#LoveWins

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What the world needs now
Is Love, sweet Love.
It’s the only thing
that there’s just too little of…

By Burt Bacharach

On Saturday I joined  200,000 other people of all genders, ages, races, and religions at the Women’s March in Seattle. Actually, the word ‘march’ is a bit of a misnomer. It was more like a shuffle due to the enormous crowds; 4 times more people than expected.  Like many, I’ve been pretty worried and sad lately about our nation and how we’re going to move forward from the most divisive presidential campaign and political time in my history on earth. Everyone I know is stressed out and worried, some more than others. Darkness and  fear pervade conversations. Heads shake in disbelief and dismay. My Facebook news feed is one depressing article after another. Going to the national news, and even the international news, isn’t much better.

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In spite of the many reasons we were marching, the energy of the Seattle Women’s March was uplifting and positive, sometimes even joyous.  I believe it says a lot that of all the many Women’s March protests all over the world, all were peaceful. That’s about 3,000,000 people all coming together, living in the world in peace. If that momentum continues, our country is going to be fine. Seeing all these hundreds of thousands of people who, like me, believe in our country and what it stands for filled me with hope.

So I came home uplifted, filled with love for my fellow human and wondering how I can possibly keep this groove going when the firehose force of troubling news just keeps coming each and every day.  I know a little something about mental health, and let me tell you it’s unhealthy to be focused constantly on the turmoil in our country. We need a little levity. We need a little fun to get our minds off these heavy things. I don’t know about you, but my mental outlook depends on it. When you are laughing and joyous, fear disappears. And that is a very good thing.

A little shabby but still holding up.

Little did I know that one solution to my ennui actually started way back in 1974. That was the year our family went camping by the Bear River up in Maine. I was in the middle of my teen years.  My sisters and I were a creative bunch, always up to making something or other. On that trip, we sat around the picnic table and painted rocks. We painted rocks before painting rocks was cool.  Here’s a rock I painted way back then, worn by time, but still fun in a funky, latter-day hippie kind of way. My sister, Amy, keeps it safe in her garden. Next to my gnomes. (Let’s not go there.)

Recently Amy posted photos of rocks she and her son found at a park in Port Orchard. Apparently there are organized groups of people who paint rocks and then hide them for people to stumble upon when they are out and about living their lives. WHATTT??? What is this fabulous thing of painting rocks and leaving them in strategic places to bring other people joy?  I have lived too sheltered a life and need to get out more!  I had no idea such a thing existed. In fact, I have held off painting because, I mean, what will I do with all of the things I make? My friends can only accommodate so many of my amateur artistic endeavors. I’ve been downsizing so hard I left my creative me behind. And that is terrible for my mental well being. It seems like a small thing, but in fact, it’s HUGE.

I painted this sleeping goddess while at an anchorage in Barkley Sound. She lives in the aft head on Galapagos.

Anyway,  you know how it is when a great idea comes zinging into your heart, lands on fertile soil,  and starts exploding all over your cells! You know that feeling! Things just become set in motion. When I learned of this rock hiding that was happening without including me, I suddenly  NEEDED to start painting rocks. I was in the flow again. It’s been well beyond a year since I’ve felt in the flow. Yesterday I went to my sister’s house and painted rocks all day!

Man, I do love a good day of painting. It felt fantastic to get my paints and brushes and pens out and start using them again. You remember how good it used to feel to get the big box of crayons? Remember that one that had the sharpener on the back and had 64 fresh, bright colors just waiting to play with you? I can still feel the tension when it came time to buy the box of crayons for school each year. Standing in the store, perusing the offerings. Will I get the big set? Am I worthy enough? Will they spring for the 64 crayon box? The one with silver, gold, bronze, and copper included?  Will it be mine? Oh sure, the  16 piece box is barely adequate, the 32 crayon box is better than nothing,  but….ARRRGGH! PLEASE GET ME THE BIG SET OF 64 CRAYONS WITH THE BUILT-IN SHARPENER AND DON’T MAKE ME SHARE IT WITH A SINGLE OTHER SOUL AND YES I WILL USE EVERY SINGLE COLOR!!! And then that smell of fresh crayons? They actually SMELL like color.

That’s how I feel about my paints. They are just yummy as heck. I could look at them and play with them all day long and never read any shitty news again. I want ALLLLL the colors.

I’m loving this octopus. I hope someone else will, too.

My cunning plan is to dive headfirst into this new creative flow by painting rocks with fun designs, then I’m going to offer them up to the gods by putting them out in the world, hoping to bring a small amount of excitement and happiness to some child or some grownup who comes upon one by accident somewhere; just a little serendipity to bring a little light into a dark time. I know my own heart feels lighter just thinking about it. It’s not a big thing. But we all know that when you cannot control the bigger things, small things matter.

Who is this little creature who emerged from the brush? She loves her handbag.

I’m tagging my painted rocks on the back with our official boat stamp and a note to find our Facebook page. I hope people who find them will love them and will post to our  page that they’ve found a home, or that they have been re-hidden for someone else to find. Mike wants me to paint a lot of rocks. We are excited to hide rocks from S/V Galapagos all the way down the Pacific Coast and across the world to wherever we sail. Kind of makes me giddy to think of the fun of it. We hope to make friends with people who find them and we hope that finding a specially painted rock will brighten someone’s day and give them, even for a moment, a sense of the wonder of the world; a sense that the world is still a pretty awesome place most of the time. #LoveWins.

 

A hobbit home? A gnome door?

 

 

(Just Like) Starting Over

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Long time readers will know that sometimes the efforts to bring our cunning plans to fruition can be hard.  It isn’t always Mexican beer and Scrabble games aboard Galapagos.  Especially as our departure date grows ever closer, actions that we once just talked about, we now must do.

This past week I celebrated my twenty year work anniversary at Boeing.  Two days later I told my manager that I would retire at the end of April.

That’s a real diamond folks. A real tiny diamond.

I have been thinking about this day for a long time, maybe three years, and still I was not prepared emotionally to hear those words come out of my mouth.  In fact, I struggled to get the words out and had to excuse myself to go for a little walk. I was overwhelmed and surprised by the intense emotions after having worried about this day for so long. After I got a grip on myself, I returned and we had a longer chat to explain my future plans.  My manager was very kind; disappointed I would be leaving but excited for the cunning plan we have laid out.  I was relieved that she took it so well. It’s hard to tell people you like that you are leaving. There’s always that niggling doubt that you are going to be letting them down in some way. I am grateful that she was so supportive.

Like most people my age, I feel as though I have been working for my entire life. I spent twenty years at Boeing, and the twenty before that working or serving in the military. To say, ‘I no longer have a job.’  really does feel like starting over: Exciting and a little terrifying all at once. If you do the math, you’ll see I’ve been working since I was 16 years old. Practically an entire lifetime.

Melissa and I have been the doing all the responsible grown up things for 35 years now and the plans we have set before ourselves are simply not a part of the typical American narrative. But who said we have to be typical? Where is that written? Youth, it is said, is wasted on the young, but I don’t buy it. Melissa and I have not wasted our youth. We have used it to build a beautiful life for ourselves and our children. And now we get to start over with a new kind of life.  It is a bold move but there is magic in boldness.

When we were young, hip and didn’t know what the hell we were doing. Evanston, Wyoming, 1981.

So we tamp down our fears about what we are giving up and grow excited about what we are taking on.  Living aboard these last few weeks has been lovely, despite the cold weather.  It reminds me our first apartment together in Biloxi, Mississippi. We were newlyweds. I was in tech school for the Air Force. Our apartment was only a little bigger than Galapagos.  It was a time for us to practice being adults and figuring out who we were as a couple.  I think we did okay.

In our first apartment together in Biloxi Mississippi in 1982. Melissa taught me how to sew and I made the Hawaiian shirt I am wearing.

 

The title of today’s post is from a song written by John Lennon.  I  must have a little DJ living in my head that queues up just the right song to capture how I feel.  One day I am sitting at my desk perseverating on the enormity of how our lives are changing and the next thing you know, Lennon is goofing on Elvis while Yoko makes animal noises in the background.  It was a pretty good song from 1980 and the hook just spoke to me. Be warned: this blog is family friendly, but John and Yoko, well, you’ll remember that they were not shy. You might want to close your eyes toward the end of the video.

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220. 221. Whatever It Takes.

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“I hear loud banging from your boat…are you trapped? Do you need rescuing?”

It’s so nice to live in a neighborhood with people who care.  I was taking my evening constitutional along the Foss Waterway when I received that text from one of our neighbors in the marina. Mike was alone on Galapagos. Was he imprisoned and struggling to free himself against dastardly criminals? Not this time. The sound she heard was the one that a small sledge hammer makes when it hits thick fiberglass below the waterline. Sound travels well by water and Mike was in full demolition mode while I was gone. In spite of how it sounded, he was not actually destroying the hull. It’s simply this: we’re back to boat projects.  It’s not enough to actually live on a sailboat. We need to be working on it as well. It’s been a nice break during the holidays but fun time is over for now.

Just look at this useless bottom shelf.

Mike was giddy with excitement when we moved aboard. He couldn’t wait to get up at 5:00 in the blessed AM, walk to the train, work a full and boing day analyzing airplane data, reverse the commute, then come home and start working on the boat. His pleasure is sometimes my pain, but I still don’t know where he gets the energy for this. It was with a certain amount of glee that he began our current demolition job. I say ‘our’ only because I get to watch, hand him the shop vac, and then I will get to do much of the finish work. Mostly at this point I praise his efforts and manliness when he is destroying things.

On the short list has been a desire to remove these huge fresh water foot pump enclosures from beneath each sink. They exist, right there in the middle of the easiest-to-reach storage space, should you want to have fresh water in the tap without using electricity. We understand the desire to be able to circumvent the electrical pump system should it break down, and we’ll be putting a hand pump at the sink in the galley during that coming refit. (We will also be carrying extra water in jugs, because that’s how I roll to appease my Amy G. Dala.) Our boat was built in 1974, a time when people had fewer choices in terms of creating their own electricity on their vessels. These foot pumps would have been necessary while at anchor back in the dark ages of my highschool years.

Now we have solar panels that crank out the amps, and pumps that draw very little power. The water to these foot pumps has been turned off for so long that the valve to turn it back on is almost frozen in place. To try to turn this valve will be to break this valve. That’s how much the foot pumps have been used.  Every time I go to put something away underneath a sink I’ve been irritated by these ungainly fiberglass housings. Why did they need to be so darned big? Seems Demolition Mike was irritated, too, so out came the tools of destruction.

One thing about our 1974 boat: everything is built hell for stout. Those Greeks really knew how to build boats to last. Mike had to power through close to an inch of fiberglass and heavy mahogany plywood. His tools of choice: the handy Ryobi multi-tool with flush cutting blade, a bottle jack for putting pressure on the cut pieces, a small sledge hammer for when the pieces fail to yield to the bottle jack, a pry bar, shop vac, and extra batteries for the power tools.

It felt a bit like sacrilege to remove such well built equipment. The original  pump, made in France,  was plenty corroded on the bottom, but it would probably still work if cleaned up. There are no moving parts. Just a seal to create a vacuum. The stainless fittings, however, are now a permanent part of this unit as the marriage of dissimilar metals put together has taken hold and they have become one.

I think it literally causes Mike pain to throw equipment like this out. We’ll probably put this on the free pile in case some soul is in need of an extra boat project.

These cabinets will finish out nicely and the extra, easy to reach, storage will be welcome. We can store a ton of toilet paper here! Or big bottles of vinegar and stuff. So excited! It’s the little things that bring joy.

Oh yes, we know those hoses need replacing. It’s on the list. We’re not very happy about it because it’s going to be a right pain in the butt considering where the thru hull is located.

Another small project has been replacing light fixtures. Why have only one project when you can have multiples? We live in a world of plenty. The boat came with several boxes of replacement bulbs for all the various types of light fixtures on board. We have incandescent lights, florescent lights, and halogen lights. They are all taking up too many precious amps, and there are too many different kinds of bulbs, some of which may be obsolete for all we know. Many of the fixtures have seen better days, like the sconces in our main cabin. The plastic shades are cracked and even more yellow than they should be due to age. So even though they work fine, we’re switching them out to these new ones with LEDs.

We found a nice source of attractive LED light fixtures on Amazon and ordered some to test out. We are quite pleased with both the quality of the construction and the quality of the light, especially for the price. Of course, we are not talking ‘marine’ lighting here. But when you consider that the light will last for at least 50,000 hours and there are no bulbs to replace, this is a bargain for us. Mike was sold on the amp draw: just .24 amps. Does that mean I get to use my milk frother while at anchor? Since we have extra amps and all…

We’re replacing some of the reading lights in the cabins with these little fixtures below.  They are smaller than they look but they put out good quality light that is the right color. I avoided LEDs in the past because the light was always too far on the blue spectrum for me and I didn’t like it. Blue light can be agitating. The technology has caught up and by choosing a warm white color we’ve been entirely pleased.

In addition, we tried these nifty little LED bulbs that work with our incandescent fixtures as they are also size ‘e27’, referring to the screw base. The quality of the light is very good, and they look like a regular bulb. We chose the warm white bulb and are quite happy with the results although they are very bright. We may see if this brand has some that put out a little less light. But this ‘win’ means we get to keep the fixtures we already have in the aft cabin.

I have a couple of larger projects on my list that I’m seriously procrastinating on. One involves paint and one involves that aft cabin. I’d like to tell you more but it’s making me tired to think about them.

For your amusement:

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