Eeeeee! It's almost time!

About a year ago, we started planning what was to be our last "big trip" until James got a job.

Well, he has a job now and this is STILL going to be our last "big trip" because this is such a major pay cut, and I'm not even mad about that part. I'm grateful! But our trips for the next few years will be a lot closer to home, places we can drive, and we're putting Chile off maybe until Mal is turning 18.

Where are we going? Here:

Yay! Ciudad de México!

Hopefully our years of Spanish will pay off, and hopefully our host country won't want to pay us back for what our country is doing to their compatriots who are here in the US. It's infuriating and embarrassing to be from the US right now, honestly. Sorry if that offends anyone, but we are being TERRIBLE neighbors, we are breaking laws, we are violating human rights. 

Last night I was looking at the plan I've made and told James, "I'm really disappointed; we don't be able to see all of Mexico City in the 2 weeks we're there!" Of course, I already know this. But I like to have a lot of options on the table so we can not waste time on the ground trying to figure out where to go and what to do. 

A lot of museums are closed on Mondays, for instance, and it helps to know that before you get there so you can plan other things on those days. Some days there are deals for locals, and that's great to know if you don't want to visit somewhere that might be more busy than usual. Other places are hyped up as "must see" that after some investigation, you realize are mostly tourist traps or for rich people, and that there are better places to visit or try. 

So I enjoy learning things and seeking out the best things for our family to experience. And I'm super excited that after almost a year of planning (I bought our airline tickets in April 2025!), it's right there on the horizon.

Also, as per usual, we have a house-sitter so don't think you're going to come break in while we're gone.

We will be staying at three different spots in town, so we can have bases of operation close to where we plan to visit. We'll be walking a lot and using public transit as much as possible. But some places, where it might be 10 minutes to drive or 45 minutes by bus, we'll just take an Uber or Didi. I'm hoping James's gout clears up ASAP and he's going to be taking tart cherry supplements for it from here on out.

Also, we have to stay ahead of Achilles tendonitis, which acted up when we were in Montreal but not when we were in New Orleans. We learned a lot on the Montreal trip! Namely that we need to avoid steps as much as possible (which is difficult when using a subway, but Mont Royal was the thing that probably really kicked him off), James needs to wear ankle supports, and he also needs to take an analgesic in the morning and with lunch. Doing that, even though we walked a ton in Louisiana, he didn't have a flare-up. 

He didn't bring the ankle supports on our cruise, and he ended up needing to borrow my dad's cane after a few days. I had to run into town at Cozumel just to get him some steroids to jump-start his recovery (which we learned later were 10x the dose he'd been given before, but we didn't have internet access and fortunately he lived).

Anyhoo... Yay for travel and it'll be a different kind of fun to plan the least expensive trips I can plan again in the future. For real!

Soooo.... #Covid19

Dear Diary,

I am not good at waiting.

Scratch that: I'm okay at waiting. As long as I know what is coming. And I'm in control of it.

I am very sad about the people who have gotten ill from the novel coronavirus that started making the rounds at the end of last year. I hope Tom Hanks and Katie Couric and all of the basketball players will get better, but I hope everyone will get better. I'm sure the effect in China is like 9/11 was here, only in slow motion: If you weren't affected, you know someone who was affected; it touches everyone.

Here in our house, we're mostly social distancing. James is working from home, which is his preference, anyway. D is typically home, except for banjo lessons. And this is spring break, so Monday would be a stay day, anyway. Our church has gone online for the time being. I'm still taking Mal to the park, and to Urban Air and the movies and other outings... but we're never around too many people.

Except for two weeks ago today, when we went to a birthday party and then to a community park and restaurant in Belton and THEN to the Round Rock Outlet Mall, where I'm guessing there were 7000 people... but the incubation period for that is over with, and we all seem a-ok.

I'm not worried or even concerned that we'll get Covid-19. I'm not worried about my family. I'm hopeful that the medical systems won't be overwhelmed and that the ill can get the help that they need. I understand why people are slowing down and backing out. I get it.

I don't get why people are hoarding toilet paper, but, let's face it. People are weird. And so far, there haven't been any documented cases in Travis/Williamson counties. Then again, there haven't been any tests available, so it's possible we ALL have it.

But here's the deal: We were supposed to go on vacation in a couple of weeks. I know, boo hoo. A lot of people have had vacation disruptions. Heck... I hadn't told anyone about this except my travel agent, but I'd booked us a Disney Merrytime Bahamain cruise for Christmas (oh, and it took me an embarrassingly long time to get that pun), leaving from Galveston and stopping at the ACTUAL Happiest Place on Earth: Castaway Cay. But we've lost more than the price of the cruise in the stock market in the past two weeks, so I canceled that. It's entirely possible we could rebound a rebook, but it doesn't make sense at the moment.

LIES. ALL LIES.

No, the hard part is the not knowing. Two of the places we'd planned to go on our immediately-upcoming vacation are closed through the end of the month. It seems unlikely they'll be open at the beginning of April, or even during the week we're to be in California. But will they refund us our money? I've reached out via email, but I'm trying to be patient since I know there are people already there who are scrambling to get out before the doors lock.

And even if THEY refund us what we've spent, will AA refund our airfare? Not allow us to rebook with no charge, but refund the tickets with no $200 per ticket fee? If they won't, there is somewhere we can go that will be great... assuming that places to eat are open. But who can tell what to expect so many yet so few weeks from now?

I'm trying to pretend that my brain is smoking pot and chilling out. But I need answers.

I realize this is a grade-A pain-in-the-ass problem. Like, people are dying. I'm a jerk. I get that. I wish I were different. I'm working on it.

In other news, 365 by Whole Foods was cleaned out when I went today. I did not panic buy anything, and we're not hoarding. It's funny that I subscribed to Charmin's Never-Ending Roll a few months ago. It's really been easy and mindless and great! Toilet paper is on the way! WHY ARE PEOPLE HOARDING IT?!

Anyway, my refusal to panic-buy meant that today, when I realized we were low on eggs and almost out of lactose-free milk for D, that there was none to be found. We bought about $100 worth of snack stuff to supplement our eMeals (I have ingredients for 3 or 4 more meals on our menu). But then I used the last of the eggs on lunch. So...

I decided to check out H-Mart. It's a bit of a drive, and I thought I'd hit the gas station first. I mean, their eggs might taste like cigarettes, but if they have them, they have them, right? THEN I thought of Dollar General. Guess what?

YAY!

So we're set on cereal, milk, eggs, and toilet paper has been shipped from the giant TP factory in the sky.

And NOW, at about 9:00 PM, we're getting ready to have our Papa Murphy's Pi Day special pizza for dinner. Our days just get later and later. But that's cool, man. Real cool. (See? I'm trying to be chill.)

Summer Doldrums

Hi, friends! We've had a couple of very television- and computer-game-intensive days around here, but I don't mind that at all! It feels like there's been a lot going on, and when Mal complained about having to take D to banjo lessons on Monday (he'd been to meet a friend at McDonald's earlier, and said, "I only want to go one place per day!"), I promised him we could stay home for the next two whole days... so far, he's mostly wanted to veg. We've played LEGOs and Disney Cars and Numberblocks, too. But he is in no hurry to leave. I don't blame him. It's been really hot! In fact, although I'm speaking with D's therapist alone tomorrow, I was going to take Mal with me, because he could just play in her office while she shows me some test results. However, he asked that I have my parents come stay with him, because he's all about being a homebody at the moment.

I'm glad! He usually loves just running around, which is fine. But I remember giant swaths of time when D was little that we'd be home all day for days. It's a nice change!

Our chickens are about 19 weeks old. James told me today that egg color is sometimes related to earlobe color (there are exceptions), and that's cool. I was noticing the other day that one of the chickens has very green ears, and another lighter green/yellow ones. They haven't really shown until recently, so maybe they're getting close. We're in no hurry. They're great pets, even without eggs.

See the yellow/green tint? But also, most of them seem to have red earlobes, which means brown eggs. The two "puffy cheek" ones should have some kind of pastel eggs. I can't see their earlobes. They're pretty obscured by fluff.

It was markedly cooler yesterday than in the past six weeks or so, and I could tell the chickens were feeling it. They had a great day roaming the yard under cloud cover, instead of avoiding the sun. Also, we used a lot of non-solar-generated electricity, but whatever. It was a nice break. Here are the chickens taking evening "baths" on the fence.

And the other day, out in the back part of the yard. They've been getting over the fence more and more, but they're understanding how to get back without my opening the gate. They look like wild birds!

Our grass is pretty much shot, and they go over the tiny patches of green first thing in the morning, so it's good for them to have other places to forage. As long as they don't cross the street or make it back to our neighbor's yard! He hasn't started building yet, and I don't want them to get into the habit of going back there!

When I lived in Sherman, one time I came home on a Saturday and there was a guinea sitting on top of our opened garage door. Interestingly, I still have a picture of it. It was October 13, 2007.

We were confounded until a few hours later, our neighbor from two doors down knocked on our door. He asked if we'd seen one of his birds, and we took him out to the garage, but it had moved on. He said it was his son's birthday, and they were getting ready to make his birthday dinner with the guinea, and he thought that the bird knew, so ran away. What's funny is that I didn't even know he had these birds, and they're really loud! Oh well. Wonder what happened to it.

Anyway, I don't want our neighbors here to have a plump, juicy chicken show up and think, "Hey! Free lunch!" Our chickens are friends, not food. I haven't gotten to the point that I can't eat other chicken, but D's been there ever since the pigeons got killed. I think it's permanent.

I'm super excited, because I love planning stuff. And I love traveling. But travel is kind of expensive, so it's not something we do a whole lot of. However, since our Hawaii trip got called off (boo!), it's allowed us to take a couple of smaller trips, and then also both James and I have a single-parent weekend with Mal in the works. I mean, of course, I'm planning both of those, too, but that's just how I like it.

We're going to see James's parents for his birthday (kind of like Mal and I did last year, but with James this time... and we're going late enough that we'll miss the Christmas parade, which stinks... but we'll hit the premier of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, so that's something), then next spring, we're going to go ahead and take Mal to LEGOLAND, like we'd discussed visiting on our way to Hawaii. We found amazing deals on two different hotels there, one of which we had to prepay, but we'd taken out travel insurance when we'd booked our flights, so we felt okay doing that. It's such a treat for me to now watch the prices on the same rooms we've reserved go up, little by little. I'm always on the lookout for deals, and am ready to change the reservation we didn't have to prepay, but it really seems like we got an amazing price, and I'll end up being super glad I do stuff as early as I do.

They're finally starting on building a house across the street from us. They cleared it at the beginning of the year, and it seems like it probably just took a long time to get permits. It's kind of noisy, and a contractor parked in front of our mailbox earlier this week, so we didn't get delivery that day. But it's fun to watch from the comfort of our air conditioned front rooms. Yesterday, we got to watch some workplace rough-housing as three guys were filling sandbags with gravel and a fourth drove the Bobcat over, got the scoop close enough to one guy that he hopped up on the form wall to get out of the way, then the driver raised the scoop up just under his neck! It was precision driving. Pretty impressive, but I might not have the same sense of humor if it had been done to me. Mal laughed, though, and wanted an encore.

By the end of the year, we should have houses on both free corners. The caddy-corner from us is a neighbor's back yard. Unless he sells it because of property taxes, it should remain undeveloped. He has it set up like a park; it's so beautiful. I hope he doesn't. If so, though, we'll always have our back yard!

You might have realized that I will turn 47 in a mere two days. "What?!" you say. "You can't be older than 32!" But it's true. I'm old. I feel it in my reflection and pictures, but I don't care. And I don't feel any older/more decrepit than when I was 18. That's good. I need reading glasses. There is only 1.5 years more difference in my age from my younger child and my sister's age from her only grandchild, but... well, that one kind of makes me want to take up drinking but otherwise... no complaints. Having lunch with a friend and really hoping for a cool cake. That's about it. I don't want for anything else, so am pretty lucky. Actually, I *did* tell James I'd love to have the back porch power-washed. Love those chickens, but they're pooping up a storm out there. So I guess you could say, I have it really great. Happy birthday to me.

Are the "Must-Haves for Disney" Truly MUST-Haves? Our assessment...

Before our travel, I went through several lists of "must-haves" for a trip to Disney. Some things, like a Smart phone and a camera and a change of clothes for Mal, we would have taken even without outside forces hadn't suggested them. But I'm going to address a few things that we just didn't use at all, and a couple of things that were indispensable.

1) Plastic baggies of various sizes. USED THEM! A lot. We had clothes that needed to be rinsed out when we were out and about, and a couple of times had a left-over cookie (about which I forgot and which then got pulverized in my bag) or other snacks. Every day, I had two each of the gallon, quart, and sandwich-sized bags, and I used many. Just replenished at night at the hotel. Oh, we also used them for disposing of wipes (which we use, because it's easier to get a kid clean with wet wipes than just TP) so as not to stink up the hotel room. Recommend.

2) Ponchos. DID NOT USE. It rained every single day on our trip, the majority of which were when we were in the park and running around. Many people put on ponchos, wore them for 20 minutes, and then either had to stow them or toss them. I'd gotten very inexpensive disposable ones, because I didn't want to have to deal with folding them up and trying to tote them after if we did use them, but we did not. We actually left them in the hotel room because we ran out of room in our luggage. I hope someone was able to use them rather than their just getting tossed. Unless you're going when all day rain or severe storms are expected, don't bother. What we DID find useful...

3) Compact traveling umbrellas. USED! We each had these umbrellas that come in what looks like a glasses case. These aren't huge, but they'll keep your head and shoulders dry, and they dry out very quickly after use. They were easier to access and utilize, then stow again, than the ponchos would have been. Plus, you always get wet when you take a poncho off, right? The umbrella would also have been good to keep the scorching sun off, if you're there and not pushing a stroller. Now, I have one in my purse and one in my car for unexpected weather events. Recommend!

4) Portable phone chargers. DID NOT USE. I know, I know. "Everyone" says that your phone battery WILL die when you're in the middle of a Disney day. Mine never did. James's sputtered after he'd put it into a waterproof bag during the rain, and I think it overheated. But in terms of use, we just didn't use our phones enough to kill the battery on any day. I only got below 50 percent the day our a/c went out and I was using the Messenger app and texting a whole lot. I DID use My Disney Experience, and opened it often to check or change or add plans. But I shut it down when I wasn't using it, so it wouldn't run in the background and drain the battery. I also had all apps closed, including Messenger, for the same reason. I wasn't posting to social media or taking pictures with my camera in the park, so pretty much used it as a clock and for planning. We never waited in lines long enough to utilize Play, and we didn't do Agent P's in Epcot, then we were never in the parks more than about 7 hours on any given day, so we just did not need to recharge until we were back at the resort. We both have our chargers now, which might prove useful in the future. But we just did not need them at all when traveling. I certainly can see how you might, if you have a good phone camera and use it, plus post to Instagram, plus just leave the MDE app open and habitually turn to your phone in down times, etc. So use your judgement on this one.

5) Quarters and pennies for pressed penny machines. Sadly, DID NOT USE. My first kid would have blown through all $20 in quarters that I'd brought, but this kid was not too into the whole thing. He chose maybe 2 or 3 the whole trip. And you know what? When you have rolls of change in your carry-on luggage, the TSA's equipment can't tell what it is, and you have to let them go through your bag. Then when you don't use the change so you still have it at the end of your trip, they check it again! My purse is really heavy now. I suppose I could go to the bank and get paper money, but I never have change for the carhop at Sonic, so I guess I'll hold on to it.

6) My Disney Experience. USED A WHOLE LOT. Guys, I get that some people aren't planners. But I can only imagine that it's very difficult to tour Disney with a small child without at least a little bit of a road map. We used it a lot in the parks, to help us find bathrooms and such, and also to make new FastPasses and to verify times when we'd set other stuff up. But I used it and the Disney website at length before the trip. We'd set our dining reservations the day we were able to (180 days in advance) and, though I changed several around at the last minute, we could not have gotten in to Be Our Guest if I hadn't. And Tusker House was full fairly far out. We also set the maximum  number of FastPasses we were allotted 60 days in advance. Flight of Passage, Na'vi River Journey (which, to my surprise, was 115 minutes compared to FoP's 75 minute wait), and Slinky Dog Dash would have been impossible without the FastPasses, because I don't wait in lines for more than 20 minutes. Furthermore, we saw people on the elevators heading down to the pool who didn't realize our pool was under renovation until they got there. We talked to another family on the pool shuttle to the other side of the resort who said the same thing. I can't imagine not having that information before leaving, just to mentally prepare and have a plan. Disney gives you tools to help make your trip easier. I recommend using them!

Also, there were a lot of FastPasses we let lapse without using, because Mal wasn't up for it, or we didn't feel like whatever it was going to take to get there. One time, it panned out really well for us. I had made a FastPass for Goofy's Barnstormer, an exceptionally short kiddie coaster in Fantasyland, the night of the Halloween party. But we knew by then that Mal was not going to be ready for ANY coaster rides on this trip. Turns out they had to close it due to weather, and they gave us an "open" FastPass for anything from 5:30 PM until 9:00 PM that day or the next. I didn't see the free pass until much later, but we were able to use it to ride Test Track the next day, after having made our Tier 1 FastPass for Soarin' (you can only make advance passes for one of those two). So if you think, "I only need two at this park," just make one for the heck of it.

7) Another app I'd used before the trip, in conjunction with the website, was Lines by Touring Plans. My Touring Plans subscription really helped me decide when to go for sure, what days to hit which park, and to lay the foundation of how we'd make our way around the parks, by giving me an idea of how long it takes to walk from here to there, how long they expect the waits will be, and then how long the experience lasts. There's an app you can use to update plans in the park and to check actual wait times (which vary from posted wait times because Disney uses the wait times to direct traffic flow just as much as it does to kind of give you an idea how long you might have to wait). Well, after the second day, I deleted the Lines app from my phone. Once you had completed a step in your plan, you click "done" and it moves it off of the top, going on to the next item. OH MY GOSH, it takes forever to do that. Like 10 seconds or so. Which sounds like a petty grips, but when I'm trying to do it on the fly, and we've done 8 of the things... I really don't feel like waiting for my app to process everything. Definitely recommend the website and yearlong subscription. Maybe have the app for an outline of your plans, since MDE only has the FastPasses and meals? But I wouldn't plan on it helping too much in the parks, unless I was doing something wrong or had crappy hardware (it's a ZTE Axon, but other apps function fine on it).

8) Wipes. Yep, USED THEM. Ever since D was too old to need wet wipes for cleaning up after toileting so I didn't carry them anymore and then a pigeon pooped on D's dad's shoulder while we were waiting for the San Antonio River Walk boat to fill up so we could take off and a lady on-board with us had a wipe to give, I've thought that wipes are just a good idea to carry around, anyway. And with snacks like cotton candy and super melting Done Whips, wipes are a lot better than dry napkins. Recommend!

BONUS: I don't know whether this is on any lists, but we also utilized and loved the packing bags that act like vacuum bags, but you don't need a vacuum, you just press the air out with your weight. I suppose it helped us fit more into our small bags, but even if it didn't, I was able to organize clothes by days so unpacked several days at a time as we needed clothes and then pulled more out as we freed up hangers. Also, in case anyone had needed to go through our checked luggage, we wouldn't have had any cases of a pair of underwear falling out and getting left behind, or caught in the zipper, or anything. Maybe they did go through our bags. I have no idea. It was all tidy when we opened them.

BONUS THOUGHT ON THE DINING PLAN: As I mentioned, we got the dining plan for "free" ($300ish upgrade to make our park tickets Park Hoppers, which we never used) and, in that case, it was well worth it. There was a 25% discount on our room at the time, too, but financially, taking advantage of the free dining made more sense. Whether it makes sense to purchase the dining plan when it's not offered gratis (and rumors are that the gifting times are almost over) depends on several things. For instance, we had a table service meal for every night of our stay, or the equivalent as we skipped one day but ate at Jiko, which uses 2 table service credits as it's considered Signature Dining. In every case but the one I just mentioned, the tab for the three of us usually came to right at $140-150 before tip. The dining plan is roughly $75 per adult and $25 right now, and assuming the we ate other food throughout the day, it seems like, yeah, we'd easily spend $180 per day on food.

However, with the dining plan, you can get specialty drinks and, on table service meals, dessert. James might have splurged on a neat cider or something, but while I enjoyed the beverages I got, if we'd been paying out of pocket, I would have just ordered soda. Also, given how our child is about eating, there likely would have been several meal times when we would not have ordered him anything at all. And we were always full, so likely would only ever have eaten desserts as a snack, never to end a meal. So, on our own dime, we actually would not have spent quite so much on food. It was fun not to worry about how much a dish cost, and just go for it, though, so I can see the benefit of that. For our family, though, I would not purchase the dining plan. It was super fun stocking up on goodies to bring home at the end of the week when we hadn't used a bunch of credits, though!