Tag Archives: baby boomers

Voice found

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So now I have a “kid” voice for ecology.com - it was a challenge, but after several iterations, I got it. Now I have a series of articles to do, basically rewrites of existing, dense pieces to make them kid friendly. My current one is all about algae! It’s like going back to school, as I am finding it is actually easier to write these things from scratch, rather than trying to edit down, and totally rework. Doing it this way entails a lot of research, but it’s a lot of fun!

This is a perfect set up for me. Part-time, anywhere-I-am work. Exactly what I want for Bocas, or wherever I end up. Be out and about in the early part of the day, home and working in the heat of midday, then out and about in the evening coolness. Just perfect.

Crab traps on the boat

Had a great weekend, weather-wise. A typical summer in the NW kind of weekend, with sun! Yes it actually was out for two whole days! Went crabbing both days, snagged seven beautiful, big Dungeness. For the first time, we trapped a lot of females, which of course we threw back. Got to keep those girls producing!

Went out crabbing again yesterday, snagged four more good ones – but they are a lot of work if you don’t eat them right away. It entails cleaning them, then cooking them. Then the “fun” part, cracking them and extracting all the meat, then pressing the cleaned meat into cupcake pans, freezing, popping the frozen serving size portions out of the pans and then into vacuum-sealed bags for long-term freezing. Takes ages! And my fingers are cut up from the sharp shells. But still definitely worth every morsel!

Because November and December are getting into tourist time in Bocas del Toro, I have decided to go down earlier, mid-October. But will go to Southern California first for a couple of weeks to see all the kids and leave from there. That makes it only two months before I go. Time to get things in gear and start getting rid of stuff. Clothes, junk, organize paperwork, decide what goes and what goes into the rubbish bin.

I travel light.

 

Psyching myself up

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I sometimes doubt myself and what I am doing. Wondering if I am strong enough to do this on my own. And I know that Susan is only planning to be down in Panama for a short time, so I am basically on my own.

My friends think I am a fearless adventurer, and at heart I am. Hell, I was when I was really young! Absolutely fearless – or maybe just too naive. But regardless, I have to wonder if I still have it, whether I can still go out, traipsing around the world on my own, a single baby boomer woman.

I do know that I enjoy doing things and going places with someone. They give me the impetus to get out and do stuff. I’m afraid that I might get stuck somewhere and not get out and experience the people and cultures if I am on my own.

So I have to figure that out – but as I sit here writing, I realize that this is the impetus I need. I remember how good, successful and adventurous I felt in South Africa, heading out off the beaten track to interview some little African woman and photograph the bead work she was doing. And how much fun it was to visit the game lodges and beaches and hotels, getting stories and photos. Visiting the women’s groups as they struggled to survive; spending those 10 days in Zululand, 4-wheeling through sand traps and all the excitement. That is what I am supposed to be doing – and I CAN do it on my own.

It wasn’t that long ago that I went following sailboats across the Atlantic, taking ferries and trains and boats and planes! Ending up spending the night in a red light district; visiting castles and all sorts of other amazing places.

So can you guess? I am psyching myself up to go it alone – again!

The days are skimming by, and now I must set some deadlines for myself. When to book my flight, when to sell the car, when to buy the V-Lux 30, when to book language school and very importantly, when to send out pitches to all the publications, blogs and online magazines about this new adventure of mine.

Summer?

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I think we might have summer today! Here it is, on the downside of the summer solstice, and we are still waiting…

But today is beautifully clear, although it is very cold outside, 46F/10C. Maybe it will warm up to 60 or so, which will be a treat. The forecast is for 68/20 but I’m not holding my breath. I am tired, tired, tired of being cold and having the heat on in the house. And I am certainly not the only one complaining. People who are died-in-the wool Pacific northwesterners are complaining. It has been just miserable.

The birds don’t seem to mind – I am watching a huge osprey survey the estuary. He has been very active, diving and being quite successful too! Big fish being snatched! A lovely sight. In fact, we have two of these birds that have made this their own fishing grounds. The original one, which has been here for the past 3-4 years is still around and now this new one. The original one is smaller so maybe a female and now the male, so maybe babies soon?

But I hopefully won’t be here to see them, although staying focused on leaving is difficult. I wish I could simply pack up now and leave.

The nuts are still there and Annie knows I am leaving in November. But nobody seems to be making any effort to do anything about moving the business south to Southern California, or finding someone here to run it or close it down. It just blows my mind that they show so little interest – but want it to keep going, according to Ryan. It’s sad, as we keep getting more and more interest, with a big wedding favor order and a possible deal with gift baskets that I will find out about this week. If I had been getting paid properly, I probably would not be so anxious to leave, as I really am proud of the company and hate to just walk away from it. I guess that is why I keep working at it, keeping it ticking over, even though there is no money in it for me. Ever the optimist, I keep thinking someone is going to take it seriously, and it will become famous, and we will all make money. It takes years for a business to become profitable, and we are just in our second year. Very sad.

My tomatoes are finally growing well in the sunroom. The weeds outside are doing well too! It’s been so miserable, that things outside have had very little attention so everything is looking rather ragged at the moment. Maybe I’ll do some weeding today, put on my iPod music and sit in the sun.

I did find a couple of dress patterns for my summer clothes, but haven’t set up my machine yet. I’ve been dragging, but really must get myself in gear. I need to go through all the cupboards and boxes and discard stuff. Consolidate. Photos are about all I will save. The rest can go to Goodwill! Although, on second thoughts, there are things that I have saved for years: my Belize drum, jippy jappy baskets, Zulu baskets, beads. I can’t just get rid of them. So I guess I pack them up and store them until I am settled somewhere – wherever and whenever that might be.

 

A day off

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What a pleasure!

Not that I had planned to take the day off, but Demand Media, where my editing comes from, is having “issues,” so there hasn’t been anything for me to work on. If this is an indication of things to come, I realize I need to find backup work.

And lo and behold, Ryan sent me a link to a whole list of places online that buy travel articles etc. Again, because I have a different mindset (Panama) I am looking at what they pay in a lot different light. And I can make it work. Now I have to pitch all the places and I am pretty sure a couple will hit.

The days are whizzing by, and I need to put up a calendar and mark off the days, although that doesn’t do much good, really, until I actually pick a date. So I am thinking the end of October — or sooner — if we don’t get summer here soon. It’s till getting down to almost freezing at night! But I know something is happening and growing, as hay fever is setting in and I have itchy eyes and nose. It’s years since this happened. Not since I did a whole homeopathic treatment 20+ years ago. It must have worn off, damn!

Most of my planning is in my head, at the moment. But the time is quickly approaching when I need to start actually packing up what I want to save, like photos and such. But there is very little that I want to keep. Just about everything in this house is thrift store and garage sale stuff, so I can happily walk away from it. And all the winter clothes? Whoosh, out the door into boxes for Goodwill. I’ll take my Kangen water machine – can’t live without that, and as the water in Bocas del Toro is not drinkable, I need to get pre-filters for it. I know that this machine is what has kept me – and will continue to keep me – healthy. The electrical system in Panama is the same as here, I believe, so it should work well. I’ll take my laptop and camera (my Canon) and hopefully the new one I want, the Leica V-LUX 30. And I will have lightweight dresses and a couple of bathing suits. Not sure yet whether to get new goggles, snorkel and fins here or down there. It’s a popular diving and snorkeling area, so it might be easier than trying to find them here. Not too many people swim here, where the water hardly ever gets above 46F!

My friends in Bocas Town will tell me what I should bring – ans what is easy to get there.

 

How to eat an elephant

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Sometimes it seems like I am taking on too much, moving to a different world, keeping the nuts going, editing, etc.

But then one giant piece of the puzzle falls into place and things appear a whole lot different.

Finances of course, are a huge piece of this equation, and until I decided to take early Social Security, these dreams were out of reach. Then going through all the hassles of actually getting the monthly payment almost made me think it wasn’t worth it. My payment is not huge by any stretch of the imagination (and may that be a note to young, self-employed people, pay your self employment tax or your social security will be minimal, it might be minimal or non-existent by the time they get to be my age anyway, but that’s a whole different story) but it will make a nice, though small, safety net.

So this week, it was a very pleasant surprise to find the funds in my bank account! Followed a couple of days later with a letter from SS telling me they funds were there. Duh! I really have no idea how these government departments function – they are so dysfunctional!

So now I feel re-energized to get moving. Today I am heading down to Silverdale to buy dress patterns that are on sale for .99c which is unheard of. And I found a store that has some really pretty fabrics that are also relatively inexpensive. I have found in the past that by the time you buy the pattern and the fabric, it’s cheaper to just go and buy a dress.

But that again, is another beef I have. Clothing styles for people my age are abysmal. They are soooo dowdy and grannyish. So you either have to go that route or you end up with clothing only suitable for teenagers – and that is not in the cards for me. So I have been thinking – for years – about designing clothes for women who are my age, active, trendy, full of life, colorful, easy to wear, that look good too. So something else to think about and add to my “to do” list.

Weather note: We had our three days of summer last week. While the rest of the nation swelters in record-breaking heat, we are still below normal and I have heard that it will most likely be another winter like the last one – but do I care? Hell NO! I won’t be here!

Making progress

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My CD’s arrived yesterday, so I can load them on my iPod and start my Spanish learning process. The instructions tell me to work on it 30 minutes a day, so I should be able to squeeze that into my busy schedule!

It doesn’t look like I will be driving down to Panama, at least not with Betsy. She has too many other things going on to take that much time to do it. But Susan said she wants to drive so I am going to start the process of getting the paperwork in order to do that. I don’t know how much time to allow us yet. Her plans are starting to solidify too, but getting things into sync with mine is going to take some doing. But all fun.

Went out with “the girls” last night to Mezzaluna, the bar at the Silverwater. Just Susan, Mardelle and Teresa. Missed Janet but not the guys. Maybe we will do this instead of potlucks.

The conversations are always wild! It’s like we have been penned up in solitary, and everything burbles to the top and spills out! It’s a good thing we were in an alcove so no one could really hear what we were talking about. We laughed and laughed, a couple of drinks, some food then the long drive home.

And wouldn’t you know, I look in my rear view mirror and see the blue and red flashing lights and I think, “Oh S***! did I run a light or something (there is only one I could have run and I was pretty sure I hadn’t) so I pull over. Sheesh, a couple of drinks for the first time in eons and I get pulled over? So I reach over to get my insurance etc, and there is a tap on the passenger side window. A very young cop – actually I think they all very young now – says, “I pulled you over because your one headlight is out!” I was just hoping he couldn’t smell wine on me, but the food I had was full of garlic so think that masked it! He said he saw me using my brights and realized I hadn’t noticed that the right headlight was out, so he was very pleasant and I was grateful he told me. I just happen to have the spare bulb in the glove box because the left one was out a couple of months ago.

But I thought, “Whew! good thing I didn’t have more to drink, certainly don’t need a DUI!”

 

new options?

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Of course, we never know where our lives will take us. We can try to steer life in the direction we want to go, make plans, but when it comes down to it, what’s around the corner is often a surprise.

When I first went to Panama back in 1968, sailing on Seedrache with Randy – boy, does that ever put me in the baby boomer generation – we met a young couple who had driven down from California in an old VW bus, true hippies. They were headed down to Ushuaia, at the tip of South America. I Pan American Highwayremember thinking then, “Wow, what a great trip!” And ever since then, I have thought of driving down the west coast to Panama, down the Pan American Highway. It’s a long trip, and I wouldn’t attempt it on my own. I just need a fellow adventurer.

So I was skyping Betsy this morning, and guess what? Yep, she might do the trip with me.  There would be a lot of things that have to be worked out as getting visas and car permits take time. But if we started the process soon, we could get it done and be out of here by November.

We’ve traveled together before and have known each other for 20 years now so we would most likely survive the closeness of a trip like that. I would get my car all sorted out to take down there. It’s going to need new brakes soon, and the transmission needs checking, but it is a great car and I think would be totally reliable for that sort of trip. And it would be good to have  a 4×4 down there where some of the roads are marginal. I’d be able to use my four wheeling skills I learned in South Africa at the Land Rover school.

If we decide to do this, the longest stretch is through Mexico, then into Guatamala. Then in El Salvador, we would stay with John Barr’s son who has a house on the beach and I have the option of staying in the apartment that is being built over the restaurant he owns, which is also on the beach. Then we would head south, through Nicaragua into Costa Rica, where Betsy has a friend with a surf camp where we could hang out. From there into Panama. Definitely an adventure.

So now there are options!

Aren’t there always?

As they say, Ask and it is given.

 

 

 

butterflies

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So even though I am so excited to be doing what I have dreamed about for so long, there are moments when the butterflies start swarming and I question myself.

What’s wrong with being here (besides the weather, the cost of living, the isolation etc?)

Why not do what most people do when they get to “our age?” Hunker down, get in a routine, visit the grandkids, knit, sew etc?

Does because it’s boring count? I think it does. Of course, I can justify everything I am planning – back to the weather, isolation etc. But the truth is, I love adventure, I love change, I love exploring and I feel deprived when that isn’t part of my life.

When this dream started taking shape years ago, I naturally assumed I would be with “someone” who would travel and go adventuring with me. But now the reality is that it is just me. Regardless whether Susan goes too, it will be me on my own in the beginning. So that’s where the jitters come in.

Wondering whether I am still up to this, if I am too old, all the self-doubt, but in my heart I know I am the same person I was when I left to go sailing on Vadura all those years ago – acutally it was 43 years ago! And I remember it as if it was yesterday. I sailed off with not a care in the world and fifty bucks in my pocket.

So that same girl, albeit a bit older, a bit wiser, and with different colored hair, is getting ready to do the same thing all over again, but this time with a bit more planning.

Life moves in mysterious ways

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We all know the saying, “Be careful what you wish for, it might come true.”

Sometimes, we just get so mired in the muck and life seems so confusing and empty, but we keep wishing and hoping and visualizing the life we want to live.

I’ve had a dream for eons; living somewhere warm where the sea is warm too, somewhere I can afford, where I can make a reasonable living and there is good internet.

Over the years, I’ve researched hundreds of places, thought about, looked at pictures, talked and talked and talked about it. I was pretty sure the place would be Central/South America. I thought long and hard about going home to South Africa, but the more I hear from the family, the more I realize that it would be a dead end for me. Of course, I will always go to visit, but not to stay.

Then along came mymixednuts, and I thought, OK, I can work on this, stash a little cash, and when it has grown up, we can sell it and I can retire with some of the proceeds. Or I could set up the management part online so I could do it from anywhere.

Well, that is basically upside down. And it put me in a very interesting spot. Seeing as I turned 62, Social Security is available. Now I hadn’t thought about taking it early, because I believed I would be working and making enough I wouldn’t need it. Then I thought, “Hmm, why don’t I take a look at how that will change things.”

And lo and behold, the whole picture changed. Not my dream, which is now closer than I ever, but how I can actually do it.

As I searched through the countries I might go to, there were a few leaders; Panama, Mexico, Ecuador and Nicaragua. Panama has always been my first choice and that is still the direction I am heading. It has everything I want, the sun, the sea, the internet.

And why the internet? Because I am creating an income now, online!

A long time ago, I saw an ad for copy editors but when I saw how little they pay, I passed it by. Then recently, it popped up again, and being in a totally different place in my life, I took another look, and voila! it works! With the social security that I get starting next month, and working 20-25 hours a week, I can make a comfortable living. Not here, but somewhere south.

I expect at some stage, it might get boring, but right now, the lack of pressure and the freedom it allows, is wonderful. If that happens, then I can look for something more stimulating. When I am in my new country then I can write again, doing articles like I did for Country Life in South Africa. Don’t know who I will sell them to but that really doesn’t matter right now.

mymixednuts will get wrapped up, if anyone ever bothers to respond to any emails. Today, if I haven’t heard anything, I will complete the list of user names and passwords, take myself off all the accounts, change the bank info, and send the key to the warehouse and list to Brian or Annie.

Looking towards the future, I want to be out of here by October/November so no more winters.

On another note, spring MAY have sprung, my tulips are sort of flowering, the trees have a lovely soft green blush, the osprey is back and so are the Canadian geese. It doesn’t get quite to freezing at night and if the wind doesn’t blow, it’s warm in the sun. Oh, and we have a harbor seal coming visiting on a high tide, not that that has anything to do with spring.

Martha I am not!

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Orris root iris
The most important thing that happened this week is that I am going to be a granny again! Cody and Mel’s second will be here around Ryan’s birthday in November. We don’t know whether Oliver will have a brother or sister yet but it’s very exciting :)
Well, this pr and marketing push that wicked-pr is doing is very exciting and interesting! 
The funniest, to me anyway, but so far the most exciting, is interest by Martha Stewart Living Magazine! I mean really! If Martha could see where the wonderful mixes are coming from, she’d want to redecorate! And I am so not a fan of hers! But if we get a mention there, it’s worth a huge amount. The only thing better I think would be to get on Oprah!
What’s even more interesting is that they are pitching my story to other magazines and tv and radio stations! You know, the old gray mare may not be what she used to be, but she’s still got a lot of get up and go sort of thing. What a laugh! So who knows where this will lead. They are calling it a second career! I look at it as a clutching at straws endeavor in the beginning, but now I feel so much more confident about what I can do. It’s like I have, in the last seven months, been in a crash course in start up business, yet sometimes I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. 
But I think if more women and men who are retiring know what we really are capable of, when are feet are to the flames, maybe you’d see more of us gray hairs out doing something that is so far from our comfort zone that we might as well be on the moon. And loving it!
It’s long days of everything from vetting the web site and hounding the developers to mixing and packing nuts to bookkeeping – and whatever else pops up. But the days are never boring, that’s for sure.
But I am keeping perspective and not letting the work suck me in to where that is all I do. Yoga is becoming more and more important to me. It’s quite amazing, really. It’s about the only activity I know of where my mind doesn’t wander from the physical; it is a totally whole body/mind experience. And even though I am just a beginner, I know it is making a huge difference in the way I feel. Now I just have to be more disciplined to practice at home. 
I am so enjoying my orris irises. They are corms I got from a house Susan had listed about three years ago and I planted them out in the bed against the bulkhead. This is the first year they have bloomed and I had no idea what color they would be – and they are gray! Apparently, the root is used in perfume and gin! But you have to have acres and acres and dry the roots for five years before they are ground and then distilled. My tulips are finally over, sad but they lasted almost a month and were a very welcome splash of color and spring rolls in. Next are the other irises, then lilies. We are going to put pots on top of the pilings with hanging plants which should look really pretty – probably petunias, geraniums and lobelia. Possibly nasturtiums too. The poppies are all about to pop too, which really is a surprise as it is about a month earlier than last year. But I love it, they take over the side of the sunroom so I don’t have to weed.
It’s hard to believe it is almost May and that in seven weeks, it will be the longest day of the year! Even now, the evenings are stretching out, but it really isn’t warm enough yet to fire up the weber, but soooooon…. And the early sunrise is messing up the kitty schedule! Buddy thinks that because it is getting light – now at around 4:30 am it’s time to go outside! I might have to get him a sleep mask!
Saturday is a Kangen Water Super Saturday in Seattle – well worth the trek over there. Lots of information from doctors and naturopaths, and lots other testimonials about the magic the water is bringing to so many people’s lives, both health-wise and financially. So am looking forward to that, and looking forward to being more knowledgeable about it too so I can spread the word.