We arrived back from St. Thomas on Tuesday night and home on Wednesday after sleeping at our park and fly hotel in Minnesota. Our trip this year was 3 weeks long, one week shorter than last year.

We found that two and a half to three weeks is our sweet spot. Both my husband and I admitted to becoming slightly bored at the two and a half week point of our beach life. We both have numerous hobbies, and except for me being able to crochet and write, it is hard to do much in a condo – no matter how beautiful it is.

I’ll add a couple of Medium friend links at the end so you can get an inkling of our trip. We had trouble getting to the USVI at the end of January due to Storm Fern and had quite the adventure. In addition, the weather was more rainy than in years past, but it is still vacation – and this unpredictability is what climate change is doing more regularly to weather patterns. With temperatures varying little between 78 and 81 degrees, even from night to day, going to St. Thomas and St. John is a welcome respite in the dead of a Wisconsin winter.

During our trip, I missed getting my New Year Poetry Exchange Postcards, but had a bounty of them upon our return home. My, what a talented group we have! I am floored by the creativity in what I received. Thank you, all!

I thought I’d share the photo/haiku cards I sent out to my assigned participants.

And although I tried to relax during our trip, I did some writing but didn’t push myself – because after all, it was vacation.

I also wrote an alphabet poem as a response to a challenge on Medium, which I’ll share at another time. Not much work got done other than my Medium articles and a few poems. I wrote 800 words for my novel and then thought they were lost for the first two weeks of the trip due to possible internet issues, which stopped me from writing more until my return home. The good news is that a few days before we came home, I found the chapter – I had saved it under another.

There hasn’t been much progress on my WordPress (this website) revisions either. But it will come, I just have to sit down and do it. It was a good vacation, and I feel relaxed. Now, it’s time to get back to business!

This week’s Poetry Friday round-up is on Chicken Spaghetti, the home of Susan Thomsen’s blog. Thank you for hosting, Susan!

View at Medium.com

View at Medium.com

View at Medium.com