As you all know, our blog postings are behind real time (see About the Blog). You may have noticed that sometimes a post will cover only half a day, and sometime a post will cover three or four days. We only write about what we think is interesting, so if nothing interesting happens for a few days, we condense those days into one story. Over the next few posts, this condensing will be very noticeable. This compression of time simply means the blog is closer to real-time than it was, which is a good thing, since we were getting pretty far behind real time. As an FYI, because it takes hours to write the stories and sort through the photos, the blog will always be behind real time.

We have been in Southern California for four days now. In some ways, it feels like we have never left. Almost everything looks the same and we immediately started to get back into the groove of our old life. When we saw Christi’s family, we just picked up where we left off.

But in other ways, it feels like a lot has changed. First and foremost, we felt the change with Eric’s family. When we got the call that we needed to come home, we had few specifics. We just knew that Eric’s mother was very ill and there was a possibility of death. His mom had gone to the doctor 3 times in as many weeks and was misdiagnosed and treated for things she didn’t have. She kept getting sicker. On the fourth visit, she was immediately hospitalized and had an emergency medical procedure done. They also figured out what was wrong with her. It was late stage, very aggressive lymphoma cancer that was affecting her lungs to the point that they weren’t working properly. She got an oncologist who started her on chemo right away and said her situation was “tenuous” at best. What is spooky is that her oncologist is named Dr. Kosmo. We think that is a good omen.

Christi’s mom died of cancer in 2002. When we first saw Eric’s mom, she was definitely sicker than Christi’s mom at the time of death. We were told she was doing better than she had been a few days before. We are pleased to report that in the last few days that we have been home, she has gotten a little better each and every day. This gives us all a lot of hope.

What has changed the most, though, is us. We are looking at California and America through a new set of eyes. We have a heightened appreciation for many things. Here are a few examples:

When we got into our rental car, we were amazed by the power the vehicle has. We are used to wimpy, gutless cars now. We were thrilled by the huge, well maintained, and easy to use road system with good, clear signs. We couldn’t believe that most drivers actually follow the rules of the road. We haven’t seen anyone drive on the sidewalk or the other side of the road or anything crazy like that yet!

When we go to the restroom, we are happy to know there is a 100% chance it will be a toilet and not a squat hole. We are happy that we can count on there being toilet paper, and high enough quality toilet paper that doesn’t fall apart in your hand. It is nice that we can put the toilet paper into the toilet, and that the flush is usually powerful enough to get it all in one flush. We are so happy that public restrooms are generally clean and almost always have soap and paper towels.

We are thankful that in sit down restaurants we get silverware, napkins, and water. We are amazed by how quickly the food comes out and how good the service is.

We are appreciative that pretty much every single public interior space in Southern California is non-smoking. We appreciate that in Southern California there just aren’t that many smokers, and even outdoor spaces, like restaurant patios, usually have little/no smoke.

We are excited about unlimited water (especially hot water) and electricity. Yes, on our boat we have more water and electricity than most other cruisers do, but we still have to carefully watch consumption of those resources.

Good trash service is very high on the most appreciated amenities list nowadays. You have no idea how invaluable trash services are until you go some place where it is not offered. Recycling services are a huge plus in our minds, too. Recycling has been hard to find most places we have been so far.

So far we can say in America, we honestly have the biggest selection of products available in the entire world, at the lowest overall price in the whole world. Yes, in some countries you can get a few selected items cheaper than you can in the US, but the rest of the items available are guaranteed to be significantly more money than in the US. And, except when we were in Singapore, there simply isn’t all that much available to start with.

On the flip side, we are more attuned to the unnecessary wastefulness of these resources than we were before. We are also a little taken aback at the tendency for excess in the USA. But most interesting of all, is that most Americans seem to be oblivious to just how opulent our basic lower middle class lifestyle is compared to the rest of the world.