Important Or Not?

I was reflecting this morning on how stressed and depressed I was through much of March and April as a result of the pandemic and subsequent shelter in place orders. It really was pretty awful, wasn't it? 

Feeling imprisoned is not something I was prepared for, and it took a pretty significant toll on me emotionally, physically, and mentally.

So as we begin to open up here in California, I am trying to be very conscientious about what I will and will not do in the weeks and months ahead. As in, what is truly important in my life, and what is simply superfluous?

This is what I believe to be truly important, and worth taking whatever risks might be involved:

• Time with family. I am willing to take on the risk of not being 100% sure that either of my two daughters or two granddaughters would arrive here pandemic germ free in order to see and spend time with them. A life without their ongoing presence is really not one I care to live.
• Time spent outdoors. Again, similar to above, I can't envision a life that doesn't involve enormous quantities of this. Generally while in motion, but sometimes just while sitting and taking in the beauty of the world. Fortunately, we have enough outdoor options to avoid the busiest trails and busiest beaches during times of greatest activity. Still, we are taking on risk, even if small, when we pass people, or are passed while out hiking, walking, or biking. Our time spent kayaking or paddleboarding are probably the two safest things we can do, in that distance on the water is pretty much assured, however neither works my legs, so I can't rely on them solely.

Endless amounts of this, please.

This is what I believe to be of moderate importance, and only worth doing if proper social distancing can be assured:

• Picnic get togethers with friends. We are enjoying these social dates tremendously, and hope to continue them on a regular basis with like-minded friends. Already we are sensing some pushback from a few of our more friends, but we are not willing to compromise at this time, so if they have to come off of our list for a time, well, so be it.
• Continuing to enjoy the occasional take out items, from bagels to coffee to full on meals. The variety they provide, and the opportunity to sit somewhere quiet and watch the world go by, are not insignificant. As long as everyone involved in handing over the food is masked, as are we, and as long as social distancing can be achieved while we are in line waiting our turn.
• Grocery shopping. Now that the first waves of panic over food shortages has subsided, it's back to being a, if not pleasant, at least not unpleasant, experience. So far everyone continues to be masked in the stores I frequent, medical feedback is continuing to point to surface traces of the virus being minimal, and I enjoy being able to shop for the many small items that make our produce-heavy dinners so interesting, tasty, and nutritious.
• Visiting our public libraries once they reopen. Generally a quiet, calm place, and again, medical evidence increasingly appears to be pointing toward surfaces as not being a significant point of concern. E-books are fine in a pinch, and I've been checking them out regularly since shelter in place began, but I much, much prefer paper books. Less distracting than an e-reader where many other things can be done other than just read, books are easy to read and see when outdoors, and there is a calmness in holding a real book that is hard for me to describe.

This is what I believe to be of minimal importance currently, and not worth doing until an effective treatment, vaccine, or sufficient herd immunity has been achieved;

• Restaurant dine in servicing of any sort, whether indoors or out. I simply don't want someone coming over to us repeatedly to either serve us or see how we are doing. Simply too much contact at this point in time.
• Attending our spiritual services in person. Virtual services are working out beautifully, and we are happy to continue.
• Attending our learning programs in person. Similar to above, virtual learning is working out just fine.
• Attending any live performances in person. Again, streaming of live performances is working out terrifically, and with much better sight lines!
• All travel other than in our RV.

Still up for debate - getting our haircut. I've pretty much decided to stop having color weaved into my hair for now in that 1) it simply takes too much up close and personal time, and 2) I'm not minding the natural color that is increasingly visible. My real hair at this point is a dirty blond with silver/gray highlights, and I'm surprisingly OK with it. Still, a decent cut for both me and my husband would be nice, so I am watching carefully to see what happens with this recent headline about two symptomatic hairstylists in Missouri.

What are you prioritizing currently? And what are you fine letting go for now?

Yep, Life Is Definitely Feeling Brighter

I'm not sure if it's that more things are opening up here in California, the gorgeous weather we've been having, or a combination of the two, but I'm feeling a lot better these days, and much more accepting of the altered reality that will likely remain in place until either an effective treatment, a vaccine, or herd immunity is achieved at some point.

What's improved here: 

• All of our county wilderness parks have reopened, including parking and bathrooms.
• All of our county beaches have reopened for active usage, though they seem to be tolerant of families with young children that just want to dig in the sand. This will be important once our granddaughters arrive in late June!
• Along with our county beaches reopening, about 50% of their parking has been reopened, plus bathrooms.
• Restaurants are once again allowing people to sit and eat their food, though we are not interested in doing anything but sitting outside of a fast casual, non full-serve restaurant, with broad spacing between tables. 

Because of these changes, our lives are feeling full enough once again to carry us for a long, long time to come. 

We can now:

• Hike anywhere we want in the county.
• Bicycle the entire length of our county's coastline, plus portions of nearby San Diego county.
• Paddleboard and kayak in any of our four nearby harbors.
• Enjoy a picnic dinner at any of our parks, beaches, or harbors.
• Hang out at our adults-only HOA pool, or at one of the family HOA pools once our daughter and granddaughters get here next month.
• Meet friends and family for Social Distancing meal get togethers at any of our many parks, particularly the ones with views of the ocean or harbor.

So we are creating a new lifestyle that fits with the current reality of COVID-19. And it's a damn good lifestyle, perhaps even nicer than the awfully busy one we had prior. 

Here's an overview of this past week and coming weekend. 

Monday- Ten mile hike in one of our coastal wilderness parks, with a stop midway for lunch on a ridge looking down on Laguna Beach.

Tuesday- Kayaked with friends in Newport Harbor, pausing midway for a floating picnic lunch.

Wednesday- Ten mile hike in another one of our coastal wilderness parks, enjoying a take out lunch from the iconic Crystal Cove Shake Shack afterward.

Thursday- Paddle boarded around our local harbor in the morning, then made a return trip in the evening to enjoy a picnic dinner and watch the local sailboat club do their thing out on the water.

Friday- Bicycle ride south, with a lunch stop in San Clemente.

Saturday- Bicycle ride north, with a lunch stop in Huntington Beach.

Sunday- Walk to the beach for a picnic lunch.

I will say I am ever so appreciative to be healthy, fit, and active enough to get outside for long stretches of both time and miles. It does wonders, absolute wonders, for my emotional health. And for my physical health too, of course, but increasingly the emotional side is more critical.

Though I am happy to have avoided the dreaded COVID-15 (Think Freshman-15, for those who may not have heard about this, er, phenomenon, or seen a meme.)

😆

We also have started doing Social Distance picnic get togethers with friends. Just one couple at a time for now, in order to make maintaining a 6 ft. separation manageable.  Our basic rule of thumb is that we each arrive fully self contained so that no sharing occurs. Plus, we have a six foot blanket that we lay down as an easy-to-see barrier between chairs. So far it's been working great, and everyone has wanted to do it again, so, hip hip hooray, our weekends are starting to fill up again, which makes this extrovert very, very happy.

It's been soooo nice to see our friends in person, even if sitting 6+ feet apart, rather than by Zoom. 

But Zoom, and also live streaming, still has an important place in our lives, and likely will for some time to come. We Zoom our spiritual services, we Zoom as a family each weekend in that one of my daughter's lives on the opposite coastline, and we are continuing to live stream various performing artists. 

Today, for example, Yo-yo Ma is giving a live performance of Bach:

Other news is that I'm in the midst of a 30-Day Planking Challenge with family and friends. The first day was tough, as in I think I may have grunted a few times tough. But each subsequent day has gotten easier, and I'm already up to being able to hold my plank for a full minute. It feels pretty awesome, so here is a chart if one one is so inclined:

So I'm feeling much, much better, both physically and emotional, as life begins to open up bit by bit. 

How about you? How are you doing currently, emotionally and/or physically?

And Just Like That Life Got Better!

I have had a series of very, very difficult days this past week, prompted by a FaceTime call with our granddaughter, where for the first time in a long, long time she didn't talk about all the things she looked forward to doing the next time she visited. That broke my heart into about a million little pieces, and set off a cascade of emotions that consumed me for days. My spirits would lift during our outside activities, but would crash again quickly upon our return to the house.

I can live without travel, entertainment venues, restaurants, and large social gatherings. I can not, however, live without seeing my youngest daughter and granddaughters, far away from us on the east coast currently.

So this past week my husband and I were discussing just how we might be able to get to them without imperiling our lives, or theirs; primarily by flying out, either together or one at a time, for a prolonged visit. But we continued to vacillate, because summoning up enough energy to do the Metro DC area in the summer is rough. With everything in the area still closed, there is literally nowhere to go to escape the heat. Even the HOA swimming pool in my daughter's development is currently closed. Still, we were getting closer and closer to throwing caution to the winds, and booking flights back anyway.

Happily, joyously, we received a call from my youngest daughter yesterday while, ironically, we were walking at the beach and seeing families encamped everywhere with happy, sand and ocean playing children. She was desperate to get out of her town over the summer in that her husband will be deployed until September, and wanted to know if we were still open to having her and our granddaughters visit for a month in July. She had decided to drive out with the girls and her au pair, and turn the cross country trip into a road vacation, both coming and going. 

So just like that, my world flipped. Instead of feeling increasingly forlorn about not seeing our 5 and 2 year old granddaughters, we will be spending four weeks with them here. And there are already so very many things we'll be able to do with them, even if nothing else comes online between now and then. All of our local wilderness parks have reopened, our beaches remain open, and some of our beach parking is coming back online. I envision our days as starting off with a morning trip to a local, nature or wilderness park, home for lunch, then off to the beach down the road for an afternoon of fun in the sun. Once home from the beach, both girls should be ready for baths to get all that sand off, and then good to slow it down a bit and enjoy whatever is left of the day playing with the many things we have here for them to do. 

Plus there is cooking and baking together, campouts here in our back yard, outdoor movie theater nights where we can turn the upstairs TV out toward our balcony and huddle together out there, cookouts in the yard over the firepit, backyard games we can set up, water fountains, and an inflatable pool with lots of watertoys.

We are also going to make RV reservations at open and nearby Newport Dunes, which qualifies more as glamping than camping, however both girls will love it's proximity to the beach, and simply by bringing our trailer, will consider it an authentic camping experience. It also has the added benefit of being close enough to our home to allow their mom to drive back and forth with the two year old, who is likely to young to overnight with us and her sister at the resort.

My oldest daughter lives in a nearby coastal town as well, so there will be trips over there to BBQ and enjoy beach time. And I'm sure my youngest daughter will be taking the girls to their old home in San Diego County to visit friends as well, ensuring everyone gets some needed breaks from each other.

So even if nothing else comes back online, we'll be fine. And if it does? Well, great, we'll take it! But either way, it's going to be noisy, it's going to be chaotic, and it's going to be messy, but we can not wait.

And just like that, life got better.

A Few Thoughts About Our New Norm Lifestyle

A few random thoughts about our new-normal retirement lifestyle . . . about the only ones I have these days!

One of the things I've discovered since Shelter In Place began here in California on/around March 17, is that I desperately need both the endorphin deluge of being physically active, and the serenity boost of being outdoors for long periods, to feel like the best version of myself. On those days that I gave in to my lazy self, and don't do either, I pay big time, mentally speaking. So as our state slowly begins to open up just a bit this week, I resolve to continue to do more of both activities each and every week.

Photos from yesterday's nine mile hike along one of our coastal ridge wilderness trails.
We were mostly alone on the trail, the weather was glorious, and I was in my happy place.

The first casualty of this renewed focus on embracing the outdoors will be my 20+ year gym membership. I used the gym extensively during my working years, when my workouts had to be completed early in the cold and dark mornings, but only lightly since retiring in 2011. For the first five years of our retirement my paltry $10 monthly gym fees were a non issue in spite of my usage slipping to just a couple of times a month - I spent my new-found time hiking, biking, and traveling instead. When we relocated here to our new home three years ago, we had to 'up' our membership level to accommodate the new gym's slightly fancier amenities, meaning $20 a month per person instead of $10. Still pretty modest. However, after eight weeks of conducting my workouts primarily outdoors, plus my husband becoming eligible for a Silver Sneakers membership at the gym of his choice come June 1, we're dumping both gym memberships for a savings of $480 annually.

Along those lines, we are really enjoying the process of planning out seven days of outdoor activities each week (wilderness trails? beach walks? urban walks?), usually including a stop for lunch at the halfway point. Sometimes we pack a lunch at home, sometimes we pick up to go, sometimes we stop for to go coffee on the way home at a Peet's Coffee that has some spread apart outdoor tables set up. It's all been 100% satisfying, and has led to us deciding we prefer to be out and about during the day, but back at home for dinner. So, I see a natural reduction in our Restaurant budget of about $100 a month, or $1200 a year.

Which will likely lead to a reduction in our annual clothing budget - we'll be dressing up less because there will be less places to go and be seen. As much as we've been out and about hiking and walking, we have done so with the firm inclusion of social distancing and masks. No matter how quickly areas that allow congregating open up, we won't be joining in for a good long time to come. The coronavirus is still here and spreading, it's just been beaten back temporarily to allow our tracking and treatment processes to try and gear up enough to get ahead of the inevitable increase of cases that will soon be back upon us.

And with less places to go and be seen, our Entertainment budget will likely drop by $2000-$3000 a year. No concerts, symphonies, plays, stage talks, fairs, wine club events, dances, or anything else for a long, long time to come.

Our travel budget will also be minuscule for the next couple of years I imagine, because where can we go with any sort of confidence? Sure, we can probably fly there safely given the many changes airlines are making, but what's going to be open for visitors once we arrive? And what happens if there is a sudden and unexpected return to lockdown in the places we'd be visiting? Nope, just doesn't sound fun whatsoever at the moment.

Instead, as I posted a few days ago, we'll be doing lots of RV'ing, supplemented by trips to visit our family back east. In one lovely silver lining, however, our youngest daughter has just shared that she is desperate for some additional help in dealing with being a single parent during a pandemic, while her navy husband is away on deployment, so she has asked if we might be open to her bringing our granddaughters out for a long summer visit of up to six weeks. 'YES' we tried very hard not to shout loudly in response, bring our girls and come for as long as you care! Our home is ample in size, and there are oodles of activities that should be back on line by then, including play parks aplenty, miles of coastline, plus several HOA swimming pools, and we will divide and conquer to make sure the girls are outside and active for the bulk of each day. Here at home we have the ability to have outdoor campfires, outdoor movie nights, and yard games by the handful. It will be messy, and it will be noisy, but it's going to be fantastic. I am so excited, and I recognize they would never have come for such a long visit were it not for Coronovirus making life so difficult for my daughter currently.

Here in California today, it's Cinco de Mayo, which is practically a national holiday. Our plan for the day is to go on a six mile beach walk along one of our newly re-opened local beaches, then pick up burritos at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants providing takeout, and enjoy them at a park before returning back home in the mid-afternoon. Dinner will be BBQ'd chicken, sweet potatoes, and green beans, which we'll eat outside on what is supposed to be a gorgeous and warm evening.

Where you'll find us tonight.

What about you? Any random thoughts today on how your lifestyle might change going forward as a result of living with a pandemic?

Revised Travel Plans In The Time Of A Pandemic

With the pandemic cancellation of both our April trip to Kentucky, and our June trip to Spain, we have no intentions of attempting to fly anywhere for the remainder of the year, other than one trip back east to see our daughter and granddaughters at the end of the year if at all possible. Nor are we interested in staying in a hotel or rental unit due to concerns about virus germs remaining behind anyone that stayed in the room or unit before us. But, I will admit we have been hankering to get back out in our RV, where we spent the bulk of our travel time the first few years after we retired. Between 2012 and 2015 we spent more than 400 nights in our RV while traveling through 13 of our western states. Beginning in 2016 our attention turned more toward world travel, at which point our RV usage dropped down to a few weeks a year instead of a few months a year.

Speaking of which, here is our RV, a unique, hard sided folding travel trailer that fits into our garage. Meaning, no storage fees, hooray! It is the only completely hardsided, folding travel trailer currently on the market, and is manufactured by Trail Manor. We've owned ours since 2012, and as of today, we have spent almost 500 nights in it, and towed it some 25,000 miles (we are currently on tire set #4, averaging about 7,500 miles per set).

Easy to store and easy to tow!

And here is a photo of our petite little trailer when fully extended:

We really do love it dearly, and we have had so many adventures in it!

The beauty of RVing during a pandemic, of course, is that no one but us has ever stayed in our travel trailer, we use our own equipment, cook our own meals, and are assured of maintaining a minimum of 20 feet from other RV'ers, generally much, much more.

So, because I really do need something to hold onto, and to plan for, over the next 12 months or so, this is what I'm thinking should be realistic set of travel plans for the next 12 months, assuming no return to Shelter In Place provisions. If that does occur, RV site reservations tend to be both modest in cost and refundable.

May/June - No travel, but hopefully the reopening of some public spaces including restrooms and our local harbor. If/when that occurs, we will happily add in bicycling, kayaking and SUP'ing to our current list of locally-accessible outdoor activities.

Maiden SUP voyage last year . . . I didn't fall in!

July - Fingers crossed our daughter and granddaughters will be able to fly here for two weeks of Fun In The Sun.

August - RV trip to Mammoth Lakes with our oldest daughter. We'll spend the entire week hiking and biking, plus the occasional take out dinner.

The majority of Mammoth Lakes' beauty must be hiked to to be seen,
ensuring crowds are kept at bay.

September - We have a friend hoping to visit for an adult version of July's Fun In The Sun.

October - Central Coast RV'ing trip to Morro Bay, Pismo Beach, and Malibu.

November - RV'ing trip to San Diego.

December - Fly back east to visit our youngest daughter and family for the holidays, particularly in they may be relocated in January to wherever my son-in-law's next naval assignment is (see April below).

January - RV'ing trip to Palm Springs for a week of hiking and take out dining. Pretty sure the January Int'l Film Festival we normal attend will be a No-Go, but there is plenty of stuff to do in the area beside just that.

February - RV'ing trip to Pinnacles National Park, plus return trips to Morro Bay to see the birthing elephant seals in Cambria, and to Pismo Beach to see the wintering Monarch butterflies. All three of these items have been on my list for quite some time.

March - RV'ing trip to coastal N. San Diego county, land of craft breweries and bicycling.

April - Flying trip to see our daughter and her family. They will likely be moving at the end of 2020 to wherever my son-in-law's next naval assignment is based. On the list they submitted to his recruiter are job locations in England, Italy, Spain, and Hawaii. Any of those would work for us for a long visit should it be safe to do so.

Come summer 2021, we are hoping to undertake our trip to Spain to walk 225 miles of the Camino Frances that was bumped from this year. If that again falls through the cracks due to a continuation of the pandemic, my guess is that we will instead RV up into the Pacific Northwest.

Looking even further ahead to 2022, we are hoping to plan trips to Iceland and Scotland, but clearly that and everything else in this post is up to the pandemic. So fingers crossed, but very loosely so at this point.

How about you? What are your 'best case scenario' travel plans currently?