This is the life

Micah's knee injury healed well. It had taken the better part of three weeks for his knee to fully heal, but its now looking like a big shiny patch of new, pink skin, an island in a sea of brown. For a while there he still behaved like he needed to be handled with kid gloves, constantly asking, "Mama! Have you seen my knee? Is it looking normal? Is this normal? I don't think the scab is on it any more!" I'd respond with something along the lines of eye rolling, exaggerated disinterest so he stops with the knee at some point...or I would take time to look at his new skin with great interest before saying, "Wow, that has healed really well!" 

Besides his knee, we have other injuries to contend with. A few weeks ago, I did something clumsy, slipped while walking down the steps into the galley. I felt my big toe slide hard across the edge of the step, followed swiftly by the rest of my foot and then the rest of me...and since these spaces are always so tight, I slammed the same toe, attached to the same foot, into the cabinet attached to the floor in front of me. Oh, man, that hurt so damn bad, no words can describe how bad. I felt this searing pain, more akin to a burn you get from very hot water mistakenly being poured on your skin, and my big toe on my left foot just wouldn't stop burning. I stood up eventually, with zero sympathy from anyone around, my husband saying something along the lines of, "those damn pants are too long for you, no wonder you slipped!" and so I just kinda sucked it up, the excruciation and the need to share the agony in words that were the only means to disperse some of that pain. 

That busted toe, initially didn't feel too bad, but an hour later, once my body had run out of its natural pain relief hormones, I winced with every single step I took. We had just arrived in Mallorca and the plan for the day was to drive part of the island to explore what we could not explore from the waters edge. I said very little because I didn't want to pull a Micah, but I was in a whole universe of pain. Add to this, I ended up with menstrual cramping and back pain on the same day, and let me tell you, I was doing everything in my power not to scream at passers by or to strangle myself so I didn't have to suffer another day. 

I walked on that foot. I avoided trying to take it easy on the toe because I knew that would only have me walking lopsided and that in turn would lead to back and shoulder pain purely because I was not walking appropriately. Every single step sent a searing pain up my leg that then radiated into my back, I am glad we had a damn car for most of what we needed to do. For the rest of it, I just suffered in silence. 

Four days. That is how long it took for my toe to heal. I would say that is record time because in the past, a similar injury would have taken me a month to heal. I would have gone about it completely differently. I would have used an ice pack, I would have stayed off the foot, I would have taken it easy...but this time I did the opposite. I proceeded to walk on it, I used Arnica ointment (one of the few homeopathic remedies I actually believe has some merit), CBD balsam to massage both my legs up to the knees at the end of each painful day, and other than a big dose of Panadol on Day 01 of the injury, I took no other pain relief or anti-inflammatory. From Day 01 where I had an inflamed, swollen, navy blue foot until Day 04 when I was swimming with closed toe fins on, I ensured to keep up with my light workout program so I maintained blood flow to my limbs. Daily self-massage to work on lymphatic drainage and I have to say even I was surprised. Its been a month or more since the injury and although I have some residual pain in the left side of that left foot, its more to do with tightness in my right hip or in my left shin, the area where I have nerve damage from a past ACL reconstruction injury. The pain has surfaced in the foot because I am now walking more and pedalling on a bicycle.

Am I really that old now that I can listen carefully to my body and know what its saying? Pshhh, maybe I am! I am just glad to be feeling better in such a short time because I did not feel like I would recover this fast when I saw and felt the initial injury. I feel a lot more confident about self-care now than I have ever felt in my life, not because I somehow know more, but because I know I have to be resourceful, resilient and robust if I am to continue to live this kind of life. There really isn't much to be gained in sitting around feeling sorry for oneself, you just got to get on with it because you still need to pick up mooring lines, you still need to be able to walk narrow spaces on deck to hang fenders, and you still need to tidy heavy ropes without tripping on them. 

Living on a boat, you get a lot of these sorts of injuries. The understanding is that you ought to be wearing shoes on deck, but most sailors tend to like being barefoot, just because, its not like we are sailing competitively, we are sailing at a pace we set and in order to get from one place to another. Wearing shoes indoors is a no go, so where I got my injury, it was just parr for the course. On deck, however, the common injuries are to toes, ankles, shins and sometimes thighs. Bruises adorn all of our legs, the kids included. If you ask any of us how we got the bruise, we wouldn't honestly be able to remember where or how, it just happens. Hitting your head is also a commonality. You can hit your head on a shelf, a jutting out part of padded wall, a doorway, a cabinet, a counter, and just about any time you pass under the boom, you could well smack your forehead or the crown of your head because you misjudged its location or you simply didn't see it because you had a hat on.  

Still, I wouldn't trade this for minor injuries for a life with other minor injuries that happen to have a doctor close at hand.

We could own a nice home. We could own a nice car. We could own a boat while owning a nice home and a nice car, but we'd also have to have nice jobs to which we'd drive our nice car so we could afford our nice home. We'd have to pay taxes on the home and the car, annually, despite already having paid taxes on them when we bought them in the first place. We would have to pay taxes on the salary we earned, losing a chunk of it after having worked our asses off. We'd then have to save our money in banks that make us pay them for us lending them our money. We still have to maintain one or two of these insane things in our lives, but its good to have cut some of that down to where we are now. 

My husband turned to me the other day, as we sat on the deck of the boat, just basking in the sun, legs crossed, staring across the bay we are moored in. 

"Do you like this life?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, are you happy with this life we are living? This...here...living on this boat, in this bay for the time being, just living..."

"Yeah, why wouldn't I be?"

"I don't know..." he shrugged. "Its just that I find it hard to consider ever going back, you know? Back to owning a house, driving a nice car, having a job that pays for all of that...paying taxes on everything we own and everything we buy. If we had to calculate how much of ones hard earned money goes into paying taxes on everything from gas to electricity, all the way down to the tax you pay for the wine you buy, do you ever wonder what it all adds up to?" 

"I'll be honest, I never thought about that sort of stuff until I owned a restaurant!" I confessed. 

"Yeah, even that! I don't think, even if it came down to us wanting to settle down somewhere, I wouldn't want you to go back to owning a restaurant," he confessed. "You will bust your ass, you will pay rates on the high rent you already pay, you will pay salaries to others before you can pay yourself, and you will never get anything for all your hard work and dedication that wouldn't come without having given your pound of flesh to earn it."

He's right, I know he is. I am not bitter about having had the experiences I have had with the restaurant, I have no regrets. I just wish that a capitalist system wasn't such a prison sometimes. I think about the life we used to have and I think about the lives my friends and my family still have. Sometimes I think that we are living in a bubble just as much as they are living in a bubble, its just different bubbles. 

We recently learned that a friend of ours who had been working between Hong Kong and Australia has decided to move his family back to Hong Kong from Australia to get them away from the insanity that is happening with Covid-19 restrictions and government mandates. Isn't it funny? For people to be moving from Australia, a democratic country, to Hong Kong, which, lets face it, is getting more tightly controlled by the Chinese Communist government, because its actually a better option?

What the hell is happening in the world? I mean, seriously?

We are in a bubble because we live on this boat, we have had little or no problem sailing from port to port, country to country...our vaccine passport may be 3 months old by now, and every day brings more confusing news on exactly how effective the vaccines are, whether they will last 6 months or 4, whether its possible they could protect for up to a year, who knows?

Will we get another vaccine? Or will we stick to taking PCR tests if they are needed? I honestly don't know how to answer those questions in a world where people are getting up in arms about the Covid-19 Vaccine, panicking about whether or not you are safe to come around someone's house if you are or aren't vaccinated. I suppose we don't need to worry about that. We don't have a house for people to come around to and I am finding that even since we have made it to Ragusa, Sicily, our winter resting spot, no one gives a shit about your vaccine status, in fact, many of the families we have interacted with have not been vaccinated, they have jobs that afford them the luxury of working from any location & their kids are home-schooled like ours.

Vaxx dodgers, I believe they will one day be labelled! Lol. Our kids are playing with a tonne of other unvaccinated kids, and although my husband and I have been vaccinated, judging by the news we catch up on, talk of "mix & match" boosters and mandatory vaccines for school age kids in the US is becoming the norm.

Every Instagram I stumble across because the algorithm sent me that shit, I see bot after bot posting one agenda or the next that relates back to the vaccine. I wonder, is it people? Or are they all paid for bots? How could so many people blindly believe what they are told by government agencies who have proven time and again to not have the peoples best interests at heart? I am all for vaccinating against childhood diseases, but I have no qualms in saying I have never gotten the flu vaccine, and this here Covid-19 vaccine, I got it because I felt it would make our chances of travel easier. It is still not as simple as you think, if you have been travelling into one country via conventional air travel, you have to prove to the next one that you are free of Covid-19 either through a PCR test or through quarantine. You still need to be doing all the stuff you would need to if you hadn't got the vaccine! 

Sure, they have assured one and all that if we get the virus we will get "less sick" as long as we have been vaccinated...but I know people who had the vaccine, still got sick, and I know people who had the vaccine, that then got sick anyway and have passed away. I just find it so insane that vaccination status has become politicized. As I said, I got the Jansen vaccine, but if there is a need for more of them, or even a mandated need, I will a lot to consider when planning future travel. Covid-19 is not going to be the last pandemic we contend with, there will be more zoonotic viruses to come, as long as we continue to factory farm, as long as we continue to eat animals, and as long as we continue to play God in labs on foreign soil, we can guarantee that the future will have more of these pandemics. So how many more vaccines are we going to shove into our bodies before we figure it all out? We are currently going through the largest human trial of a vaccine in history, we have yet to see where this will take us in five years. 

Trust the Science...that is the phrase you hear over and over. I trust Science. I believe in Science. I know the earth is round, I know that you can prevent crippling childhood diseases with vaccines, I believe that climate change is real. I have been a staunch atheist who believes in Science and Science alone for decades of my short life. What I don't trust is Science that is rushed to production and I certainly do not trust the pharmaceutical industry. I have had a general distrust for old school doctors and pill dispensing pharmacies ever since a specialist told me "don't worry about it!" when I was diagnosed with cysts and lesions on my liver that then spread across my liver thanks to following that advise. Its when I took matter into my own hands and healed myself through diet and using more traditional medicine. I love how we say "alternative" medicine as if the only gold standard is the one brought to us by the great minds that also brought us colonialism, capitalism and slavery. 

It is what it is. I could go on for a phenomenal length of time, but I would also like to switch the topic to something a bit lighter because today marks the 1 year anniversary of Jeroen losing his job. In fact, yesterday marks that day. 

One year ago, a year ago yesterday evening to be precise, my husband received that email telling him not just that he had lost his job but that so had all his colleagues, that Cathay Dragon was no more. Life couldn't be more different then than it is for us today. We are sitting here in Sicily, the sun shining, our new bicycles and electric scooter parked nearby, social gatherings with random neighbours happen almost daily and our kids seem to invite random kids over to the boat for hours on end. We haven't even been here a week and already we have had a beach clean up that we participated in, a hike that we were invited to, a thanksgiving dinner a month from now that we are meant to be begin being prepared for by volunteering our oven and stove top spaces so that the chef who is planning it, an American gentleman, can pull it all together on the day. 

People are so damn nice here. Like...Truman Show kinda nice. Its taking some getting used to. I know most people who know me think I am the ultimate extrovert and that I would be lapping this up, but honestly, I have been living with just my family for the last 10 months, give or take a trip back to Hong Kong where I was tossed about in a sea of hyper social leaving parties that left me reeling, so suddenly having new people around, each of them nicer than the last, its enough to make one feel nostalgic for the quiet comfort of aloneness. 

The beauty of this experience is that you still live in a cocoon that is your boat. 

You go out and that is where the rest of the world resides, but if you don't want to go out, you can still sit on deck, soak up the rays, get some work done, read, write, do your yoga on deck, get your kettlebells out and do some weights...and if you want to get out there and be alone, you can still hop on your bicycle and go for a 10km ride on a perfectly safe and exclusive bike path. 

Its really quite beautiful here, aesthetically, I mean. Sunsets are a glorious symphony of pastels and you are constantly reminded of how breathtaking the sky is because you see it reflected on the water around you. We are getting time to think about our plans for the future. Are we going to make it to the Caribbean by next winter or are we going to lengthen our sailing exploration of Greece, Turkey and maybe even make it to Tunisia? The Mediterranean has so much to offer. What is the rush? Why do we need to head for the Caribbean next winter, the ideal time to make that crossing, if this is our life now? Where's the fire? What is the rush? Why not wait until we have managed to buy our dream boat, our forever boat? Hey, like I said, we are thinking about this a lot, yep, even a forever boat! Lol.

The kids have settled into their home schooling well. Their reports back on their assignments so far have them scoring in the 90's every time. I know sometimes it feels to us like we are pulling teeth, but they are getting more emboldened and confident in their abilities, soaking up Mathematics concepts like sponges, experiencing Science concepts first hand, and learning English in a whole new way for the first time, with a teacher (me) who is willing to wait until they understand exactly what the present perfect tense is before moving on to chipping another block off the grammar megalith. 

Not sure if I mentioned this before but we have both of them in Year 4, essentially Sasha is redoing a year. The reason for this was mainly because of the mess that Covid-19 brought to all our lives, and how the standard in-person schooling routine, hastily modified for home-school set up, was not exactly ideal for a kid who had learning support at school nor for parents who had no idea what was being taught or how to teach it. With the current set up, with Wolsey Hall Oxford, we get given lesson plans, helpful teaching tools and assignments all meant to tie together all the loose ends of knowledge that the kids are meant to one day understand without difficulty in retaining the information learned. 

The beauty of home-schooling is that you can go as fast or as slow as you choose to. You can cover certain topics really quickly and you can take more time of ones that the are harder to grasp. No one is left behind because they didn't get a hang of it in the same time as the rest of the class. Initially the home schooling was hard for myself and my husband, mainly because we are unfortunately brought up to be high achievers with excessively high expectations of ourselves and therefore, of others. Time, and the support of the incredible team at Wolsey Hall Oxford, have made us view the experience as a marathon more than a sprint, for us to take a long, hard look at ourselves and our motivation, what we hope to achieve for our children, and its made us a little less hard-assed and a bit more resilient when it comes to dealing with the kids on a bad day. Home school is swiftly becoming a source of pride and joy for all of us and the assignments are becoming a welcome challenge more than a dreaded endgame.

It does feel good to finally be berthed in a marina for an extended period of time. I have to admit, not all the journey here has been easy. We made it from Ibiza to Mallorca and from there we made the big hop over to Sardinia. By the time we got to that leg of the journey, it felt like the weather became less predictable and the seas even less so. Unpredictable weather meant we were sometimes stuck in one spot longer than we planned, waiting until the winds changed to somewhat in our favour. Howling winds meant that the sea was not as inviting.

On rough seas, you feel this lurching, your heart drops down into your belly and your stomach hops up into your chest. The feeling is similar to sudden, almost free-fall that you experience in turbulence in a plane, the kind where people get injured! On a boat, unlike in a plane, it never stops! It could continue for hours on end...its just a constant battering by the waves. In human nature, we may feel something similar when we fall in love, that weird flip-flop feeling where you have butterflies in your stomach and your heart wants to burst out of your chest. We can have similar feelings when something terrible happens, like a loved one dying or a relationship ending abruptly...that is when the mind and body get so confused, much like they do on a rough sea, you feel anxious and nauseous even when you know you are completely safe in a strong and dependable boat...and more important, you are alive, that there is no threat to your own life. 

I get anxious every time we plan a longer crossing, and no one time is an exception. The few hours sleep we managed to get before we made the crossing to Sardinia, leaving at 1am, I found myself struggling to fall asleep because memories I had left long buried, surfaced, memories of shame, regret, the kind you want to hide from even in your darkest moments, moments of deep sadness from youth...they all surfaced. This was the first time I was able to be aware, mindful that this is what happens to me when I am anxious, this is what has always happened to me when I am anxious, I have never really sat with that discomfort before, not without calling up a friend to find time to drink a bottle of wine with. That feeling of "I need to get out of here"...when you live on a boat, when you are sailing on the sea, you just learn to sit with the discomfort and you learn to make peace with it. Sitting with discomfort has been exactly what I have been working towards in my mindfulness practice.

Sailing...life at sea...it has helped bring many realizations to the surface. I have finally begun serious work on trauma, thanks in part to the incredible work of Dr. Gabor Mate and his supporters, I realize that there is a lot of work I now have time to do, for myself, and that the benefactors of me doing that work will be my family, but more importantly, me. I am learning to come to grip with meditating on Loving Kindness...to be patient and to sit with discomfort, its a slow learning process but a totally worthwhile one. I had stumbled across the work of Dr. Mate purely by chance. If any of you are interested in checking it out, the new documentary film is called The Wisdom of Trauma and although I paid for access initially during their second release of the film, I believe there is still a lot of great information on there for those who may be interested. I paid for "all access" so I could get to watch, in my own time, the more than 17 hours of talks with experts, and its been the best decision of my life. While working a full time job and spending all my waking hours caring for others, it would have been impossible for me to take this time to work on myself. I am truly grateful for this here opportunity to see life and the world around me, in a completely different light. (You can find more info at https://www.thewisdomoftrauma.com/)

I am learning that regret is also not such a bad emotion to experience. As David Whyte says, anyone who says, "I don't regret anything" is possibly a psychopath! I used to say I had no regrets, but now I am a bit more selective about the things I admit to not regretting. There are, so it has emerged from my subconscious, many things in my life I do regret, but that is fine, because now I can finally move on from that.  

"To admit regret is to understand that we are fallible - that there are powers beyond us. To admit regret is to lose control not only of a difficult past but of the very story we tell about our present. To admit sincere and abiding regret is one of our greatest but unspoken contemporary sins." - David Whyte - 

Emotions are emotions, they are neither good nor bad, it is how we process them that matters. I feel more capable, more ready, and more willing to do the work on processing them now than I have in the past, and that is a good thing, for real. 

Our days now, as we settle into Ragusa, start with waking when we wake...its a luxury that most people do not get and one we are supremely grateful for. To wake when you wake...not to an alarm that wakes you mid sleep cycle, and then to eat breakfast when you are hungry, not purely because you need to shovel something into your body so you can fuel it until your lunch break...to eat only when hungry, that too is a luxury, a deprogramming that has been necessary for our family, and finally, to be able to get daily movement in, cycling, walking, kicking a football about on the nearby beach...or even just yoga or TRX on the deck, this feels so natural and free that its going to be tough to give it up when we leave here. 

We've already made up our minds that we will winter in Ragusa, in this same marina, next winter. Why not? The weather is amazing, the marina is super chill, people are nice, and its totally affordable and the facilities are great. 

Our first solid day here we rented an SUV and we went to Decathalon and bought three bikes, for myself and the kids, and an electric scooter for my husband. So now, we have something to wander slightly longer distances to supermarkets and in to town. It feels good to be moving again...physically moving our bodies. 

I have already put down a deposit on my Camino Portuguese, planned for the 6th of April to the 15th of April 2022. Its the Portuguese leg of El Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage made by many people, religious and atheist alike, annually, and I hope to have some time to just hold space for myself while I go through the experience. 2021 was meant to be the Holy Year, but because of all the restrictions that were imposed during the pandemic, the Pope has extended the Holy Year to 2022, so I will ensure to stick around in Santiago de Compostela another few days after my pilgrimage ends so as to spend Easter Sunday there. Easter Sunday will be on the 17th of April 2022. I know, I am an atheist, but old habits die hard. I am a born, baptised and confirmed Roman Catholic, and I would love to be part of the experience of not only making it as a pilgrim of The Way of Saint James, but also to take part in the Eucharist on Easter Sunday at the final destination for the pilgrimage, the church in Compostela. I am participating in the pilgrimage as more of a walking meditation, a time of solitude, a chance to be with myself in contemplation more than I am doing so as a religious pilgrimage, but the significance of what I am undertaking is not lost on me. I am starkly aware that I am taking part in a journey that has been ongoing for centuries and spanning many countries, cultures and peoples from all walks of life, it feels pretty incredible to know I am finally doing this! I have dreamed of doing The Camino since my 20's, so I am genuinely looking forward to April next year. I have already bought some of the gear needed, my hiking boots, backpack, and honestly, many of the other items I already have...good hiking socks...and soon I will begin training here, walking 10K a day, from the marina to the next town over. 

Training...

Wow, its funny to think of how much has changed in our lives. We no longer have gym memberships, we don't have a car to guzzle fuel or pay parking on, we don't have rent to pay, we don't have to pay for the school bus or for a helper, we don't get to hit up movie theatres or bars when bored, and we don't have a revolving door of social gatherings to make up for a life lived working ourselves to death...life has really been simplified...I know, many people worry, especially friends and family, about how we will survive this life without jobs, but you'd be surprised how little this life costs. You can't actually spend money, and what money you put into maintenance pales in comparison to what it costs to support a life lived in a big city. Life is simple...life is manageable...life just is about waking when you wake, eating when you are hungry, learning when you are ready to learn and sleeping when you are tired. The rest is all about spending time with the ones who matter most, being there for your kids, being there for each other...and most importantly, showing up for yourself...having time to get to know yourself better, that has been the greatest challenge and the most incredible gift I have received since we made this incredible decision to leave Hong Kong and take this new path that clearly, is well trodden, because we are surrounded by by so many people who have been living this life for years longer than we have, so its comforting to know that it clearly is easier than we assumed it to be.

I guess that is why I haven't written in a while. I felt there was no real impetus for me to write purely for the sake of writing, keeping up with a schedule that I was not succeeding in keeping up with, mainly because life is just so "go with the flow" now that I would find it hard to share something new on a regular basis. I still enjoy writing, I just want to be able to write when it matters instead of purely because I am supposed to be productive. 

I recently read an interview of one of my favourite actors, Lee Pace, and he was asked what advice he would give to his younger self. He answered it so perfectly, "I would say that there’s nothing better than being relaxed. That it’s not just a luxury to be relaxed and to make being a relaxed person a priority in your life, it’s key. I think about times in my life when I was worried about one thing or another or trying to control one thing or another that was not really inside my control. I’m feeling now, in my life, coming out of this experience of COVID, and travelling under the regulations of COVID, and everything, a real sense of gratitude and perspective, and thinking about death and health and how important health is, and being a relaxed person."

This is where I am right now. I had a really big scare while we were anchored off Sardinia, I had what I am confident was a gallbladder attack. I had this intense, excruciating pain in my midsection, just under my ribcage and radiating out to my arms, and for about 30 minutes, I was curled up on the bathroom floor, unable to move, arms and hands frozen in place with tingling pins and needles. I know for sure, being as I feel my presence within my body more clearly than I have ever before, that it is pretty likely I passed a gallstone. 

It scared the shit out of my kids and it certainly scared my husband real good because we were in the middle of nowhere, no hospital in sight, and not even any houses in the bay we had anchored in. I know for sure that what caused the gallstone was a number of factors. The main three I can think of is my age, I am a peri-menopausal woman over 40, I had just spent the previous 33 days strictly intermittent fasting (calorie restriction and fasting can contribute) and I had also dropped about 3 kgs or so in that time, so not only can age, hormones, fasting, calorie restriction and sudden drop in weight cause gallstones, when it happened to me I was actually not surprised. How I dealt with it is what will matter more than anything. 

Dr. Gabor Mate has a book called, "When the body says No", a book about the connection between stress and the body, and although I haven't read it yet, it was a subject touched upon in the documentary film I recently watched...and it hit home hard. I have struggled with many problems over the years and all of them can be traced back to stress. My liver, my inner ear issue, my gut health, and now my gallbladder. I know that my body is saying, "no more". So I have chosen to listen, to be kinder to myself, to listen to my inner monologue more, and to stop expecting more of my body than my body is capable of giving me. I have been phenomenally ungrateful and unkind to my body, pushing desperately to attain unrealistic goals of physical being, and in turn, my body has pushed back. 

I have since stopped fasting, my body has happily settled back to where it was before all that battery and now I have just made peace with where I am at and knowing that nothing is permanent. Life is a marathon, not a sprint. At some point, I will make it to a doctors office and ask for a quick ultrasound of my gallbladder, maybe I have a collection of pebbles in there, who knows, but I am not in a rush at this stage.

At some point in the next few months, we will head to Malta for a week or two. There my husband and I will take turns learning to freedive by taking a course with an accredited program in Malta. The course offer is a weekend long affair, so it can be done in two weekends, one weekend for him while I watch the kids and one for me while he watches the kids. Once we learn to freedive, we will be equipped to explore the beautiful coastal areas of Greece and beyond. I have always wanted to learn how to freedive, so this too is another one of those life experiences that would have been harder for me to fit into my life it we had remained in Hong Kong. When we were there we were looking forward to learning how to Freedive in Taiwan, but then Covid-19 hit...and that plan just kinda had to be put on hold, indefinitely...Sailing has opened up all possibilities for us. We haven't had any issues with vaccine passport requests or PCR tests...most places we haven't even been asked. 

I know that at some point the whole Schengen thing will become an issue, but if we camp in Croatia or Tunisia for a handful of months, or even if only I do so while my card-carrying EU passport holder family continue their wandering through EU countries, we will be fine. For now, I continue to hold Dutch residency, but we have had some back and forth questioning of that status from the Dutch Immigration Department, so I do not expect to retain that status the longer I remain out of Holland. Its understandable even if its going to make our lives a bit more complicated to stay continually together.

Meh, we will cross that bridge when we get to it. For now, all is well...life is good. This is the life...