travel blog

Looking For Some Amazing Produce?

| jamiefeinberg

So, there’s a lot going on in the world right now, and as I mentioned last week, I’m especially mindful of the fight for racial justice and equity for black people right now. It’s also Pride Month, and of course life under COVID-19 continues.

So I thought that this week, I’d mix things up and tackle a lighter subject – food! I know that food can be a really heated topic – not everyone has access to good food, and food deserts are one of the factors that’s undoubtedly contributing to black and brown people being harder hit by this virus – but Ross and I have been taking advantage of one resource for good food that’s been an incredible blessing.

Misfits Market is a produce subscription service. On a weekly or twice monthly basis, you get organic fruits and vegetables delivered in a box. That might sound like it would be really expensive, but since the produce is the slightly blemished or otherwise overly abundant produce of organic farms across the country, you save 40%!

When we started our subscription, it was a box of a dozen fruits and vegetables, and we didn’t have any control over what was inside. That was honestly a LOT of the fun, reminding us of our past CSA shares from local farms, and the unboxing was always a fun surprise! But in the last few weeks, we’ve been offered the chance to CHOOSE what we want in our box (within specific parameters) and that has been such a treat!

After your first week’s subscription, you can also enjoy add-ons. Add-ons can vary from super cheap to super pricey, but they let you add on items like bulk nuts, gluten-free treats, chocolate bars, oils, herbs and specific higher-end fruits and vegetables (like berries, cherries and avocados). For those on a budget, it’s easy to skip the add-ons, but if you’ve got a little extra money since you aren’t eating out right now, there are some wonderful treats available. (One of my favorite things is their selection of mushrooms!)

 

Misfits has been an incredible blessing. We absolutely love the delicious produce, which is rarely blemished enough to warrant notice, and we’ve really enjoyed the challenge of cooking new foods each week. I also am thrilled by the fruit options, which are delightful and not something I usually have room for in my budget. And the convenience of weekly produce delivery really helps extend the time between grocery store visits.

If having a subscription to produce sounds appealing, I highly suggest joining their waitlist. You can use my code to save 25% on your first week. Their customer service has been outstanding (they rarely make mistakes, but they’ve taken care of us perfectly when something has happened) and I know we’re doing a much better job getting all of the nutrients we need thanks to the variety of foods we’re eating each week.

Wherever you are, I hope you get a great meal or two this week. Please take care and stay safe! Thanks for reading.

______________________________

Supporting Our Blog

We are so thankful for your support of our blog and our careers! You can help by doing any or all of the following:

  • Purchase one of Ross’ albums!
  • Become a patron of our work!
  • Make purchases via our Amazon website links. There is no additional cost to you, and a portion of the proceeds can support our travels. Begin your Amazon search here.
  • Make other purchases using our affiliate links. Capital One 360 is one everyone can take advantage of to save money! Signing up with Dosh is a great way for everyone with a smartphone to support us, and we also have options for aspiring virtual assistants as well as occasional and full-time RVers to save money.
  • Listen to, subscribe and review our theater comedy podcast, Finishing The Season!
  • Subscribe to our blog, as well as perhaps InSearchOfAScoop.com, and recommend our work to your friends and family.
  • Take music or theater lessons (group or private) from us, either in person or via Skype at TinyVillageMusic.com.

At a loss for words, but it’s important to try

| jamiefeinberg

Hi. Thanks for reading this today. It’s been quite a week, and I’m struggling between feeling like I should say something, because I have a platform and people read what I write, and yet also feeling like there are others who say it better.

(If you can’t approach this with a generous heart, an open mind and the attitude of seeing the best in what I write, please keep moving. I’m not going to tolerate hateful comments here, and I appreciate you respecting that. We can respectfully disagree, but I’m going to keep this post focused and kind.)

I know that the work I do, in my own way, to be avowedly anti-racist every day is really important. Every conversation I have with someone has the potential to give them a glimpse of a perspective they didn’t understand. Every time I call out the racism or prejudice in front of me, it could have ripple effects, and if nothing else, it could make one person feel seen or feel loved instead of feeling betrayed or rejected or disposable. I can also point out the history and systemic inequalities that contribute to why someone is where they is or why they’re going through what they’re going through. I was privileged to be educated about these issues in a way that I know most people really aren’t. Our educational system is overly rosy and extraordinarily focused on white men, and until we are all educated on the flaws in our systems, we won’t recognize the need to change them. I know I’m extraordinarily privileged and I try to not just be aware of it, but to do something meaningful with that privilege each day.

Black lives matter. Every black person who has been murdered has been denied the right to a life, to due process, to pursue their dreams. Their families and friends have been robbed. Until we change the systems that create oppression in this country (the police, the courts, the jails, the schools, the laws, the social service systems….) we will continue to see racism, both individual and systemic, continue to flourish.

No one should live in fear. Black people, trans people, women, homosexuals, those who are living with disabilities or poor or in abusive situations….I could go on, but if we look around us, there are SO MANY people living in fear. And many of us have 2, or 3, or 4, or 5 or more of these challenges stacked against us.

Just because I’m not black doesn’t mean I haven’t struggled, or don’t struggle. It just means I haven’t known the specific experiences of racism and the prejudices due to being a black person in this country. In my opinion, to be anti-racist, every day and openly, is to be a good human being.

Our country needs leadership, visionary leadership, not a dictatorship. We need a vision for the future that works to fix these inequalities, and that won’t be complete or content until no one has to fear being murdered in their own home, walking down the street without cause or due process.

We all have a lot of mixed emotions right now. I’m trying to push the rest of them aside and focus on a vision for the future and supporting black people in every way I can right now. Those of us with a little (or a lot of) privilege and power need to make the most of it and do what’s right.

Stay safe, and take care, friends.

P.S. Here’s a list of resources to show your support and a guide to being anti-racist if you’re not sure where to start in this journey.

Stillness, Movement and Disney

| jamiefeinberg

Still in Florida. Still spending 99% of our time in our RV. And still thankful that we have enough, and that there’s plenty to enjoy, even in a small space.

Stillness

We haven’t gone anywhere since we last checked in. Just walks around the campground. And honestly, that’s fine. In fact, I just took about 3.5 days off this past weekend, and you know what? I LOVED it. I hadn’t taken that much time off since last summer! So having hours to stream great programs (like Bernstein’s Mass, a Hal Prince documentary and a livestream of The Marvelous Wonderettes from Seacoast Rep) was delightful, and having time to make cookie dough (the kind you don’t have to cook – mine was an almond flour base) and enjoy whipped coffee courtesy of my husband? It was so lovely.

I also had the time to make a Pros and Cons list, something I’d been threatening to do for many weeks. And the grand conclusion, shocking, I know, is that it’s safer and better for us to stay put in Florida than go anywhere else right now. We’ve got plenty of internet access, an affordable site in a comfortable place, access to deliveries of all sorts…and the moment we move, we’ve got extra risk and a whole bunch of new variables. So, barring weather or other changing tides that make staying here unsafe or unsustainable, we’ll be sticking around. We’ve got a few logistics to figure out with doctor appointments and the like, but this feels like the best course of action through at least most of the winter. So we commit and stay the course.

Movement

It can be easy to get restless when you realize you haven’t gone anywhere for about six months and won’t be going anywhere until next year. One way I’ve been able to combat this has been participating in projects to get me outside of my RV. I had a blast with a virtual choir experience (I’ll let you know when it’s complete), and more recently, I got to participate in some movement. I really love how this one came together if you’re interested. (I’m in the blue dress later in the video sequence.) It was lovely to have an excuse to dance for a while!

If you know anyone wanting to create one of these videos, let us know! Ross’ video and audio editing background means he can do these types of things very well.

Disney

Disney has announced that Disney World will be re-opening, with lots of modifications of course, in mid-July. July 11th and July 15th, mainly. We don’t feel comfortable going, because of underlying health conditions and the knowledge that it will be a LOT of extra risk for us. We haven’t been in a building off the RV park grounds since March 16!

I’m happy for the people who have been in need of this. I truly hope and pray that Disney can keep their employees and guests safe. Since Florida testing has gotten really unreliable and shady, I’m not sure how we’ll know if “it’s working” or not. So I’m just going to be thankful for all of the time we got at Disney in our first three months here. It was really wonderful. And now I’m going to practice self-care and be thankful for all that we do have. (It is so, so much.)

Wishing you and yours all the best. Take care and be well.

______________________________

Supporting Our Blog

We are so thankful for your support of our blog and our careers! You can help by doing any or all of the following:

  • Purchase one of Ross’ albums!
  • Become a patron of our work!
  • Make purchases via our Amazon website links. There is no additional cost to you, and a portion of the proceeds can support our travels. Begin your Amazon search here.
  • Make other purchases using our affiliate links. Capital One 360 is one everyone can take advantage of to save money! Signing up with Dosh is a great way for everyone with a smartphone to support us, and we also have options for aspiring virtual assistants as well as occasional and full-time RVers to save money.
  • Listen to, subscribe and review our theater comedy podcast, Finishing The Season!
  • Subscribe to our blog, as well as perhaps InSearchOfAScoop.com, and recommend our work to your friends and family.
  • Take music or theater lessons (group or private) from us, either in person or via Skype at TinyVillageMusic.com.

Making The Lives We Want: Our Scorecard

| jamiefeinberg

Though we casually refer to our travel blog as “Ross and Jamie Adventure”, the actual name is Making The Lives We Want: A Practice In Living. I named the blog long before we hit the road, secretly writing away and documenting my thoughts as we navigated this crazy dream – becoming full-time RVers, traveling the country, giving Ross the chance to be a touring musician and ultimately finding a new place to settle down.

“Ross and Jamie Adventure” goes back to when Ross and I married in June of 2014 (almost six years married, and we’ve passed ten years together now). We coined the phrase then, creating an email with the moniker for handling our wedding details. It felt right. Even when our disposable income was almost non-existent, we always loved going on adventures, from our first New Year’s Eve together (also our anniversary) spent at Santa’s Village, to drives around northern New England for ice cream, museums or just whatever we’d see, to our short but magical comedy & music cruise out of Miami, to our epic two weeks of mostly camping and living it up in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Even though we’d never dreamed of anything like this when we got married, should it really shock anyone that we decided to embrace adventure fully with a life on the road in late 2016?

Obviously our adventures are looking very different right now. So instead of discussing traveling, I’m revisiting our name to ask the question, are we making the lives we want?

Here’s how things have evolved since I started this blog.

  • We bought an RV; and then when that one turned out to be a clunker, we bought another RV (this time with financing!)
  • We sold most of our furniture, got a storage unit and pulled a lot of favors with family and friends (thank you!!)
  • We traveled the U.S., especially down the East Coast, across the southern part of the United States, spent some time in the Pacific Northwest and cut a northern route back to NH (in several combinations).
  • One or both of us has performed in many communities across eleven states, from bars to libraries, restaurants to yoga studios and clubs to churches.
  • We went from mostly workcamping (at campgrounds in NH, TX, NC, CO and NM) when we weren’t performing to building a thriving virtual assistant business to supplement our not-insignificant teaching and performing income.
  • We’ve eaten premium and super premium ice cream across the U.S. in at least 19 states.
  • We’ve made new friends, spent time with family and old friends, fallen in love with several communities and continued to expand our time table from at least one year to coming up on four years this fall.
  • We’ve participated in yoga classes (Ross as a musician, Jamie as a student) in at least a half dozen communities.
  • We’ve created new goals for the future, no longer content to return to the status quo but instead working to remain location-independent indefinitely.

Of course, it’s that last piece that makes us particularly well-suited to endure what’s going on right now. Working remotely combined with relatively diverse streams of income has meant that instead of panicking when our gigs were canceled, we knew we had a lot of other income streams that, thus far, are doing okay. So we live in gratitude for the blessings we have, for all of the privileges that have made this possible and for all of the people who have supported us along the way when our RV needed work or we needed someone to watch our cat or store our keyboard.

We really are making the lives we want. It keeps evolving, and we keep redefining what that means. We aren’t rich, but we’ve lived lives that so many people have only dreamed about. We are rich in experiences, and whatever comes next, we’ll remain eternally grateful for what we’ve had.

Wishing you health, safety and comfort, friends. Take care.

______________________________

Supporting Our Blog

We are so thankful for your support of our blog and our careers! You can help by doing any or all of the following:

  • Purchase one of Ross’ albums!
  • Become a patron of our work!
  • Make purchases via our Amazon website links. There is no additional cost to you, and a portion of the proceeds can support our travels. Begin your Amazon search here.
  • Make other purchases using our affiliate links. Capital One 360 is one everyone can take advantage of to save money! Signing up with Dosh is a great way for everyone with a smartphone to support us, and we also have options for aspiring virtual assistants as well as occasional and full-time RVers to save money.
  • Listen to, subscribe and review our theater comedy podcast, Finishing The Season!
  • Subscribe to our blog, as well as perhaps InSearchOfAScoop.com, and recommend our work to your friends and family.
  • Take music or theater lessons (group or private) from us, either in person or via Skype at TinyVillageMusic.com.

Surreal Experiences In A Florida RV Park

| jamiefeinberg

Ross and I love the little RV park we stay in while we’re in Florida. It’s got a super convenient location, friendly neighbors, plenty of space to walk the park and even a slice of a water view at the far end. RVers as a whole often are more conservative than us (let’s be fair – most people probably are when we get down to it), but we try to be open-minded, and when we do our best to avoid politics, we find we’ve got lots to talk about and lots to enjoy in the people around us. We also like this park because there are lots of people of color here, mainly Latino but also black people, which makes it feel a lot less exclusive than some of the RV parks out there. It also seems to have a diverse range of incomes, judging by the range of people who stay here, some of them staying year-round.

All that being said, our neighbors, in our humble opinions, aren’t taking the virus seriously. Ross and I have been self-isolating since March 17th, and by early April snowbirds were mostly vacating the campground here (still lots of year-round folks staying). People still congregate in tight (closer than six feet) groups outside of their RVs. It makes no difference if some of them are extremely high risk, and all of them are 60+. With one exception, the only people wearing masks at the campground are a few maintenance workers. Well, besides us, that is.

When we go to do laundry, it’s extremely awkward, because people congregate around the entrance or do their laundry inside the tight quarters as if the pandemic doesn’t exist. When I walk the park, I feel like a lunatic in my mask while everyone else visits and acts like everything is fine.

Campground management, on the other hand, takes it extremely seriously. For weeks the office has drastically reduced their hours, and they’ve asked us to avoid using the trash pickup service so the maintenance workers are exposed to less germs. Sanitizing and cleaning has been stepped up, the mail room is no longer a gathering place and the community room is closed. And yet when you look around the park, it’s like a time machine to a few months ago.

Given our ages, we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to fight this thing off. But we don’t know, and we’d prefer not to test that out, especially with the underlying health challenges we are aware of. We’re in a communal environment and that won’t be changing any time soon. We haven’t left the campground since March 16th.

We’re so thankful to have a safe place to be. And yet, it feels like we’re bracing ourselves for impact, because if our neighbors aren’t taking precautions seriously, it feels like it’s just a matter of time before things will start to change around here.

Take care everyone, and stay safe. Lots of love from Ross and Jamie in Florida.

P.S. If you missed your chance to learn about Ross and my new course, part of the Essential Work from Home Survival Kit, check it out! Our course is “Navigating Relationships When You’re Both Working From Home”, but the bundle covers a wide variety of topics and might help you relax and become more productive in the coming weeks. Now that we are thinking of it, maybe we should dive into that as some counter-programming this week!

______________________________

Supporting Our Blog

We are so thankful for your support of our blog and our careers! You can help by doing any or all of the following:

  • Purchase one of Ross’ albums!
  • Become a patron of our work!
  • Make purchases via our Amazon website links. There is no additional cost to you, and a portion of the proceeds can support our travels. Begin your Amazon search here.
  • Make other purchases using our affiliate links. Capital One 360 is one everyone can take advantage of to save money! Signing up with Dosh is a great way for everyone with a smartphone to support us, and we also have options for aspiring virtual assistants as well as occasional and full-time RVers to save money.
  • Listen to, subscribe and review our theater comedy podcast, Finishing The Season!
  • Subscribe to our blog, as well as perhaps InSearchOfAScoop.com, and recommend our work to your friends and family.
  • Take music or theater lessons (group or private) from us, either in person or via Skype at TinyVillageMusic.com.

Thankful and Fearful for Stay-at-Home

| jamiefeinberg

So the order to stay at home has finally come down from the governor of Florida. Since we’ve committed ourselves to staying here for the long haul, and since we’re Florida residents, staying put at this campground in central Florida remains our best option.

When the order came down on Wednesday, my feelings of thankfulness quickly made way for fear. Had I done enough to stock up on supplies? What if deliveries didn’t go as planned? What if my clients don’t need me to work for them anymore? What if we can’t get the aid we need? What if, what if, what if…

There are so many unknowns right now. I can’t do anything about that. All I can do is put one foot in front of the other, and hug my immediate family (my husband and my cat), and enjoy the meal in front of me or the beautiful sunny sky.

So each day, I will try to soak in a little bit more of the things that I love that I can control or enjoy right now. I’m having tea with family this weekend. I make phone calls, I write emails, I send texts. I relish “virtual happy hours” with co-workers and remote yoga classes and days without needing a/c and nights full of sleep. I write letters to representatives and know when to turn off the news stream. I discover new TV shows with my husband, appreciate his cooking evermore and work my way through my client checklists to keep my clients as happy as possible.

I know I can’t control it all forever. I know my family can’t either. But we can take care of ourselves as best we can. We can do the work to clean and isolate and exercise and give ourselves room to grieve and cry and also laugh and breathe. And we can know that whatever tomorrow brings, however long this journey is, we will have done all we could to live our lives in joy and thankfulness in the midst of adversity.

Sending so much love to all of you. Thank you to everyone who is making it possible for me, and others like me, to stay home. And thank you, for doing your part each and every day as we work to kick this virus to the curb.

Stay safe, friends.

______________________________

Supporting Our Blog

We are so thankful for your support of our blog and our careers! You can help by doing any or all of the following:

  • Purchase one of Ross’ albums!
  • Become a patron of our work!
  • Make purchases via our Amazon website links. There is no additional cost to you, and a portion of the proceeds can support our travels. Begin your Amazon search here.
  • Make other purchases using our affiliate links. Capital One 360 is one everyone can take advantage of to save money! Signing up with Dosh is a great way for everyone with a smartphone to support us, and we also have options for aspiring virtual assistants as well as occasional and full-time RVers to save money.
  • Listen to, subscribe and review our theater comedy podcast, Finishing The Season!
  • Subscribe to our blog, as well as perhaps InSearchOfAScoop.com, and recommend our work to your friends and family.
  • Take music or theater lessons (group or private) from us, either in person or via Skype at TinyVillageMusic.com.

The Practice of Finding Joy Daily

| jamiefeinberg

We’re on Day 10 of our self-imposed quarantine, and we are healthy and I think handling things about as well as can be expected right now. Since last week’s blog, we’ve been getting a lot done:

  • We signed up for, recorded, edited and submitted a lecture & questionnaire as part of a new course on working from home.
  • We sent out an email to our ukulele list with a video lesson and all the materials needed to learn to play the song “Wagon Wheel”.
  • We created and completed about 2/3 of an “In Case of Emergency” doc that had been on our to-do list for several years, in the event that one of us becomes incapacitated and the other person has to step in for them.
  • We had lots of phone and video calls with friends and family.
  • We had a virtual Happy Hour with some of Jamie’s co-workers.
  • Ross played a lot of Animal Crossing.
  • Jamie took four yoga/meditation classes with great instructors.
  • Ross edited several podcasts & Jamie completed a week’s worth of virtual assistance for her clients.
  • We researched online food ordering options, put in our first orders & made decisions about how we’ll be proceeding in the near future.
  • We had a game night and played Sabacc (from Star Wars).

So despite lots of mind wandering and wondering about how we and those we love will be able to get through this, we’ve still been quite productive, and while everything is still surreal and frustrating and frightening, we’ve got a clear road map to follow as we move forward. And I think that’s the key for us. By having clear goals, a schedule (especially for Jamie) and taking time each day for gratitude, I think we’re going to get through this. And I hope and pray that you will too.

How are you getting through this? Any suggestions you’d share with others?

Take care and be well.

______________________________

Supporting Our Blog

We are so thankful for your support of our blog and our careers! You can help by doing any or all of the following:

  • Purchase one of Ross’ albums!
  • Become a patron of our work!
  • Make purchases via our Amazon website links. There is no additional cost to you, and a portion of the proceeds can support our travels. Begin your Amazon search here.
  • Make other purchases using our affiliate links. Capital One 360 is one everyone can take advantage of to save money! Signing up with Dosh is a great way for everyone with a smartphone to support us, and we also have options for aspiring virtual assistants as well as occasional and full-time RVers to save money.
  • Listen to, subscribe and review our theater comedy podcast, Finishing The Season!
  • Subscribe to our blog, as well as perhaps InSearchOfAScoop.com, and recommend our work to your friends and family.
  • Take music or theater lessons (group or private) from us, either in person or via Skype at TinyVillageMusic.com.

You Know You’re An RVer When…

Gross smells I Ross and Jamie Adventure
| jamiefeinberg

Gross smells I Ross and Jamie Adventure

I wrote my second post for The Virtual Campground and I am SO proud of it!

I think it’s one of the funniest blogs I’ve written, and I hope you’ll agree.

Head here to check it out! 

__________________________________

Supporting Our Blog

We are so thankful for your support of our blog and our careers! You can help by doing any or all of the following:

  • Purchase one of Ross’ albums!
  • Become a patron of our work!
  • Make purchases via our Amazon website links. There is no additional cost to you, and a portion of the proceeds can support our travels. Begin your Amazon search here.
  • Make other purchases using our affiliate links. Capital One 360 is one everyone can take advantage of to save money! Signing up with Dosh is a great way for everyone with a smartphone to support us, and we also have options for aspiring virtual assistants as well as occasional and full-time RVers to save money.
  • Listen to, subscribe and review our theater comedy podcast, Finishing The Season!
  • Subscribe to our blog, as well as perhaps InSearchOfAScoop.com, and recommend our work to your friends and family.
  • Take music or theater lessons (group or private) from us, either in person or via Skype at TinyVillageMusic.com.

Five Unexpected Places To Visit In The U.S.

| jamiefeinberg

I’ve recently started blogging for The Virtual Campground, a wonderful community of RVers and aspiring RVers with a sense of humor, fun and compassion throughout. I’m honored to be sharing my thoughts over there, and it’s challenged me to up my blogging game with new topics for a new audience.

My first effort there covers five of my favorite unexpected places that we’ve discovered in our travels. Let me know what you think!

I-20 Wildlife Refuge, Midland, TX I Ross and Jamie Adventure
1-20 Wildlife Refuge in Midland, Texas

__________________________________

Supporting Our Blog

We are so thankful for your support of our blog and our careers! You can help by doing any or all of the following:

  • Purchase one of Ross’ albums!
  • Become a patron of our work!
  • Make purchases via our Amazon website links. There is no additional cost to you, and a portion of the proceeds can support our travels. Begin your Amazon search here.
  • Make other purchases using our affiliate links. Capital One 360 is one everyone can take advantage of to save money! Signing up with Dosh is a great way for everyone with a smartphone to support us, and we also have options for aspiring virtual assistants as well as occasional and full-time RVers to save money.
  • Listen to, subscribe and review our theater comedy podcast, Finishing The Season!
  • Subscribe to our blog, as well as perhaps InSearchOfAScoop.com, and recommend our work to your friends and family.
  • Take music or theater lessons (group or private) from us, either in person or via Skype at TinyVillageMusic.com.