Monday, 3/2/2020 – For the first time ever, we received refund from our Homeowner’s Insurance policy. Of course, since we no longer have a home, we overpaid on our annual policy, but, I’m counting it as a victory, as they sent me money, instead of the other way around for once! Woohoo for more money being stuffed into the “living our dream“ fund!

Tuesday, 3/3/2020 – Today was HUGE day for us! Today was the day that we completely paid off our boat loan! It was surprisingly difficult to get our financier to accept the lump-sum payoff. Way more difficult than I expected it to be, actually. But, after a week of phone calls, e-mails and pleading with them to accept our payoff payment, we are officially, 100% DEBT FREE! We owe absolutely zero money to anyone and it feels FANTASTIC! Something tells me that it may be perfect timing, as the talk of the “coronavirus” is increasing…

Saturday, 3/7/2020 – Making sure that the dog stays up to date on his shots has been a lurking priority, as we’re sure it’s going to become important in the not-so-distant future. Today was shot day for the year at the reduced-priced clinic. $84 and we’re good for another year!

Monday, 3/8/2020 – As of today, we’ve got just 15 working days left. Pretty surreal! This week is packed with daylight savings time, a full moon and Friday the 13th, so, it ought to be an interesting week!

Tuesday, 3/10/2020 – Josh and I made a quick trip to the local Etters, PA Walmart after dinner for some ice cream. While we were there, we figured we might as well go ahead and pick up dog food and toilet paper, as we were nearly out of our very small-living supply. I was SHOCKED to see the toilet paper shelves completely empty, while the hand soap shelves are full to the brim and look like they haven’t been touched. I’m baffled by the toilet-paper-hoarding that’s currently going on, apparently across the country. The CDC says the symptoms of the coronavirus are fever, dry cough, maybe some fatigue – much like the flu. The FLU, people, not violently shitting yourselves for weeks and needing 30 rolls of toilet paper to try to manage the after-effects. People are officially losing their minds…

Wednesday, 3/11/2020 – It’s official…the coronavirus has been named a pandemic by the World Health Organization. (I’m positive there will be absolutely no toilet paper left after this…) Good thing our “pandemic preparedness plan” includes moving onto our boat in just 16 days…

Friday, 3/13/2020 – Today’s events surrounding the coronavirus seem pretty fitting for Friday the 13th…

Saturday, 3/14/2020 – Going to let these photos here so that (hopefully) in a few years, we can reflect with hearts that are a bit lighter. These are photos from our local Etters, PA Walmart, where I’m currently doing all of our shopping…

Monday, 3/16/2020 – I woke up to notification from my CEO that we would be transitioning to remote and virtual operations in order to do our part to help slow the spread of the coronavirus. I’m infinitely thankful that I put in the hours of work months ago to get our agency to a point where it’s quick, simple and pretty daggone efficient to work remotely. Hours later, the Governor added his recommendations for the state…

Thursday, 3/19/2020 – I’m trying really hard to keep this blog post from being focused on the coronavirus, but, life keeps serving up unexpected situations this month. Today, our Governor ordered that all non-life-sustaining businesses close in order for people to stay home. For us, that means that Josh’s last day of in-person work will be tomorrow, which is one week earlier than our expected last day of next Friday. We’re trying to view it as a blessing, but, it’s tough. After 16+ years with his company, there will be no going away party, no in-person goodbyes, no opportunity to close things up, which just sucks…

Friday, 3/20/2020 – Day 4,092 of the pandemic. Our refugee camp welcomed another member today. Josh’s youngest brother packed up his stuff and came to join our peaceful (but loud) camp. Current situation: 4 adults and 2 loud, old, grumpy dogs are holed up playing World of Warcraft with plenty of snacks. The pandemic continues…

Monday, 3/23/2020 – Another day, another grim bit of news…

Tuesday, 3/24/2020 – Day 6,475 of the pandemic. Made a food run yesterday and found more empty shelves than food, but, Middleswarth BBQ chips, oatmeal creme pies and chocolate were procured. Spirits were running high in our refugee group until the power went out at 11:30am. Some of the camp reverted to cleaning the basement with a battery powered lantern to stay busy while the rest of us ate chocolate…

Friday, 3/27/2020 – Today was Alexis’s 35th birthday and our much anticipated final day of work. Given the current state of affairs with the coronavirus chaos, today was pretty anticlimatic on both fronts. I decided I’m taking a semi-raincheck on my birthday and will cash that in after things calm down so we can at least have a few cocktails with friends and family. On the work front, we’re having some feelings about not really having any closure – no in person goodbyes, no dinners – because of all the social distancing stuff. We’ve decided we’re kind of in the same situation with work – taking a semi-raincheck on being able to properly say goodbye to our work families once things calm down. We planned to pack the vehicles and head to the boat this afternoon, which ended up being perfect timing, as the PA Governor issued a stay at home order for York County (where we had been temporarily staying) this afternoon. We hopped in our vehicles and headed to boat in the late afternoon. We arrived at the marina around 5:30pm and started moving aboard. We can FINALLY say that we’re officially LIVEABOARDS! What a fantastic birthday present!

Saturday, 3/28/2020 – Today was our first full day as liveaboards and it was BUSY! We spent the morning sorting, putting away and organizing until lunchtime. Then, were notified we needed to get the boat moved into another slip, today. So, we spent the next 4ish hours prepping to move, moving and reestablishing after moving. The good news is that we’re back in our slip so no more moving. We hadn’t had an opportunity to get to the grocery store yet, so, there was no food on the boat. After moving the boat, we made a trip to the grocery store to get some groceries. We were pleased to find that the local Food Lion was stocked fairly well except for frozen vegetables and paper products, but, no big deal. We got back from the store and I asked Josh to make lunch because I was hungry. After he told me it was 6pm and lunchtime was long ago over, we decided to make some dinner, finish getting the food put away and take it easy for the evening. I definitely passed out on the couch by 7pm and slept all night long!

Sunday, 3/29/2020 – Today was a bit less action-packed, as we finished moving the majority of our belongings onto the boat. We finished just after lunch and spent the rest of the day taking care of small organization tasks, baking cookies, catching up on some computer work and enjoying not having to pack up and head home for work tomorrow morning.

Monday, 3/30/2020 – Our first Monday with full-time jobs was pretty busy! I had a video conference at 11am and Josh spent the morning flushing our water tanks and installing our new drinking water filter. I haven’t seen a smile this big on Josh’s face on a Monday morning for quite some time!

After flushing the water tanks on the boat, Josh got out the tools and cut another hole in the boat. I’m beginning to think he likes putting holes in our boat… This time, the goal of the hole operation was to install a drinking water filter so that we are comfortable drinking the water we put into our water tanks. Despite my initial anxiety about putting another hole in the boat and the level of perfection required to make things work, the installation went FANTASTIC and we’ve got clean, filtered drinking water, on demand, in the galley! No more lugging water jugs around or paying for drinking water – WOOHOO!

And then we learned about the stay-at-home order that was issued for all of Maryland from our marina owner. It’s been pretty awesome to keep the news off and be off of our phones for the past few days, so we were pretty happy that the marina owner shared the news with us or we probably wouldn’t have known. It’s been really easy for us to “socially distance” and live in our own little bubble the past few days. I guess it was only a matter of time…

Tuesday, 3/31/2020 – I counted living creatures in the marina this afternoon: 6 humans and 1 dog in the entire 12-acre marina. So, we’re winning at social distancing! It was a pretty windy, chilly, overcast day which made it pretty easy to retreat to the warmth of inside the boat. We were somewhat productive in changing all the light bulbs to LED bulbs, troubleshooting the defiant laundry machine (which turned out to just needing to be slammed shut to function) and coming up with a strategy to get some parts and pieces we need to keep making progress on boat projects. Also, we installed a sign we brought along from our former house to make things feel even more “homey”…