I’m dusting off the blog after a short leave of absence. Let’s just say that I’ve been learning how to stay busy without becoming frenzied…and I haven’t figured it out yet! The first semester of community college classes just ended and we’re trying to catch our collective breath. We’ve never been on a schedule like this before, and I’m realizing what a blessing that was. If I try to explain to a landlubber how crazy I feel running around like a chicken with its head cut off, they don’t understand. I feel foolish seeking sympathy for the normal pace after homeschooling in our swimsuits while anchored off a palm-fringed beach. I’m realizing how lucky we were to have had that time as a family to explore life and learning at our own pace.
But the new adventures are good, too, if a little dizzying. Three mornings a week, I’ve been getting up early, taking the three oldest kids to school (or, technically, they take turns taking me as I act as driving coach), then stopping at the grocery store or coffee shop for a writer’s meeting or taking a yoga class before heading back to the boat to do an hour or two of school with Rachel and check in on Sam, who’s doing most of his work independently. I then go back out to pick the kids up. After lunch, it’s more school, another trip ashore to go to the park, do laundry, take kids to youth group, music practice, or basketball practice, and then home for dinner and bed. On Tuesdays, I teach a high school U.S. Government class at the library before homeschool P.E. and then basketball practice in the evening. The kids all have friends ashore, too, so there are random drop-offs and pick-ups which add busyness. Aaron has a job but gets himself there and back on his bike. Eli has a job lined up for the spring and is about to get his driver’s license. He test-drove affordable used cars at CarMax with his grandma during Thanksgiving break; a second driver and vehicle will hopefully reduce my taxi-driving.
We’ve also had a visit from our South African friend, Deon, a boat kid we met in the Rio Dulce last year. He came for the last week of November, and we tried to give him the whole American Experience. We took him out for BBQ on the way home from Ft. Lauderdale airport, drove to Key West for the Conch Train Tour…
and sunset at Mallory Square (where he was pulled out of the audience to help in the final act of a street acrobat’s performance!)…
and did a road trip to Everglades National Park…
and on to Clearwater for Thanksgiving with the grandparents. It was a fun week, and he seemed to fit right into our family.
The other reason I’ve taken a break from blogging is that I’m completing a manuscript for a book, a project I’ve been slowly working on for the last couple of years. I started partnering with my friend, Summer Delaine, who is also writing a book, and we meet once a week to set goals, discuss our work, read and edit each other’s work, and keep each other accountable. I had set a deadline to finish the manuscript by the end of 2019, and I am three weeks and one chapter from meeting it. So the combination of kids’ schedules, normal household routines, and writing means that the blog gets relegated to the back-burner. And I’m not apologizing for that.
I write for the joy of writing, because I can’t help it. I write for my family, so we will have a record of our adventures. I write for our extended family and distant friends, so they’ll know what’s going on with us. And I write for anyone else who might benefit from a vicarious sailing journey. We don’t keep track of our readers, we don’t read comments, and we don’t advertise our blog in any way. We don’t use Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, or Instagram. We’re hopelessly old-fashioned. If you are reading this right now, you are probably related to us, received a boat card and were curious enough to look up this blog, or accidentally found us using a google search. But thank you for being there, anyway, whoever-you-are. It means a lot when you email and tell me that you appreciated something one of us wrote. When I finish the book, I hope you’ll read it. I’ll be posting a sneak-peek soon…