Routine

The exciting adventures and wonderful tours of Tucson and Phoenix have made a farce of my premise that we are not on vacation! There is no doubt that we have taken advantage of beautiful locales, however the travelogue doesn’t give the complete picture.

We were in Tucson for 2 weeks and in Phoenix for a full month. Interesting tours were hardly daily occurrences. We continued the business of business. An RV and truck require cleaning and maintaining, if not as much as a house. By living at home instead of in hotels, we fix our meals and clean dishes, without benefit of a dishwasher, in a very confined space. The space issue means that if you get an item out, you really need to put it away ASAP to allow for whatever you need to do next. Dishes, computers, printer, sewing, books, etc, all have to be put in their assigned spaces prior to a meal or whatever else happens next. Therefore, routine events take a little longer.

Add to that, laundry, grocery shopping, exercise and the other daily chores of living. We are fortunate to have an oversized refrigerator, freezer and pantry, but still small by house standards. We buy groceries more often than we used to in stores we are probably unfamiliar with. Our home has a built-in laundry hamper, a nice extra, but we opted not to get the washer/dryer. So there is a weekly trek to the laundry room instead of the ongoing one-load-at-a-time concept. I have found that getting several washers going at once and being done with it is has advantages over always being in some stage of laundry.

We also have work to take care of online. We each have a laptop and responsibilities. Russell’s daily work with the stock market allows our lifestyle. He is very disciplined and knowledgeable from years of study and following the markets. He also manages bills and rental property for his Mom. I help Russell with his work and handle business for my parents. There is a flurry of additional computer activity when the weekly mail arrives.

None of these routines is all consuming or daily. It is not at all like the routine of going to work for someone else, like we did for three decades. However, each job has its space and time and adds to the fullness of our life on the road.