We have a storm on the horizon, but here' why we're gonna be okay

As hurricane season heats up, Chris is traveling for work in Pennsylvania... and here we are with construction at our house. Today I have a little real talk and life updates.

It’s newsletter day! I really enjoy sitting down to share what’s happening with us. I get such thoughtful responses from people and it makes me feel really good, and feel heard, which is so important. I like writing this much more than social media, so thank you for being a part of it.

Before I share what’s happening this week (oh gosh), I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who shared their tips and stories with me last week. I had asked about planning a trip to Peru because we have lots of airline miles to use, and I got so much really great, very specific advice both about traveling to South America and what sights in Peru are worth the time and money. I’ll share more once I’ve sorted through it all, but wow, that was the BEST crowdsourcing info I’ve ever gotten!

This Week: Hurricane / Tropical Storm Idalia

If you’re in the Southeast then you have seen that there’s a storm a-brewin’, which is going to be named Idalia. She is expected to be a CAT1 and then turn into a tropical storm, so not as intense as Ian last year, but that still can cause a lot of damage and really upset those who are impacted by the storm. It’s looking like one of our favorite Gulf Coast spots, Cedar Key, is in the predicted path, as are lots of other Florida islands, so we’ll see what happens.

For us on the Atlantic Coast, it looks like we will most likely get the tropical storm side of things, and hopefully just the remnants at that, but we’ll be ready just in case. We’ve done our non-perishable shopping (fruit, PB+J fixings, lots of Amy’s refried beans) just in case, but hopefully we’ll be in the clear.

My friend Angie has a great hurricane prep / shopping list in case you’re in the path of this storm or another potential one this season.

We’ve been in Florida for a while now, going on our fourth year, and whenever there’s a storm anywhere friends back in Washington or on Instagram are like “I don’t get why you live there. You’re going to get hit hard by a storm one of these days and you’ll regret the move.” Brothers and sisters, no, we won’t regret living here.

While the loss and damage of storms is very sad and intense, we are fortunate to be able to prepare for hurricanes and both get out of harm’s way AND minimize our losses. Living in Washington I had so much anxiety since being a little kid about getting hit by “the big one” or being in the blast path of Mount Rainier. Here we don’t have that and it’s actually a personal source of peace. I’d rather be prepared for a disaster than have underlying stress every day. And we get the beach the rest of the year when it’s not storming.

Construction at our House - will the storm thrash us?

As I’m writing about not being too worried about a storm coming towards us, ummm, we are putting in a swimming pool at our new house and it’s in the ground and totally not finished. Because we’re close to the beach, we’re having a fiberglass swimming pool installed and wouldn’t you know that the week it goes in the ground and pipes are laid is the same week a tropical storm may stomp on us.

As of right now, the pool is in the ground, the pipes are laid, the yard is torn up and a pump is continually removing water under the pool from the ever-flowing water table. This week we’re supposed to have the pump/filter installed, have the rebar work done, have an inspection and then have the concrete footing poured. This stuff needs to all be done in the not-rain, let alone be done when the whole of the stormy tropics are pummeling us. We’ll just have to see.

In the meantime here’s what things look like here:

And this is what the finished project will nearly look like, only we’ll have more patio area and lot’s of tropical plants around the outside. Stay tuned!:

“What DOES Chris do for work?”

Yes, I mentioned that Chris is traveling for work right now and he’s up in Pennsylvania. He doesn’t get to work on the blog full time with me, even though that was the goal with relocating to Florida. Someday hopefully we’ll be back to that path. Anyways, what Chris does is confusing to me, but here’s how I understand it: he directs and develops systems that support grocery store owner/operators in doing their business. This includes training systems I think, store facing portals and stuff, and other tools that make his company successful.

Chris works for Grocery Outlet, which is primarily a west coast grocery chain. He really likes his company and his team, and he gets really excited when he talks about his job. I think my job is awesome because I get to talk about sharks and historic brick alleyways, but he really likes what he does because each grocery store is owned by actual people who are present in their stores, and he gets to help people run their own businesses.

So yeah, he’s up in PA all week while his big store project launches. If you want to know more, you’ll have to ask him for a better explanation if/when you see him.

Incorporating Travel and Art into our House

We love our adventures but it’s really nice to be home. It’s funny, because we moved into our new house in May and finally have been home long enough to figure out how we actually live in our space. A part of this is also decorating our house. Both Chris and I work from home mostly, so we are here a ton and need to like where we live/work.

Well, in addition to the pool going in, we also painted every room in the house! And now that we’ve painted, we’ve got art and photos on the walls! This is so nice because it both kills the echo effect of living in an empty house and we get to have our travels posted everywhere through the house. I had a bunch of family travel photos printed and tapped into the ridiculous number of frames we have to create a cool family gallery. My goal is to get all the way to the ceiling and each wall of the stairwell (think Hogwarts!).

It feels like home now that we have no more beige walls and we have art up. I love painting and drawing, so filling the walls with art is easy. There’s no shortage or large or small paintings to put up.

New on the Blog: EVERYTHING

I’m not going to get into the life-questioning decision making process that I’ve been in the throes of, but let’s just say it out loud: I accept that I bit off more than I can chew and now I am paring down my over-committed world. For the last two years I’ve been running 2TravelDads.com and PaddleYourState.com and they’ve been doing great.

And then I jumped onto the local travel website bandwagon and got overzealous. I started 8 more websites and was putting more effort and attention into them than into my primary sites. And then I also realized that I write about the same things on 2TravelDads as I do on my paddling site… So will a VERY LIGHTENED HEART I have started to combine all my websites back into just one.

I’ve been working hard with the help of my lovely assistant, Kate, to get everything updated and formatted to my regular blog. This means HUNDREDS of articles. HUNDREDS. I’m excited to see what this does for the business side of life, but more importantly moving everything onto one site so I only have one project has made me feel so good.

Having a bunch of websites and not being able to give any single site enough attention to really do it well was very stressful. Now I just have the one site (still transitioning) and I genuinely feel different, both mentally and physically. I don’t get overwhelmed when I look at my to-do list. I don’t stress about not having something fresh to share. I don’t need to rob Peter to pay Paul.

Here’s a few of the things that are new on 2TravelDads this week thanks to this big change:

• Wildlife in Maine - our tips of what to see and where

• My review of the Harraseeket Inn in Freeport, Maine - this is the LL Bean hotel basically and it’s really cool

• My recipe for Whoopie Pies and the full scoop on whoopie pie culture

There will be lots more going live as we keep updating things, but for now I feel great about what we’ve gotten done!

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Thank you all for following along. This upcoming week hopefully the storm will pass us by, the pool will pass inspection and I can finish polishing up my workshop for the OWAA conference in Gulf Shores in two weeks!

Have a great week, stay safe, and enjoy that last stretch of summer!