My husband just went to the grocery store because part of this little life adventure will be him shopping and cooking!  This is his idea.  Yes, we occasionally discuss (sometimes heatedly) his desire to eat healthy with the result of reducing his mass a tad and my desire to not cook and eat coffee with lots of cream for breakfast (yes, eat), out for one meal a day, and cheese and crackers or nachos for the other.  Not so healthy I know  and I am exaggerating a bit, I do feed my kids fruit and lots of black beans and I really like to exercise so it seems to work out.  I hate cooking and grocery shopping at this point in my life and since he wants to do this I am letting go (part of my journey and more on that later). Anyway, part of this journey is he will cook so we will eat more healthfully, he will lose weight, the kids will eat vegetables and I will, instead of shopping and cooking, write and “be creative!” and he thinks this is going to be so easy.  Maybe it will be, as I am being positive.  So, mid unpacking he asks, “What do you want for dinner? I am going to go get food because you must be getting really hungry.”  We have this other discussion that I have “hanger issues” due to my eating preferences.  In my heart, I know that he is the one getting really hungry but he knows that it is go time for him, time to man up and cook.  I reply sweetly, “Whatever you want to cook, Sweetie” Well, maybe I didn’t say Sweetie but soon I am sure that I will.  I know he is fishing.  Good Lord, shopping and cooking is daunting enough when you know the town, grocery store and language but here we are, so go get em’ Sweetie!   He says, “Well, I probably don’t want to make it any warmer in here.”   It’s hot and humid today and our very cute little apartment is warm with no fans or air conditioning.  I say, “Well, just get…”  I was going to say, stuff that doesn’t need to be cooked like bread and meat and cheese and we’ll have sandwiches.  But, he stopped me because I was out of line.  Eating here on our adventure is his thing and I get that so I stopped myself without any feelings of irritation because that is my thing here on our little adventure.  Yes, I said nothing and then when he just came back hours later with groceries and announced we’re having roast vegetables and fish for dinner (that requires the oven I grumble in my head) I smiled and said, “That sounds great, sweetie!  Thank you so much for shopping.”  I traveled miles on my journey today.

Part of my journey is being nicer and less commenting.  I think I have a lot to say about stuff.  Another part of my journey is about self-discovery.  That is one of the best things about travel for me.  I think travel takes me out of my comfort zone, everything becomes new, and all of a sudden I am learning a lot about myself.  In this coming year, I want to learn to let go of the control that I think I have.  I have been practicing this and it is surprisingly freeing.  It’s only been about 36 hours though so maybe my feelings will change.  We were in SFO yesterday, the first day of our adventure, waiting for our flight to Munich and my husband and son were entertaining each other by talking to each other in a made up language.  This made me all kinds of uncomfortable.  I thought that they were just obnoxious and then I thought they were probably being offensive and then I thought, “Daisy, you’ve got to let that stuff go.”  I remembered a time in high school that my best friends and I went to a Chinese restaurant and pretended to be foreigners speaking a made up language.  We were doing nothing other than trying to be sophisticated world travelers and while I don’t think my husband and child were trying to be sophisticated world travels, I don’t think they were trying to offend or bother anyone.  And the very best thing about this whole experience was, I didn’t say anything and that had a snowball effect in a great way.  No one gave me a dirty look, my husband did not get to have a snappy little comment, and I wandered off to the newsstand and purchased m&m’s for the flight and had myself a quiet, preflight glass of wine.  Same for the roasted veggies that are now raising the temperature of our already warm little abode.  I will take my glass of wine (that my husband shopped for and proudly poured for me while I sat on my butt) and go outside on our adorable and much cooler little balcony and wait for my dinner that will be delicious and healthy and without any effort on my own, well, except for the effort of keeping my comments to myself!