work when the time comes that we are traveling. My draft, for now, is five paragraphs or five quick sections. I‘ll start with an introduction to the day to kick off what I have been thinking about.
Second, I‘ll main sentences of body. I would start with what I ate or what our meals looked like. Especially when traveling I feel this is something we focus on a lot because food is such an interesting part of culture – as is drink. In a quick day this can be a paragraph but in a busy day or a day with a “foodie adventure” it can be more. After the food I will talk about major events from the day. And then I‘ll scroll to the evening. Hopefully this will be when I gather my thoughts for the day but it may be more likely to do that on the following day. Anyway, this is when I will begin to understand what the day was about.
And then a conclusion. So what? What did it all mean? Was it a good day? Yes, honestly it was. No, not everything is going as planned, but today was a good day.
In Retrospect 