Our Happy New Routine

Vista Create

I have been in Thailand about 2-1/2 months now. We have had a whirlwind of activity with my husband’s health, moving to my condo, changing out the furniture, figuring out all the details we needed to do every day in order to get our lives going here.

Now things are finally taming down. There are still a LOT of details to be handled, and we are doing these the best we can, but our day to day lives have begun to settle into a routine now, and I’m embracing that new life.

Our typical day now looks like this –

I get up at 5am to get ready to go to the gym with Brian and walk on the treadmill while he runs. We walk back, shower, and then share breakfast and discuss if there is anything we need to accomplish that day. Three times a week that includes half the day going to visit Harvey at the nursing home, making sure he is okay, comfortable, and as content as possible. Many other days, though, we don’t have anything that we can do from our list.

Brian is trying to do more work, since expenses of taking in both of his parents – particularly the hospital/nursing home surprise – is a bit hard to handle. So, if we don’t have anything scheduled, he goes off to work and we then share dinner.

This means he is free to concentrate on doing well for his clients, and I am free to do whatever I would like to do with my day.

Today I spent quite a bit of time in my art alcove.

I love spending time here. I thought I would grieve at having given up all my carefully collected art stuff, but I’m concentrating on trying to learn how to draw what I see better. I keep these in the big fat sketchbook you see here. I have regular pencils, colored pencils, and watercolors. I am choosing pictures I like from the net, particularly YouTube and Pinterest, and trying to reproduce them the best way I can. I’m having SUCH a good time trying. I don’t feel pressured to produce anything for sale. (Thank goodness!) I can simply enjoy the process of trying to draw and paint something for the sheer joy of it, wiling away the hours with a grin on my face. I’m also making small paintings for my housekeeper each week, thanking her for her work, and for my new ‘grandson’ who loves dinosaurs.

I’m always in the middle of a good book, too. The current one is another Nora Roberts book. I can’t believe I’ve missed any because she is probably my favorite author right now, but I’m delighted to dive into anything she has written.

I am trying to balance my walking on the treadmill in the morning with yoga stretches in the afternoon or evening. I’ve been doing these stretches for a long time, but they are especially useful in times when I develop mysterious old lady problems, like the grabbing pain in my back last week, that need to be carefully stretched out to heal.

I, of course, spend time on the blog. If I’m not actively writing a post, I’m researching things to find to share with you. There are so many talented people in our world, and I’m delighted to be able to share their work with you.

I also take time to stare at my jigsaw puzzle. It’s a really good thing that I’m not feeling any pressure to get it done. I find that I’m much slower than I used to be. This “owls” puzzle is difficult, and I may die of old age before it’s finished. That’s okay, too, because I love taking a few minutes here and there to see if I can make some progress.

Last night Brian downloaded Family Tree Maker software for me. We had it for years in the states. Now I have my data attached to it again, and I can spend lots of time seeing old photos, remembering things about relatives, learning new things about people related to us, but I didn’t actually know. I find it fascinating.

In the middle of the afternoon, if I don’t contact him first, Brian texts me, asking if I’m okay and if I want him to order a coffee for me. Imagine that! Today I got a cold chocolate mocha coffee that was delivered to the condo building table downstairs. Brian texted me the order number, and I went downstairs, retrieved it, came back to my place and slurped it. What a difficut life I have!🤪

We share dinner, talk awhile, and then hit the hay because 5am the next morning comes quickly.

And that’s our new routine. I’m studying some Thai language tapes, trying to learn some very basic phrases. I will be able to learn more quickly, I hope, when we see the last hearing aid people and I get some hearing aids. (Trying to reproduce a sound when you can’t hear it accurately isn’t quite a waste of time, but close to it.)

More plans in the works as we get more details settled.