#254 Nomad Diary. 30 August-5 September 2025. Week 6 of 8 in Madison, Alabama Airbnb. Grandkids. Friends and Family.

Quinn is Very Close to His 5th Birthday on This Call from Brazil.

 Saturday. 30. Today has been such a lovely day!! We slept in until 7am! Lol. That is such a pleasure to experience. Well, we got up and did our exercise routine which took about 40 minutes today. Darrell made pancakes together with me shredding an apple to add, and getting all of the table set and the extra items measured and the coffee made, etc. I texted our son Samuel to see if he would come for breakfast. He did! We are usually so much earlier that this opportunity doesn’t happen. He stayed and ate and enjoyed our time together. We all talked about our upcoming cruise together as he is flying to England just prior to getting on our ship for the final two weeks of Southampton to Fort Lauderdale. We enjoyed hashing through a bunch of tedious items like airport parking versus Uber rides. Also got into some travel app info and phone sim card info that can be helpful for Samuel. He needs ‘Rome 2 Rio” and also to look into Google Fi for his data needs while traveling overseas as well as cutting his phone bill in half or more now. As soon as Samuel left, we got a call from our next older son, Jeremy, who lives in Brasilia, Brazil until March 2026. We enjoyed talking to him and his wife, and son, Quinn who will be 5 years old in a few days! He’s an adorable little one! I’m biased, but he is very adorable, smiley and active learning piano and swimming and going to kindergarten. He’s having a popsicle party and I’m looking forward to hearing all about it.Darrell decided to go shoe shopping. We went to two large stores, but he came away without shoes for now. I reminded him that he’s lost so much weight that he needs a new swim suit too. Oh yeah…lol. 

Sunday. 31. Busy Day. We had our normal morning routines: exercise, breakfast, coffee. Today we left at 8am to drive almost an hour to visit South Fayetteville church of Christ, just north into Tennessee. We planned a couple weeks ago to come up to visit our friends Steve and Mary who worship here. They retired here in November of 2024 from Chicago. We met them 40 years ago while living in Germany. She worked as a DOD librarian and Steve was a minister. After church we went for lunch and visited for a couple of hours. We left to drive back down to our congregational singing at 4pm in Harvest, Alabama. We enjoyed our worship time and headed home for a quiet evening. We have been watching tv in the evenings. Tonight we watch a couple of our favorite sedate shows on YouTube. We watch ‘The Repair Shop’ and ‘Escape to the Country’, both are BBC shows. 

Lunch Out With Samuel. Newish Indian Restaurant in Clift Farms.

Out for a Coffee in Rural Alabama.

Monday. 1. Today is Labor Day, a US holiday. It seems like a Saturday to me! Lol. After breakfast we are sitting around reading and doing duolingo. We decide to meet Samuel, our youngest son, for lunch. We ended up at a new Indian restaurant. It was pretty good for Indian fast food. Darrell and I came home for a cup of tea and then we went off to shoe shop again. We went to Athens and he found some shoes at a French’s shoes and boots store. Then we went to Wal-mart for a bunch of odd items and then to drop off 3 bags of thrift store donations to lighten our things! Cleaning out unused items comes around more often when we live in smaller spaces and with less items. We went to walk at Swan Creek and then back home. We sit together in our living room reading and listening to Sirius XM Pops station and drink hot tea. Dinner today is one of our standard meals: Black Beans that I make in the Instapot and then keep in the fridge or freezer as we eat them over a week or two. We reheat a couple cups of beans and then add into our bowls with browned lean and seasoned meat to make a chili. Darrell likes to add a chopped tomato, onions, peppers and cheese. I usually add in some yogurt and also make a plate of blue tortillas with toppings melted in the microwave. I top them with shredded cheese, chopped onion and hot peppers, then some more yogurt and Tapitio sauce. 

Tuesday. 2. Ab routine day is a more difficult exercise and I’m so glad once it’s accomplished! We have our fabulous pancake breakfast! Between breakfast and leaving for morning class we have time for drinking more coffee and reading. Leave about 9:30 for Bible class at the church building. 1pm Bible Class with English church and others we now know in the US.

Flowers and Butterfly on Neighborhood Walk Near Eric's

Darrell Swinging Esther on One of Her Many Hours of This Activity.

Wednesday. 3. Morning routines. By 9am I was putting 2 pounds of dry black beans into the instapot to cook for us a total of about 6-8 meals. We ate them for lunch. I texted Eric and told him that I was getting the beans started and I’d come over after that to play with Owen and Esther. He said they wanted to come over here and asked if that was ok. Sure. He brought them over and they played for a couple hours. We have some toys in our airbnb, mainly blocks to play with. We spent a little time outside with the croquet set. The kids mostly are getting the vocabulary of each item and taking the pieces off of the rolling rack, playing with the balls mostly and then putting all the pieces back onto the roller. Then we go back inside, take off shoes and carry them over to the kitchen sink, climb up on a chair and rinse off the wet grass from each shoe. Owen also helped me load some clothes into the washing machine, but he was too busy later to put them into the dryer. They each had snacks. Esther has learned ‘peach’ here. It is peach season and we’ve had fresh peaches that she has enjoyed each time she comes over. Eric came and got the kids just before we had lunch.

Thursday. 4. Go around 9am to Eric and Erin’s house to get the car seats into our truck for the next few days. Eric is taking off to Michigan for a writers conference. Darrell and I are helping Erin out by sitting with the kids while she’s at work. Erin is coming home around noon since Darrell has an eye treatment at 2pm. The morning went well. We got the car seats into our truck and took the kids to the playground called Kid’s Dugout in Athens. We came back to the house around 11:15. We did a little house-keeping and Erin came home for the rest of the day. We left to have lunch and then head off to Darrell’s eye doc appointment. Today he had a steroid put into his eye. It’s a different consistency and a different type of injection with a different recovery too. Darrell did fine and I drove us back home. 

At Our Airbnb. Playing Toys. Grandpa, Owen and Esther.

Esther Hugging Her Daddy Goodbye for His Road Trip

These Two in Our Truck. It's a First Time Because of Needing to Share Car Seats.

Friday. 5. Today I’m getting up early and going over to Eric and Erin’s house before 6;30 am when Erin leaves for work. She’ll be home around 4:30 for the weekend. Darrell will stay at our house resting and recovering from his eye treatment. This day went well and was sweet and tiring for me! Owen and Esther are sweet ages at 4 and 2. They are into potty training and they did quite well for all of what it takes to learn this skill! A year ago, Owen wasn’t changing his own clothes and now he can choose to do it several times a day. Sometimes he only needs help with his socks. Recently he and Esther got Halloween costumes and this may be the motivation throughout this past year for changing clothes for dress-up and pretending. Whatever it is, they are both very capable and ready to learn very complex tasks. Before Eric left town, he showed me Esther’s knives that she uses to help cut up things in the kitchen. She stands on her platform next to the counter and works at learning and helping with tasks! It’s so sweet to get to be around them and figure out kids (again) in this time of my life! By the end of my day I was spent! Lol. Erin came from work about 4:30 and I was ready for my downtime! I came back to our house. We fixed tacos for dinner and went out for an evening walk at Swan Creek. The sky got dark as the sun set toward the end of our walk. 

Nomad Notes. 

Beginning to Pack for Our England Trip in Under 3 weeks!!

Today, Saturday, is three weeks until we arrive in England by airplane. I’m looking at all of the clothes that I own and beginning to cull my clothes for my upcoming trip. I will be packing in one large soft-sided rolling suitcase by LL Bean, and one weekend type backpack good for my airplane carryon. My checked bag is limited to 50 pounds/23 kg.  

For this particular trip, I’m going to pack for 1 week in England, then a month on a cruise ship that is going two weeks to Norway and then 2 weeks across the Atlantic to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. There’s an extreme in temperatures, weather conditions and also social situations. From my current clothes, I began by getting out my warm clothes for cold weather. I have about 5 wool shirts and a couple of wool sweaters. I add to that a couple of cotton long sleeve shirts and lightweight cotton pullovers. Next I put together my Columbia brand winter coat with wool gloves, gaiter and an additional hat and scarf. I also stow a couple of wet weather clothing items including my Columbia waterproof pull on pants and a hooded rain shell. Each of these groups of clothes I put into packing cubes to eventually get packed into my large suitcase while accumulating to my 50 pound limit. I tried on my current swim suit of long board shorts and two swim tops. I’m taking both tops, but one definitely fits me better than the other. The suit goes into a small packing cube. I have an opportunity on the cruise ship for a daily hot tub soak! I don’t usually go every day, but I like to go several times a week in the late afternoon or after dinner. 

Once I got these initial items packed, I went to my closet and looked at all of my hanging clothes. There are several items here that I have not worn in the 5 weeks we’ve been here. It is hot and humid here so my clothes have mostly been sleeveless and airy options. I’ve purchased a few new pieces of clothing and I’ve also donated a couple of bags of clothes and other various items culled by Darrell to a local thrift store. I have clothes that I like to have because they bring memories of a place where I bought them. Some of the items become less favored as a choice for me to wear. So to reduce my current selection and look forward to my upcoming trip, I asked myself which clothes will I definitely not wear in the next 3 weeks? I pulled out a bunch, put them into a large packing cube to stow into my one and only waterproof, Rubbermaid trunk storage box. I had two dresses that I pulled out that I took on a cruise with me last year,and they went unworn. One of the dresses I have never worn from the time I purchased it a year ago and one dress I have owned over 10 years and I can’t remember the last time I wore it, even though it’s a classic black dress. I have set these two dresses with my suitcase packing cubes for my upcoming trip. I’m going to get honest with myself and see if I do or don’t wear either of these. How I dislike this situation of having invested money into clothing items that don’t get worn! 

Besides this one unworn dress and this one older and little worn dress, they are not alone. I have tried many clothing items by purchasing them and then they somehow lose favor and get pushed back and unwanted. I bought two short sleeve tees while in Canada. They seemed good to me at the time and I wore them often in the cool spring weather. During the first wash and dry, they each shrunk a little leaving them a tad shorter than I like. I love the colors, but I have to work around the shortened length and I often make a different selection. I console myself by knowing that they worked for a few weeks in filling my need at that time. With living in a house in a ‘normal’ way, I would either put these kinds of items at the bottom of a drawer under my favorite tees, or hang them on the far end of my closet. It would take me a two year cycle at a minimum to decide if these items stay or go. 

This kind of use of items also happens with some of my shoes that I buy. Often it is difficult to know if this item I purchase is going to give me the function and the pleasure that I feel like I’m paying for. 

Ultimately, I have very limited space for keeping clothes and shoes. I will keep on culling faster and turning over my clothing items with my sense of what I like to wear and what seems to fit me at my age, my size, and my destinations of travel. It’s definitely challenging to flow with all of this while living in constant movement, seasons, and changing personal taste.

On Monday, I put my packed cubes into my suitcase and weighed it today. I’m only at 26 pounds! I have plenty of weight left up to 50 pounds to get the rest of my items for our airplane trip to London on September 19th.

Our future movement and travel discussions have some questions abounding. How long can we travel between Darrell’s eye treatments? How far do we want to go? At what pace do we want to go? Is there a particular place we want to go? Somewhere we have not yet been or somewhere we have enjoyed previously? What is Darrell seeking in constant movement compared or complimented with what I am seeking in our constant movement? What am I holding onto as valuable and consistent in my constant moving from place to place? 

Darrell: puzzling through new situations. Time spent with Mom. Cruising. 

Sherry: Health and living practices: walking, stretching, cooking, reading. Beautiful scenery. Time spent with grandchildren (2 in Alabama and 1 in Brazil currently)