DIY

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It’s been a number of years since I’ve spent time in the DIY laundromat to do this household chore. Our Bosch has decided to do it’s own thing so I Google-mapped the nearest laundromat. It was just a short bus ride away, so I threw the sweaty mound clothes in the Ikea bag and off I went to the DIY.

If you’ve never had the privilege of participating in this life-lessons event, try it out some time. Maybe try it in your hometown, and then in some places you travel to.

Pourquoi, you ask?

I say, pourquoi not?

There are a number of things I thought about during this an hour and a half excursion:

There is comfort in washing clothes; in the smell of the laundry detergent that fills the air in every laundromat.

You learn to read and follow instructions. Hopefully it’s before you go buy the potentially unneeded detergent.

The signs that are so easy to follow that almost anyone could clean their clothes independently.

You will learn that the dryer “averagely takes about 30 minutes to dry” (I do love finding those intricate English misnomers).

You will use some time management skills and see how much you can actually do in that 30 minutes while the dryer is averagely drying your clothes.

The laudromat is a wonderful place to observe others, and reflect on life.

I value these mini-life lessons. They are in everything we do. We just tend to overlook them.

What The Hell Happened?

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Seriously! What the hell happened to March, April and 3/4 of May 2019?

Photo by Joseph Redfield on Pexels.com

In February I was all set to record a bunch of podcast episodes and see how that whole thing would work out. And somehow it is May and I have the one mini-sample episode posted. What!?

Well, you know how life happens.

For me it was: a conference, meetings, calls, writing, travel, life planning, learning a new skill set to increase work/life flexibility, managing a new project, planning an institute, teaching. And somewhere in there – eating and sleeping.

Anyway. These life events are not any kind of excuse that I set the podcast to the side for several weeks. However, now is the time that I can refocus and get back to my writing new stories and recording old ones from my bank.

I’m still excited for this and hope you’ll have a listen when episodes are available!

Spider in Shower

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Yes. That’s what I said.

Spider in shower.

When you visited tropical places, you have to expect tropical things.

My friend, Alaa was visiting from San Diego so we took a weekend trip to Bali. We were staying at a lovely villa I have stayed in before with Monica and Jeanette a couple of years ago. When staying in Southeast Asian resorts and villas, there usually a customary welcome tour that the staff and hosts do for you to show you the features of your accommodation.

Our gracious host walked us through the fountain, kitchen, pool and rooms. One my most favorite features of villa stays are the outdoor showers, which of course our host was happy to show us. When we entered the master bath area, I noticed a visitor in the shower on the wall. A big visitor. One that had 8 legs and was about 4-5 inches in diameter (although it was likely bigger because we were standing back a ways).

There was no freaking out. There was a just a statement.

“There is a really big spider in the shower”, I said.

“Que?” he responded (okay he didn’t say que), but I did repeat my statement for him to hear and pointed to the large creature.

The gentleman apologized and said he would take care of it. And he did. He stayed behind as Alaa and I went back out to the main area.

Not long after this minor spider/shower incident, Brett joined us at the villa. We blah, blah, blahed and after some time we decided to turn in. And as it turned out, the “take care of the spider” was just temporary because, when we went into the large bathroom area for the usual nighttime routine, guess who was back in the shower?

Photo by Mircea Iancu on Pexels.com

Brett tried a second round of “taking care of it” but that sucker was fast! So we decided to be at peace with our shower-spider-friend and just use the nozzle to scooch him out of the shower with some water.

And we never saw him again.