I’m jumping the gun slightly — I’m writing this post first thing in the morning on January 31st, so it’s possible that today might turn out to be the best day of the month. But, you know, somehow I don’t think so. I woke up this morning after a night that didn’t include nearly enough sleep on a stomach that hadn’t had nearly enough food and it’s just not the kind of start to the day that makes you think your day will prove inspiring. Plus, today’s plans include returning a rental car to Enterprise and retrieving Serenity from the dealer where she spent the night because they couldn’t finish everything that needed to be done in one day, so… yeah. Not looking like the best day of the month.

Also not the best day of the month: my dentist visit on Wednesday. I was pleased to be told how great my gums looked, much less pleased to find out that one of my old fillings appears to be developing a cavity underneath it.

Also not the best day of the month: the dermatologist visit back at the beginning of the month, which resulted in far more literal pain than I would ever have anticipated from a dermatologist visit. My face is finally starting to look better, but it still hurts. Fortunately, they haven’t called so I’m assuming my biopsy results are normal. I never really like waiting for biopsy results, though. It’s just annoying to have medical uncertainty looming.

Many other days were also not the best day of the month. I’m ruling out all of the days where I had to force Zelda to take antibiotics on general principles, because she hates them, doesn’t understand why I’m forcing things down her throat, and it’s a moment or two or ten of torture for both of us.

And all of this makes it sound like it was a bad month. It really wasn’t. It included two driveways, plenty of games, plenty of good food, time with many of my favorite relatives and friends, and lots of learning and appreciating, even if not enough creating. I appreciated sunshine and dog snuggles, the best gluten-free pizza I have ever tasted and really good sushi, lots of new music and some excellent walks with R and Z.

My learning included at least half a dozen worthwhile books, including The Four Disciplines of Execution; Well Designed Life: 10 Lessons in Brain Science & Design Thinking for a Mindful, Healthy, & Purposeful Life; The INFJ Writer: Cracking the Creative Genius of the World’s Rarest Type; Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere); Winning the Story Wars: Why Those Who Tell (and Live) the Best Stories Will Rule the Future; and The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick). (Also, I should really start adding dates to my book list because it was remarkably difficult to figure out what I’d read when. My favorite of these books, though, is definitely Well-Designed Life, which I’m actually still reading.)

Yesterday morning I decided that it was time to set some business goals: all this learning is well and good, but the whole point is to use it to build my business, so I can stop worrying about needing to find a job. Then I realized that my business goals have to support my life goals — they come first. And my life goal is to have a life where I get to have breakfast and conversation with my dad on a regular basis; go out to lunch with my son now and then; play games with my friends; take great walks with my dog… my life goal is, in fact, to have the life I’m living. Even when it includes unpleasant vet, dermatologist, dentist and van service results.

Back to the best of the month: the day that stands out was Tuesday, when R & I visited Gainesville. I suspect that’s partly just because it’s so close in time, but that’s okay, it was a really good day, and I’m glad I got to have it.

I have about five posts I’d like to write today. The photo retrospective, one picture from each month, that I’ve done for the past couple years. A year in review post, given that 2019 was packed with travel and adventure and friendship. A post with thoughts about the new year — maybe not quite resolutions, but plans, anyway. Even a decade in review post, given that the 2010s were… well, a busy decade. An intense decade, even. I might regret not writing that one, come 2030 when memories of today are blurry and faded, but if I’ve somehow managed to forget how very, very challenging some of the teens were, I suppose that’s all to the good. I will certainly not forget how incredible some of the teens were, but those years are already beautifully documented. May 2017 for the win, IMO.

Meanwhile, today is New Year’s Day which means it’s time for a best of the month post. December didn’t include much travel: three driveways, spread across central Florida. It did include much food, much music, a lot of games, and wonderful times with people I love. I could pick a dozen moments to be highlights, but I’m going to stick with one.

The morning of the 27th, R came out to the van to see when I was leaving. I offered him a cup of coffee, and we turned the passenger seat around, and he sat in the passenger seat, I sat on my bed, and we chatted while we drank our coffees. Then we walked Zelda all the way around the block, past “the wall of chihuahuas” — four or maybe five chihuahuas, all barking their heads off at Zelda, who was entirely oblivious. We played one more game of Ticket to Ride on the porch, and then I headed off.

What made it such a perfect morning? I think partially it was because we’d already had three days together — the longest amount of time I’ve had with him since the summer of 2018. We’d gotten past the “how are you doing?” and “what are you doing?” conversations and into the zone where you talk about walls of chihuahuas. It felt cozy and easy and.. yeah, just nice. In a month of much good, it’s a moment I want to remember.

I am finding it hard to believe that it’s December already. Where did November go? I swear we must have skipped a couple weeks, because it zoomed by at light speed.

I failed to achieve any of my November goals in November — I didn’t finish revising A Precarious Magic, I didn’t succeed at NaNo, I didn’t finish writing Cici 2, I didn’t even take the van in for an oil change.

I did, however, visit friends. And I played a lot of games. My current favorite is Ticket to Ride, which is a game where you build train routes around the US. I think I played it once before and was terrible at it, because I had no idea where any of the cities were. But we’ve played twice now, and I’ve been highly competitive. Not only do I want to win, I want to build the longest route and have the most destination cards and go out first. I’m not competitive, usually — I like playing my best, but I don’t need my best to be better than your best. I don’t care if I lose as long as I played well. But I’ve found it so satisfying to have really good interesting routes.

I’m also jumping the gun on New Year’s resolutions. It’s the end of the decade, a thing that wouldn’t have occurred to me yet except that John Scalzi blogged about it and then a Jimmy Fallon video I saw on Facebook talked about it, too.* Given that it’s the very beginning of December, I’m sure I’ll have been reminded of this another twenty-hundred times before the end of the year and be totally sick of the idea.

But conveniently for me, I wrote about the decade ending ten years ago. Do you know what I wasn’t doing in 2009? Writing. Anything at all. And yet, about three weeks after that post (where I was thinking about meditating and exercising and losing weight), I started thinking about writing again. The 2010s are therefore, for me at least, the decade of words. I am not making any predictions about the 2020s, but I did decide it was time to put Streaks back on my phone and start paying attention to walking and meditating and taking photos again. Early New Year’s/ new decade resolutions!

*The Jimmy Fallon video included John Mulaney beautifully describing the 2010s. I had no idea who he was. Never heard of him, don’t think I ever even saw him before. Now I want to watch everything he’s ever done, probably on repeat. In fact, I have to admit, this blog post got greatly delayed because I had to watch videos.

It also got delayed because I got a new phone in November and it came with Apple Music. I’m far too poor to pay for a music service, but wow, I love it so much. I’ve been creating playlists like crazy, including one for the season. This has involved listening to endless variations of classic Christmas carols trying to decide which one fits best with the overall tone of my list. Do I want Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers or Mickey Mouse singing “Deck the Halls”? Etc, etc. Much fun.

Oh, but this was supposed to be a best of November post. Oops, I got distracted. Yeah, that’s the theme for the month, I think. And I’m supposed to be making dinner right now so I can write with a friend in half an hour, so I think I’ll just say best of November = playing games with friends.

But I will also say: A Precarious Magic. In celebration, Christina took me to her hair stylist. I couldn’t decide between blue and purple but she said I didn’t have to.

Today is not the last day of October. It’s not even the first day of November. Four days into November and I still haven’t written a Best of October post! What a disorganized blogger I am. Although in my defense, I finished a book and I’m 4700 words into a NaNo project, planning on getting back to it as soon as I post. So, yeah, words are being written.

October — wow. It started out at a driveway in Maine, included a quick Boston visit with some fantastic sushi, a night in a parking lot because of lousy weather, and a too-brief family visit in PA. And then, of course, my adventures in Virginia and North Carolina. Two national forest campgrounds and dispersed camping in a national forest, a national park campground (on the Blue Ridge Parkway), an Army Corps of Engineers campground, and a county park, followed by two more familiar driveways.

Looking back over my daily words, I was sick for a tremendous amount of the month. Not the kind of thing I blog about usually, but boy, did I whine about it a lot in my morning words. Fortunately, that’s not going to be what I remember from the month. Instead, I will remember writing good words in a beautiful forest, feeling peaceful and happy while walking Zelda, appreciating some really incredible scenery while I drove — the Blue Ridge Parkway is gorgeous — and lots of nice sociability with family and friends.

But for my favorite place, the true highlight of my month, I’m going to pick Little Fort Campground in the George Washington National Forest, where in my morning words, I wrote:

Today is a day for thinking about Fen and appreciating my life. 

Ooh, I did mean to write about moments of awe. The best part of my drive yesterday was when I actually starting thinking about 2019, trying to remember where I’ve been and what I’ve done and it was… amazing? I feel like that’s such a strong word, but the reality was a canyon in Texas and the night sky, and feeling awed, and a farm on the Olympic Peninsula with Pam and loving the air & the oysters, and those sand dunes with Suzanne and sitting in a beautiful parking lot, and Fort Bragg, rainy sea glass beach, and cupcakes, and sushi with Chris, and a shooting star in Maine, and the front porch of Trish’s house, writing with a view, also in Maine, and so many, many beautiful memories.

But the things that really stood out were things like last night, listening to the wind in the trees, feeling these moments of awed surprised connection with nature. Night skies and water sunrises with fog and the music of the trees. Z is now up and just about to tell me that it’s time to open the door and it’s also time for me to eat breakfast, but it was really — well, amazing — to drive down the road and feel grouchy about driving and rain and traffic and have that turn into memories of beauty. And all beauty of the single past year. I am phenomenally lucky and blessed. Yes, my choices brought me here, but that doesn’t change the fact that I am lucky and blessed. 

Morning words are a little more incoherent than words I would usually post, but the three days that I spent in that forest were, for whatever reason, days where I really savored my life. Really good days, in other words. And I’m going to call them the best days of a solidly good month.

August was a lovely month. I started in Pennsylvania, zoomed through Vermont & New Hampshire, enjoyed a brief stay in Maine, lingered in Massachusetts, then started over again: back to PA, then MA, now Maine. Camping was lots of driveways — both old friends and new — but also a state park, an Army Corps of Engineers park, and a national forest, all of which were lovely. If I had to pick a favorite of the campgrounds, it would be the ACoE park, Winhall Brook, in the Green Mountain National Forest of Vermont. Such a beautiful place. I’d love to go back there someday and stay for a while. Oh, and a KOA, where I finally got to take advantage of all the amenities — the swimming pool, the trampoline, even the tetherball. And the camp store for ice cream and candy. Summer fun at its best!

August also included much, much good food. Most of it seafood, but I would be hard-pressed to decide which of the many fish I ate was most delicious. This week included a lobster pad thai and some incredible sea scallops, but the cod Barbara cooked in Rockport also leaps to mind. I think of cod as a “sure, fine, it’s okay” sorta fish, but Barbara turned it into a “wow, delicious” fish — flaky and smooth and flavorful. On the other hand, the sea scallops Deb cooked last night were probably the best sea scallops I’ve ever had and I already like scallops a lot. Decisions, decisions. I’m not going to make one, just going to be grateful as I appreciate the memory of all my delicious meals!

August also included lots of people. I’m not going to make any effort at all to pick a favorite visit, but when I someday reread this post, I think the things I’d most like to remember are looking at family pictures and reading my grandmother’s scrapbook with my aunt & niece; mini-golf & ice cream with my niece and nephew; and yesterday’s kayaking on the river with Deb and Zelda. Zelda was a reasonably good kayaking companion — she only jumped in the water once, we didn’t overturn the kayak, and there was more tail-wagging than whimpering. Actually, there was no whimpering at all, which is a good sign for my September plans of kayaking regularly. Of course, now that I’m thinking back, I’m remembering lots of other random fun moments, too, but that’s what happens when you have a lovely, busy, sociable summer month.

Looking through my photos of the month made me realize that it really took me far too long to figure out that I had dog spit on my camera lens. They’re all blurry and diffused. But here’s one of the prettiest sunrise I saw, taken on the one night I spent at the garden house. It doesn’t do the sky justice, but it was a gorgeous morning.

Wow, and I just remembered that August also included a quick visit with R and M! And a visit with Pam and her daughter at a highway rest stop in New Hampshire. Sitting around a huge campfire at the Travato meetup. Zelda playing with her toys again. Oscar, stealing my phone. Video games with my nephew. Early morning walks in Rockport. Yeah, it was a good month.

The last days of June 2019 were a whirlwind. Well, a whirlwind followed by a couple days of the kind of complete and utter laziness where even taking the computer down from the overhead compartment seemed too much like work.

The month started in Yellowstone, and included stays in Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. There was a national park, a state park, the Far West Fishing Access campground, boondocking outside a national park, an Army Corps of Engineers campground, a city park, three national forest campgrounds, four county parks, a KOA and two driveways. Not in that order.

And I will pause for a moment to mention Wolf Creek Park, the only campground that I did not write about during the month as it happened. It was… weird. It was a county park in Ohio, where I spent one night while I was on the road from Michigan to Pennsylvania, and it was perfectly nice but completely empty. Most campgrounds have a host, so there’s always at least one other camper, but Sandusky County had an online payment system and not a single person at the campground. I was totally alone. The campsite I chose was in a loop around an open green space and I’m pretty sure that it would have been pleasant even if it was crowded. As it was… it was pleasant, yes, but also spooky. There was a lot of traffic noise from the nearby highway, but I somehow felt like I was trespassing, even though I had paid my $15.

Moving on — it was such a busy month that there are plenty of options for the best moment of the month, but as I have learned in my almost three years of full-time van life, the best moments are almost always about the people. In June 2019, it was the mini-reunion with college friends in Rochester, MI. Sitting on the front porch and laughing about our yearbooks; reading letters I wrote when I was 18 (my handwriting was so much more legible back then!); walking to the farmer’s market; enjoying the Motown museum and the pedalpub boat ride; and especially playing SongPop Party, the most ridiculous “Name That Tune” game, which was so very entertaining, despite the fact that I was horrifically bad at it. (A week later, I am still amused that in about fifty rounds of the game, the only times I budged from the bottom of the chart were when I chose the Taylor Swift and One Direction categories. Yay for modern pop!)

Picking a best campground, though, is impossible. I stayed in so many beautiful places. But I’ve definitely moved national forests up on my list of campgrounds to consider. They don’t usually have electricity, so they’re not great for me in the heat when I need AC for Zelda, and their campsites tend to be smaller and not necessarily level, but those three campgrounds were true highlights of my trip east. I was moving fast to make the reunion and blueberry season, but they would have been beautiful places to spend a relaxed couple of weeks appreciating nature. Maybe next year!

And meanwhile, it’s time to get back to writing a book. My own adventures were fun, but I’m eager to get back to enjoying Fen’s adventures instead!

What a month May 2019 was!

It started on a beautiful morning of bird-watching at a county park in Oregon, included a state park and a parking lot in Idaho; a state recreation area and an independent campground in Oregon, plus a hotel in Oregon, then a county park in California, and then a driveway. But that was just the beginning. Eventually, I made it to a county park in Oregon, then a driveway in Seattle and a driveway on the Olympic peninsula, followed by a national forest campground in Idaho, an independent (and free) campground in Montana and then another independent (and very expensive) campground in Montana. Fourteen different places, five different states. It was a busy month!

And it was also a delightful month. I was terrible at the part where I wrote a book, but I was extremely good at the part where I thoroughly enjoyed my life and spent lots of time with people I love.

I’m not even going to try to pick a best moment, though. There were simply too many excellent choices. I barbecued peeps and soaked in a hot springs under the stars. I brought the dogs to a restaurant and found cool clothes at thrift stores. I failed miserably but entertainingly at building a campfire. I got to spend time with R and hear stories of his adventures. I went to multiple beaches and breathed deeply of fresh air on morning after morning. I ate great food — gluten-free cupcakes and fresh oysters come to mind — and took some good photos. (If I had faster internet, I’d post dozens of them.) I even went kayaking with my dog!

I could probably spend the next two hours thinking about the past month, remembering all the things I liked about it. New moments keep coming back to me, things I wrote about at the time and things I didn’t. Playing games, watching Person of Interest, eating spicy seafood medley. Laughing about coconut milk. More laughing about coconut milk, which I thought was one of those stories where you had to be there, but turned out to be funny when shared, too. Having P’s co-housing friend J tell me how much she enjoyed Cici and how eager she was for the sequel. Just so much goodness.

But I’m still in the midst of the goodness, with stories to tell about the places I am and the places I’m going, plus adventures to have, both big and small. (Today’s adventures will include dumping the tanks and visiting CostCo, woo-hoo!). But if I get my act together, it might also include Yellowstone National Park! And I also need to write about my Thursday, where the need for clean water led me to make some unexpected, expensive, but quite delightful choices.