It was an excellent weekend. Busy cooking for guests for two nights was easy when it wasn’t too hot, and I felt so good after several nights of good sleep. Tom helped quite a bit, keeping the endless stream of dishes, pots, and pans under control. He’s happy to help with anything I need, but when I am busy cooking, his help with some of the chopping and dicing and the dishes is more helpful than anything.
Both evenings were fun and lively, with great conversation, laughter, and banter back and forth. Last night, when only Alan and Fiona could come to dinner, we ended up having a fantastic anniversary dinner. We had our favorite song mix playing on our portable JBL speaker, not too loud, and we had an excellent time. We won’t see them again until we return in 2022 or early 2023, when they return from being away for many months.
Today at 3:00 pm, 1500 hours, we’re meeting Dawn and Leon and another couple at Buckler’s Africa for Crocodile River watching and later for dinner., which undoubtedly will prove to be yet another fun event.
After that, we don’t have any social plans until Thursday at 4:00 pm, when we’re meeting up with a new couple, Louise recommended, who are also from the US. It’s not that we prefer meeting Americans over people from other countries. It makes no difference to us. We love making friends with people from all over the world.
It helps when they speak English, but over our past nine years of world travel, we’ve developed friendships with some who don’t speak English (or very little English), with whom we found a magical way to communicate. Of course, sharing a language makes it lots easier to build closer connections.
On another note, as I make my way through the corrections, I am now down to 14 more pages (of 20 posts each). Since I started from the oldest posts, working toward the most recent ones, I am working on those we posted in lockdown for those darned long ten months in India.
At the rate I am going now, I plan to be done by the middle of November, one page per day. But, more interesting to me than getting it done soon, I am fascinated reading the old posts from one year ago as I work my way through typos, grammar, and line spacing issues. Did we really do that? Ten months in a hotel room? Oh, good grief! How did we ever get through it?
But, yesterday as we reminisced on our ninth travel anniversary, we patted ourselves on the back for the depth and quality of our relationship, that, without it, we would never have made it to the end of those many months still sane, still in love, and still enjoying time spent together.
Nothing was lost by us as a couple during those ten months. If anything, we grew more attached and attracted to each other (if that was even possible) in admiration for each other’s patience and resiliency. Did either of us ever think we could get through such a scenario, or yet, did either of us ever think such a scenario could occur in our lifetime?
This morning I did three loads of laundry, did my nails, paid all the bills for the month, fed lots of pellets, carrots, and cabbage to the animals. At the same time, Tom busied himself with his usual tasks and, of course, Monday morning’s viewing of yesterday’s Minnesota Vikings game.
Once our daily tasks are done, we have little to do on less socially active days, and yet, we are content and grateful. We are thankful to be able to stay here until January 23rd. We are grateful to each other for the love, companionship, and friendship we share. We are thankful for our friends who have stood beside us through thick and thin. We are thankful to our family members for putting up with our crazy lifestyle.
And most of all, each new day of good health is an indescribable blessing. We wish this for all of our friends, our family, those we encounter along the way, and of course, all of you. Thank you, dear readers.
Photo from one year ago today, November 1, 2020:
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| This photo was posted one year ago while in lockdown in a hotel in Mumbai, India, on day #223. We found this bloom in Hawaii, known as Kimi Pink Ginger. For more photos, please click here. |