Ok, so the Mason 43 in the BVIs is officially ours now.  Hooray!  We are in the process of giving her a new name, "Moxie".  (Some people say that re-naming a boat is bad luck but we're going to take our chances-- anyways, all the kids are doing it).  Travis has been working like a fiend dealing with all of the details of boat ownership: insurance, renting a slip (a place to dock it), hiring someone to inspect and replace rigging, buying and registering an EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) and a thousand other things.  Thank God he's good at that kind of stuff because I am definitely not.  

So what am I good at?  Well,, I like to fancy myself a fairly decent writer of plays for children.  Lately I've been obsessively writing my final script for the Young People's Theater, Max & Minerva's Magical Machine.  It's about the joy and wonder of imagination in childhood and it's pretty much an amalgamation of every glittery, goofy fantasy I've had since I was a little girl. 

When I'm not writing, directing, or teaching, I'm up to other glamorous endeavors such as scrubbing the bathrooms of our house.  When we decided to take this sailing trip, we examined our budget closely for the first time since...well since EVER.  We realized that if we were going to commit to a year plus of traveling we would need to trim the fat off our spending in a serious way.  This fat included eating in restaurants, buying new clothing (for ourselves, not the kids, their bodies are growing, after all), and other luxuries such as our cleaning lady.  "Cry me a river", you are probably saying, "First world problems!"  I know, I know, you are absolutely right.  We had been living high on the hog (by our standards), buying things we didn't need and spending money that we didn't really need to be spending.  Instead of buying a $12 salad every day in town, I now make my lunch in the morning and bring it to work with me.  I ignore the emails from Anthropologie.  We stay put on the weekends.  I clean.  When Hudson first saw me roll out the vacuum he said, "Wow, Mom I've never seen you use THAT before!"  Yikes. 

Planning for this sailing trip has forced us to put everything into sharp perspective, to examine things much more closely.  It's more than about just saving money, it's practicing a new way of living, of focusing on what matters, and also practicing the letting go of things.  We feel good when we forego the temptation of an easy, yummy trip to La Cocina at the end of a tiring day and pull out the pans instead.  We enjoyed the quiet togetherness of a Thanksgiving "staycation".  We're realizing more and more that things we thought we needed were things that were holding us down.  I love living frugally and minimally.  I'm learning, I'm excited, my back aches from scrubbing baseboards and I've never been happier.