Captain’s Log 12/25/19, Merry Christmas Radio Morning

This blog is about living aboard a boat in the Pacific Northwest and snow-birding to Arizona while training an artificial intelligent mental health virtual assistant named Rubi ready to provide support in the traumatic aftermath of COVID-19.

I realize that our departure from living in a house, has further eroded any Christmas traditions that we may have had. I used to put a Christmas tree in the living room window and decorated it with a mix of ornaments from my James and mine’s childhood along with new ornaments we collected as a couple at the after Christmas sales from REI. We really embraced the scenes of luxury camping by collecting ornaments of sleeping bags, kayaks, out houses, snowshoes and snowboarding Santas to make our tree complete. It as if we were visioning a more adventurous life on a boat.

Apart from the ceramic tree on the boat’s dash and despite usually putting up an elaborate Christmas tree, we hadn’t put presents around the tree for each other in many years. It had been over ten years we hadn’t shopped for presents other than for my mom and niece and maybe Jeff. We figured we got what we wanted throughout the year and lived very well so why spend more money for a special occasion, just to get more stuff, to get more stuff? In a way I saw it as rejecting consumerism. However, we weren’t rejecting consumerism for religious reasons to find the “true” meaning of Christmas either. We just had to be selective about the stuff we had. When we first moved out of our house, we started with seven storage units, had a major garage sale, made $65oo from small stuff, sold the big stuff on craigslist and are now down to three storage units. We weren’t looking to collect more stuff, but to have new experiences and adventures. This meant letting go.

And since we majorly downsized from moving from our house to the boat, the anti-gift mentality really took on a new tone. Anything considered to be purchased was usually reconsidered when thought about where to keep it on the boat. I was more interested in spending time with people we loved and enjoyed being around more than anything. Eating good food was a bonus.

Christmas morning, I found myself taking James to the airport and saw an invitation from friend Susan Rook D’Ettorre to listen to her husband’s radio show Christmas morning. She would be joining him on the air as this was part of their Christmas tradition. I really liked Susan and why not make their Christmas tradition a part of ours? I tuned into iHeart Radio on my cellphone and piped it into the car stereo on the long ride to SeaTac and texted Susan that we were listening. As soon as she heard we were listening, she gave a shout out over the air with my name saying she had an audience covering coast to coast from Seattle to Rochester, New York where they were broadcasting. I was elated! It made my Christmas morning and I briefly remembered what it felt like to be a kid again. James rolled his eyes but was grinning ear to ear and we enjoyed their mix of Christmas music until I kissed him goodbye and got into the drivers’ seat, leaving him at the airport for his flight.