I especially love those old Kodachrome images; so bright, so analogue! Your essay is lovely, honest, and heart-felt. I read it as a travelogue, but also as a kind of love-letter from you to Jim, one that you share with us with an Elizabethan (in the Beggins sense, not the era) generousness of spirit. Bittersweet also - the things we did in our twenties, that we could have done much better in our 30s, and closing in on 70 (for me anyway) probably not at all. I wonder if other couples are inspired to identify a defining adventure from early marriage. Not many of us have a Tempo in our past. Lucky you. Lucky Jim!
Tempo, and the opportunity to enjoy her, was our great good fortune, Stewart, maybe mixed with a bit of willfulness. Though the boat log held many of the details, this was my first effort to capture that adventure in a narrative format. Letter-writing is comfortably familiar, so it's sweet to think of it that way. I'll keep that in mind when I try to gather up the pieces of the second voyage, the one that brought us here! Appreciate you being here.
A wonderful tale. We also had a sailing dream when we lived in Maryland for ten years. I wanted to sail our Cal35 down the ICW, across to Panama and up the west coast of Mexico and the US. Alas, my work schedule grew more intense in the nineties when it seemed the world was falling apart.
Then we moved to Central Asia and our lovely boat was left on the hard at a little boatyard south of Baltimore. After that move, I saw her only a few times and knew my dream of cruising wasn’t going to happen.
Still, I spent many fine mornings and many fine days sailing her in the Chesapeake and never once thought of her as a money pit. Reading inside a gentle rocking boat moored to a dock while listening to a soft breeze turn rigging into wind chimes was the best way I knew for relaxing and shedding away the stress of my world.
Eventually we sold her to another couple with a cruising dream. I’ve lost touch with them, but wish them well.
Something about a coastal existence, right? It's hard not to get bit by the cruising bug. I'm sorry you didn't get to see your dream to fruition, but yes, there is much to be gained from having them and the hopefulness that comes with them. For what it's worth, I'm sure you could give it another shot if you were so inclined. After the Pacific Crest, perhaps? :) Nice little catamaran or trawler? Thanks for the comment, Switter.
Wow! What a wonderful story, Elizabeth. Having that old composition book log is priceless. How beautiful to see the record you were both keeping, even then. Love seeing the photos, too.
Honestly, I'd lost track of the log book, Amy. Thankfully, my "other half" not only kept it but knew where to find it. As mentioned in another comment, it was fulfilling to put the story together from the memorabilia we have. Thanks so much for being here!
Betsy, loved this tale more than most, primarily because I was a backseat voyager, keeping track through your Mom, and Don. My the experiences you shared! I was GREEN with envy at the time of your new life with Jim, sailing the world. But mostly, I was just incredibly proud that I knew someone with such an adventurous spirit. And you still have it!! Thanks roomie!!
Well, maybe a small piece of the world. I wonder if your green matched my seasick green? 😂 Have always appreciated your enthusiasm, Carolyn. With all your skiing and biking, you've certainly had your own share of adventures. Get 'em written down so I can read them! Better yet, we can just swap stories when we see each other in June. Can't wait! Thanks for reading and commenting. 🧡
Oh my goodness... Not sure I could read anything tonight more exciting and more of a love story than that... Having known you both in those days and all these years since.. that is such an exciting adventure to share with all of us.. Betsy, these are simply precious logs... Precious..
Aw, thanks, Barry. It's fun to hear positive feedback from someone who practically knows the story already. 😅 Jim and I were fortunate to find each other and to be able to live on the wild side for a little while. I appreciate your presence here, my friend.
Funny. It sounds like our paths crossed in New York at this time. I moved there in summer 1990. A few years later, I was copy editing for a subsidy publisher when one of my assignments was a memoir of a couple’s many sails up and down the IC waterway. I think I edited that book around 1993. Reading your account, and having just a small on-board experience in the waterway a decade later, I can say with confidence that editing a sailing book was a much better choice for me than living or writing one! 😅 This seems like a wonderful way that you started your married life with adventure.
So intriguing, Tara! Do you happen to recall the name of the couple? My husband grew up in NY and was a boatbuilder, so he is often quite knowledgable about the sailing and cruising communities. Thanks for reading. :)
I don’t remember their names. They were retired - possibly for some time, and I think they made the snowbird journey every year, if my memory is accurate.
The book was by the woman. I can’t remember any reference to grown children, but wouldn’t rule them out. That might be any number of people. She was writing and printing the book with the intention of sharing with friends. This was my impression from a prologue probably. It’s been awhile, but for some reason the book stuck with me.
Of course, now I'm off Googling and finding the many, many memoirs written by those who spend time living aboard and winding their way up and down the Ditch. :) Not unlike hiking the Pacific Crest, the Appalachian Trail or the Camino de Santiago -- it is an experience that stays with us.
Yes, definitely a major journey! The press was Vantage Press of New York. I think I freelanced for them around 1993-95, so it would have been published in or near those years, assuming the author saw the project to the finish. If I’m going to send you on a goose chase, I might as well give you what I know. 😅
Thanks, Melora. I'm afraid, if we start looking at significant events, we are at risk of becoming "one of those couples." We have our real wedding anniversary in February, our extended honeymoon cruise for the month of June, and of course the anniversary of our meeting, which is another story I look forward to telling sometime. :) Appreciate your presence here.
Oh, now you've got me wanting to go back and read Prince of Tides again! :) So glad you enjoyed the tale, Courtney. It was good for me to get those memories into some kind of cohesive tale. Though my entries were more journal-like than log, there wasn't really enough context to (pardon) anchor the story to the rest of our lives. Thanks for reading and commenting.
Yes. I love your saved photo on the helm. Sailing is a particular, unique experience, isn't it? Boundaries dissolve and we can come closer to stillness. lovely piece.
You are for more adventurous than me! What a great story (and metaphor). I love all the primary source documents; you both look adorable in the photos, and I feel as if there's so much revealed about both of you in the very different styles of your writing in the log.
A few years ago, when I was moving to my current house, I came across a journal I kept during my first year of teaching (90-91). It was such a mind-trippy thing to read! It was like reading a book written by someone else, so full of questions about the future and what the writer wanted from life, and so strange to read it knowing all the things the writer couldn't about how it was all going to go. There was so much I wanted to tell her! As I was reading your story, I was wondering if you had any of those kinds of feelings as you re-read your old ship's log.
And, happy anniversary! That younger me thought and hoped I'd be the kind of person to travel through life with one partner. Part of me is envious of those who get that experience. I think it must be pretty wonderful to grow old with someone who knew you at the very beginning of things, who has loved all the different iterations of you.
I would not necessarily describe myself as adventurous, Rita, but I suppose it's all relative. I've been fortunate to have opportunities to do things that maybe fall outside the norm, but I'm no mountaineer. LOL!
I hear you on the mind-trip! I have some old journals, too, pages I wrote in high school and college. It is so odd to read a voice that no longer feels like mine. Every now and again, though, I come across bits that resonate and it's nice to discover that I haven't changed COMPLETELY.
The story of how I came to be with my husband is pretty remarkable (and, as I hope I've conveyed, it hasn't always been blissful). We go back and forth between whether it was some act of divine intervention that brought us together or just random luck. Perhaps a little of both. Either way, it has always felt like I should never take it for granted.
Thank you for reading and commenting! You write "some of your sea log." Here's little secret: That same log has notes from the future voyage back south, though that series includes very few entries from my spouse. :) A story for another time.
What a beautiful chronicle! My recollection of one short chapter goes like this.
We had planned to meet you two and Tempo at the Isle of Palms marina on your voyage up the ditch. The second hand updates from your mother had been rather vague. Something about a sailboat. With memories of my sailboat racing phase still fresh, I imagined a sleek, stripped down vessel built for speed, not comfort, not the exquisite, graceful, enchanting Tempo. In retrospect, it seems she was built for neither speed nor comfort, but man was she a beauty! In my envious mind your trip would be carefree, uneventful, perhaps glamorous. I pictured the yacht Intrepid, the Americas Cup champion. The day of your planned arrival, our greeting party would of course include your mother, whose palpable anticipation waned after a few hours while we waited, eventually turning to impatience (Where are they?). Then concern (Do you think something is wrong?) And finally masked irritation (Why don’t they call?!) Several hours later, when Tempo finally docked – better late than never - giddy sighs of relief replaced all other emotions. The irony was obvious. Your mother, who at a very young age had fearlessly delivered a stranger’s car to California by driving it across the country, and who remained adventurous her entire life, was now perplexed, concerned yet enormously proud of her intrepid daughter. She remained enormously proud her entire life, slightly concerned, and charmingly perplexed.
Smiled through the entire comment, Rob, and read it aloud to Capt. Jim who, in the effort to make that deadline all those years ago, swore he'd never commit to arriving by sailboat on a specific day ever again. 😂 Charmingly perplexed is the best way to frame our mother's lifelong curiosity. And also, never nosey. Just detail oriented about other people's business.
Wasn't that the family gathering where you taught the boys to swim underwater by tossing coins to the bottom of the pool? And where Don lead by example on the fine art of the pirate life by tying napkins on their heads?
Your memory is razor sharp. Yes, for a pair of 5 year-old rapscallions, tossing quarters into 4’ of water was more frugal than lessons, and twice as effective. And yes, as usual, Don being Don was a total hoot!
Gosh, just gosh. Such a wonderful post! I love the very precious archive of Tempo's log - what an amazing piece of your joint history - yours, Jim's, Tempo's together. A truly beautiful post.
"In spite of it all, and perhaps against the odds, two people who took a chance on each other managed to find their sea legs and sail. It’s been a beautiful voyage!"
I sailed as a child, but on lakes, reservoirs and rivers; never on the sea (on which I am certain I wouldn't thrive)!
Dad always kept a log on every week-long October narrowboat holiday we went on, usually on the Leeds Liverpool Canal in northern England. The left-hand page would mark the bridges we passed under, and the locks, swing bridges and lift bridges we had to operate, plus any notable occurrences (sightings of moorhens, water voles, kingfishers, horse riders on the tow path or boats with funny names, and the fact that his woolly hat knitted by Granny blew off into the water and was unrecoverable, that sort of thing). The right-hand page would be a written account of each day, which he'd complete after the day's motoring and usually over a bottle of beer before supper. Dad's a retired pilot, so I think that keeping a log has always been second-nature to him. I don't have to look far to find where I've got that part of myself from! 🤣
I love knowing about this part of your past, Rebecca, and the loss of Granny's wooly hat -- what a priceless nugget to have on record! Husband and I just had a little chat about "narrowboats" and I needed to go pull up a photo to refresh my memory. To clarify, was your dad a boat pilot or the flying type, either of which would fit neatly into the log habit?
I sometimes wish I was better at keeping a daily (or even weekly) log. I've never been able to maintain the habit, though there have been occasions, as with Tempo, when I managed it for a period of time.
We watched that hat as it disappeared over a weir, never to be seen again (not by us, anyway!). Oh, and Dad was an airline pilot - in fact, that's kind of why we always had canal holidays - canal traffic has a speed limit of 4mph! Flying anywhere (even as a passenger) wouldn't've felt like a holiday for him!
Narrowboats come in various lengths up to 70 feet, but at a maximum of only 7 feet across they are only half the width of barges. Their interior layouts are jolly clever, accommodating shower rooms, loos, a galley kitchen, dining tables and seating (usually convertible to double beds) and through-cabins with a berth on each side and a narrow gangway in the middle. One we hired one year even had a woodburning stove, carpet a SOFA and a telly! 🤣 On that holiday (1990) we felt like we'd really been slumming it up until then!
I find my log really useful - I keep a bullet journal which is mostly my daily to-do list, but I rapid-log everything from tasks to recording the fact that X rang me and we talked about Y, and what my latest car insurance quote was, and notes to remind me what Z might like for their birthday. When I look back (I have books going back to 2018, when I started the process) I am often surprised/moved/laughing/incredulous at the things I'd recorded - the first baby blackbird of spring, the fact that my grocery delivery contained mouldy apples, the power cut which prevented me doing the housework to take just three examples! 🤣 Nothing earth-shattering (mostly) - just the minutiae of my life!
My mother always had a thing for cruising vessels and overnight train cars, because she marveled at how many amenities could be fit into small spaces. We talked of building a tiny house in our backyard to accommodate her, but that was a pipe dream. The small, cast iron, coal-burning stove aboard Tempo is how we kept warm in winter!
I'm enamored of your log keeping. I have doubts about my ability to take up the habit, but I suppose I could give it a whirl for a month or so, to see how it felt. I'll keep you posted!
Loved learning all of this, Rebecca. Thank you for sharing these stories.
Yeah, it’s a bit of a speed difference, that’s for sure! 🤣
I’ve always been fascinated with habitation layouts like that! We love our campervan and how jolly clever it is to fit everything in (even for two such tall people like us!).
I especially love those old Kodachrome images; so bright, so analogue! Your essay is lovely, honest, and heart-felt. I read it as a travelogue, but also as a kind of love-letter from you to Jim, one that you share with us with an Elizabethan (in the Beggins sense, not the era) generousness of spirit. Bittersweet also - the things we did in our twenties, that we could have done much better in our 30s, and closing in on 70 (for me anyway) probably not at all. I wonder if other couples are inspired to identify a defining adventure from early marriage. Not many of us have a Tempo in our past. Lucky you. Lucky Jim!
Tempo, and the opportunity to enjoy her, was our great good fortune, Stewart, maybe mixed with a bit of willfulness. Though the boat log held many of the details, this was my first effort to capture that adventure in a narrative format. Letter-writing is comfortably familiar, so it's sweet to think of it that way. I'll keep that in mind when I try to gather up the pieces of the second voyage, the one that brought us here! Appreciate you being here.
A wonderful tale. We also had a sailing dream when we lived in Maryland for ten years. I wanted to sail our Cal35 down the ICW, across to Panama and up the west coast of Mexico and the US. Alas, my work schedule grew more intense in the nineties when it seemed the world was falling apart.
Then we moved to Central Asia and our lovely boat was left on the hard at a little boatyard south of Baltimore. After that move, I saw her only a few times and knew my dream of cruising wasn’t going to happen.
Still, I spent many fine mornings and many fine days sailing her in the Chesapeake and never once thought of her as a money pit. Reading inside a gentle rocking boat moored to a dock while listening to a soft breeze turn rigging into wind chimes was the best way I knew for relaxing and shedding away the stress of my world.
Eventually we sold her to another couple with a cruising dream. I’ve lost touch with them, but wish them well.
Sometimes dreams, and hope, are enough.
Something about a coastal existence, right? It's hard not to get bit by the cruising bug. I'm sorry you didn't get to see your dream to fruition, but yes, there is much to be gained from having them and the hopefulness that comes with them. For what it's worth, I'm sure you could give it another shot if you were so inclined. After the Pacific Crest, perhaps? :) Nice little catamaran or trawler? Thanks for the comment, Switter.
Wow! What a wonderful story, Elizabeth. Having that old composition book log is priceless. How beautiful to see the record you were both keeping, even then. Love seeing the photos, too.
Honestly, I'd lost track of the log book, Amy. Thankfully, my "other half" not only kept it but knew where to find it. As mentioned in another comment, it was fulfilling to put the story together from the memorabilia we have. Thanks so much for being here!
Betsy, loved this tale more than most, primarily because I was a backseat voyager, keeping track through your Mom, and Don. My the experiences you shared! I was GREEN with envy at the time of your new life with Jim, sailing the world. But mostly, I was just incredibly proud that I knew someone with such an adventurous spirit. And you still have it!! Thanks roomie!!
Well, maybe a small piece of the world. I wonder if your green matched my seasick green? 😂 Have always appreciated your enthusiasm, Carolyn. With all your skiing and biking, you've certainly had your own share of adventures. Get 'em written down so I can read them! Better yet, we can just swap stories when we see each other in June. Can't wait! Thanks for reading and commenting. 🧡
Oh my goodness... Not sure I could read anything tonight more exciting and more of a love story than that... Having known you both in those days and all these years since.. that is such an exciting adventure to share with all of us.. Betsy, these are simply precious logs... Precious..
Aw, thanks, Barry. It's fun to hear positive feedback from someone who practically knows the story already. 😅 Jim and I were fortunate to find each other and to be able to live on the wild side for a little while. I appreciate your presence here, my friend.
Funny. It sounds like our paths crossed in New York at this time. I moved there in summer 1990. A few years later, I was copy editing for a subsidy publisher when one of my assignments was a memoir of a couple’s many sails up and down the IC waterway. I think I edited that book around 1993. Reading your account, and having just a small on-board experience in the waterway a decade later, I can say with confidence that editing a sailing book was a much better choice for me than living or writing one! 😅 This seems like a wonderful way that you started your married life with adventure.
So intriguing, Tara! Do you happen to recall the name of the couple? My husband grew up in NY and was a boatbuilder, so he is often quite knowledgable about the sailing and cruising communities. Thanks for reading. :)
I don’t remember their names. They were retired - possibly for some time, and I think they made the snowbird journey every year, if my memory is accurate.
The book was by the woman. I can’t remember any reference to grown children, but wouldn’t rule them out. That might be any number of people. She was writing and printing the book with the intention of sharing with friends. This was my impression from a prologue probably. It’s been awhile, but for some reason the book stuck with me.
Of course, now I'm off Googling and finding the many, many memoirs written by those who spend time living aboard and winding their way up and down the Ditch. :) Not unlike hiking the Pacific Crest, the Appalachian Trail or the Camino de Santiago -- it is an experience that stays with us.
Yes, definitely a major journey! The press was Vantage Press of New York. I think I freelanced for them around 1993-95, so it would have been published in or near those years, assuming the author saw the project to the finish. If I’m going to send you on a goose chase, I might as well give you what I know. 😅
It’s possible it never made it to an internet listing.
A wonderful metaphor for a marriage indeed! “Bitey things and soggy things” 😂 Happy anniversary 💕
Thanks, Melora. I'm afraid, if we start looking at significant events, we are at risk of becoming "one of those couples." We have our real wedding anniversary in February, our extended honeymoon cruise for the month of June, and of course the anniversary of our meeting, which is another story I look forward to telling sometime. :) Appreciate your presence here.
Thank you again for a beautiful pause in my day to feel nourished by your storytelling.
Aw, Sue... I love knowing that there was both pause and nourishment. Thanks so much for your ongoing support. :)
What a great read. Elizabeth Hemingway and her Prince of Tempo Tides. Love this story so much. Thank you for sharing.
Oh, now you've got me wanting to go back and read Prince of Tides again! :) So glad you enjoyed the tale, Courtney. It was good for me to get those memories into some kind of cohesive tale. Though my entries were more journal-like than log, there wasn't really enough context to (pardon) anchor the story to the rest of our lives. Thanks for reading and commenting.
Lovely, Elizabeth! Thank you for sharing one of your sailboat adventures!
Thank you, Erica. I'm sure you could tell about some of your own!
Yes. I love your saved photo on the helm. Sailing is a particular, unique experience, isn't it? Boundaries dissolve and we can come closer to stillness. lovely piece.
You are for more adventurous than me! What a great story (and metaphor). I love all the primary source documents; you both look adorable in the photos, and I feel as if there's so much revealed about both of you in the very different styles of your writing in the log.
A few years ago, when I was moving to my current house, I came across a journal I kept during my first year of teaching (90-91). It was such a mind-trippy thing to read! It was like reading a book written by someone else, so full of questions about the future and what the writer wanted from life, and so strange to read it knowing all the things the writer couldn't about how it was all going to go. There was so much I wanted to tell her! As I was reading your story, I was wondering if you had any of those kinds of feelings as you re-read your old ship's log.
And, happy anniversary! That younger me thought and hoped I'd be the kind of person to travel through life with one partner. Part of me is envious of those who get that experience. I think it must be pretty wonderful to grow old with someone who knew you at the very beginning of things, who has loved all the different iterations of you.
I would not necessarily describe myself as adventurous, Rita, but I suppose it's all relative. I've been fortunate to have opportunities to do things that maybe fall outside the norm, but I'm no mountaineer. LOL!
I hear you on the mind-trip! I have some old journals, too, pages I wrote in high school and college. It is so odd to read a voice that no longer feels like mine. Every now and again, though, I come across bits that resonate and it's nice to discover that I haven't changed COMPLETELY.
The story of how I came to be with my husband is pretty remarkable (and, as I hope I've conveyed, it hasn't always been blissful). We go back and forth between whether it was some act of divine intervention that brought us together or just random luck. Perhaps a little of both. Either way, it has always felt like I should never take it for granted.
What an amazing voyage, in all ways! Thanks for sharing some of your sea log with us, Elizabeth.
Thank you for reading and commenting! You write "some of your sea log." Here's little secret: That same log has notes from the future voyage back south, though that series includes very few entries from my spouse. :) A story for another time.
What a beautiful chronicle! My recollection of one short chapter goes like this.
We had planned to meet you two and Tempo at the Isle of Palms marina on your voyage up the ditch. The second hand updates from your mother had been rather vague. Something about a sailboat. With memories of my sailboat racing phase still fresh, I imagined a sleek, stripped down vessel built for speed, not comfort, not the exquisite, graceful, enchanting Tempo. In retrospect, it seems she was built for neither speed nor comfort, but man was she a beauty! In my envious mind your trip would be carefree, uneventful, perhaps glamorous. I pictured the yacht Intrepid, the Americas Cup champion. The day of your planned arrival, our greeting party would of course include your mother, whose palpable anticipation waned after a few hours while we waited, eventually turning to impatience (Where are they?). Then concern (Do you think something is wrong?) And finally masked irritation (Why don’t they call?!) Several hours later, when Tempo finally docked – better late than never - giddy sighs of relief replaced all other emotions. The irony was obvious. Your mother, who at a very young age had fearlessly delivered a stranger’s car to California by driving it across the country, and who remained adventurous her entire life, was now perplexed, concerned yet enormously proud of her intrepid daughter. She remained enormously proud her entire life, slightly concerned, and charmingly perplexed.
Smiled through the entire comment, Rob, and read it aloud to Capt. Jim who, in the effort to make that deadline all those years ago, swore he'd never commit to arriving by sailboat on a specific day ever again. 😂 Charmingly perplexed is the best way to frame our mother's lifelong curiosity. And also, never nosey. Just detail oriented about other people's business.
Wasn't that the family gathering where you taught the boys to swim underwater by tossing coins to the bottom of the pool? And where Don lead by example on the fine art of the pirate life by tying napkins on their heads?
Your memory is razor sharp. Yes, for a pair of 5 year-old rapscallions, tossing quarters into 4’ of water was more frugal than lessons, and twice as effective. And yes, as usual, Don being Don was a total hoot!
Gosh, just gosh. Such a wonderful post! I love the very precious archive of Tempo's log - what an amazing piece of your joint history - yours, Jim's, Tempo's together. A truly beautiful post.
"In spite of it all, and perhaps against the odds, two people who took a chance on each other managed to find their sea legs and sail. It’s been a beautiful voyage!"
I sailed as a child, but on lakes, reservoirs and rivers; never on the sea (on which I am certain I wouldn't thrive)!
Dad always kept a log on every week-long October narrowboat holiday we went on, usually on the Leeds Liverpool Canal in northern England. The left-hand page would mark the bridges we passed under, and the locks, swing bridges and lift bridges we had to operate, plus any notable occurrences (sightings of moorhens, water voles, kingfishers, horse riders on the tow path or boats with funny names, and the fact that his woolly hat knitted by Granny blew off into the water and was unrecoverable, that sort of thing). The right-hand page would be a written account of each day, which he'd complete after the day's motoring and usually over a bottle of beer before supper. Dad's a retired pilot, so I think that keeping a log has always been second-nature to him. I don't have to look far to find where I've got that part of myself from! 🤣
I love knowing about this part of your past, Rebecca, and the loss of Granny's wooly hat -- what a priceless nugget to have on record! Husband and I just had a little chat about "narrowboats" and I needed to go pull up a photo to refresh my memory. To clarify, was your dad a boat pilot or the flying type, either of which would fit neatly into the log habit?
I sometimes wish I was better at keeping a daily (or even weekly) log. I've never been able to maintain the habit, though there have been occasions, as with Tempo, when I managed it for a period of time.
We watched that hat as it disappeared over a weir, never to be seen again (not by us, anyway!). Oh, and Dad was an airline pilot - in fact, that's kind of why we always had canal holidays - canal traffic has a speed limit of 4mph! Flying anywhere (even as a passenger) wouldn't've felt like a holiday for him!
Narrowboats come in various lengths up to 70 feet, but at a maximum of only 7 feet across they are only half the width of barges. Their interior layouts are jolly clever, accommodating shower rooms, loos, a galley kitchen, dining tables and seating (usually convertible to double beds) and through-cabins with a berth on each side and a narrow gangway in the middle. One we hired one year even had a woodburning stove, carpet a SOFA and a telly! 🤣 On that holiday (1990) we felt like we'd really been slumming it up until then!
I find my log really useful - I keep a bullet journal which is mostly my daily to-do list, but I rapid-log everything from tasks to recording the fact that X rang me and we talked about Y, and what my latest car insurance quote was, and notes to remind me what Z might like for their birthday. When I look back (I have books going back to 2018, when I started the process) I am often surprised/moved/laughing/incredulous at the things I'd recorded - the first baby blackbird of spring, the fact that my grocery delivery contained mouldy apples, the power cut which prevented me doing the housework to take just three examples! 🤣 Nothing earth-shattering (mostly) - just the minutiae of my life!
4 mph vs. ~2,000! 😂
My mother always had a thing for cruising vessels and overnight train cars, because she marveled at how many amenities could be fit into small spaces. We talked of building a tiny house in our backyard to accommodate her, but that was a pipe dream. The small, cast iron, coal-burning stove aboard Tempo is how we kept warm in winter!
I'm enamored of your log keeping. I have doubts about my ability to take up the habit, but I suppose I could give it a whirl for a month or so, to see how it felt. I'll keep you posted!
Loved learning all of this, Rebecca. Thank you for sharing these stories.
Yeah, it’s a bit of a speed difference, that’s for sure! 🤣
I’ve always been fascinated with habitation layouts like that! We love our campervan and how jolly clever it is to fit everything in (even for two such tall people like us!).