#20 and #21 March 20 & 27, 2021 "4 months is Too Long for Us!"

March 27, 2021

Here we are. Still in Harvest, Alabama. Maybe I've called it Madison. They border each other. We know our way around really well here. We've lived in this area for 12 years. In this particular airbnb, a nice 1 bedroom with a lovely neighborhood, giant pines, full-sized kitchen and laundry, we decided to stay for 4 months: Jan - April.

So as we have been learning and reading about being 'nomads', we have come across this idea of tempo, timing or pacing your moves and your travel to work with you. Since we are so new to our life as nomads, we signed up for 4 months at this place. One of the reasons I encouraged us to stay this long is because I went to Vancouver for a full month. So really, just Darrell is doing the full 4 months here. He said it's too long for him. I agree. We want a new place to live in and we want a new neighborhood to walk around. So we have learned this about our current tempo of living and moving to the next airbnb.

Last Saturday and today, Darrell has been helping our oldest son, Eric to fix, patch and paint items in their house so that they can be ready to sell it soon. The last two weeks here have had stormy days with tornado threats. We didn't have any near us for these events. Today the temperature got up in the 80's! I put away my winter clothes for this Southern spring.

We have a loop to walk in our neighborhood that is about 2 miles with a small uphill that keeps a little challenge alive! I baked dinner today! Woo hoo! I made a Spinach Artichoke Phyllo Pie. It was my only successful attemp ever using Phyllo dough. My secret was to use olive oil spray for each sheet of dough, not a pastry brush which goes too slow for my skills.

We got to talk to our grandson Quinn and his folks. He's so adorable right now, smiling at the conversation and recognizing us as Grandma and Grandpa. He was practicing sitting up with his mom while I sang "Skiminy Rinky Dinky Dink..." over the video call. He got tired and started to go to sleep, but was too interested in the coversation to give up completely while we talked for a few minutes.

This week I bought some colored markers to start just drawing some pictures for my amusement in my notebook. Each morning Darrell and I do a pre-recorded workout. Today we did one called "Stand Up". Yeah, you stand up the whole time. It is part of the DDP Yoga series. We started these workouts back about 9 years ago! We started much slower, and have built up through the years. Just recently we decided to do a routine every morning because it feels better doing it than not.

Besides this exercise routine, we are both doing Duolingo Spanish App. Darrell is learning Spanish as one of his retirement hobbies. So he is way ahead of me. I do the least amount possible to get by on the free app. He upgraded to the paid app. I also do a daily out-loud Bible reading to myself, usually just one chapter per day. It's taking me forever to read through the Bible this way, but I'm hanging in with it.

Another thing that I have completed a full year of is Noom. If you have any questions about it, I can answer them because I did the full year. Now that I am coming to my end of nooming, I found a free app to track my exercise and foods that I really like and recommend called mynetdiary. It looks like a green apple with a tape measure shoulder sash. Get it and you will like it!

5 Saturdays from today is our moving day. Meanwhile, we keep working from here and living our downsized nomad life!