I've decided that these days in Santa Barbara, although many more than I would have wanted or needed, are a sort of "crusiers boot camp" of sorts. We are slowing down enough to really have it sink in what we are doing here. That we have actually embarked on this adventure and left the "regular" behind. Case in point. After trekking what should have been a short 1.8 mile walk to Trader Joe's that instead ended up being like some sort of odyssey or rite of passage, I found myself feeling oddly grateful and resentful of my car. How easy it is to drive to Trader Joe's and load up on food and supplies if you don't have to carry them back in the hot sun with a tired toddler in tow who wants to read every letter (thank you Leap Frog Letter Factory!!) she sees and pick as many flowers as she can (we stupidly forgot the stroller). I now find myself saying to the kids, "Now that you know how hard it is to get grapes, are you sure you want to inhale them?" And, loading up the dinghy and driving over to the laundry and waiting the 32 minutes for the wash and then the 48 for the drying... takes some of the fun out of laundry, right? SPOILED I AM! But guess what? In those "wasted minutes" I met another woman from Seattle (Anacortes really) who is doing the Baha Haha with her husband (True North) and then a really interesting fellow who was also doing his wash and who, in exchange for some of my suds, drew an amazing map of Santa Cruz island in the Channel Islands for me and explained where to go and where and how to anchor and basically mapped out a whole adventure of an island I would have otherwise known nothing about. THAT doesn't happen in my laundry room at home! And the whole "9 pm is the cruisers midnight" thing? TRUE! We all go to bed between 9 and 10! Exhausted! And sleep is so different on a boat. Hard to explain. Perhaps it is just less disturbed - physically and mentally. I have less on my plate and therefore less stress and therefore less that keeps me awake at night. I am finding that simplifying and streamlining one's life is indeed a fascinating process. I am still in a bit of shock about the whole thing. It is quite surreal, really. But here we are. Launched and adrift. Lost and found. And because of this brave leap of faith, I can send you photos like this:
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| Ben, reading his SECOND book!! |
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| Baby Sky Bison |
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| Santa Barbara's "Wet Wednesday" racing in the background |
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| A visit to the beach before dinner tonight |
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