[00:00:00] Rosa Linda Román: Hello and welcome to New Mexi-Castaways. I'm Rosa Linda Román and I am just leaving Cedar Breaks Park Campground in Texas, in Georgetown, Texas. I've got a German Shepherd in the car with me and another German Shepherd in the car in front of me. I don't know him, but the dog's got his head out the window and Nala's in my car happily with her head out the window. [00:00:54] Rosa Linda Román: And it's really funny because the shepherd in the car in front of me is literally snapping at each car that passes and happy as can be. It's been an interest trip. This is Spring Break in Round Rock, which is where we live currently, Round Rock, Texas school district. It's Spring Break, and so we had to put all of our Spring Break plans on hold because my husband Nathan just had knee, like reconstructive knee surgery and so spring break plans to go to The Bahamas. We were going to be at Cavalli House in The Bahamas, in the Exumas. It had to get canceled so that he could recover. It's a good thing we did cancel that plan because there is no way he would've been functional and been able to enjoy traveling to The Bahamas. He's in a lot of pain and as it is, so we're week. [00:01:45] Rosa Linda Román: And a day past surgery right now, and it was my hope that I would just rent this campground and we would spend some time here. But he barely can be here because he really is still in a lot of pain. It's not like with the Ahava's surgery, my daughter, my 14-year-old daughter, Ahava had ACL surgery seven weeks ago. And with her surgery, the recovery was, I think, well, I don't know, it's hard to remember, but she was in a lot of pain, but she could do different things. Nathan is in a lot of pain and some of the things that he normally would be doing, he can't. And he's very much a doer and it's driving him crazy. [00:02:29] Rosa Linda Román: But it's kind of in the way good, not good that he had to have surgery. Great that he's hopefully going to have new knees, and feel great, and be able to do lots of things. But for me, it's forcing me to be creative and look for ways to kind of fill my bucket in the middle of the crazy chaos, busy, nonstop life that we seem to have developed here. And specifically, I had brought this camper here to the Austin area from Arizona, actually, by way of Washington state. We have taken this camper all over the country. It belongs to my brother-in-law Ari. [00:03:10] Rosa Linda Román: And I had been wanting to take the camper out to somewhere to do like little weekend camping trips, but it seemed so daunting and difficult to pull off, and we were just so busy with all of our various activities. So, I didn't know if we were going to be able to do that. Well ,this, because we had to cancel our Spring Break plans and I was feeling quite stir crazy, I decided to look for a place nearby and we had just gone to a campground, Georgetown Lake about a week and a half ago with my daughter Ahava's teammates. She was a gymnast and her team all met at this campground called, I think it was Jim Hogg Campground. [00:03:56] Rosa Linda Román: We met at that campground. Had a great time. And so then I thought, you know what, if we have to cancel our Spring Break plans, let me see if I can at least get us a campground so we can be somewhat close and still do the camping thing or do something. And so, I found this Cedar Breaks Park and it is fantastic. It's right on the lake, it's got a little forested area. Each campsite, which only costs $26 a night, has like a flat, flat with power and water, and it has like a fire pit and a little pavilion with a picnic table. So, it's a really nice little campground campsite and we were able to get it from Sunday through Wednesday. Today is Wednesday. [00:04:41] Rosa Linda Román: Then my daughter Ahava decided that she wanted, well, she had wanted her teammates to come, but they don't have Spring Break at the same time, and so they ended up meeting us. They said, well, they don't have gym on Wednesday, so they could join us Wednesday. Well, that's today. And so I scrambled to try to get it for another day. [00:05:03] Rosa Linda Román: Our site that we were in was not available, so we found a second site just for tonight, and that meant packing up the camper, moving all the stuff. Luckily, it was two sites down, and so the girls were able to help carry all the stuff from one site to the other and rearrange. [00:05:19] Rosa Linda Román: Well, meanwhile, Ziva, and Nathan, and Samuel stayed at home last night. Ziva and Samuel, just because they wanted to, Nathan because of the pain issue wanted to be in his own bed. Plus, that's where the ice machine and like he has this machine that moves his leg automatically. Anyway, that's at home. So, Nathan stayed home. [00:05:38] Rosa Linda Román: Well, then he said, "Well, Ziva has a volleyball clinic today." And that volleyball was close to our house, not close to where the campsite is. Also, at the same time, Nathan didn't take any time off of work for this surgery. He just decided he was going to, I mean, took the day of the surgery off and he tried to work the next day, quickly realized that he was totally drugged and couldn't because of the pain medication. [00:06:06] Rosa Linda Román: And so, then he took that day off. But he basically is working ever since. And when I was setting up the camper and I had to go get kayaks that we borrowed from one of Ahava's teammates, the families, and all of the stuff that normally Nathan would do, a lot of that, the lion's share of the work on that I did and it was good for me. It helped me to remember that I'm A, very capable. In fact, there was a situation where we were at the first campsite and Ahava and I were spending the night and I realized that the tanks, both the gray water and the blackwater, so like the graywater is from the showers and the blackwater is from the toilet, both those tanks were completely full, which is not good. [00:06:50] Rosa Linda Román: And so we had to pull the camper out. The problem is the camper is, it was backed in. All these sites are back in only sites, which I always am like, "Oh, I don't know about that." But I had to do it. I had to pull the camper out, like break it down, pull it out, and move it to take it to the dump, to dump what, which I referred to as walking the dog based on, you know, that we lived on a saline catamaran. I'm doing what I can to try to juggle it all and still feel like I have some relaxing time for Spring Break. [00:07:25] Rosa Linda Román: I had a really nice morning this morning. I was sitting out, I came out, it was nice and it was cool outside, brought Nala out with me and I have this portable fire pit which is propane fueled, so I turned that on and just took out my journal, had a hot cup of coffee, and had a great morning just doing some writing. It was joyful and then because of this volleyball clinic, I was worried about how to get her there and then having to move the camper. This morning I enjoyed the writing, quiet time with no one else around. Ahava was sleeping and the others stayed at home. [00:08:06] Rosa Linda Román: Anyway, so going back to walk the dog, the tanks were full. I had to move the camper to the dump station and dump it and handle it all myself. Basically, you have to break down the camper, you know, and then set it up, you know, dump it, dump the sewage, dump the waste water, and then you end up having to back it back into the spot. [00:08:29] Rosa Linda Román: I did all of that myself, and I was so proud of myself and I thought, you know, it's not that I haven't done the damp stuff before. I've handled this camper before, but it's always in like a pull through site and you pull up to the spot that you... you pull up to the dump site in kind of a loop and then you loop around. I never had to like back things into places. I tried to avoid that most of the time. I have done that with my girlfriend, Molly, in her house in Spokane. I backed into her driveway, which I was super proud of. But this was just kind of one of those things where it was a situation where I really needed to handle it and I did. And it was a lot... it was like a confidence builder. [00:09:13] Rosa Linda Román: But here's the thing, a lot of the reasons I think people don't do things, try things, test things, do their, you know, big awesome life, their BAL is out of fear that they're not going to be able to handle something or they're going to get stuck and they're going to be in a situation where, you know, they do the wrong thing. And that is how I felt about handling the camper by myself. [00:09:38] Rosa Linda Román: Now, the reason I bring this up is it really is to me the reason why we're not living on a boat this time. In fact, some of our dear friends who were our boat neighbors Rondo, they were like a buddy boat for a time. They are in the Galapagos Island right now. And it just kills me. I'm green with envy a little bit. You know, I'm usually not one to be like, "Oh, I wish." Oops, there goes my turn. Got to turn around. One minute slower. I guess I won't turn around. I'll go the one minute slower. Sorry, I don't know where I'm going, so I have to be careful. [00:10:16] Rosa Linda Román: Anyway, so my point is that the reason I'm not doing that is because I was not comfortable handling the boat by myself, and Nathan was not interested in doing the boat full-time. I mean, that's the truth of the statement. He enjoyed the boat most of, not most of the time, some of the time he enjoyed the boat, but there were a lot of times that the work of the boat made it much less enjoyable than the reality of the, like the work was just too much and he always had to come back to work and, you know, all of that. [00:10:54] Rosa Linda Román: And so if I had been able to handle the boat by myself, I think that we would've been much more inclined to still be living on the boat cause then I could have done a lot of the stuff and handled a lot of the stuff that became a burden for him and taken a lot off his plate. [00:11:10] Rosa Linda Román: And so, that's kind of been the way I've approached the camper this time. Just, okay, I'm the one that wanted to do something for Spring Break. Everybody else seems content to do their videos or whatever, you know, they're doing at home. But I didn't want to just sit at home. I mean, with two of my kids homeschooling I'm home all the time and if you know anything about me, I'm not a homebody. I want to explore, I want to travel, I want to see things, and I feel like a caged tiger. And so, instead of blaming my spouse and saying, well, you know, because of his surgery we can't do anything. I'm just like, okay, so this is the current situation. What can we still do given the new reality? [00:11:56] Rosa Linda Román: And I think that's what looking back at the boat, if I had handled the boat, I could have said to him when he said, "Well, we got to move off because I got my career." I could have said, "Okay, we're going to be here and I'll move it, you know, from one small island to the next." Or the reason the dog thing made me think of that is we had a situation once where we were in Georgetown, in ironically also Georgetown, in The Bahamas, the Exumas, and I was anchored there while Nathan went to work and the tanks were full when he left. I didn't know that I should have had him empty the tanks before he left, so he didn't. And the tanks got full and I called for the pump out boat and the person on the radio said, "Oh, there is no pump out boat. It sank with the last hurricane." [00:12:48] Rosa Linda Román: So, that meant there was no way to discharge the waste. The problem with that is you don't just dump waste into the harbor. So, I thought that I had a solution. I found some friends who had the exact same boat we had and I said, "You know, is there any way that you got..." Well, they offered actually to, they were going to help me move the boat take, because you have to go out to sea and you go like three miles out away from shore, and it's all liquified. It's just like macerated waste and it doesn't hurt anybody or anything once you're way out at sea. [00:13:24] Rosa Linda Román: And so, my friends offered to do that and take me to move the boat out, and Nathan was very uncomfortable, and against that idea because he didn't know them, and he didn't know, you know, for assurance purposes, he really was the only person who was supposed to be moving the boat. So, because of that, I was really in a bind and very stressed because I felt like I couldn't handle the basic issues that came up when we were on the boat. [00:13:53] Rosa Linda Román: So, fast forward to today, now it's about a year since we've been living on the boat, which is shocking to me to think about. And I realize I want to be able to handle things myself and not be in the situation where because there's something that, you know, is thrown at us we have to stop everything and you know, wait for someone to come and rescue us. [00:14:16] Rosa Linda Román: Now, that doesn't mean I'm not going to lean on people and ask for help because, like, perfect example is today, I just had asked my friends to take Ziva to volleyball so that I could handle moving the camper when at the same time I had to move the camper, well, at the same time Ziva wanted to get to volleyball. Nathan can't drive. He had had her Uber to the morning session, he went with her, gratefully. I was like, "Wait, you didn't just send her in an Uber by herself, did you?" He said, no, he didn't. So, he wasn't going to have her Uber for the afternoon session. [00:14:53] Rosa Linda Román : All of this to say I had a girlfriend help take her and now I'm able to go pick her up late, but pick her up and he just texted me, and said, they said someone would wait with her, thank goodness. Okay, so we're good. So, Ziva's good. I left Ahava with her teammates with kayaks going out onto Lake George... Georgetown Lake, which I was hesitant to do because they're really the only females out there. [00:15:23] Rosa Linda Román: I mean, her teammates are 18 and 16 and, you know, they're capable young women, just for a second, because I'm actually approaching the volleyball place, but to finish the walk the dog thing. So, basically that left me feeling very vulnerable when I couldn't handle, yes, I know you're panting in my ear, go lie down. I couldn't handle the boat by myself and so the simple basic needs, I couldn't handle that. Plus, we had a dinghy that was constantly breaking and I should have insisted that we get rid of it and dinghy that was reliable so that I could have handled things as they came and were thrown at us. [00:15:59] Rosa Linda Román: With this camper there's a lot about it that is very similar to living on the boat, just the community, when you're there in the campground, people are very friendly, lots of really great people. The camper itself, you know, it's kind of this closed system with the sewage, and the water, and you have to figure out the power, and water, and sewage, and sleeping arrangements. And it's an interesting thing to realize that I'm handling this and it's kind of building a little bit of confidence for me to remember that, whatever... and I wrote this this morning when I had my beautiful moment by the campfire. I wrote my motto, which has been my motto for a long time is get clear on what you want and the right people and resources show up to make it happen. And I really feel like that is so important to remember. Instead of getting caught on, what if this goes wrong? What about that problem? What about this situation that I can't handle? Or like literally, I was thinking about all the things that had to happen in order to facilitate getting this campsite for this Spring Break, especially, with Nathan unable to drive and the kids still doing various activities. [00:17:18] Rosa Linda Román: And when I thought about it that way, it was overwhelming. But instead, when I said to myself, "No, I know I want to do this, I'm going to find a way." All of a sudden it opens up like the question, okay, how can I make this happen? What is there that I can do to make this happen? That is what I did. It shifted everything. And now here I am having a wonderful Spring Break at the campground, allowing my kids to have different experiences than they would normally have, and there is my Ziva. So, I'm going to take a break and I'll wrap this up later, probably at the campground tonight. [00:18:02] Rosa Linda Román: Well, I never did come back to recording the rest of this episode. Sorry about that. But as I've been sorting through my audio files for editing, I've decided that this one was complete enough to still publish it. I hope you'll agree. And if you like this somewhat abbreviated podcast, please consider joining the New Mexi-Castaways crew. [00:18:22] Rosa Linda Román : Those are the awesome folks that support this show. They also get bonus content like photos and videos of all the stuff that I'm talking about here on the podcast. So, to do that, please visit newmexicast.com/crew, or you can go to patreon.com/newmexicast. Thanks for listening to New Mexi-Castaways. I'm Rosa Linda Román.