How has it been 10 months since we have written anything for this blog?! Somewhere along the way I ran out of gas and general oomph. I guess it was a combination of work stress and uncertainty, the world gone (IMHO) slightly crazy and just a general angsty feeling of “what the hell.”
I still feel a bit that way and the world is still in a pretty weird place but if I wait for things to get squared away, well, I’m not sure that I’ll live that long. So it’s time to take the plunge, grab the bull by the horns, get off the pot or s**t, etc and jumpstart getting back into telling our story (and reliving the good bits for the benefit of my soul) with a quick trip down memory lane.
Since last August (2017) we’ve taken a few trips – to Colorado for Thanksgiving and Chuck’s brother’s retirement from the Denver PD, a trip to Los Olivos for our 15th anniversary, and to Philadelphia for a conference (tossing in a few days to see friends and family in MD and DC) and that’s about it. One highlight didn’t involve travel – we helped my sister and brother-in-law celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. It was a grand gathering of family and old friends and a reminder of how fast our lives fly by. It was made bittersweet by the faces that weren’t there to celebrate but that’s part of life, too.
Some of my funk may be due to the fact that we haven’t been feeding my addiction traveling as much as we did in 2016 – talk about a crazy and wonderful year of amazing trips – and I’ve missed the adventure of new places.
Chuck is heading toward his one-year retirement anniversary (July 1) and is a happy camper. He was ready for a year of projects around the house but injured his hand after falling while running in October so was sidelined for several months while that injury healed (this also no doubt contributed to our general sense of meh). He’s on the other side of that now, and back to being a busy retired guy. I’m still wrestling with what I want to be when I grow up quit working (and I have given myself a stop date of October 2019 so this is now a real thing to figure out sooner rather than later) and am concerned that I won’t know what to do with myself. Seeing Chuck handle it all pretty smoothly is both encouraging (if he can do it, so can I!) and discouraging (yes, he did it, but can I?).
So there you have it, the last 10 months in two paragraphs. I am excited about some coming adventures that I will write about: a road trip to/across Canada (well, from Calgary west) with Chuck and Maggie the wonder dog, then in the fall a Rick Steves tour to Eastern Europe with Chuck and my sister and brother-in-law.