In between time

In between what time?

Seems some people - including me - view my time as planning a trip, going on a trip, or being between trips. My sister once suggested that we're taking all these trips because I'm running from something. I don't think that's the case any more, since my visit last year to the Nebraska cemetery where my mother's grandparents are buried. However, I know we'll slow down. We're getting older. Our energy level has diminished. We have aches and pains. At the moment my husband is looking at knee replacement. I have a chronic back issue. We're probably not going to be doing any more inn-to-inn hiking as we did in Ireland 13 years ago, or any more group hiking trips, as we did in the UK and in Iceland ten years ago. I have a niece/friend who's 41. I read her Facebook page and I am exhausted by the pace and number of her activities. I used to do that myself!

Now that we can see our elder years coming along, the trips we take are sweet and special. Whether a road trip to see where my family came from, or a weeklong adventure with my sister to California to visit an old and dear friend, or a flight to Cancun to celebrate the wedding of a daughter - none of them are idle ventures. I make my list of places I want to see, and the ones that float to the top are the ones that might be too much for us a few years from now. Like Australia and New Zealand, Antarctica, and Africa. Maybe they're all too much now. I can't muster up the enthusiasm I once had for these more exotic destinations. I used to have disparaging thoughts about elderly people on cruise ships in harbors, taking day trips. Now I can see to a place down the road where they'll be just right, maybe.

What defines me still, though, is curiosity. For one of our Kentucky nights next month, we're staying in a lodge in a state park rather than in a motel in town. Why? I expect I'll meet more Kentucky people in the park. To talk, to see how we are different and how we are the same. Maybe to meet someone who's related to me, since my grandmother's family were coal miners in Kentucky for generations. On six of the fourteen nights, we'll be staying with other empty nesters, members of the Evergreen Club. One night, at the request of our host, I'll be speaking to the Lions Club of Shelbyville, Tennessee. On the topic of my choice! I'll probably combine the Evergreen Club, the genealogy, and our book into some theme called "community". See where curiosity gets me?

Our book sales are coming along. We're getting good comments, especially from vets. We're taking copies to seven Vet Centers in Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia. Art comes home with $17 and says, "I sold another book." Who would have guessed a retired "lineman for the county" would be doing this?

I'm thinking my life is still interesting, just different. I'm probably entering the "wisdom" part of my life. I've got no regrets so far about the part that's gone, because new stuff comes up constantly.

Isn't that great?

Another Sunday morning

I keep telling myself I'm going to take Sundays off the computer and just read, or putter, or something else. This is the third Sunday since I decided to be computer free that I haven't followed through.

Here's what's on my agenda today, computer-wise:

1. I'm planning our upcoming road trip to Appalachia. Originally we were going to fly into St. Louis, rent a car, drive to our endpoint in Charlottesville, VA, and fly home. That was when I'd checked airfares and car rentals; you get penalized with a car when you don't drop it off where you picked it up. Originally, St. Louis had very reasonable car rental rates, and that was why we made one-way plane reservations to that city. But yesterday, when I'd planned each of our 12 days - activities and lodging and mileage calculations - I went to reserve the car and found the rate had increased from $400 to $1200! Too, too much, I decided. So I spend a few hours rerouting us for a round trip into and out of St. Louis. That meant changing reservations and motels and B&Bs and finding other Evergreen Club people for the dates we needed. EC is an online club we belong to where you stay with other empty nesters, getting a bed and breakfast for $15, plus good conversation and maybe a Dutch treat dinner out. I've heard back from Evergreen Clubbers in two of the five cities we've requested, so I'm getting there. By later on today, hopefully, I'll have enough positive responses to make the reservations for the car and the return flight from St. Louis. We'll get four extra days of exploration for about $500 less.

We're traveling in April because our Ecuador home exchange partners will be in our house for ten days to attend their daughter's wedding. Otherwise we'd be staying home. Our days are getting longer, and the darkness is much harder for me to deal with than the rain and wind we often get in March.

2. I've signed up to take an online course called Living Well with Chronic Conditions. I'd heard about a volunteer opportunity to teach the class, but the signup person told me they prefer trainers who have already taken the class. At present the only chronic condition I have is tingling feet from nerves in my back that got compressed last May when I sat down wrong in a chair. (I don't count cataracts, since I'm having one of them removed on April 3.) Still, I'm expecting to learn from the class - particularly about adapting my attitude to my less-than-perfect body. It's a six-week class, online, starting each Sunday.

3. I've committed to blog at least one day a week, and it's been a week.

Otherwise, I've got other things going on today off the computer.

4. Making a list of the places I could have lost my credit card this week. I noticed yesterday it wasn't in my wallet. Olive Garden on Tuesday is the last place I remember using it. But I'll call around this afternoon to other places I've been. I lose my card from time to time, and I always find it. In the meantime, I check online every day to make sure it's not being used by anyone else.

5. Four loads of laundry.

6. One trip to the gym.

7. If I find an hour, I'd like to lie down and finish "The Hunger Games". Originally written for teen readers, this one is being picked up by grownups as well. I hear it's been made into a movie opening very soon. I'd always prefer to read a book rather than see a movie. This one is really engrossing - I stayed up until 1:30 a.m. this morning reading it.

I feel bad when I don't get around to my blogging community during the week. That's the last computer activity for today.

On being home again

We've been home for over two weeks now, and we're not leaving again for another five weeks. Here's what I've noticed:

1. It's such a pleasure to be able to catch up, at my pace, with the mail and the magazines. And to have time to do the income taxes, prepare the budget for the year, and repot the root-bound plant.

2. I'm noting the hours of daylight are longer and wonder what happened to the darkness. Then I remember we were gone for 48 of those days. That's why we went! It was a wise decision, the being gone. I feel much more grateful about living in the Pacific Northwest this year, having missed much of the darkness.

3. Even if I take a laptop when I travel, there are some things that aren't on it - like the genealogy and the finances. At home, I have everything I need.

4. I'm walking a couple of miles a day on most days, and getting to the gym most of the others. I'm pacing myself, but already I can tell I'm stronger and have more stamina than I did a month ago.

And on the just-thinking front:

5. The filing cabinet is losing some of its folders - everything related to work and work benefits and L&I claims from working, and everything related to Bud, our pig, who died in November. I like that we're getting simpler.

6. I'm a good grandma when my grandkids are around. I'm not the lunging-type grandma. I sit there on the couch until the kid starts putting his toys right next to me, and then I teach him how to twist the dimmer to turn on the tall lamp, and then when his mom says it's time to leave he says, "I don't want to go home. I want to stay here." And I'm grateful to have these grandchildren and I'm glad the kind of grandma I am is fine with them.

7. I'm grateful my husband trusted me to manage the finances and investments when we were working, because now we're not working and we have everything we need. I'm also grateful he does all the grocery shopping and all the cooking, because I get a treat for dinner nearly every night without having to do a thing myself.

8. We have a daughter getting married in October, near Cancun. As our gift, we're contributing to the airfare for four of her siblings. One of them wants to stay with us in Mexico rather than finding a different place. That means we're good company for 30-somethings. That means a lot! I've been delegated the job of making sure all the siblings get passports. That means I'm considered trustworthy. I've also been delegated the job of buying a tropical wedding outfit for the father of the bride. That means my opinion is valued.

It's all good.

Royalties!

I just logged on to AuthorHouse, the publisher of our book Return to Viet Nam: One Veteran's Journey of Healing. It was published in December. We earned royalties of $96.27 for the 39 copies that were sold by December 31. I am totally thrilled.

Art and I have decided to send complimentary copies to the team leaders of veterans' clinics, at first in the Pacific Northwest. These clinics, part of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, are all over the country and directly serve the veterans. Art attends a weekly group meeting at the vet clinic in Seattle. We provided a copy of the book to the group's counselor; next week he'll be taking half a dozen copies of the book to sell, at a discount, to the vets in his group.

At the end of the book Art says, "I hope that talking about this journey of healing and how it has helped me -- if even one person can get some good out of it and stop the nightmares and gain some peace, it will be worth it." We're hoping that will happen."

It is very cool to hear from people who have read the book and made comments to us. Family members who had no idea what Art had gone through; friends who bought extra copies to give to friends. Signing a book is an honor for both of us.

Today I sent my approval of the second version of the book. I decided I wanted to make it as good as it could be, rather than just "good enough". The "retech" cost more, but I'll be proud to have the new version out there. Most people wouldn't have noticed the changes I decided to make, but picky readers would have. I don't want anyone distracted from the story by a small inconsistency or a quotation mark on the wrong side of the punctuation mark.

Once the retech is ready, I'll be taking copies to the bookstores in our area and to the library. On our April road trip, we'll make a point of stopping by vet clinics and dropping off a book.

With this book, it's not about the money. It's about the vets.

Waking up too early

It happens from time to time. I wake up at 5 or so - early for me - with thoughts running through my mind that keep me awake. It's usually not a random worry, but an issue I need to resolve.

This time it was about our travel budget. My husband Art and I have decided to travel when we can, while we can, but we're not expensive travelers. We put away a certain amount every month for travel, and if we don't have the money in the account, we don't go on the trip.

Our 10-day trip to Hawaii before Christmas was to a timeshare, as was our 18-day trip to Arizona in January. We bought these timeshares a while back, when we were both still working and when I was a sucker for timeshare presentations. Now and then I think about selling them, but not yet - we'd take a very large loss and all we'd get out of it is freedom from the annual maintenance fees, which are doable, and we're still enjoying using the timeshares. Our February trip to Ecuador was actually pretty inexpensive - we used miles for our airfare and the lodging was a home exchange. We were gone three weeks and spent a total of $700. Not bad.

These trips got us out of the discouraging Pacific Northwest weather for a good part of the winter.

For the rest of the year, I'd lined up a trip to Appalachia for April, a schooner cruise in Maine for August, a week south of Cancun for October, and a week in Hawaii with our 12-year-old twin granddaughters between Christmas and New Year. Plus, we're still planning on renting a park model in Tucson for January and February of next year.

And that was what kept me awake. The travel plans exceeded our budget. So, for the first time since we retired, I prioritized the trips as to feasibility.

The Cancun trip is a necessity. Our daughter Laura is getting married in a town south of there. The wedding will be only siblings and parents and a very few close friends. We have agreed to split the airfare for eight siblings and spouses. That commitment takes a chunk out of our travel budget but it's very worth it.

The April trip is a necessity in that we have to be out of our house between April 15 and April 26. That's the time when our home exchange partners from Ecuador will be staying in our house to attend their daughter's wedding in Seattle. We could go anywhere, of course, but we decided on Appalachia because (1) we've never been there and (2) I am a genealogy buff and in Kentucky and Tennessee there are several cemeteries full of my relatives and (3) there's a "Crooked Road" in southwest Virginia offering numerous Appalachian music and craft venues and (4) we want to visit Polyface Farm in Virginia, site of one of the discussions in "The Omnivore's Dilemma". I've whittled down the cost pretty well by having us fly into St. Louis and depart from Charlottesville, staying with couples who belong to the Evergreen Club (online group, you call and make arrangements with fellow empty nesters and pay $15 a night).

The Maine trip is a treat. This will be our fifth cruise out of Rockland in the last ten years. It's profoundly relaxing and beautiful and is probably Art's favorite time of all. We've already paid the deposit. We'll use a companion fare certificate from Alaska airlines so one of us will pay only $100 for our ticket. We'll stay with friends for a couple of days before and may be able to set up a home exchange for a week afterwards.

The Hawaii trip was something I've wanted to do for my granddaughters, who live quite locally in Oregon. I'd gotten permission from their parents, but when I checked out airfare I found to my distress that each seat costs $800. Then, when we get there, I'm pretty much on my own managing the girls, because when they're with us (in July and in December), Art does the cooking but pretty much relaxes and lives his own life when they're visiting. I realized I'd be paying $3200 to wear myself out. I thought about inviting the parents, too, but then I'm paying $4,800. Too much money for our budget. So, reluctantly, I decided to forego the Hawaii trip until a year when we don't have much other travel scheduled. Maybe 2013.

Once I realized Hawaii was the budget buster, and let the trip fall out of my mind, my sleep issue went away.

All this travel is our extravagance. We drive old cars and wear mostly old clothes and have only basic cable and our TV is a 27-inch box rather than a 47-inch flat screen and we only see movies when they come out on Netflix and we get our books mostly from the library rather than a bookstore. There will come a time when the energy required to travel will be too much, or we'll have a major expense that will wipe out the travel budget, or one of those other life things that happen. For now, we want to go and see and do.

Now I'll get back to the income taxes. For some reason, they're not keeping me awake.

Ecuador reflections

We've been home 24 hours and already our busy life has resumed. I want to record some final thoughts before we put this vacation behind us.

Casa Quinde

Our Last Laundry

We spent our final day in Quito. We met up with Lynne and Sean, our home exchange partners, at their very nice apartment in the city. We went to the old city with Lynne, enjoyed a late afternoon snack and then a dinner before calling a taxi for the airport. Though the variety and pace of things in Quito were interesting, Art and I reaffirmed our opinion that we really prefer smaller towns and rural areas when we're traveling.

The physical beauty of the area where we stayed is comparable to any other lovely places we've seen: Hawaii, Iceland, New England, our own Pacific Northwest. The green seems greener, though, in Ecuador. And perhaps because the number of tourists we saw was smaller, Imbabura province seemed more rare and special. We could have taken a picture of the volcano every morning from our back yard, and each photo would have been different - different cloud formation, different light.

It seemed to me like the area should be filled with tourists. I suppose that's not the case because "Ecuador" doesn't rise to the top of places people want to visit. But for those of us who go there, the memories rise right up.

I've long been in favor of the education of women as the best way for a region to improve its lot. But I always thought of "education" as high school and college. Not as elementary school. I realize that a person can be smart and practical, but if they have no education - or a poor one - their knowledge of the world can be extraordinarily limited. I met a woman, for instance, who thought the Ecuadorian volcanoes were caused by the use of too many plastic bags. I make assumptions about what's common knowledge. And I think we should teach everyone. But then I wonder. Does it matter? If a person is able to get by, how much do they need to know? How much should they know?

Poverty is sometimes measured by annual income. If a family is living on $5,000 a year, but they have a plot of land on which they grow their own food, and they have a cow and a pig and some chickens, and they live with family members, are they poor? Where I live, if money disappeared one day, we'd be in a world of hurt. We grow only a small part of our own food, and we rely upon a sophisticated infrastructure for our heat and electricity - which we think of as necessities - and we live in small nuclear families. But in Ecuador and elsewhere, money is used for only some of their needs. They are more self reliant. And they are accustomed to less. We had fires in two fireplaces in our casa because comfort for us was a temperature of at least 62 degrees. But that's our cultural preference. If we wore layers those fires wouldn't be necessary. Even so, though, we had to maintain the fires in the evening. That required us to be more mindful than setting the thermostat on our central gas heating at home.

We ate fresh local fruits and vegetables in Ecuador. Yesterday Art went to our local supermarket and brought home three peppers. Each was a different color and was bright and shiny. I knew those peppers had been grown somewhere very far from Brier, Washington and shipped hundreds or thousands of miles to reach us. Somehow they didn't seem as real as the ones we picked up last week at the mercado in San Pablo. And the pot roast I had for dinner tonight grew in a styrofoam package, not on a recently butchered cow.

I think Ecuador has about 14 million people - very small compared to the U.S. We can get just about anything we want here. But I think about the difference between what we want and what we need, and I wonder.

We're so glad we spent three weeks in Ecuador. We learned a lot more than Spanish.

If you're interested in spending some time where we did, you can rent the casa at www.casaquinde.com.

Last day in San Pablo

I hung up the laundry this morning as soon as it stopped drizzling. We leave tomorrow morning, and tonight we pack. If the clothes aren't dry by late afternoon, I'll ask Venancia to take them to the lavanderia. I'll say, "Venancia, las ropas, a seca, por favor," and she'll understand what I mean and fit the walk across the grounds and back into her schedule for the day.

I went to the wi-fi place at Hacienda Cusin and ran into five frustrated American tourists. They'd just finished a three-week guided tour of Peru and Ecuador, including the Galapagos, and they decided to stay here an extra day after their group broke up. There are rose plantations nearby, and they went on a tour. The tour was entirely in Spanish, and they learned at the end that the fee for a 15-minute tour was $15 a person. They were short on cash and the people at the plantation locked them in until they could come up with the money! One of the men climbed the fence and made his way back to Cusin's Reception. He complained about their treatment, saying that neither Cusin nor the plantation had told them about the cost before the tour.

I thought about guided tours. We've been on some ourselves, and they have their advantages. Nearly everything is taken care of, and, if in a foreign country, guides on the tour speak the native language. On the other hand, reliance upon a guide can be detrimental once the group tour ends. The frustrated Americans hadn't had to pick up Spanish words as they became necessary. They hadn't had to figure anything out. Had it been me, after 18 days on my own here, my first question would have been "cuanto cuesta"? Probably spelled wrong, but I've used it and I understand when the other person tells me how much the cost will be. I've learned to ask first. Without a tour guide.

We took our last walk into San Pablo this afternoon. We were looking for a taxi to take us to a weaver's shop. No taxis. Carnivale this weekend. We figured we weren't supposed to see the weaver. I said, "I've spent enough money." We stepped into our favorite panaderia and bought two cookies. We told the young proprietor we're leaving tomorrow. He asked how long we have been here and we said 18 days. All in Spanish. His was good, mine not so much, but good enough. We found a tienda that was open and bought bagged milk and Trident gum. Milk in a bag or a box seems normal to us now. We said "buenos tardes" to the dozen or so people we passed, and they returned the greeting.

We've invited Venancia to join us for dinner tonight. She'll fix a soup using the chicken breasts we have left in the refrigerator, plus the giblets and broth from our chicken dinner on Saturday. We'll give her a $40 tip for 14 days of service to us out of the last 18 days. For washing our sheets and towels, vacuuming, cleaning up the kitchen, cooking our meals, correcting our Spanish and laying our evening fires.

San Pablo has been our third restful place this winter. We spent ten warm, sunny days on the Big Island of Hawaii in December. We'd been there before; the best part was the company, for three days, of our daughter and son-in-law. We spent 14 cool, sunny days in Sedona and three warm, sunny days in Tucson in January. We'd been to Sedona before; the best part was the seven short hikes we took. And discovering a place to spend two months next winter, in Tucson, was very good.

We've spent 18 mild days in San Pablo. We've never been here before. We don't speak the language. We don't have our cell phones. But we have explored every other day or so and grown to love the area. I read five books: The Time Traveler's Wife, the Memory Keeper's Daughter, Water for Elephants, Reading Lolita in Tehran, and Under The Dome. Art has read as many. We have slept listening to outdoor sounds and listened to a CD course on personal growth.

When we left Seattle on February 1 I was feeling discouraged by physical issues: the long, slow healing process of a back injury, difficulty seeing well enough to drive at night, and ear issues causing mild dizziness. I was feeling limited in the amount and kind of exercise I was getting and by the way my nighttime schedule was changing because of the driving issue. My concerns weighed on my mind.

In the last 18 days I've gotten just the right exercise - walking and hiking and maneuvering in the cobblestones in the streets and walkways. I've been home every night, reading or talking to Art. I haven't been in traffic, with the glare of headlghts, to bother my vision. I was given some exercises before we left home that have significantly helped my ears. I feel good now. I've had time to get away from myself! And now I'm looking forward to cataract surgery sometime in the next couple of months - and also to the longer light that's coming to the Pacific Northwest, and the resumption of my evening schedule.

Being in San Pablo has been exactly what I needed. I feel refreshed and ready to go home, taking my restored self along.