All for the Kid

The things we do for kids and pets.

Babysit dog and kitty.
Make a toaster cover.
Make a cover for a KitchenAid mixer.
Make six coasters.
Repair the puppy's cape - the one I just made last week.
Pull weeds.
Play fetch with Superman.

A busy two days spent at kiddo's house.

Bucket or F*** It?

Not too long ago we heard Scott Jones, a TV host and writer, do a Ted Talk. Scott had a stroke. After the stroke his friends encouraged him to make a bucket list. But Scott wasn't interested. Instead he decided to make a list of things he didn't have to do anymore. Things he didn't want to do anymore. So he created a F*** It list. (You can see his presentation here.)

After listening to his anti-bucket list, hubby and I are finding a F*** It list fits us well, too. We have just a few things on our list.
*No early mornings.
*No buying stuff we don't need.
*No engaging in stupid conversations we don't really care about.
*No need changing clothes every day if we don't want to. (Who cares if we wear the same clothes two or three days in a row?)
*No going anywhere we don't want to go.

It's liberating. Knowing our time is limited, why spend it doing things we don't want to do?

Not on our F*** It list? Hanging with our daughter's growing boy.

No Other Place

We've had a rough go of things these last few years. With aggressive rheumatoid arthritis, one working lung, two torn rotator cuffs, two knees needing replacing and being very obese, a mobility scooter was the only way I could get around anywhere. While my rheumatoid arthritis treatments have been discontinued and my lung will never get better, I did have two knee replacements and two rotator cuff repairs and lost a huge amount of weight. No more mobility scooter. Yay! Then there is hubby. Born with cerebral palsy, he had a bout of kidney failure and was hospitalized for a length of time and had to relearn to walk. His kidneys are a bit better and while his stamina is still low and he needs assistance with some of his daily activities, he is somewhat mobile again.

It would have been easy for both of us to give up, throw in the towel. Believe me, we've done our share of moping. But between those weeks where we couldn't get ourselves dressed and out the door even if we wanted to, there are days we push ourselves out. Thanks to our friends from around the world, we have a reason to leave the house and now have a book full of no other place places. 

No Other Place places? When I am somewhere, doing something, with someone (or sometimes alone) and say to myself, "There is no other place I'd rather be than right here, right now." And then I take a picture. Many of the pictures are of boring things - the time hubby put clothes away, the time I was sewing Christmas stockings for charity, the time I had my feet up at the end of the day - but many of the pictures are of our travels over the years. The amazing things we've seen and the amazing people we've met is just, well, amazing. Amazing enough I made a photo book out of all of them.  

Every time I take one of these pictures I wonder if it's the last one. Is this the last time we will see something like this? Is this the last time we will see this person? Is this the last good day we will have? So far, the Universe has been on our side and allowed us to keep moving forward. 

And allowed up to meet up again with some of our favorite people. One of the no other place pictures in the book is from the day we spent with our Indian and Serbian friends. We are so blessed.

No Other Place.

The Indecisiveness Continues

At the time of my last blog post (several months ago) I was deep into indecisiveness. Unfortunately things haven't become much clearer. Conflicting thoughts keep popping up in my head.

I want to start the blog again. I don't want to start the blog again.

I want to write my next book. I don't want to write my next book.

I want to make tutorial videos again. I don't want to make tutorial videos again.

Which leads me to the bigger question.

Now what?

With me not working anymore and spending my days at home with a hubby who does nothing but sit in his chair and watch television all day long, what comes next? Until I know what to do, I guess I'll at least post a picture today. And hopefully will be back tomorrow to post another.

I have done one thing this month. I'm fostering some baby kittens again. This is Axel. You'll meet Vinny tomorrow.

My Boy Vinny

Temporarily, that is. Just until he hits neuter weight.

First Time Flyer Adventure

My husband used to read the blog when I was writing everyday but now that I'm more sporadic he doesn't visit it anymore. So tonight I was reading one of my recent blog posts to him and found several mistakes.

I've always tried to read and re-read the posts to cut down on those mistakes. But being that I find myself doing more of the writing during the middle of the night I am not nearly as cautious. Some of the mistakes are pretty stupid. It will be a surprise if I later don't find a few mistakes even in this post.  Another late middle-of-the night writing.

Actually, I haven't yet been to sleep.  An afternoon-evening-night of adventure for me.  An even bigger adventure for my son-in-law.

Two mechanical problems on two airplanes. Two delayed flights. A period of no working toilets while sitting on the plane waiting for repairs. Once off the ground, almost three straight hours of pretty nasty turbulence. A medical emergency onboard. A safe but late after midnight landing. A scarcity of cabs. A long line for hotel check in. Finally receiving our room key, putting it in the door, and finding it not to be working which then necessitated a trip back to the front desk at 1:30 in the morning.

For us, all part of the ups and downs of travel. While we have experienced each of those things in our travels, we have never had them all wind up happening in one trip. It has been quite the day for us all.

I'm not sure what our son-in-law is thinking right now. He is on this adventure and today was his first airplane ride ever. Poor guy. Sure hoping it hasn't scared him off.

Local time here is after 3:00 AM and all I can say is what an adventurous day we've had.
and
What an amazing picture of the Phoenix area from above. I think one of my best aerial pictures yet.

The Other One

Who or what is the other one? It's the other blog.

Last year when I finally published my book on cruising, I gave the whole social media presence a go. A halfhearted go, actually. Twitter, Instagram, and a blog dedicated to cruising. But it didn't last long. I was forcing myself to have this Internet thing going on. Except it wasn't me. I was trying to intertwine travel and cruising and gratitude. And I gave up on it.

So back to one blog. I'll gradually start moving things from the other one to this one. (But who knows? Maybe I'll change my mind again and go back to two. Why am I so indecisive???)

The first move-over is a post I wrote about gratitude from last year. Looking back it was more about money than gratitude:

Whenever I talk to people about cruising, I talk about the value. Compared to a night in a hotel, cruising can be downright cheap. A year ago we paid a total of $549 (not per person) for seven nights on a cruise ship. That ship took us to Belize, Cozumel, Mexico and Costa Maya, Mexico. With that price we received lodging, meals and snacks, entertainment, beautiful scenery, and transportation to three different ports. We also received $250 in credit to use on board. For one full week.

I'm wishing we were on a cruise right now. Because today I walked out of a hotel we just spent the last six nights in. In the city we live in. In a room with a king bed and a very limited breakfast. For a price of $1027.31.

Why in the heck would someone as smart as me pay such an outlandish rate at a hotel? And not even in a fun, new destination? We're just a few miles away from our own home. And we're doing it again, in a different hotel, in our same city. But this one is (thankfully) being paid by our insurance company. In fact, they will be paying for us to stay here for at least a couple more weeks. (They reimbursed us this afternoon for that $1027.31 bill. Whew.)

Let's get to the bottom of this with some more questions.

Ever heard of the word mitigation? According to FEMA, mitigation is the effort to reduce loss of life and property by lessening the impact of disasters. I hadn't heard the word until last week.

Did you know the bottom of a hot water heater can leak? Did you know it can flood the area around it? (In our case that area included the closet, the bedroom, and the bathroom.)

Did you know that manufactured home floors are made of pressed board? That if those pressed boards get really wet they don't dry well? In fact, in some cases they need to be pulled up?

Um, yeah.

Hello, bedroom floor.

Hello, living room/dining room/kitchen.

Hello, mitigation.

Wonder if I could convince the insurance company to send us on a cruise instead of paying for an overpriced hotel. I'm sure I could find us a voyage that will be cheaper than the payment they will be making to the hotel.

Yeah, probably not. Grateful for insurance anyway!