Almost Perfect Rainy Day

The imperfection? Losing in spite of the inspired use of "quoit".

Perfection

No photos today, because it's the same view. But . . . it's beautiful. Today the world is giving us the most perfect "caribbean vacation" weather - postcard worthy, sunny and hot. I went for a swim around 11 (and just to be clear, when I say "swim" I mean float on my back and occasionally wave my arms to propel myself from one end of the pool to the other but not so strenuously that I splash water on my sunglasses), and instead of immediately showering, and putting on real clothes, for the first time this trip I just sat around the pool, reading a mystery novel and sipping cold coca cola from a glass bottle until I got too hot and had to go back into the cool water. Then more sitting around the pool. Eventually I slipped on a loose cotton dress over my bathing suit, ate a yummy lunch prepared by one of the housekeepers - a local green called calalou stir fried with garlic and onion topping steamed rice.

I just moved my things into the bigger room that I'll share with Zach for the next few days. For the first time in the 5 years I've been visiting my parents in Belize, I've managed to get a friend to come with me. Zach's arriving tonight,, on the 5:00 flight from BC, and I have a feeling that his arrival will stir things up a bit, or at the very least force me outside the walls of the hotel. We already have a date to visit the local butterfly farm on Wednesday. I saw it years ago, but it's now owned by friends of my parents, and is apparently doing a booming business. So check back on Thursday; with luck I'll be able to show you a Blue Morpho.

(P.S. I can't bring myself to talk about it yet, but I finally gave my mother permission to mail in the Idaho Bar application I completed before I came down here. So I guess it's semi-official. I'll be looking for a job in Idaho sometime in the next few months.)

A little rain

Before
After

Action Shot (Almost)

A fair few intimations of mortality today.

Geckos are one of the cooler things about tropical living, or at least I think so. I mean, as lizards go, aren't geckos pretty darn adorable? And they also eat bugs. Which are one of the less cool things about tropical living. So it's a win-win. I'll choose more cute geckos and fewer biting insects any day of the week. I was taking this shot of a gecko and moth and mosquito for a friend who likes such things and just as I pulled my camera down the gecko made a lunge and took a chunk out of the moth. Of course, I couldn't capture that on my crappy camera. This last moment of the moth will have to satisfy my photojournalist urges.

My parents' place has plenty of little geckos scuttling around the walls and on the ceilings. They used to have a lot more before they got a cat named Emma. This morning I saw Emma skulking into the house with something yellow, little suckers on its toes. That part of the predator-prey cycle makes me sad.

This afternoon the crypt that was being built next door by the digger singing Goodnight Irene was filled in a traditional Garifuna ceremony, there was a blocks long procession from the church to the cemetary with chanting and singing and just a little wailing. I didn't take any photos of that - it seemed a little insensitive. The Australian medical students sitting around the pool didn't have a problem playing voyeur however. Maybe I should have just given my camera to one of them?

Pool

Hammock

Vacation

It's been a pretty gray day. This is as sunny as it's been. Not that I'm complaining. It's beautiful. I woke up this morning after a long night in bed, making up a little sleep deficit I'd built up on my lovely trips to Portland and Alabama and the annoying early morning flights and drives that they'd entailed. I dressed, headed down to the dining room and had myself some fresh creole bread and a cup of tea. I'm not a paying guest at my parents' bed & breakfast, but I do get some of the perks. Maid service, someone to wash the dishes and clear away the crumbs . . .

After breakfast I read for awhile. Then I changed into my bathing suit and swam a few lazy, slow laps under the gray skies. Some online chatting out on the balcony (I brought my laptop and the place has wireless . . . god I love it here) rounded out my morning. The afternoon: more reading, a nap, and a quick perusal of the job boards at the resort across the valley from my Idaho home. I'm broke. I hate it. I think I need to do something part-time, answer phones, make coffee, book appointments, greet guests . . . something to pay for more plane tickets to Alabama. To make it possible to stay in Idaho, my beautiful ridiculous cabin, for as long as I'd hoped. To postpone the need for a full-time job, a real job, a real life. I like this fake life a lot. I'm not ready to give it up.

Right now, I'm sitting on the balcony again, this is my view, listening to the rustle of the palms and banana trees, listening to the grave digger (really a crypt builder, but grave digger sounds better) in the cemetary next door singing "Goodnight Irene". Who would want reality when their fantasies look like this, even in gray?

Highlight of My Day

Tomorrow I'm leaving on vacation (is it really a vacation if the rest of your life is spent pretty much only doing what you want to do anyway? is a vacation just a trip at that point?)and I've been spending all morning working on really annoying chores preparatory to a fabulous jaunt that will take me to Portland, Alabama, and Belize. One of those chores had me tied to my computer, and what did I see when I looked up a few minutes ago? A big red fox limping across my front yard. Look. Photographic evidence.

Gratuitous Kitten Photo

The kittens are getting too big to corral in the guest room. My makeshift doors aren't working anymore, and since I don't have an actual door . . . here's a cute picture of three of them making themselves at home on my unmade bed. Sugar is not pleased.

Fall

Two signs that summer is ending:


This very cold morning I succesfully lit my first fire in my brand new wood stove. (That sentence is misleading. It was not really the first fire, just the first successful one. My fire-building skills leave something to be desired. After my first attempt, I was sure that it was going to be a long cold winter if I didn't get my mommy to come start a fire for me that I wouldn't let go out until I was ready to move. Y'all know my only source of heat is that wood stove, right?)

In a related sign:

I've started stacking this huge pile of firewood. This isn't even all I'm getting. I have two more loads to look forward to. Fuck.

[ETA: I just tried to chop some kindling. Holy hell. I was smart enough to realize (fairly quickly) that flip-flops probably weren't the proper attire for swinging an axe. I could kill myself doing that shit. My mom and stepdad are planning to spend a week here while I'm in Belize later this month. Is it wrong to ask them to chop as much kindling as they can while they're here? Yes, they're older but . . . they're more competent than I am and, more importantly, they have health insurance. Not that I don't feel old right this minute. I can sense incipient back spasms from all the bending and lifting and stretching while carrying chunks of dead tree. I am the wimpiest wimp who ever wimped.]

Labor Day

This is how I spent my Labor Day. I don't actually have a deck, and the grass is too dry and full of grasshoppers to place a chair in directly, so I made do with this . . . I think it's a platform for saddling horses? Which I don't have . . . whatever, it worked. It was nice to sit watching the smoke blow the other direction with a nice glass of sweet tea and the cozy comfort of a Miss Marple mystery. Hope your Labor Day was equally labor-free.

Phew

It looks like Felix has turned and my parents won't have to face the worst of it after all.

If it's not one thing, it's a hurricane

Yeah, my dad and stepmom live right in the middle of the projected path for this hurricane. I'm supposed to be visiting them in two weeks. Please keep your fingers crossed that Felix weakens in the next two days . . . a lot. The last hurricane to hit Belize missed them completely. When I talked to them the next morning they said that they'd actually gotten less rain than they get during a typical summer storm. I got an email from them this morning, and they're taking Felix very seriously. They had closed their B&B for repairs anyway, so they don't have any guests to worry about as they board up and hunker down and hope for the best. It is a pretty place to hunker. But still.

Smoke-Aided Sunset

I really wish I was a great photographer with a great camera, because my skills are not adequate to give you a tenth of the beauty I see through my window right now.

Idaho the Beautiful

I made my grandmother cry this morning. Now, in my defense, that's not hard to do because we're a really drippy family, the lot of us. We cry when we laugh and we cry when we're sentimental and if you put two of us in a room for more than twenty minutes tears WILL be shed. But not in a bad way, we don't fight and we don't argue, we don't hurt each other. That's not our way. We're usually crying together. But this morning I made my grandmother cry and it was NOT a good thing.

My grandparents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary earlier this summer. Amazing isn't it? And what my grandmother wanted more than anything was for the whole family to get together for a nice weekend in the mountains. She wanted us to sit around in piney air, in folding camp chairs, telling stories and laughing together until we cried together. And she got her wish. There were a couple of people missing . . . my dad and stepmom who live in Belize and were in the States earlier this year couldn't make it back, especially during hurricane season, and two of my younger cousins had to work. But the rest of us, over the course of the last few days, got in our cars and and headed to the mountains, and set up a big family camp, on Labor Day weekend, next to this lake. With this view.It really is amazing that so many of us were all in one place. I've been absent from most of the family gatherings for the past seven years or so, living on the other side of the continent, flying home maybe once a year. As the oldest in my generation that was sort of my role. The one bird who'd really flown the nest. But I came back. And we'd picked a spot where the cousin closest to me in age, and the one most likely to be absent after me, Tony, couldn't help but attend. He spends his summers just up the road leading rafting trips. So we were there. Most of us. Laughing until we cried. And it was really really lovely. One of the reasons I came home for this year. Spending time with these people I've known my whole life, who I don't really know that well, but who share these weird hair trigger tear ducts.

But I could only spend one night. I'm tied to this house by these damned kittens. I wasn't comfortable leaving them alone for longer, so this morning, I tried to leave. That wasn't so bad. I'd prepared my grandmother for that. She wasn't happy, but she understood. I think I could have gotten away without more than a tear or two. But I made a mistake. I tried to leave before the family photos were taken. I hate having my picture taken. It makes me feel awkward and gauche. And I'm vain enough to not want to be photographed with messy hair and no mascara or concealer and that's what would have happened. Because there was a little miscommunication and my grandmother had told me that the family photos weren't being taken until Monday so I, in my packing light obsession, had left behind all fripperies and only brought camping things. No mascara. No black t-shirt and khaki pants (the uniform of this proposed family photo. Although, now that I think about it, I'm not sure I could have found a pair of khaki pants or a black shirt to pack even if I'd known I was supposed to bring them.) Whatever, the point is that I was thrilled to have these dual excuses for not having my picture taken. I had to get home to the kittens and I didn't want to ruin the symmetry of the photo, in my grey t-shirt and jeans, with my frizzy hair and blotchy skin and puny eyelashes. And the family tried to get me to stay, but . . . I was so happy to escape. And just as I was leaving, I saw my grandmother. And she wasn't crying, she was weeping. And I felt like the most selfish, heard-hearted, bitch. I'd made my grandmother cry because I didn't want to be immortalized without my Shu Uemera. So I stayed for another 20 minutes. And I smiled. And I felt horrible. And now I'm crying just a little thinking about it. Because I'm home now. And I was right to leave when I did, because the cats managed to consume every drop of water I'd left out, but . . . the rest of the family is still at the lake. And even though I'm breathing mountain air, it's not the same. And I made my grandmother cry.

[NB: The fire is 7 miles closer than it was when I left on Friday. But they're slowly getting it contained. It's amazing how much more resources get devoted to a fire when it threatens many multi-million dollar properties.]