July 2024 recap
The last few months have been...pretty weird. I spent much of July avoiding taking a break from dealing with things related to my dad’s death, such as buying a proper urn and planning his memorial service. I feel a bit bad about it (he’d be annoyed that I wrote that), but...well, that’s how I’m dealing (or not?) with things right now. I’m just not quite ready.
Instead, my wife and I have been focusing on planning the epic trip that we’re beginning this fall. We’ll be traveling around the world on a 100-day trip! Pretty fucking cool. We see it as a big “life reset” after the last 4.5 years of stressful caregiving. I’m glad I got all that time with my dad, but it was also the worst half decade of my life. We actually started strategizing and saving for this trip way back in 2020, figuring we had like a 5% chance of making it happen, but here we are, actually booking flights, hotels, and tours. I’m really proud of ourselves—it feels like an important personal accomplishment. We’ll be posting about the trip at AdventuresAroundThe.World, with a digest email every week. It’s probably pretty clear why I’ve been focused on this and not that whole dead father thing.
Traditionally, we’d have a bunch of weekend trips in July, perhaps even a bigger out-of-state trip. After all, it’s hot here in Phoenix and this is the perfect time to spend time in the mountains. This year, we only managed two three-day “escape the heat” camping weekends up north of Flagstaff. During the week, I’d usually also kayak the Lower Salt River 4-6 times in the month, but only managed a couple of paddles. Jen was away for about ten days to visit family at the beginning of the month and I considered doing my own road trip somewhere, but a (binding?) mastodon poll instructed me to just relax at home instead.
With our April roadtrip, and my dad’s health decline and death in May, oh and Jen’s two surgeries and that family trip since then, we just never quite got around to mapping out many summer trips. Overall, I feel like we’re in a bit of a funk when it comes to getting out of town, but of course we have this massive trip (and complicated trip logistics) to work out, so that’s where we need to spend the energy right now.
That won’t change much in August, as we’ll be spending nearly the entire month in Tucson. We’ll do a few things down there—there are a number of newly-opened breweries we need to mark off, plus some museums that have been on our list for awhile, and I need to catch up with some conservation colleagues about a big new project I’m launching—but all in all, it doesn’t feel like a “trip.” It’s just Tucson.
I’ve also spent quite a bit of time helping my mom navigate the consequences of an auto accident she had, which totaled her car and left her a bit injured. And working to diagnose some disconcerting health issues of my own, plus some other annoying financial and legal things for both my mom and my dad’s estate. Besides the great news about the 100 day trip, it’s otherwise been a bleh month.
In terms of media consumption, we watched Killing Eve, Bank of Dave, Wicked Little Letters, and some of the Olympics. I poked into a few books, but nothing’s really stuck. But I have been reading a lot of personal blogs, which has been fun. And I’ve been doing a bit more writing, though hitting publish less than I’d like. I have a ridiculous number of half-written drafts, though! That’s in part because I’ve spent too much time monkeying with a number of website projects, three of which will launch in August, instead of finishing things up.
#Blaugust2024 #100DaystoOffload