Rosa Linda Román (00:29): Hello everyone, and welcome back to New Mexi-Castaways, the enchanting audio edition of New Mexicast. I'm Rosa Linda Román and I am once again driving to the Fort Lauderdale airport from West Palm beach. I made the check yesterday to pick up my niece from the airport. She flew in to surprise my son, Samuel, for his sixth birthday, and now her siblings are coming today. So I'm going back to go get them, which is wonderful to see everyone. And I know it's going to be great for Samuel because since we moved on to the boat, Samuel has been the least enthusiastic about this whole thing. He said multiple times, like when we were being evacuated for the hurricane, thinking that we were going to come back and not have a boat to come back to. And also after we were evacuated from the fire that happened next to our boat, both times he said, "It's okay. If our boat is destroyed, then I could move back to New Mexico and see my friends." And so as his birthday approached, he was very upset that his friends were not going to be ,the ones from New Mexico, were not going to be able to come to his birthday party at Chuck E Cheese's, which is where he has always wanted his birthday party. And we have resisted pretty much every year, but we relented this year. And so we have some friends that are really my daughters, Ahava's gymnastics friends siblings that have become Samuel's little friends, but no one that's like a really, really close friend here. So it's really nice that the cousins are coming and it's going to be a really nice surprise because they just get along so well. And it's great, but we have only one car here and we had obviously, well, my daughter had gymnastics this morning, so I took her to gymnastics ran a couple errands and then found out that my niece and nephew are actually on the flight and they're going to, I didn't realize it. Rosa Linda Román (02:35): And now I have to be there because they're unaccompanied minors, which means I need to be at the gate by the time they get off the airplane and it's an hour drive away. So it's going to be tight. I left my dad and my niece at gymnastics, and I am driving now to Fort Lauderdale. You know, it's funny because in New Mexico, the commute to just to the gym was about 35, 40 minutes to gymnastics every time she had practice. And so I'm used to commuting and I'm used to driving, but it's just a different dynamic when you have other people visiting and trying to get back and forth. It can be a little bit challenging, especially with my husband out of town. Luckily my mom's still home with Samuel and Ziva who were snuggly, sleepy on the Saturday morning, actually Samuel was building his one of his birthday gifts from last night. Rosa Linda Román (03:34): It's like a marble maze thing, which he was very excited about. So that's basically what's going on in our world. Nathan is on an airplane, headed back from India via London, and he will be traveling for the next, I think he gets in at like seven tonight. So he's got hopefully what, 10 more hours at least if I do my math, right? It's like 34 hours of travel total to get from where he was to home. So he'll be nice and tired. I was hoping the boat would be ready for him to be able to go and sleep on the boat. But that is not to be. Let me fill you in on kind of where we are. We left our boat. It's been two weeks almost. We actually left more than two weeks ago because we were at a trip to Disney World. Rosa Linda Román (04:26): Then we found out about the boat next to us burning and that it damaged our boat. And then the process of getting the surveyor in and figuring out what needed to be done to our boat to get it, make it livable again, has been exhausting. Trying to push people, and you know, I think the problem is most people see it as something that... It's a boat. So it's like a luxury item, right? Like just something you might use on weekends or whatever. But we're trying to explain to the adjusters and workers that are helping us fix the boat, that this is our home. And we, you know, we can't move back in until obviously it's cleaned and the smoke and soot, and whatever is not in the air because I have three kids that live on this boat with me and I don't want them breathing smoke and all of that. Rosa Linda Román (05:19): So it's been a long slow process. We did finally get someone. There's a company called Yacht Clean that is working on cleaning all of the outside and the inside the ducts. Because they had to clean like the air conditioning ducts and there's all these little crawl spaces and things that the smoke permeated into. So everything has to be cleaned. And this company is, did start working on that. But if you look at my, my house right now, it's missing curtains. Like there's the curtains have been taken to be laundered. All of the bedding has been taken to be washed and like including the mattresses. Everything's been taken. And, u,ah, so my boat looks naked. Oh. And it looks even more naked because another company came and took our sail and the sail bag, because that has to be replaced. Not, the sail hopefully doesn't. That's okay. I think it's just a little, its like, soot covered and has to be washed, but the sail bag has burn holes throughout it. So that has to be replaced. So it really does. My boat looks naked right now, and I it's frustrating because now I've got my family in town and I want to show them our boat and let them see it. And they've not been able to, because we're living in a vacation rental property right now. But, you know, we make do. I was just having a conversation with my niece and my dad on the way to gymnastics about a technique that...cause we were talking about politics. My niece, this is the last election that she won't be able to, wouldn't have been able to vote in. Next time, she will be, she'll be over 18. Rosa Linda Román (07:02): So she'll be able to vote then. So she's paying a lot of attention. For me, the challenge now is to help the next generation feel empowered, to do more and understand things on a deeper level than perhaps we did. I know when I was her age, it was just like, my head was swimming with all of what people talked about with politics. And then when it came time to vote, I just basically, it felt like I was just filling in dots and not really knowing much about the candidates and not understanding anything about them. So I try to be mindful of that. But anyway, my point in telling you all of this is that one of the things that Natalie Goldfein, who is that you've heard me talk about before my husband's cousin who has a program called My Habit Upgrade. She teaches these techniques that help you with self-improvement and just really improving your outlook on life and your day and, and whatnot. Rosa Linda Román (08:02): And so I had been interviewing her as part of testing out live streaming for New Mexicast. And one of the techniques that she had that I really liked is to look for the gift or "find the gift" is what it was called. And you basically just look for the gift in every situation. So everything that is bad that you think is just terrible. You can probably still find a gift inside that situation. And the example my niece used is that her brother had missed the cutoff because they were traveling for picking, being at this basketball thing where they picked the coach they wanted. And he ended up with a coach that he didn't choose, but she said, but it turned out to be okay because he ended up meeting his best friend being on that team. And I said, yeah, that's finding the gift because he could have been so miserable, didn't get the coach he wanted and just said, forget it, I quit. But instead by sticking with it, he was able to make a new friend and have something good come out of it. And so, as it is with all of these adventures that we've had, boating or trying to get boating, I really try to find the gift. What is the positive in this? And, and it's, you know, from the beginning, it's simply saying out of all of these crazy stressful situations, we've all been safe and that's number one. We're safe and healthy. And so, you know, that's the first thing. That is definitely the gift. But even more than that, one of the gifts that came from this fire evacuation is that I made some new friends who just took us in when we were not sure where we were going to go. They just offered for us to stay with them. And I really got to know Sarah better, this woman who she and her family took us in . Rosa Linda Román (09:58): She's my daughter's gymnastics teammates family And I wouldn't have had the time to get to know her and I really like her. And I feel like that was the gift in that situation. I got to make new friends and even continuing this morning, I drove as part of the carpool for the girls going to gymnastics. That would have never happened if we were just on the boat because our boat is very close to where her gymnastics is. And we are now staying at a place in Jupiter, which is much further north. And so the moms of the gymnastics girls in that area do a carpool. And so by being there, we, and also staying at their house, we started getting involved with the carpool, which my daughter Ahava, who is the more, she's just more of not loaner is not the right word, but she's fine kindof on her own. She's not, she's not the social butterfly like Ziva and myself. And so she's great socially, but she just is fine if she's on her own as well. But anyway, she loves the carpool and that's a gift that came from this. So she has now this new connection with these three other girls on her team, all of whom are just delightful kids. And it's just been really fun. So I think with anything you can see definitely the glass half empty, definitely the glass half full. And I love my dad to death, but he is a little bit more on the glass half empty side of the spectrum. And I have to constantly point out like, okay, yes, this is something that is negative but if you look at it you could see the good. Like I was saying, with this whole Trump thing, you know, people, he doesn't see, this is not something my dad said, but some something that people say, oh, you know, America, like, like they basically are talking like our country is doomed and we're going into the toilet. Right? And I don't feel that way. And I said to my dad, I said, you know, think about it. If you looked at our family as representative of an American family, first of all, we're very diverse. He's from Puerto Rico, which by the way is right, a protectorate of the United States. But he looks like he's very Hispanic looking, right. So we're very mixed because my mom is German Irish. And so I look a little bit more like her, but gratefully, I have the diversity of both sides. And so I said to him, I said, if you look at our family and you think about how all of the members, all of his five kids and their spouses are contributing members of society, none of his kids or grandkids are drug dealers or drug users, or, you know, have major gambling addictions or, you know, anything. Rosa Linda Román (12:48): I feel like we're just like an average American family. We're a mix. I mean, I'm Jewish, they're Catholic. We like, you know, some are better off financially. Some are worse off, but they're all good people. And I said to my dad, because he was kind of grumbling about some frustrations he feels with his own country with Puerto Rico and the way that it has gone over the years. And he just, he gets frustrated. And I said, dad, if you look at our family and you think we represent an American family, you would say our country's doing pretty well. We're doing all right. But if you look at some other families that aren't doing so well, not just, you know, I'm not talking about financial or anything, I'm just saying people who are unkind to each other or have major addictions or, you know, self destructive behaviors, you know, you look at that and you might say, wow, America's going to the toilet. Rosa Linda Román (13:43): So I just think it's important to know that in all of this, if you're listening to this and you've felt some of that disappointment with all of this with the politics or the, you know, the economy, you have to remember that there's a lot of good there. You know, find the gift because the gift is always there. We just have to, we have to do what we can to look for it and find it and not just, you know, always see the downside because the downside is there too. I mean, we know that and we can let it drag us down or we can use it to, to do great things. I mean, I was thinking about so many of my favorite people are feeling so hurt and, and terrible right now because their candidate did not win. And for the record I was not able to vote. Rosa Linda Román (14:37): So I really can't say anything about either candidate or any candidate, any of the process, but I'm going to anyway, I'm thinking about my loved ones who are so heartbroken over the loss. And I say, okay, so what is the gift? What let's find the gift in this. And the gift, my first thought was that because of the president, I know that's not consolation for those of you that are big supporters. I'm not trying to say it was a good thing or bad thing. I'm not. But there is a gift in that now people who maybe were leaning on the candidate to think that she was going to solve everything, realize they're going to be active in their communities and they're not going to rest on their laurels and sit and wait for Donald Trump to handle everything for them. They're going to do what they can to improve their communities and make sure that the little guy doesn't get trampled. Rosa Linda Román (15:35): Right? Cause that's what their big concern is, is what does this mean for the weakest among us? The people who need, you know, protection and care and support. Well, with this situation, we find ourselves in, this means, I mean, I've already seen many, many of you are posting things on like Facebook and stuff that, of what you are doing and what you are going to do to make sure that rights are not violated and that people are supported. So if there is a gift, maybe that's it. Okay. I don't want to get into politics cause that's really not my area. And I hope I didn't piss anyone off because I really just, I just like to look at how life ebbs and flows for me. It's, it is, it's like , you know, it comes in waves to use the ocean metaphor, right? Rosa Linda Román (16:27): It knocks you down and then you get up again and you find a new way to go. If the passage is blocked, you look for a new path, a new path. So yeah, that's kind of, what's on my mind this morning. I don't know. It's been really fun to have my teenage niece here visiting because she's such a bright young lady and how can you not be hopeful when you talk to someone like that?You know? I mean just the, I remember being young like that and having being idealistic and full of hope and I just love that, that doesn't go away with the next generation. You know, there's always the, the idea that, oh, you know, kids these days, the millennials are... And I, you know, I'm not saying I haven't said it either because there's moments where you think, oh, there's such a sense of entitlement. Right? But then you meet, you talk to someone like my niece, Elizabeth, and you're like, oh, we are golden. If this is the future generation, we're in good hands. So I'm hopeful. And I feel very happy about that. All right. Well, let me think. I'm going to take a break and check my GPS and then I'll come back. Rosa Linda Román (17:44): Well, I never did come back to recording the rest of this episode. Sorry about that. But as I've been sorting through my audio files for editing, I've decided that this one was complete enough to still publish it. I hope you will agree. And if you like this somewhat abbreviated podcast, please consider joining the New Mexico castaways crew. Those are the awesome folks that support this show. They also get bonus content like photos and videos of all the stuff that I'm talking about here on the podcast. So to do that, please visit New Mexico cast.com/crew or you can go to patreon.com/newmexicast. Thanks for listening to Newmexicastaways I'm Rosa Linda Roman.