Adventure

Andrea and I are on a vacation that our past selves booked in July 2023. Our past selves must have known our present selves would need this type of trip. Way to go, past selves. It’s the kind of vacation that punctuates the end of 2024 with a nice semi-colon before the holidays arrive and 2024 draws to a close.

We are on an Olivia trip, our 2nd. The first, back in 2017, was a cruise to Alaska, and was more active - biking, a hike through a rainforest. This trip is at the Club Med Turkoise in Turks and Caicos. The only hiking we are doing is from our room to the pool or the beach. We’ve caught up on sleep and reading. I haven't checked my work email, which is a compulsion I guarded against by using the Freedom app. Suck it, capitalism.

Yesterday was cooler and overcast, but, as Andrea said, poolside, “It beats a 3 PM Zoom call.”

2024 wasn't so bad. Another reason I stay on social media, particularly Instagram, is if you look back at a year, chances are you will think, “Well, that year wasn't so bad!” because who posts pictures commemorating the low points? Like the time you had explosive diarrhea, or worked for a prize asshole, or spent a few days in the fetal position following the election. If you're like me, your Instagram is filled with photos of your pets behaving (versus them being rotten assholes) and events you attended and enjoyed a part of - if not the whole thing- like a work trip where you managed to find a glimmer of joy (despite your shitty boss), vacations, your Christmas tree with all the lights working and ornaments distributed perfectly, etc. Facebook  - well, that's another story. Sometimes people air their shit in a spectacular eruption that tells you they've hit a rough patch. I rather enjoy the eruptions because the airbrushed stuff is boring. I think I kept many of my eruptions under wraps this year as I worked to navigate through them. Now they are in my rearview mirror, and I am still processing those - which means I’m waiting for my current boss to act like my old boss, which, thankfully, isn't happening. Now and then, I think, maybe it was me? Then I read the Glassdoor reviews and his abysmal approval rating and think, “Nope. It wasn't me.”

Early on this trip, we met a very un-boring woman named Nancy - raised Mormon, now a 68-year-old lesbian living in Texas. Nancy was on this trip with a group of 7 lesbians from TX.  She said 40 of them met at a gay bar in Odessa - imagine being gay near Odessa, TX? I mean - I have trouble imagining living in TX straight. Nancy is 8 months into her retirement after selling her oil company; before the oil company, she owned a company that produced steel pipes (”boring,” Nancy proclaimed). She was on this trip with her girlfriend of 19 years, “We don't care about being married -we have all the paperwork.” Nancy had been in a band in the ‘80s and met her (now) girlfriend, but the girlfriend left for college.  Eighteen years later, the (now girlfriend) looked her up. The rest is history.

Nancy is a character - while talking to us, she gazed toward the sea and said with admiration of a woman strolling by, “She could crack a walnut with her ass.”  I mean - that's the only way I'd ever wear something showing my ass in public.

Nancy needs to write a book - she has more than enough material. I'd read it.

While here, we booked an adventure for 2026. A cruise on the Baltic Sea with stops in Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Poland, Germany, and Denmark.

Iceland is still on my bucket list, and I will make it happen. I'm planning to have more experiences in 2025 and in the future.