Rosa Linda Román (00:28): Hello, and welcome to New Mexi-Castaways. This is Rosa Linda Román, and I'm your host and also the creator of New Mexi-cast, which is what this show was originally based on. But now this is the audio companion and where I share my personal process as my family has moved on to a 45 foot sailing catamaran. Now it is a very exciting, wild, crazy time because we are in 12 hours launching for the first time to head to The Bahamas, since we've lived on this boat called the Dawn Treader. So I am surrounded right now by packages and packages that we got basically two weeks worth of shopping for preps. And today we went to Costco. So I am in the process of kind of documenting the the process of, of fitting all of this stuff in this tiny little boat. So I thought I would let you guys the audio companion listen in as I record and stop and start. Rosa Linda Román (01:32): And I'll talk with you in between it all, because this is kind of where I vent and express myself. So you'll hear me start I'll talk to you, you, the audio, we'll call you the New Mexi-castaways crew. Okay. So I'll talk to my New Mexi-castaways crew, and then I'm going to pause and record a little something for the video audience. And if you guys want to check that out, I will have either in the show notes or the end of this episode, I'll explain where you can find that. But for now, I'm going to turn on the camera to record my videos. So what I like to do is I like to document the process for others who might be interested in doing this. Right now I have to check that's my dog, she's barking at some guy walking by good girl. Rosa Linda Román (02:24): She's our protector. Although I do need to figure out a a way to make her know the difference between scary people and our friends, but for now it's better that she actually does know how to bark because my last dog did not. Okay. So here we go. I'm going to start the recording and talk to our video audience. Okay. So I've got the freezer defrosted, which took quite a while it was really bad in there. Just caked on. And it's funny cause this freezer is new. The previous freezer totally died somewhere along the way. From when we had the boat fire near ours. And I don't know if there was a power surge or what, but basically we had to get a new freezer. Now that it's defrosted, I'm taking stock of what we have. Rosa Linda Román (03:19): So I've created this document where I'm writing down everything that is in this freezer because I don't want to be opening it and closing it when we are using either the generator power or underway. I don't want to let the freezer air out. I want it to stay cold. So I only want to go in and get what we need and come back out. So I'm going to write down, I've got these two to smart balance two smart balance margarine. Which is something I don't know how to spell. It's not really margarine. It's, dairy-free something or other, but we'll call it margarine. Let's call it butter smart balance butter. We do not eat pork. So we have to bring a lot of our, mroducts that with us that we will be able to eat like hot dogs. Rosa Linda Román (04:08): We've got Hebrew National hot dogs. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 packages of that with eight each I think? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Okay. So that's 35 Hebrew National hot dogs. We've got another, how many? We've got 28 Nathan's Dog's, 28. Nathan's hot dogs. And this way I can just check my list and I just have to take it off of the list as we go. As we cook, I know what's in there, what we need to restock and also what never gets eaten. So we don't end up keep buying this same stuff. Nathan's hot dogs. Okay. Now the next thing I've got, this is turkey sausage links because again we don't eat pork. Now I take everything out of the boxes because the boxes, a lot of extra space you can see in there. So to save space and to give yourself a cardboard paper cut. Oh, that was nice. Rosa Linda Román (05:32): Open it up, you open up the packaging and it makes it easier to pack everything in this tiny little freezer. I've said it before, but I'll say it again. This is one of my very special talents that I'm famous for. Being able to fit things in places packing wise that have no business fitting. That's kind of a running joke in my family. Someone will say, "Oh, that's not going to fit" when we're traveling,suitcases or whatever. And I'll say really, are you sure? Because that is my special superpower. And the, also the running joke is my husband Nathan likes to say, "Yeah, just because it can fit doesn't mean it should." All right, this is another thing that we have. These are boneless skinless chicken breasts. And the reason we bought this one at Costco instead of the others the other option, is because these are individually packaged. Rosa Linda Román (06:28): And that way, again, I can lose the packaging the outer, extra big thing, and just stick them in there wherever they fit. So this is going to be the meat, meat shelf. We've got chicken breasts already sealed. Look how nice that is. See? So I don't have to waste a whole bag when we're just, maybe I like, as if I cook. Isn't that funny because I don't cook it all. Nathan is the cook. I do bake, but,uthat's about the extent of my culinary interests. So let's see, I'm just, just making things fit. That's basically all you gotta do. You use up every space you can, and some things are gonna have to go and some things will make the cut. So I'm gonna pause here and I'll check in after I,ufinished this process or at least in a few minutes. Rosa Linda Román (07:25): Okay. So I paused the audio. I mean the video and I'm just finishing up putting in the chicken because that's something that is good because again, one of my kids, Samuel in particular is really picky. Ahava used to be really picky. She's the 11 year old, but she's gotten better. She's trying more things. And I think with time, they start to realize that, you know, it's better to eat something they don't love, then go hungry. We're not great at like being mean and saying, "Well, you just eat what you have and that's that," but that may change now that we're heading off to The Bahamas and the food options are not going to be as plentiful as they have been. All right. So let me just make a note. And so what I was talking about and that document, I can share that with you guys. Basically I like Google docs because it lets you like really create any kind of document you want. Rosa Linda Román (08:30): And I like to be able to, and I can share it and work on it offline. So I created a Google doc with just I've used it through all this project management. I basically just create my own document where Nathan and I can collaborate. And to be honest, mostly it's me just kind of writing in there and putting what I'm using, but,uthat's, it's nice. It's handy to have that as a, as an option. All right, let me write down, I'm going to pause and let the freezer cool. And I also have to plug in my,uvideo camera because I use the heck out of everything and it's, the battery is not,ugonna stay charged. That's something I need to get is a backup battery, but it's just one of those things that isn't going to happen this trip. So,uI'm going to pause and I'll be right back Rosa Linda Román (09:34): Okay. So I'm rounding out this shelf. Third shelf down has a six and a half pounds of chicken breast fresh fish, which is the Mahi Mahi caught by our neighboring boat that they gave to us, which is awesome! We've got turkey sausage for the mornings, turkey bacon, hotdogs. We still need to get chicken apple sausage, which we love. And,uthese, this is just half a bag of chicken nuggets, which has been Samuel's staple. Like he loves, but we're going to start weaning him off of that, but that's just what was left. Now, I gotta figure out how to put the rest of it in,including these awesome pasteles, which are made by my cousin, Arlene, up in Chicago. She sent them down with my sister who visited last week. So,Let's figure out how to put in pasteles and I'm sure there's plenty of other stuff. Oh, the chocolate. How can I forget the chocolate? That's like, of course that is going to be half of my freezer. Rosa Linda Román (10:40): Ah all right. It's funny. I'm talking to you, New Mexi-Castaways crew now. I turned off the audio recording and one of the things as I go, I don't really know what I'm going to use these recordings for, to be honest. I mean, at some point, hopefully by the time you're listening to this, I will have already figured all that out. But one of the things I learned from Chelene Johnson, which I think is really important, is just record everything. You know, what I'm doing now is, is different and interesting. And if nothing else it's like for my own kids, they can, you know, enjoy hearing the, how to do things or how mommy,talked things through. But at this time of this recording, I really don't know exactly what I'm going to be, how I'm going to be utilizing these,uthese videos in the future. Rosa Linda Román (11:34): But I figured I might as well just record it while I'm doing it. So there, I got, I got all the pasteles, which is two dozen. And for those of you that are familiar with Mexican food, pasteles are like the Puerto Rican version of a tamale. So that's, that's to give you a little bit of an idea of what that can be what that is, but it's made with banana. I think it's banana paste. I don't quote me. I really don't even know how it's made because I don't cook, as I've mentioned. So what else can I tell you? Man, Costco run. I want to, I want to share the audio with you guys of what we of the Costco trip or post Costco trip, because we spent $800 and I don't even know what like $850 or something like that. Maybe more, which about gave us a heart attack. It was, it was quite interesting to get that bill. And then Costco said, oh, you can't you can't use your credit card and use Ali's which is Ali's our babysitter. And we weren't allowed to use her. I don't know what that beeping is. Sorry. We weren't allowed to use her our credit card with her membership card and we don't have a membership. So that became a challenge. But in the end we took out cash and got it done. So I'm going to record a little more now that I've got that main stuff in. I wish, you know what, I'm going to try to figure out where that audio beeping is. I think it might be outside. That's the thing about, and you hear that, that whooshing noise too. That's that's the fan in the AC, but that beeping is outside. That's not our boat. I don't even know what that is. It's obnoxious glad it's not us. That's all I can say. Uit's hard when you live,uespecially in a marina with other boats nearby. Every loud noise, including a barking dog, becomes a nuisance to those that live nearby. So yeah, luckily that's not us. Uokay, so I'm gonna take a break and I will be right back Rosa Linda Román (13:51): All right. I'm taking a little break from packing up in the salon because Nathan just called me and told me to go downstairs and do not come up until he says all clear. He just drove down somewhere south, I think Deerfield Beach or something. Where I believe he was getting me my Hanukkah present. So of course, I'm happy to oblige and be down here and hide until he gets back and does whatever thing he's doing. So it gives me a chance to work here in my bedroom which is a huge mess right now, but we really are getting closer. I know I, I keep kind of saying that and then it's like, oh, are you really? Because here's another thing that has to be done or you really here's another thing that has to be done. But at some point I think we just like, we'll cut our losses, or I don't know if that is the right word, but we'll basically be like, okay, it's not losses. Rosa Linda Román (14:57): Just pause and say, okay, we're done. And we we've done as much as we're going to do for this trip and make the most of it. So let me describe a few things that I have here that are new, that eventually I will put to good use. Hopefully one of the things is we don't have any screens on the side hatches or we don't have any screens on the side hatches or the front door. And that is a problem, obviously, because we're about to head to islands with like mangroves and we'll be anchored in sheltered areas, which are great, you know, it's great shelter, but it also brings with it bugs. And the nice thing about this marina that we've been at here in Riviera Beach is there really aren't that many bugs at all. You know, I've talked on previous episodes of some of the things I did not like about this marina. Rosa Linda Román (15:55): Mainly having someone try to rob us. And also the boat next to us burned down, but I don't know that that had anything to do with the marina. But the good news is it's beautiful as far as you know, we're right next to Peanut Island. You can hear the floorboards creaking and it's funny. We're right next to Peanut Island, which is really cool. And we also what was I gonna say, oh, Blue Heron Bridge. That's a place that you can go scuba diving or snorkeling, and it's gorgeous and it's right next to us. And again, very few bugs. So that was a big plus for us. We could sit outside or leave the windows open and not get eaten alive. So we, I dunno, one of the things is I don't see us probably coming back to this marina when we come back, but that could change. Rosa Linda Román (16:49): I mean, you know, anything is possible. If we can't find good options as far as marinas. We wanted to get if we do come back to Florida, we want to go up to the Jupiter area because we have friends up there and we really enjoyed that town. But there's a chance that we won't be able to find a place to be,uto dock with the size of our boat and especially the width of our boat. Our boat is very fat as a catamaran. We have a 25, 26 foot beam and the beam is what determines how it's, how wide you are. So we're wide, we're a wide cat. Uwhat else can I describe? So, oh, so back to the screen. So I basically went, I had big plans to like order fancy screens, but boy, we like financially right now we have, we feel like we're having a major bloodletting because,uwe have bought all the supplies for boat and gotten so much ready. Rosa Linda Román (17:52): That would just need to kind of temper that, that spending. So instead of getting fancy, perfect screens, I bought this, what is it called? A magic mesh screen. It's the kind that you see, like on a, on a TV. And I got that to, try to, I've got two of them and I'm going to try to stitch them together and make a screen for the front door. We'll see how that goes. You can hear that. Listen. Can you hear all the thumping and bumping? That's the downside of being, having a bedroom under, under, on a boat. You hear everything everything's very loud. So, yeah, that is what you're hearing. You're hearing lots of thumping and bumping and noises from people up on deck. But this is good, cause it gives me a chance to, well, first of all, it's exciting because I know whatever they're bringing on board is for me. Rosa Linda Román (18:52): So he, he, he! And it gives me a chance to put away some of these presents that I have hidden down here in my bedroom. So yeah, that's, that's what I'm going to enjoy doing right now while I'm waiting to get the all clear to go up, back up to the main level. Yeah. What else can I tell you other than I feel like I'm as ready as I'm going to be. I will never be all the way ready as far as cross, making the crossing. So the big thing is to just prepare as much as we can. And and then just try to, you know, get creative for the things that we aren't prepared for. There will be, I'm sure, things that we come across and go, oh, we should've done this or we should have done that. So we'll see, we'll see what we forget. Oh one of the things, (can I come up? Yep. Oh Excellent.) So, m'll be up in a second. I'm going to take a break and I will wrap this up and a little bit Rosa Linda Román (20:10): All right. Now we're going to move on to dry goods. So that's going to be, I'm going to start the recording and we're going to, I, whatever it was that Nathan wanted me not to see has been put away. And so now I'm back in the living room and I'm going to start recording for the like napkins, paper, towels, that kind of stuff. So here we go. Okay. So I got the freezer all packed up and now the next step is to put away some of the well and the fridge stuff too. And the next step is I'm going to try to put away some of these dry goods and anyone who has ever lived on a boat, knows that lots of things have hiding places. So our couch is no exception. That's where a lot of these, these paper products are going to go. Rosa Linda Román (20:59): And one of the things I've learned is a lot of times crumbs end up down there. So I actually already vacuum this out so that you don't have a mess under there, but you move things out of the way. And under this seat, this is where I put most of my paper products. You can see some paper towels in there. I'm going to try to prop it open so I don't kill myself. And let's see, I've also hit my head on doing this a number of times. Okay. So you can see this is tools and... I don't know if you can see that, let me show you down here are tools. And I usually have that very well organized, but because Nathan and our friend Dusty had been working on putting the watermaker in. That,uis a big mess. So I'll get to that later. Right now, I'm going to try to fit all those paper products, toilet paper, paper towels, a lot of them in there plus these napkins. Umo here we go. And that's, this is nice because these right here are individually wrapped. You can see that other one is not. And again, when crumbs fall down into the hold you don't really want it to get all over this stuff. So I liked things sealed and then sealed again and double sealed. Individually wrapped is my favorite, but yeah, that's going to have to do so we're just going to make the most of the space we have. I'm going to have to probably get under there in a minute. Rosa Linda Román (22:32): Yeah. And some of the, like the toilet paper will go in the restrooms. In the cabinets there. So yeah. There's not going to be a lot of room other than paper towels in this one, unless we put the, these somewhere else. You might be able to break open the napkins and put these individually on top. No, not really. All right. We'll see how that goes. This is also another thing that goes down here. This is just a rags, industrial rags. Very good to soak up oil and stuff. That'll be in the tool section once I organize that. This is where we keep our spare parts. I'll move stuff over. I'm trying to get things out of the way. You become very limber living on a boat. Rosa Linda Román (23:35): Can you guys still see that? Probably not. All right. So I'll just show you the after once I'm done. I'm going to have to put some of these down in another location. Okay that's in and these go on top. That's good. One more, maybe? Well, I utilize every space imaginable. Really do. All right. I think another one will fit. No. But maybe, mne of the other things can go in here. These are Swiffer pads. We just bought a Swiffer cleaner. So we can put some of the extras in here. I think that's going to be about all that I can fit. That is the paper area. So that's fun. All right, so now I stop the recording. I'm going to take a picture so you can see how packed the paper products area is, but that's something we go through a lot. So, and then the, there's the tools under there that have to also be sorted, but that's fine. That is for another day. I'd like to put everything away where you can't see it unless you're needing it, but that's not necessarily going to always be the case. Rosa Linda Román (25:46): We'll see. Now to go put the, find spots for toilet paper. A massive 42 rolls of toilet paper.! Haha. Oh no. 30 roll. So let's see where we can put that. I don't like putting paper products outside. We have like some holds that are kind of semi wet or some, I know we're supposed to be dry, but they, they smell musty to me. And I'm really anti musty, anti moldy. So I don't like to do that. So let's go down here. I'm going downstairs, taking the camera little by little,uwe're finding a spot. I actually just came downstairs. When Nathan asked me to hide, I,ustarted Kon Mari-ing his underwear. You'll have to go back through another episode to find out about that. Yeah, I love. Rosa Linda Román (26:45): Oh, is he taking the car? (Yeah) Are you going to take everything out of there. (What?) Well, there's the returns. (Yeah). There's another box of returns here. (Well Let's take that box) And isn't there something I'm not supposed to see? Why don't you wait until the kids at least can be here If you're going to show me. (Where Are they?) Staying out of my way. (Are They downstairs?) No, they went to the Dollar Store and she's going to the post office to get our address change forms. So at least we can start the process. Well, then there's a box right here. Can you give me that box and I'll put the rest of the giveaway in it? So you can put, do you want to just have him give all that away or you want to bring it all out? Rosa Linda Román (27:28): Bye. Thank you for all your help. (Here's Our number. If you need anything give us a shout.) Okay. Hopefully we'll see you in The Bahamas one of these days. So, I'm packing up the giveaway stuff that,uthat we've been so good about trying to just go through and get rid of anything that doesn't spark joy. Uso I just collect them in this little cabinet in my room. And now it's time to get rid of it. Now, what you just heard was saying goodbye to our friend, John Dierdricks, and he is going to take our car down to,udown to Fort Lauderdale and keep it there where he lives. So that's awesome. What? (We don't have the car!) Oh, well, there you go. That's a problem. She should be back. Just call her. She's just trying to stay away for us. Why don't you just drive with him to wherever or yeah, her car. Oh, no. She took her key too. Rosa Linda Román (28:43): Oy, and she'll have stuff to take out of the car as well. Yeah. You better call her. Boy, the logistics of coordinating everything is quite challenging. Last minute stuff that we're trying to figure out. Anyway, John and Whitney our very dear friends, are going to let us leave our car there in Fort Lauderdale because we won't need it up here. So. (sigh) The dog's going nuts on top, on deck. Can you hear that? And now I'm, as I was saying, I'm Kon Mari-ing Nathan's,some of his clothes that he got, his socks and underwear, and I'm just trying to find a place for it all and work around all these people coming and going. Hopefully we'll get it all done in time. So I think I better just,ustop right here. Say that I will update you all as soon as I get to a place where I can do so. I'll try to record the audio along the way, but for now, let me say thank you for listening to New Mexi-castaways. Give you a little slice of the chaos that goes on before you leave the known shore and head to parts unknown, make the crossing across the Atlantic ocean. Excited, nervous, and so much to do. Rosa Linda Román (30:09): So I'm going to let you go and I will be checking in with you guys again, as soon as possible. Thanks for listening. I'm Rosa Linda Román.