Not Enough Hours in the Day

Barb and I were juggling schedules—if we did yoga after lunch, and visited the pearl farm after home schooling, that should leave just enough time for a beach cleanup before the evening net—unless we are leaving today… But it still doesn’t leave time for laundry or the writing workshop, and are we having sundowners on Ceilydh’s foredeck again today? Or does Evan still have a fibre glassing project spread out across the nets? And what am I going to make for dinner? The only fresh veg in the store today was one $4 carrot …

People ask how we stay busy out here.

And if we get bored.

And the answer—for all those people who imagine us on an endless holiday that consists of long lazy days of nothingness, interrupted by the occasional beach stroll or swim—is staying busy isn’t a problem. Fitting it all in is.

 I am behind on everything. Our laundry is piling up, my emails are neglected and I have projects I’ve been meaning to get to since somewhere around San Francisco still waiting. Everything I do get done takes twice as long as it would on land—and sometimes much, much longer. Especially if we didn’t have the foresight to pack a part for some project or another.

This isn’t a complaint.

We actually find it as funny as anyone else would. I really imagined having long lazy hours at my disposal—but somehow between keeping the boat clean, dry, and functioning; and educating and entertaining Maia; and finding and preparing food; and working; and coping with those sudden crisis’s that crop up with such regularity that we really ought to schedule them in; and traveling from one place to the next—all those hours that I imagined having all to myself have been idled away only in my imagination.

I pretty much have all the same balancing/time issues as every mother everywhere—I’m just doing it on a small boat far from girlfriends, gyms and therapists…

But sometimes, like mothers everywhere, I do find a way to take time for myself. I decide we can wear dirty clothes for one more day and join our buddy boats for a yoga class. And I realize that Ev and Maia can fend for themselves for an evening while I sneak off to have a girl-night on Britannia.

And while eating a double batch of popcorn and yawning, and watching a lushly romantic movie that husbands and kids would never want to see, it seems that for one day, at least, we found just enough time to fit the important stuff in. And maybe tomorrow I’ll get to the laundry.