Dirk and I have sold both our restaurants, both our cars, listed the house as a vacation rental and are taking the rest of the year to travel.

Times have changed. Long gone are traveler’s cheques, sending postcards, and having the family over after a big trip for the boring and ever too long ‘slide show’. Now, we have blogs and social media to help keep everyone up on our adventures. It also helps me calm my mom down from freaking out that we are so far away.

We are starting our adventure by heading to California until the end of April. From there, we are going to explore Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, & Thailand. We will then jump across the pond (with a brief stop in Alberta) to spend time in Ireland, Scotland and London.

Thanks for Following my blog, my dry humour, and my mediocre writing skills.

My husband  has ‘An Old Man’s Back’ that hurts all the time. I never really thought about how getting old will suck, until yesterday.

I was in the office when I heard a strange voice. ‘What the hell! Did someone just walk into the kitchen off the street?!’ Then I heard a timid little voice, ‘I am lost’. I turned and saw a tiny elderly lady, clearly in her 80’s, wiping her eyes.

‘Where do you live?’

She tells us the name of the her apartment and we explain to her how to get there. This lady was clearly not understanding, but says she does. Off she goes on her walk home, proclaiming the entire time that she can’t believe she is lost and so turned around. I later found out was she actually got off the bus two stops too early, making me wonder why she was out on her own.

I could not get this knot out of my tummy. So I grab one of my servers and off we go after her. We find her at the next corner and still confused. We put her in the truck and go to where google tells us, but she still can’t figure it out. So we drive around until she finally proclaims ‘There it is, I live on the 3rd floor. My husband will be so worried I am so late.’ I help her out of the truck, she thanks us for being so kind and walks into her building.

Once we are back in the car, I look at my employee, ‘Fuck, getting old is going to suck!’

As a kid we all get asked, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’. The answer is always filled with dreams of being doctors, lawyers, astronauts and firemen. Although, as a female, we all grow up also dreaming of being with doctors, lawyers, astronauts and fireman. I can tell you now, none of those kids are what they first answered or we would have a shit load of ‘billionaire playboy superheros’ and ‘princesses’.

I find asking this questions at any age is ridiculous. I am 45 years old and still not sure what it is I am going to end up being when I grow up. Don’t get me wrong, I did it all right. I graduated from high school – so I had a good start with ‘educated’ and not ‘drop out’. At that point I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up, so I did what every lost 18 year old would do, I got a job in a restaurant. It was a great job filled with fun and, of course, money. I was living the dream.

It was after three years of working I asked ‘What do I want be when I grow up?’ I  decided I wanted to be an accountant, so I went back to college and proceeded to get several acronyms behind my name. I worked as an accountant for about 10 years before I realized how boring it was.

Again I asked, ‘What do I want to be when I grow up?’ It was answered when my company was looking for accountants to move into IT and help with a new software they were implementing. I was revived and my question answered again, I was now an IT Analysis. This job lead me through an amazing career ending up as a manager at a large Consulting firm. But, it was stressful and tiring, so change was again needed.

Again I asked, ‘What do I want to be when I grow up?’ My husband answered the question this time by asking for my help opening our second restaurant. It is exciting, yet scary, I have come full circle back to the restaurant life, so maybe the answer to my question was answered when I was 18.

Or was it?