Setbacks happen. What’s important is not to worry about them before they they happen–optimists are healthier!–plus how you react when confronted by one.

We’ve encountered a couple of minor speed bumps recently. The wonderful workmen who transformed our apartment last week helpfully removed a phone we thought was unused, and apparently they thought so, too, but it turned out that it was tied into our front door comm system so now we don’t have that. It will be repaired of course, but meanwhile deliveries, visitors, and Freecycle are difficult.

Two weeks after we purchased a new Candy tumble dryer, it stopped working. This one gathers the water into a basin which you empty rather than having a drain or exhaust, and it just stopped doing this. The clothes would tumble forever with no discernible change in dampness, leading us to feel this machine dries by removing water rather than by applying heat. It’s under warranty of course, and the repair guy said, These are complicated, we’ll just replace it…BUT…this close to Christmas, there are none available. So we had a dryer for two weeks and now we are using laundromats for probably four weeks, and then, we are sure, the replacement will be trouble-free for our remaining time on Earth.

These small obstacles remind me of the very large obstacle we overcame last year. After trying for four months to get an appointment to submit our visa application, we set out July 9th on a quest to San Francisco to find out what was going on. We weren’t the only ones to show up without an appointment, and the staff was friendlier than we expected given exhortations against popping in on the website. What we learned that day was that, due to our visa type and residential location, we were unlikely to get an appointment for the next couple of months at least.

Unfortunately, some of our paperwork was in danger of expiring, so we had to decide among three paths: Give up on moving completely; wait until 2026 and try again; or become residents of a US state associated with a less-crowded Spanish consulate. We decided to move to Virginia. Florida would have been more of a sure thing, but we have connections in Virginia, plus there are fewer alligators. It felt bold, even a little crazy at the time, but it worked. We became legal residents of Virginia in August, submitted our application in September, and got our visas in October.

That was the biggest obstacle in terms of disruption to our lives, but there is another that looms large in its longevity, which regular readers of this blog can probably guess: the Saga of the Shipping Container. If this were a Netflix series we would have enough material for three seasons. Living for four months on the cache of personal items, mostly clothes, that we set out with in August has had a lot of ramifications, such as

• Weather, which started to catch up with us as fall approached in the Mid-Atlantic Seaboard. We had a reprieve when we moved, but Spain’s winter is not nothing, and half the clothes we brought aren’t practical now. We started with about eight days of outfits plus three sweaters each, and wow are we BORED with them. The entire back ripped out of one of my nightgowns last week. That pales compared to
• Health, which I feel is negatively affected by excessive restaurant meals, even in Spain. We bought a minimal set of dishes, flatware, and cooking supplies, but we still don’t have anything like a proper kitchen going, so we eat out a lot. We also don’t sleep as well without our high-end mattress, we don’t exercise as much without workout clothes, and these cheap knives are dangerous. Then there’s always a little frisson of
• Discomfort, at least while we’re at home. We have four chairs, two of which came with the apartment, and only one of which is reasonably comfortable. Our futon sofa is also our bed so we don’t convert it daily. We aren’t keen to spend hours sitting, but after a few weeks you actually miss not having a nice place to sit and read or browse without your bum going numb. Then there’s a tangible impact on our
• Finances, since we’ve had to duplicate some stuff that is on the ship but we need now. We likely will end up with paid lodging for our family visiting over the holidays since we have no guest beds. Going to restaurants a lot is expensive as well as unhealthy, and we won’t be cooking any family meals at home for the holidays. Mostly though we miss practicing
• Music, and listening to it as well. Most of our instruments are on the boat, along with all of our remotely-decent-fidelity playback devices. This is a longer dearth of practice than I had when I broke my wrist in 2024. Then there’s the je ne sais quoi, let’s call it
• Serenity, aka the way you feel when you live with your books and cookware and clothes and hobbies and papers and photographs and artwork, as well as paperclips and scissors and Goo Gone. Barcelona is distracting and stimulating, but we still have that living-on-the-road feeling, not to mention the
• Uncertainty of not knowing when the situation will resolve!