Like A Twister

1000 Nautical Miles: Every Single One

2022-12-01T11:50:00.593-08:00

Almost a decade ago, I went to visit my friends Amy and Liz in Louisiana and came home to discover Mack bought a sailboat. Since then, he has bought four more sailboats: Kenutu, Lily Girl, Cynara, and Andante. I will probably have brain damage from all the work we did on Kenutu, and I wept, like actual heartbreak weeping, when we sold her. Lily Girl lasted about 5 minutes before Mack realized the joy of being able to stand up straight, especially when you have back pain. Cynara took a lot of our money and time and enjoyed one trip out of the slip before she was sold. And then we got Andante, a boat Mack said would be his "forever" boat.

Andante is a stunning 40' Hans Christian Christina commissioned by a dentist in 1984 and brought to the sea in 1986. She's a comfortable hoss, refitted with such luxuries as a travertine countertop in the galley and tile in the bathroom. Like Kenutu, she has a Pullman berth for sleeping, which is so much better than a V-berth. It has been a dream of mine to have a fridge with bottom area access since we got on boats, and Andante even fit that bill.

Andante was our most expensive and perfect boat investment, and Mack decided she would be the vessel he'd leave the port with and start a journey around the sea. I agreed to meet him at the other ports because I get motion sick and recently developed vertigo.

His epic adventure was to launch this year with the Baja Haha Rally in October, a "race" with about 100 other boats that goes from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas. He recruited his cousin Scott and buddy Dylan to be crew and spent months of time and money getting Andante ready for anything. Plumbing, electrical, rigging, anchor system, radar, navigation instruments, sails... he did it all. I made hats and shirts, got FOMO, and decided that I should probably go too, especially since if I ended up in a puke bucket dangling from the side of the boat for a week, there'd be others who could split the work load.

On October 28, we left Long Beach and started our trip down the coast to San Diego, where the official starting line would be. We had a beautiful sail to Dana Point and got to fly our asymmetrical spinner for the first time ever. I wore my scopolamine patch and stayed in the cockpit and we had a lovely day. We watched a hot pink sunset, enjoyed a celebratory Guinness, and I started to think this could be really fun.

The next day we waited for Scott to fly in before we untied the lines (Dylan had to bail because life) and started the 10-12 hour sail for San Diego. Scott, who arrived with the worst sounding crud of a cold I'd heard in a while, was with us when we sailed Gypsy into San Diego so that history plus the new radar made our late night arrival a little less scary. For them anyway. I'd reserved a slip a week before our arrival, so I knew we had a parking spot... which was basically exactly long enough for our boat and squished between two other boats. Mack snuck our big girl in there like he was putting a baby to bed, Scott and I tied her up, and we all went to sleep excited for the next day's parties and rally meetings.

This was the first sign that the Baja Haha was probably not where we belonged. Mack went to the Captain's Meeting (held in an unshaded parking lot at 8am) for about 20 minutes before he lost all patience for it. We later went to the meet and mingle costume party, held in the same parking lot, where we ended up tucked in a corner wondering what was wrong with us that this party wasn't all that fun. We weren't meeting anyone. We weren't learning anything. It sort of felt like when you visit a retirement home and sure, it's pleasant enough, but you also can't wait to get out of there. Were we too young to relate to the salty boomers or too old to relate to the young adventurers? Is it us or them? I still don't know, but now I don't care.

The next morning we woke up, filled the water tanks one last time with sweet, sweet American hose water, untied the lines, and joined the race to Cabo, a 10-day voyage with two stops along the way. The wind was all wrong for a southern sail, so they announced a rolling start of 24 hours, meaning you could sail or motor for an entire day and it would count the same. It was so exciting falling in with so many other sailboats as we left the harbor, closer than we normally would have been and on the precipice of something incredible. That first day was some of the best sailing we had the whole time.

As the sun went down, we had to turn on the motor to keep pace, and so began the misery. I went below to make chili, which was ambitious. It was so nauseating that I decided to spend the night in the cockpit, where I slept in what felt like 5-minute increments. I vascilated between terror that Mack or Scott had fallen over and were lost at sea, pain from that cold ache that settles in your bones when your feet are unsalvagably cold, and worry that my head may actually explode from diesel fumes.

The sun came up, like it always does, indifferent to the night we had, and put a little life back in the crew. I managed to pee and refill my water bottle, which was really the extent of my entire existence for three days. Mack had rigged Starlink so we could have internet while under way if the motor was on, so Scott watched shows and read books and Mack made phone calls and read the news. Every couple of hours one of the boys microwaved a burrito.

At one point we decided to test the hand line we bought in San Diego. Scott tossed it off the end of the boat, I gave him a clothespin so we could tell if something latched on (learned that watching La Vagabonde), and before we even finished saying, "Think we'll catch something?," something was on the line. A yellowfin tuna, big and beautiful with actual fins that were yellow, came aboard, leaving us scrambling for a way to bleed it and quickly filet it without luring sharks onto the deck as well. That burst of excitement, which was a welcome highlight, took the gram of energy I had in my entire body, and the fresh sushi had to be put in the freezer because no one had the capacity to make something with it.

It is surreal how depleted you can get doing essentially nothing but not dying. As the sun headed for the ocean and the darkness swallowed us up again, the guys developed a 3-hour shift plan and let me go below to try to sleep. The freezing toes didn't get in my way that night, but no matter what I did, I couldn't stop worrying that Mack or Scott would fall overboard and be lost forever. It was an unrelenting dread. If they fell overboard and were tethered in, they'd be drowned by the autopilot. If they fell overboard untethered, the autopilot would leave them in the waves and we wouldn't know they were missing until we were three hours away from them. It was the worst, most constant mindfuck I've ever felt in my life.

By our third day at sea, I was done. Done with the diesel headache and the lurking panic attack and the radio chatter relaying all the great times and dolphin sightings and fresh sushi the other boats were experiencing. I was done with the boat. If Andante sank in the middle of the Pacific I wouldn't have cared, as long as I was off of her. I actually thought the only thing worse than being on that boat was being in that never-ending dark water that is refrigerator cold and full of things that could eat me. That's literally what kept me on board. On her, I lived.

I changed my scopolamine patch, giving it some extra massages to try to get the medication to work better. I laid up by the mast to get away from the stench of diesel and streamed Real Housewives on Peacock. I did not want my sour experience to ruin it for anybody else, but I think we were all feeling underwhelmed by the magic.

And that was the most terrible part. For years Mack had dreamed about this experience, had worked hard and put blood and sweat into making it happen, and seeing reality stain that dream was a new devastation. My heart broke for him, I was disappointed in myself for being so worthless, and I could only muster apathy about it all.

When the sun took her bath that night, we had about six hours still to sail before we made it to Bahia Tortuga, our first stop. It was probably 2 in the morning when we finally set the anchor, sleep-deprived, delerious, and so grateful to have the motor off.

As we tidied the deck after the voyage, I found a nut on the deck. A nut that attaches to the bolt that keeps the boom in place. The boom that is an 11' metal tube that holds the bottom of the sail. A metal tube that could have killed us or knocked us overboard if it had come loose while we were out in the middle of the rolling ocean. Thank god I had no idea we also had that death trap threatening us until we were safe at anchor.

Bahia Tortugas, or Turtle Bay, is a small fishing community with a very alive anchorage. After 450 miles of nothing but sunrises, sunsets, and waves lurching at you, it was glorious to hear the barking sea lions and watch the tornado of birds riding upwind drafts in that bay.

The Haha organized a baseball game with the locals, who have a pretty amazing field for such a remote village. The townspeople set up pop up restaurants in the plaza, and we enjoyed abuela-fuerte margaritas and tacos served on homemade tortillas. It was so nice to walk on land again, to see humans and hear music, to watch the dogs lay in the sand. It felt carefree and happy, and it reminded me why I came on the trip. It also made me realize why the Haha wasn't really working for me. Everything was prescribed, on an agenda, rush rush rush, competing for resources that are already scarce, and being very "Karen" about it. We sat at the only restaurant in town (I think), sipped margaritas, watched a rainbow, and ended up meeting the crew of Big Sky, a boat out of Montana who happened to be in the bay but not on the Haha and seemed to be on our frequency. I also made poke bowls from that fresh tuna and my god, that was probably the best thing I ever made.

We pooled Scott's money and took a panga to the beach the next day for the Haha cookout, which is where they sold lots of meat and $12 margaritas. They also sold burgees (literally said "Flying burgees is fun" to get people to buy extra even though we all got one when we signed up), t-shirts, backpacks... basically all the free swag we got for signing up. It was more of the Baha Nuh-Uh nonsense, but we ended up hanging out with Pete and Amy from Big Sky and formed a friendship that they probably regretted later.

We enjoyed a spicy orange sunset for our last night in Bahia Tortugas while Scott enjoyed his 11th margarita. I put on a fresh scopolamine patch and told myself it would be worth it because being on anchor is so fun. And we enjoyed one last night of good sleep.

With 450 nautical miles and two good nights of sleep behind us, we hauled anchor and got started on leg 2, which would be only one night at sea. We tried to sail to avoid the diesel element, but I fucked everything up on a tack and almost killed us. Basically I couldn't look up to trim the sail because of my vertigo, but the line I was tightening to trim the sail was caught on something so the sail wasn't tightening and the line had about a million pounds of tension on it. I didn't pay attention, nothing was working right, the sails were flopping, and the Captain was pissed at how I could be so stupid. I cried and kept my mouth shut while he got us into a position where we could recover, and once things calmed down, I gave him my resignation, letting him know I will not be sailing one minute past Cabo. Ah, things were off to a glorious start.

This leg was actually better than the first. I think knowing it was shorter helped. We caught a bonita and another yellowfin tuna, both of which took less than 5 minutes to bite. And I was starting to get some "sea brain" so I could actually go down below and make quesadillas or guacamole without needing to vomit. Mack and Scott were still taking the night shifts, but I tried to hang out on deck as late as I could, like midnight, and then head below for a 6-hour snooze. One night the boat started flopping really strangely and I knew someone was dead. I woke up, popped out of bed and headed toward the cockpit, when I saw Scott crawl of his berth. Which meant Mack was dead. Scott opened the companion way and Mack was dodging a cruise ship and a sailboat charging at him with a gigantic spinnaker blocking their view of him. His watches always seemed to have the drama.

Since the boys were doing the nights, I tried to wake up as soon as the light came through my window and head up to the cockpit to relieve whichever exhausted man was on watch. Often they were so tired and bleary eyed they didn't see obvious things, like the torn sail that happened at the reef point. I basically tied myself in, assured them I'd alert them if anything happened, and told them they had to get some rest.

I am not a morning person, but the morning was my favorite time at sea. Watching the world change colors with the new light. Seeing the animals who'd come visit. I saw sea turtles, sharks, dolphins, jumping rays, even whales, most of it with just myself to squeal at about it.

Sunset was also good, but not as much because after sunset is the horrible, cold, tired nighttime of despair. One evening I was in the cockpit alone, listening to a podcast, watching a very dramatic sunset to my right, only to look to my left and see a subdued little moonrise happening on my left. That was the first of four incredible things that happened, that made me grateful to be out there suffering through the awful moments to get to these enchanting ones. The sky also gifted us some shooting stars, one of which was green, which reminded my of my Uncle Vince. Between the shooting stars and the moon, which reminded me of my Aunt Becky, it felt a teeny bit less lonely.

At some point we had 100 nautical miles to go, which Mack turned into the bottles of beer song. He'd busst out with "98 bottles of beer on the wall, 98 bottles of beer, take one down, pass it around..." and wait about 20 minutes/1 mile before he would sing the next verse. From then on, when somebody asked, how much farther do we have, the response would be "62 bottles of beer" or however many miles we had to go. I hated every answer above 20. At 20, it was like oooooh just three to four more hours!

We again arrived at the anchorage in the middle of the night, exhausted, desperate to anchor and get sleep, and relieved that the sail was over for now. We had logged another 200 nautical miles and arrived at Bahia Santa Maria.

Although it was beautiful and untouched, Bahia Santa Maria was really remote and had a treacherous surf that our little dinghy couldn't handle at the beach. The radio chatter was very clear that if your dinghy is pitiful, it will tip and you will be swimming and your motor may slice you into pieces or give you a head injury, so we resigned ourselves to skip land.

Instead we spent the days cooking up all the fish we caught, taking dinghy tours around the anchorage to peek at boats, reading books, doing puzzles, watching movies, and realizing that our boat looked like a murder scene because we are bad fish butchers.

It was at Bahia Santa Maria that the second incredible thing happened. Since it was Halloween before we left, I'd bought a couple mullet wigs for Mack and Scott in case I needed a laugh. I pulled them out, Mack put his on, and Punto Tomas was born. I don't know what it is about him, but he was absolutely a highlight of this adventure. Loud, a little bit dumb, and way too much machismo, and I liked it.

Too soon, it was time to haul anchor again and go the final 165 nautical miles to Cabo San Lucas. The rain dribbled on us as we headed out of the bay, surrounded by boats flying spinnakers and having full sails and wondering why the fuck our sails wouldn't cooperate. We were on the same wind, same tack, same everything, but they were getting along just fine and we couldn't. It was motor time, again, but at least the wind wasnt' exactly behind us trying to smother us.

I sat in the cockpit while Mack helmed when all of a sudden the ocean let out a huge sigh about 20 feet off the port side of the boat. My brain finally caught up as I saw the blow holes of two humpback whales close up, head under the water, and say goodbye with their namesake hump. I waited for the tail wave, until Mack reminded me that we needed to get the hell away since a breaching one of those giants sank a boat on the Haha before. Even though it came with some terror, seeing those whales, so close, so enormous, so indifferent to us, was humbling and marked the third incredible moment that gave value to the whole experience. Well, it was probably 11 seconds, not an entire moment, but still.

The sail to Cabo was my favorite, and because I can say assuredly that it will be the last overnight sail in my life, I'm glad it felt the best. Not good, mind you, but the best. We hugged the coast, which made the sea seem less ominous and gave some flair to our surroundings. The other boats on the rally were in sight too, which meant the horizon was dotted with pops of yellow and teal and red from spinnaker sails. I saw more sharks, two this time, and I watched their fins disappear just as they got near the boat but I couldn't make out their bodies in the black water. Also saw dots of turtles and was impressed at how brave those guys are with these sharks roaming about.

SHOW ME THE TURTLES.

The weather went from gloomy to brilliant to electric. The sunset's drama was matched by the moonrise this night, which was so good I called for Mack and made Scott get out of his cocoon to come look.

The boat switched into night mode, with red lights on inside and boys taking shifts. I slept but was done before sunrise, so I took my place at the helm and sent Mack to bed. I'd never seen his eyes so glassy, his face grey from fatigue. I found some flying fish on the deck and plopped them back into the ocean. My nausea in the cockpit was finally gone, and it was a peaceful morning to say goodbye to the Pacific Ocean and thank her for being gentle with us.

Peaceful until we got in sportfishing boat range of Cabo. Then I was dodging sting rays jumping out of the water and long trawling lines coming out the back of power boats. The last thing we needed was our propeller to catch on something and have to solve that problem. As we got about 20 miles from the finish line, the whole crew was in the cockpit, taking in the trademark point of Cabo San Lucas. I don't know how anyone else felt, but I was relieved. It was over. I did it. No one died. My resignation was submitted.

After we anchored, I took a little swim, had a beer, and laid on the bow letting the sun dry me off. Mack came up to sit and the fourth and most incredible thing happened. Without a word spoken, I absorbed how much we sacrificed to make this happen, how much we suffered for each other to be here, how even though it wasn't ideal, it was successful. A special thing blossomed between us in the silence of that bow, something that wouldn't have been nurtured if not for the stress of the 10 days before. Something our togetherness hadn't ever touched before. Was it enough to make me go one more mile? No. But was it exquisite and a precious taste of what life is made of? Definitely.

We made it. Even though thousands of people have done it before us and tens of thousands will do it after, it was huge for us. Huge and done. Cheers to that.

Dulywed: Quinceanera

2021-11-29T08:49:00.007-08:00

Mack,

Hey there. How are you? It's been a couple years since I last reflected on this happily ever after of ours. Last year around this time, my dad died, and, as Metallica says, nothing else mattered. Thank you for being there for me to fall into after his quiet departure. I will always love you for that. And since you never read these things, I know you forgive me for letting it slip by.

Back when we were way less grey, with way less understanding of the kick in the balls life can dole out.

I fully recognize I've been a squishy mess since my dad died, and I appreciate your patience and support, even though it sometimes comes across as frustration and annoyance.

I remember after I got back from a trip home for the 4th of July, me sitting on the floor in a fat mess (thanks, grief, booze, and cortisol) and you across the room, looking at the window. We finally got the courage to say, "I don't like this relationship between us." It was full of me being pathetic and you being the bright spot. You brought energy, and I took it all. And then I did nothing with it.

I was lost, and I have never been lost before. I was depressed. I was wearing us both down. So thank you for having that conversation with me. It opened my eyes that the happiness that normally comes so easy to me was slipping away, and I needed to fight for it, like so many other people do their whole lives. I went to therapy, cried a lot, opened up my heart, reconnected with my mind, and finally got better.

And we got better. I started existing again, speaking up for myself, making choices for myself, taking action for myself. At first, because I know you so well, I thought you'd respond with anger when I gave myself permission to expect certain accommodations from you. But you pleasantly surprised me. You took the Love Languages test, and you added physical touch and words of affirmation to your programming. I went back to school to get my master's, started going to the gym to get me out of the house every day, and gradually the squish got less and less. Well, not on my body but in my mood anyway.

Despite the goo of me-ness that I've been swimming in, we've managed lots of memory making this year. We moved our whole life to a 30-square-mile rock in the Caribbean. We got rid of one business and started another, making some lawyers very rich. We got vaccines against Covid-19, bought an abandoned crackhouse to flip, and spent weekends bombing over waves and looking for creatures under water. Well, I looked. You sat on the boat playing polka music full blast while I did "science" with the turtles. You also procured the coconuts.

I had surgery, you almost had a tumor (thanks, lab errors). We took Goldie to the snowy mountain roads of Big Bear and drove through absolute road lakes. We went to June Lake to catch some fall colors. We took hikes and were extra cautious about the potential for one of us to "wild crimes" the other. Luckily the most egregious thing I did to you was make you watch me paint rocks. We bought a new old sailboat, Andante, and took her on her first voyage to Catalina. You were brave enough to enjoy a swim, but this life on that rock in the Caribbean has ruined me for cold water. Andante has so many other charms, like how handsome you are captaining, so she's still worth being on even if the water she's surrounded by is dark and full of terrors.

You remained your peculiarly hilarious self, thank god. I remember during the Olympics we were watching a swimming match, and you reached over, touched my boob, and claimed yourself to be the best breast stroker. You also came up with such hits as "You Know You Like It When I Do It Like This" and "Uno Mas Dia." As they were rooting in your brain (and mine), I definitely wanted to kill you, but I love you so I didn't.

Couple of grey haired bandits, not killing each other.

To celebrate 15 years of marriage, you're supposed to give the gift of crystal, "an enduring material that symbolizes the lightness, clarity, and durability of your love." Or a watch, "representing the many hours and minutes you've spent together, as well as the years to come."

Without even meaning to, we did both, got fancy as hell watches with sapphire crystal glass. Because you know what, we've earned them. We've put in a lot of time, understanding, forgiveness, arguments, resentment, cheerleading, sacrifice, hard work, energy, indifference, patience, tough truths, and love into this thing between us, and having an exquisite timepiece to show for it somehow validates it. Heads up, I'm gonna need the Pearlmaster for the 30th anniversary, kay?

Thanks for the last 473 million seconds you have spent at my side. You really are my best friend, and I appreciate all you have been for me this year especially. Happy anniversary.

Love,

Pipi Rodriguez

Island Life

2021-10-01T10:06:00.020-07:00

Things that do not get old living on an island: the views and that warm clear water.

Things that do get old living on an island: all the rest.

Our swimming spot.

Literally the moon.

Just looking out the window.

What exactly are these skies doing??

Come on, Nature.

Stop it.

Just stop it right now.

I know, I am a spoiled asshole. I have been my entire life. And I want to smack my own face. But I'm gonna say it: island life is hard.

Sure, being able to take your half finished drink with you when you're done eating is amazing. The smell of the rain is intoxicating. The afternoon dips to cool off are pure therapy.

But the loneliness is achy. The struggle to find something interesting that makes you leave the house is real. The cost of groceries is staggering... $8 for Triscuits, guys... and the unreliability of them is frustrating. And even though I love Mack, not having a way to get out of each other's sight is maddening.

It's been a year since we made the move to island life. Given the fuck shit stack that was 2020-2021, living on an island whose temperature is always 82 was some quiet constant that my soul needed. Each day feels like a month, yet somehow we get half as much done.

Which is good, because there is nothing to do so you gotta spread that stuff out.

The times we've had visitors has made this place perfection. But then they leave and it's just us and here and, well, I started therapy it's that bad. So is my hair.

Good vibes only. Except Mala.

Pure medicine. Especially in her giggle.

My daughter-sister.

A couple other Covid runaways.

The Queen of Open Water

The co-inventor of Rail Racing!

The Griswolds even made it, despite a flight cancellation and Covid test requirements!

Chungus loved drinking that salty water.

Tater probably would've swam home if we'd let him.

I have been trying to get connected to this place so it feels like home, but even after a year together, there's friction between us. I can't figure it out. I hate myself for that, because it really is so amazing. The critters are everywhere, providing constant and delightful entertainment. But somehow, even though I've seen a damn octopus in the wild, it's not enough to fill the void.

I've met no fewer than 100 baby chicks.

These guys do pushups on the balcony, and I'm like, guys, stop, I'm married.

Donkeys! Also there are goats!

Oh, this is my friend. We've hung out a couple times.

Another buddy. You can just see the annoyance on his face.

Luckily he only likes to eat the stuff on the bottom.

Oh hi, you killed Steve. On accident. I get it.

Another casual lunch with a dinosaur.

I have found a few awesome people to spend time with. Really, they found me and didn't give up on me after a few shy encounters. They live a couple doors down, cook curried lentils like pros, and are so generous that they let me cling to them like family.

Afternoon cocktails on the porch with the mayor.

And drunch with this power couple.

I'm a person who needs to put down roots, to put energy into something and be rewarded by watching it grow over time. I can't seem to get anything to root to, to anchor myself. Maybe it's because we come and go a lot. Maybe it's because there's no dirt around my condo... it's all rocks and water. Being a tiny life nomad requires you to neglect things a lot, either due to time or space, which makes me feel like nothing that takes a personal investment is worth doing. In other news, it's also forced me to find clever band-aids. Like, now I know an embroidery hobby will fit in a gallon-size baggie. But I don't want to put things I enjoy in a baggie and leave them behind. I want them to surround me all the time and take up space and see how they change over time.

Then these rainbows show up, and are you really whining about life on an island, you idiot? Look what time does to them. They appear out of nowhere, change, grow, disappear, reappear, double in size, and capture the attention of everyone who sees them, forcing us all to stand still and look up at them in amazement. If only they could hug me, make me laugh, and give me something to do... that's what I need more than anything.

Life on the sunny side

Home-ish sweet home-ish

My Chubby Bubby

2021-02-24T21:59:00.062-08:00

I don’t know why the baby makers in my life won’t coordinate their pregnancies so I can get a fresh baby every couple of years instead of all at once. The last time I got babies, Shannon had Nynie, Lee had Mateo, and Leiah had Beatrix in a span of 8 months. No one listens to me, so for this, which is likely my final baby season, Leiah and Lee decided to have babies at practically the exact same time. Of course.

And, to add to it, as they were discussing names, Leiah mentioned she was thinking they may name their son Elliott BUT LEE AND BUBBA HAD ALREADY DECIDED TO NAME THEIR SON ELLIOTT. Finally, Leiah took pity on me and took Elliott of her list.

Lee headed to the delivery room 3 DAYS before Leiah to bring our newest nephew to the world, a guy we’d watched growing in his momma’s belly all summer. In the couple months before his big arrival, his family moved into a new house, his daddy started a new job, and all they needed was this new baby to settle into life as they’d know it.

Having a baby during a pandemic means no one can come to the hospital to see you. And you get to huff and puff and push and get that baby out thru a surgical mask. Lee took it all like a champ, and then, at 4:53 pm on Nov. 25, our little Ching Ching showed up.

Ching Ching is apparently how you say cubby in Tagalog, and though this little bag of sugar is only 6lbs. 5oz. and 19 inches long, he is a whole pound bigger than his big brother was. And it shows.

We didn’t get to meet this sweet baby until this month, and I am not exaggerating when I say he is absolutely the best baby I have ever been around. We’ve been staying with Bubba and Lee for a few weeks and I have not heard one cry out of him - not one. He likes to lay in his basinet and listen to jazz or take naps in his swing. When he wakes up, he’ll listen for his mom’s voice to say hello to him and a smile will creep across his face. He likes it when Mack talks to him like they’re doing important business negotiations and then when Mack finishes it all with “Agoo,” Bubby just beams. I’m ruining him by snatching him up to hold him, but I’m his Tita and that’s what I’m supposed to do. I like to make him do “nexercises” and just the other day this butterball rolled over! He eats all his food, sleeps good at night, and is one of those babies you could forget about because he’s just so content. He doesn’t spit up. He doesn’t have diaper explosions. He’s unreal, except that I’ve held him and he is so real.

I can’t wait to watch this one grow up alongside his brother, Mr. Personality. I mean just look at them! I’m going to have no money.

The One Who Tried to Kill My Sister

2020-12-01T07:30:00.010-08:00

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, the day after we buried my Uncle Vince, Nico Alistair Galownia burst forth from his mother, my little sister, and brought with him exuberance and despair in a matter of seconds in a true demonstration of the universe’s capacity to fuck your shit up.

We were gathered at Camp Grampa, where Shannon was improvising a dinner out of some frozen hamburgers and turnips, seeing if a change of scenery could put the grief one layer lower for my sweet Aunt Becky, a woman who just a month before was in this same kitchen, improvising a dinner of fried green tomatoes and fried blue gill that she and Vince had caught, in an effort to get our grief one layer lower.

We got word earlier in the day that Leiah was headed to the hospital to deliver her son, a fella who’d made her belly so big strangers couldn’t contain their “whoa”s when she walked by, earlier that day, so I sent a text to David at 5:50pm to see how it was going. We got right in on the action when he replied “Dialted and pushing. Home stretch.”

In an attempt to do something with all the excitement, Susan and Becky trimmed the little Christmas tree Susan had put up in the living room. I collected bets for weight from everybody in the room to make it competitive.

Finally at 7:37pm my phone tings and there is my nephew, Nico Alistair. A beefy red baby, 19 inches long, 8lbs. 13 oz. Isaac won.

His dad let us in on his name, which wasn’t a guarantee, and told us that he was a super chill baby. And just as quickly as joy filled every cell in my body, fear crept in. Leiah had a huge 800 gram clot that was preventing her uterus from clamping down. She was hemorrhaging, and even though she was in the best place to hemorrhage, a place with blood and surgeons, and even though I knew they’d take the whole uterus out before they’d let it kill my sister, I was afraid. Leiah later told me she didn’t realize that many hands could fit in a vagina. David said, “The whole hospital was in there.”

Fortunately the fear only lasted for an hour before Leiah stabilized. She got blood and the hands that were inside her body did what they needed to do. We got pictures of her, smiling, pale and covered with a mountain of blankets, but alive and having achieved another echelon of love.

Her family was complete, bookended by boys, little girls in the sweet center, and her record for biggest cheeks broken. Though it didn’t take away the loss that brought us together, Nico’s arrival bandaged our family with hope, with certainty that life goes on, that happiness will still bridge the sadness. He reminded me that the terrible things that are going to come our way will be made better by our cohesion and that even in the darkest times, there are beams of light to cling to.

Welcome to the tribe, little man. I hope you love being one of us as much as we love you.

Pretirement

2020-11-09T07:25:00.000-08:00

After 7 years in the Emergency Department at Harbor-UCLA, a Level I Trauma Center is South Los Angeles, I have pretired.

Pretirement is a lot like retirement, except it comes earlier and you fully intend to go back to work again... when you run low on money.

I loved my job. LOVED it. And walking away from it was one of the hardest things I've ever done. So hard, I stalled it for 6 months so I could get my head around the idea of saying goodbye.

When I started my career as a nurse, I didn't know what to expect. I hated nursing in nursing school, and I wasn't sure I'd like it as a profession. Turns out, it is the best thing I've ever done, and I don't think that would have been the case if I hadn't landed at a county facility serving the uninsured.

I loved the people I worked with, the patients we cared for, the uncertainty that rolled through the door, the smell of the firefighters' overalls, the lingo on the radio calls, the glued-together building that we worked in. I found my voice and my backbone, and standing up for someone who can't stand up for themselves became an everyday event, some classier than others. I got to do all sorts of amazing things as a nurse at Harbor, things that made me tough and things that made me cry. And laugh, oh there was never a shortage of things to make you laugh.

Disaster Training! What a disaster!

Thanksgiving with the Harbor Fam. We knew how to potluck.

In a place where people die, you've got to make the merry sometimes.

Easter egg hunts made everyone a kid again. Bad to be a patient in that 30 minutes.

Legends. Absolute legends. I was so lucky to work with them.

Less legends. But such a highlight of every day.

Helipad adventures

Everybody loves St. Patricks Day. Even the Russians, Mexicans, Filipinos, Nigerians, South Africans, Brazilians, Japanese, Chinese, Persian, and every other countryperson represented in our nursing staff.

Search and Rescue Training. I basically killed all the dummies. That's why it's called training,

Visit to the LA County Morgue. For, y'know, inspiration.

MICN Class. Literally thought my head would explode during that course.

Trauma Survivor Celebration. Without a doubt, my favorite extra credit work.

I got to make friends from co-workers, celebrate their birthdays, weddings and new babies, support them to higher degrees, watch them fall into love and their first homes. We defiled party buses, celebrated any season we could justify, pulled off adult field days, white water rafted, camped, skied, tubed, and even traipsed through Europe. This dysfunctional family I was a part of is the reason I lasted all the years I did.

Field Day!

Work wouldn't give us a Christmas party so we gave ourselves one.

Lots of people died on the Kern River the year we did this. None of us!

At least one of us knew how to put up a tent.

Birthday on the beach.

Letting a couple doctors in on our good times.

The Harbor Hoedown!

Babies! And since this, two more babies!

Playing in the snow became an annual thing.

The gang does Germany. And Austria. And France.

So much like family that Shana became a stand-in chicken mommy when we left.

That place absolutely shaped who I am, and after seven years, I can say with confidence that I am pretiring a damn good nurse. I am smarter, kinder, better, more aware, and stronger than I planned to be. And even though my heart broke when I walked away, it was time.

A couple months of perspective has really brought to light the toll that sustained intensity like that of my job can take. It necessarily should have a short life or it will cost you some of yours. A typical day in the emergency department has huge swings from high to low, which can make you an impatient, detached, compartmentalized person as a means of self-preservation. Factor in the dysfunction and cripple of a pandemic, well, human beings aren't made to do things like that as a career. A month or six if it's real desperate, sure, but a career? Nah.

Pretirement is a welcome change. A slow, boring, empty change. It's got its own sweet torture, where every day feels like Sunday. Inconsequential things like if the hermit crab will show up out front become extremely important parts of the day. I am burdened by how many chicks the hens are having and tossing bread that costs $7 a loaf out to them in the morning. I spend an inordinate amount of focus on hydrating. I brush my hair once a week. A trip to the grocery store makes me need a drink. I've made huge improvements in my crossword game. I did a very complicated paint by number. Having only impulsive things to do has brought peace, and that peace has saved me from a chronic distress that I didn't even know I'd developed. Every nurse in the world deserves a pretirement phase after the Coronavirus shit we've been through.

I miss my job. I miss my work fam. But pretirement is just what the doctor ordered.

Dad

2020-10-29T08:19:00.000-07:00

He was so strong, even in his 60s, that I was sure, despite his lifetime of smoking and daily drinking, he would make it through. Sure, he'd puke and feel miserable, he'd lose weight from the chemo and lose his hair, but in 6 months, he'd be a new man with an external bladder. As he put it, "it's just plumbing." I mean, bladder cancer has a survival rate of 80%, and if anyone was built to survive, it was Dad.

But strong has nothing to do with it. Nor does effort. Just days before he died, he was hauling his wasted body up a flight of stairs with no handrail because he was working to regain his strength. It turns out he had no platelets, no red blood cells, and pneumonia, and even the fatigue that comes with one of those conditions, let alone all three, couldn't kill his will. When he went to the hospital for a check up, his sister-friend Barb and Susan, the girlfriend he refused to call girlfriend, the woman he would have called wife if he hadn't been so burned by his last divorce, used an office chair to roll him to the car. Barb told me he couldn't remember how to get to the hospital from his house, along roads he'd driven his entire life. And when he moved to the wheelchair to go inside, his pants fell to his ankles because he was easily 70 pounds lighter than he was when he was diagnosed.

Susan kept us in the loop, even though I don't think he really wanted us in it. He'd rather we preserve an image of him as the Captain, the man with the cover and the concealed carry license, the guy who was as steady in a stick-up as he was while cleaning his own mother's bottom at her end. He was totally unfazed, and while that hurt deeply when I was a kid and he was a distant dad, I grew to appreciate that part of him the most as an adult. It was a tough lesson to learn to have no expectation of people you love, particularly a parent, but it freed me from hurt and disappointment more than I even realize.

We didn't talk often, but he did write me letters and forward invites to the annual family reunion and keep me posted on deaths and births and marriages. The last few years, he'd trek to Kentucky to bring us some of his homemade deer jerky and a $100 bill for Christmas. When we were together for our annual summer visit for 4th of July, a holiday he made matter, we'd get a fire going and he'd make me laugh. Our politics couldn't have been farther apart, nor could our religious beliefs, but somehow we had a lot in common. He told great stories and got a kick out of little things. He loved the outside. He was a smart ass, with a sideways smirk and a twinkle in his eye that was always looking for a good time. For me, he was that parent that you look at and go, "oh, that's why I'm like this."

I value my own physical strength more than physical beauty because of him. I'm not afraid to try things that are traditionally reserved for men because of him. I don't feel anyone else is responsible for my happiness or life choices but me because of him. I married the man I married because of him. I like solitude. I owe the parts of myself that are the biggest, the most pronounced, the most valuable to me, to him.

When I got to the hospital to be with him, after Mack drove me 24 hours straight, I gave him a hug and said, "Wow, I didn't expect you to take Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death so hard, Dad." He peeped his eyes just to give me the glare that was our playful exchange. His hug felt amazing, warm and safe despite the fact that I outweighed him by 30 pounds. I sat with him and held his hand, and when he opened his eyes and saw me and I smiled behind my mask, he said, "Sorry." I don't know what it was for, I can imagine a million things, but I didn't want to hear it. I told him, "Don't you dare, you have nothing to be sorry for. You are an awesome dad and I love you." He responded with, "I love you too baby," and closed his eyes.

The next three days are burned into my memory, and I keep reliving each moment over and over at the most inopportune times. It's sweet agony. I want to hang on to them, but I need to move past them. Our relationship was so much more than those three days, but those three days were sacred, intimate, intense days of love and fear and courage and laughter. Shannon sent a video of Nynie on the beach saying, "Love you so much, Grampa Greg," and when I showed it to him, he smiled the last smile I saw him muster. I had to call my step-sister Christie and give her the news, and my heart broke again hearing hers shatter. Leiah came to be with him also, and we sat on her bed in the hotel one night eating peanut butter pie right from the box with plastic spoons and relishing how lucky we've been in life lately, aside from the event bringing us together. When I said good night to her the next night, I had to tell her to cover her eyes because they were looking too much like Dad's and she was going to make me cry.

They did a CT scan on Dad, which showed more cancer in his lungs, liver, and kidneys, maybe even in his brain but they didn't scan that part. I held his hand when the doctor came in to tell us the news, which we knew was bad thanks to the gift of summation by his excellent nurse... who turned out to be a relative, of course. Dad was as unfazed as ever, but I did see the tiniest tear appear on the lower lid of his right eye. He kept his eyes closed and brought it back into himself, stuffing it in the bottle he kept deep in his belly where he shoved all his intense feelings. I inherited that from him, but my bottle is admittedly leaky. He asked the doctor how long he had, and was given days to weeks. Dad held up his index finger and said, "One." I said, "Are you giving us one more day, you have one day?" He nodded.

I immediately moved into action mode. "Where do you want to go? Where do you want to spend your one day?" He wouldn't answer until the next day. I guess it needed to sink in. His action meant dying, and I guess he needed to get square with that before giving out orders. The next morning, when Leiah and I walked into his hospital room, he said, "I'm ready to go home, I reckon." I told him we could do that, but I wanted him to know that the getting there part was going to suck. At one point, while talking about the stress of transport, I said, "If we can make people who've had their legs blown off tolerate a helicopter ride, we can get him comfortable." Dad piped up and said, "No fuckin' helicopters." The room erupted in laughter. I'm not sure if his trip via copter to Indy in August inspired the strong reaction or if it was the bill on his table for that ride for nearly $40,000 that did it.

Helping Dad die was such a surreal experience that I was so grateful when the nursing element came in. Something familiar that I could cling to. A role I felt human in. A tether to this world. A distraction from myself. Turning him. Giving medications and tracking the times and doses. Checking his pulse and counting his respirations. Monitoring his urinary output. There is so much strength in caring for others.

Friends came to visit, and the room filled with laughter at some of the stories we heard. It also filled with sadness as the severity of his disappearance hit people in the face. Barb was an angel who manifest miracles in the times of Covid. I fell in love with Susan for loving him so much and so delicately during this whole process. My cousin Kristin brought all her mom energy and pointed us on the path to the right decisions without telling us what to do. Leiah and Christie were sources of joy and comfort, as was Shannon even though she was stuck in Florida. We were a bunch of women helping a man do an impossible thing for him.

He died late on a Monday, although not pronounced until early Tuesday morning. The nurse in me couldn't help but look at the clock when I saw the last pulse run through his neck. Time of death, per the microwave clock, 11:29pm. He always used to tell Susan "10 o'clock, lights out." He stayed up late to hang out with us a little longer, I guess.

I had been giving him morphine and Ativan around the clock, but despite the meds, he started sweating from breathing so hard and fast. He was taking huge gulps of air that clattered his teeth. I called the Hospice nurse and asked him to come to the house. We gave him a big dose of morphine, and after about 20 minutes his breathing slowed. The nurse left. We sat with him. Then his breathing got slower and slower, still gulps, still clattering his teeth. And eventually it stopped. We held him, said goodbyes and I love yous, and Leiah and I fell into our husbands. I looked over at Susan, whispering in his ear, and my heart broke into 1000 more pieces. I still have no idea how she didn't die in that moment too.

Christie had the good sense to break out the peach Crown Royal. We sipped a shot and waited for the nurse to come back to pronounce him and the funeral home to arrive. I rubbed a little taste on Dad's lower lip. Barb told an amazing story about giving farm animals shots and we laughed again. But the room was notably absent his laughter. He was gone. I still can't believe it.

Something Concrete

2020-09-03T21:59:00.000-07:00

Being at home all the time really makes you recognize all the annoying things about the place you live. For me, it's been the driveway.

The driveway has been sinking since we moved in. Pulling in from the sidewalk started to make the car go PLUNK! about a year ago. Mack band-aided it for the past year with a paver we put in the 4" drop by the sidewalk. Alas, the paver is now chunks of moveable rock and the car is PLUNK!ing again. This time the car is not a Chevy Volt. It is a Tesla. It is Mack's fancy Tesla.

And now we're getting a new driveway.

Picking a driveway is seriously harder than it looks. A couple years ago I consulted with a landscaper for a yard design, and she sucked so bad she suggested bringing the driveway into the yard. I hate large swaths of concrete, and I had no idea why she was suggesting we move the driveway into the view of the front porch. Well, I still think her idea is stupid, but I have a new sympathy for figuring out a driveway concept that looks good. It's frigging hard.

I thought about keeping it simple and just redoing the whole driveway, but see the part above where I hate large swaths of concrete. Then I was going to get that concrete grate looking stuff that the grass grows up in, but it looks way more modern than my 100-year-old house. Then I started looking at ribbon driveways, a driveway concept I'd seen but had no idea had a name. They seemed like an option, so I called my Do It Guy, Kyle, and he got to work.

Of course, because it's a home improvement project, we found a problem. The dirt under the driveway by the house was wet. Did we have a sewer leak? Did we have a sprinkler problem? What the heck? Kyle climbed under the house and dug a hole that could've been a grave for 10 people trying to find an answer. The answer was just wet dirt. We had to delay a bit to let it dry out, and then, business time.

While Kyle and his crew broke their backs, I had to figure out what to do with the middle of my ribbon. I went down a driveway rabbit hole on Pinterest and decided I'd fill it with rock. Then I decided I'd fill some of those gaps in the rock with plants. I'd make a driveway garden!

Maybe one day my love of gardens will turn my thumb green.

Grateful that we'd bought a pick up truck, I headed to the stone store, where I was confronted with La Paz cobble and Yosemite cobble and Sierra cobble, large cobble and small cobble and pebble cobble. Jesus, why is there so much cobble to choose from! I ended up buying 3 tons of Yosemite cobble. Yep, the same stuff I loaded up on during our trip to the Sierras earlier this year for free cost me hundreds of dollars. As they loaded the pallet into the truck bed, I wondered if that old girl would break in half. Luckily she didn't. That'd be what I'd do unloading all this damn rock and placing it in the middle of the damn ribbon.

Since we have nothing else to do, I popped up the sunshade so I wouldn't burn to death and started taking armloads of rock to the driveway. I had to buy dirt to put under it so it wouldn't just be a place to break your ankle, and so my garden could have a chance, so I also hauled about 500 pounds of that over. I put on my podcasts, zoned out, and 8 hours and a broken body later, behold.... a driveway masterpiece.

I'll be shocked if the plants survive, but isn't it just the cutest driveway you've ever seen for now? If it's not, shut up because I'll never walk the same and it needs to be worth it.

The Interesting Times

2020-08-17T20:24:00.282-07:00

Breaking news: we're still in a pandemic. The coronavirus continues to keep restaurants in take-out-only mode and masks are such a feature of my face that I've got mask-ne. It's acne... from a mask! We get Door Dash a couple times a day and have developed a real Amazon ordering problem. The toilet paper/hand sanitizer madness has subsided and you can buy those things as needed again. There's no where to go and nothing to do, and when you walk down the street and people see you coming, they'll cross the street to keep 6 feet of clearance. Okay, that social distancing part I love and want to keep forever, but the rest is tired and annoying. Interesting, huh?

Just a couple gals getting a Covid antibody test. I was hoping Mom's sickness this Christmas was Covid so she could exist in the world. No such luck.

Bubba, Lee, and Mateo are staying with us, and Shahin, Tom, and Laila are next door. The proximity of family spread across two neighboring properties has made our bubble a little bigger than most people's, and I am so grateful for that. Mateo is about to be a big brother in a few months, but for the time being he is relishing being the center of six adults otherwise boring and alcoholic seltzer soaked worlds.

He's really into Grossery Gang, so much so he had it as his birthday theme. He's got moldy nachos, a soda with worm straws, fries with vomit? on them, a tub of discolored popcorn, and about 100 other small, squishy rotten food items that he totes around in a box and plays with all the time. He never lets me, or any other women he ropes into playing with him, be anything but Bagel Lady.

That boy comes up with the nuttiest things. He is A LOT, never gets tired, and sometimes I find myself bickering with him like I'd bicker with my sisters because I AM MATURE. But most of the time he is being a bright spot in the middle of this boredom. Mack bought him a book of stories and one of them is about a donkey that wants to sing like grasshoppers, but since it's an old storybook, they call the donkey an ass. Mateo loves being allowed to say ass, and that's the only reason he likes that story.

In non-Mateo news, I've spent my free time planting a garden in the container boxes Scott and I built before this all started. The cabbage worms are trying to sap my will to cultivate food, but I finally caved and dusted them with Sevin and I think I may just have the upper hand now. My friend Annie started making mead from scratch. Mack and Erik, Annie's boy, built automatic weapons. Men and women respond to global crises in such different ways.

Zoe, Bubba's dog, is also living here, and she has developed an understandable fascination with the chickens but a really bizarre friendship with Lemondrop. She bursts out the back door and acts like she's herding the chickens, except they're already in their coop. She runs from one side to the other, getting all up in the dusty bushes and getting filthy. Then she'll come inside and chew on herself from itching because she is not a chicken and cannot do the dust they way they do.

Oh, the gorgeousness. Those asses.

Mack and I have managed to do a couple of escapes, one to camp at Mammoth Pool in the Sierras and one to visit my family. Mammoth Pool was beautiful, but Mack and I had a moment when we wanted to kill each other because I insisted we take the long way home from the waterfall to the campsite and the long way ended up being 8 hours of nervous off-roading in a giant pick up truck. This is only about the 10th time I've ambitiously led us on an adventure that ended up being a scary ass drive that takes forever.

It started out so perfectly.

Listen, Google Maps confirmed this was the way.

Worth it.

Beautiful campsite right by a little creek.

He finally forgave me after a pot of chili and the serenity of a campfire.

The trip back home was way too fast. I had to hit Kentucky, then up to Dad's for a day, cram in some aunts, uncles, and cousins, meet the newest member of the tribe, Crew, and then get back home, all without catching or giving anyone a deadly virus. The fear of travel is real when the lovies are at the receiving end of it, but I couldn't not see them, especially with this threat looming over us and no visitors allowed in hospitals.

2020: bringing the campfire hangout back cuz you have to be outside and social distanced!

Worth it.

Don't know how these teenagers are making it thru this mess with a smile on their faces.

Pandemic baby! Welcome Crew! Do you know how hard it was to not be able to hold this fresh baby?

We still have no idea when this might all end. When we might be able to hug and kiss again. When we'll see smiles from strangers and celebrate birthdays again. When we can travel to the places we're drooling over again. When we can go to weddings and hold the babies. When this interesting will take a turn toward normal. But until then, we're washing our hands, being good recluses, and being grateful we're dodging the invisible bullet.

Life in Interesting Times

2020-04-13T10:35:00.001-07:00

I guess we're in a global pandemic. Which I guess gives my life the distinction of being lived in "interesting times."

So what's interesting about it?

As things were just starting to ramp up, Heather came for a planned visit. It's hard to self-isolate when your best friend is a night shift nurse with ADD on vacation, so we had to get out of the house despite the flurry of warning. Our days were bookended with trips to the weed store or Costco and epic games of Scrabble. I took her to get Botox from the guy who does mine. We wandered around the neighborhood, grateful to live in a place with lots of beautiful plants and houses and murals and a beach at the end of it.

In the middle of it all, we escaped to Joshua Tree to stay at a Zombie-themed shack next door to a trailer park hotel, where we binged awesome pizza, saw shooting stars, and sat by a fire in a teepee.
We let Mack lead us off a trail to a boulder-filled riverbed in search of a palmed oasis and hoped our ankles held up. Heather got spiked by a cactus and I plucked the pricks from her thigh while she stood bravely in her underwear in a room full of fellas.

I took her to the airport with a handful on N95 masks I had in the garage for cleaning my chicken coop. There was some mouse poop in the bottom of the box, so perhaps they'll end up being the source of Covid-20. We do what we can.

After Heather left, I did a few-day stint at work, which was as dead as it's ever been. I almost burst into tears as I turned into the parking lot on my first day back. I was terrified and obligated, torn in half by a desire to protect myself and help others. It felt like I was lining up for the firing squad. I had to swallow that worry down and remind myself that being brave meant doing things despite being afraid. I talked about this bizarre conflict with some co-workers in the break room and tears welled up in our eyes. Cops brought us donuts and coffee, restaurants sent us meals, we felt loved and appreciated. We had to plead our case to get a mask from our supervisors.

I checked the temperatures of every ambulance run that came in that wasn't on the verge of dead and offered it to staff if they asked what the hell I was doing. I felt like a Walmart greeter. I also spent a shift in triage, where I wore a mask and goggles and made everyone who entered use the hand sanitizer upon entering the room. In 4 days I think I saw 10 patients, most of whom were psych. It ended up being a great time to connect with my coworkers and use our sick sense of humor to make us feel a little more at ease with our enemy and the battle ahead. A battle that I knew I'd watch from the sidelines, since we had a month-long getaway/renovation job in St. Thomas that was planned way before Chinese New Year ignited the coronavirus.

Everything was cancelled. Volleyball for me, medical conferences for him. Bubba's nursing school graduation. Laila's classes. We took it as a sign and moved our departure date up. Our plane to the island had maybe 30 people on it, including one grouchy guy who was pissed about paying extra for the better seats when the plane was mostly empty. It sounds romantic and fortunate, and in a lot of ways, it has been. Especially before they closed the beaches. But in a lot of ways it's added an extra layer of torture. Is that interesting? Or disgusting?

We have a lot of time to feel guilt and gratitude right now, and it's a swirly mix daily. Frustrated with boredom, elevated by books. Annoyed that we can't get 90-Day Fiancé here because Hulu loves boundaries, renewed by a little dips in the aquarium outside our door that we do illegally most days.

I look forward to throwing rice at the chickens when they walk by with their babies. I love the sound of the wind in the palms and the crash of the waves. I feel obligated to check on the two lobsters hanging out at the reef we visit to make sure I can still find them. It's a thrill to see a soldier crab walking on the sidewalk. I hate that I love the air conditioning, not because I can do things without sweating but because my mosquito bites itch so much less. I miss touching people. I miss being careless about touching pens and keypads and door handles and shopping carts. I miss restaurants. I miss the sound of other people's laughter, especially if I was the thing that got it out of them. Mack's great and all, but the burden of isolation is really too much for one human. I'm jealous of big families. I bet parents of big families wish they were me. Is this interesting? Or pathetic?

The isolation has made us weirdly social people. We befriended our contractor Jose, who learned that we are late sleepers without any conscious input from us. We polished off two bottles of wine and ate black bean stew with (and courtesy of) our neighbors Corrine and Ivan, a brilliant combination of British sailor and environmentalist and Caribbean Olympian/actor/spear fisherman/community-made mayor. I'm looking forward to Scrabble night with them this week. I need to bring them some chocolate if I can find it. And wine.

Other items on the List of Things to Look Forward to This Week include a trip to get groceries since hardly any restaurants are operating and, hopefully, the arrival of Mack's electronic piano. We miss the music that usually fills our mornings. Maybe we'll also get our washer. We ordered it 2 weeks ago, but the handle was broken and the ferries weren't running and then there was Easter and island time. Last week, we managed to move in, get our dryer, get WiFi, and have the air conditioner installed. I'll probably keep up my routine of sweeping the floor and mopping daily. I have really cultivated a love of sweeping, probably because our place is so small it's low effort for high yield. I have also cultivated disdain for FaceTime, probably because it shocks me into harsh reality every time I open it. I love to see my lovies faces, but I can't stand the look of my own... it matches my voice. We haven't had a mirror in our lives since we moved in, and I forget how wild and greasy I can look, especially in muggy climates like the one we're in. Today I had to apologize to Jose when I opened the door for him to do some plumbing work because I went to bed with wet hair and I know the range of appearance that can get.

(Mack just caught a mosquito with our electric racket: "Mess with the bull, get the horns." The thrill of catching one of those bastards is worth remark.)

I don't know how long this will last. But I do know that the sweet agony of it has settled down on us, and I hope that at the end I'll feel the same fondness for it that I feel about my last summer vacations as a kid in Kentucky. That hot season when my mom kept us out of the house since she was trying to sell it and we were living disasters who survived on Nerds and Nachos at the swimming pool. When Heather and I bounced around the neighborhood between our houses like nomads. When I kissed my first boy and discovered that I could inflate my bathing suit top to make it look like I had giant boobs. When I broke my collar bone coming home from the dentist and had to swim in a brace. When we climbed into the bathtub to protect ourselves during a tornado warning and Leiah peed on all of us since Heather's mom refused to let any of us get out of the tub. When everything was carefree and slow, drastic change was on the horizon, and I was learning without even trying to.

Dulywed: Level 13

2019-11-30T14:23:00.000-08:00

Moltenson,

Well, well, well. Lucky number 13. The ol' baker's dozen. The year of lace. The time of intricate entanglement. That point of "cheaper to keep her."

When I start thinking about how we got here, how have we made it this far, how we have never committed murder or ran away, I am bewildered. I have no answers. I have no idea. I only know that I am here and so are you and that feels pretty awesome.

This, our 13th year of marriage, we both entered our 40s. We have lost the battle of grey hair. You've officially crossed over to more salt than pepper, and I welcomed my first grey eyebrow hair. I've reached that point where if I eat a healthy meal I gain five pounds and if I think about cake I gain ten. Your "gramps" are better since you got treated for those worms, as is your snoring, which may have been the end of us if it had kept progressing. You take naps around 4pm, a routine you call N&N (news and naps). While you bury yourself under the weighted blanket and explore varying levels of unconsciousness for a couple hours, I tolerate the rambling on MSNBC in the background and give some attention to my projects. Lately most of those projects have been for your private practice, which has grown so fast it's almost scary, or our place in St. Thomas, whose post-hurricane renovation has been anticipated for so long it's actually endured another hurricane. When I think about things like "private practice" and "condo in the Caribbean," I also think "Who the fuck are we? How is this our life?"

We've had a lot of fun this year. You bought another old boat, Cynara, and we did that thing where we hemorrhage money on restoring broke down boats with gorgeous potential only to sell them as soon as they're restored. We varnished and sewed and plumbed and painted and electriced for the whole year. At one point I was elbows deep in mystery shit doing a power squat to get a holding tank bladder out of a tiny hole, and when I finally stood up with everything in my arms, I caught a glimpse of you... beaming with pride. I'll never understand why you are most impressed with me when I am doing gross, unattractive things related to brute strength, but since that's sort of my baseline, I am grateful for it.

Our third child, Cynara.

Yes, you belong there. It looks amazing on you. I wish I didn't puke.

We did a lot of work this year. But man, we also did a lot of pretiring. We spent my birthday in Fiji, where we begrudged being at a 5-star resort where everyone was so friendly we actually started playing "Dodge the Bulas" because we are so spoiled and awful. I'm still sorry I made you take that drive to find a waterfall that almost killed us, and thank you so much for reassuring me that I would make it to 42 during those four hours of terror. A couple weeks ago we spent a perfect weekend in the woods, taking short hikes among the smell of pine needles, skipping rocks on the lake, soaking in the hot tub, and binging that show about Gianni Versace's murder. Hands down, though, my favorite moments of this year with you were "chairs" and that drive across the Denali Highway.

The worst moment was when I came home from my trip to Europe and your welcome involved such kind remarks as "You were gone too long," and "I did just fine without you." I ended up in the bathroom crying to myself and you got so pissed off you threatened to leave. No, you did not do just fine without me. You turned into a troll. Luckily, my abandonment issues are so deep-seated that even that your shapeshifting into a monster doesn't send me packing.

I get why you hate when I leave now. It's not that you miss me as much as that it's bad for you. When I'm around, those damaging thoughts that creep into your brain and swirl around until they become false realities are subdued somehow. They are softened. They are muted. You are better. And I think you know it. I also know it's not your fault, it's just the intensity of your mind, and to your credit, you recognize you need a buffer on some level.

I am happy to be your buffer. In fact, I enjoy it. You are hilarious, especially when your disdain starts to boil, and your pleb-hating brings your humor to new levels. Remember that afternoon I made you go get frozen yogurt in your pajamas and we sat in the parking lot eating our yogurt watching people coming in and out of Target and talking so much shit about them? I laughed til I cried. I think that was the best date I've ever been on in my entire life. And our recent impromptu dinner at C&O Trattoria, where we drank house chianti and blew our server away with our ability to vacuum up food in seconds? "Next!" I could do nothingness with uncoordinated moments like these with you every single day and never get bored.

I like that you get up in the morning and look at financial graphs, even if it triggers unsubstantiated worries about us being poor. We were living paycheck to paycheck just a couple years ago and now there's a private practice AND a condo in the Caribbean that we're connected to. I like that you nearly get into a rage when I steal your flip flops to walk outside to do my chicken duties. What a fun little button to accidentally push, just annoying enough and innocuous enough to drive you in to madness. I like that you creepily stand over me when I sleep too late in the morning and interrupt my dreams of you on Ketamine trying to kiss men while I turn in my neighbors for trying to human traffic my co-worker. I like that when I try to take a picture with you, you pose like this.

I like you. I like us. I like this thing between us. Even if it means accepting that you like lady drinks.

Thank you for being willing to watch Dexter with me every night for months. Thank you for your "on demand" farts and making it to "fartsgiving" this year. Thank you for keeping all your secret life things, all those sneaky relationships and money manipulations that I just know you're doing, a secret, so I can live in oblivion in this beautiful facade of our life. Thank you for saying thank you more in the last month than in the past 13 years. Thank you for getting all tangled up in this marriage mess with me and making being tied down a good time. I am so lucky.

Gramma

2019-07-17T17:17:00.003-07:00

Almost a year ago my grandma moved from Florida to Indiana because, as she put it, "I'm gonna be buried there, I may as well die there." Soon after she relocated, we found out she had a lung mass, and even though she couldn't remember why she was at her doctor's appointments, she always knew she didn't want to get treatment. She was ready to wrap it up, to "head upstairs," and while her attitude was a gift that made letting her go easier, losing her hurts to the bone.

In her 89 years, Gram raised six kids and buried three of them. She married two men and buried both of them. She made countless friends, explored the country, and most loved the view out her kitchen window when the deer came into the field in the evenings.

For me, she was that grandparent. The one who was your favorite, who loved you as sweetly as a grandparent should, who let you be who you are, and who felt like home to you. My favorite memories of life have her in the background, as her farm was the backdrop for the purest childhood joy I ever felt. I remember playing in a giant tire sandbox under pine trees there, riding big wheels down a drainage ditch, wading the creek and catching crawdads and building up the dam, finally getting brave enough to jump off the bank and into the swimming hole, swinging on an old tire swing that probably every butt in the Scott family swang on at some point, learning how to live off blackberries picked off the vine and the most efficient way to fetch firewood.

The place we called "back at the crick" initially had nothing but a clear patch in the middle of some woods, but that place of nothing was everything to me. It was so full of good times and wild abandon, and when I got too tired or dirty from being an animal, I'd retreat back up to the house, get hosed off outside by Gram, and then get to come inside (leaving my shoes at the door) and play in the cool, musty, delicious smelling air in the basement. She'd make me fried chicken and mashed potatoes, which I'd eat in my special yellow booster stool. She let me sleep in a baby crib in her closet until I was 7 years old. She gave me her old nightgowns to use as a silky blanket. She'd take me on adventures to "town," for which she got ready by putting lipstick on her cheeks and rubbing it in, and let me pick out which cold cuts to buy and and a sack full of penny candy. She didn't judge me for choosing olive loaf or ham and cheese loaf. In fact, she made me feel special for making those choices.

Gram was fat before fat was an epidemic. Her lumpy grandma body was the most comfortable place I've ever been, and she rocked me in a recliner even after I was way too big for it. She'd sit in her chair mending clothes while I'd play with her spools of thread like they were characters in a soap opera, soap operas I knew all too well as a five-year-old because of her addiction to her "stories." As we were sorting through her recipes after we lost her, I found recipes for a diet cabbage soup, and it was only then that I realized she considered her body a struggle. I loved that body. It was the perfect body for a grandma to have, and even when it yelled at me or disciplined me, it was a safe haven that made it all better.

As I got older and had issues with my dad, Gram became my retreat. I stayed with her whenever I visited during high school and college. After I got my first job after college, I took her out to dinner for pork chops at a steakhouse called Amber's and learned about her life as a child and during her first marriage. She had it rough, a mom with tuberculosis who left the family to go to a sanitarium, a dad who was an angry alcoholic. She found her spine in those struggles, and when I asked her about the death of her first husband from a drunk driving accident, she said, "If he hadn't died, I would've divorced him." She told me about how she met my handsome grandpa. As she told it, he had dated some of her friends at work and did them pretty dirty, so she decided to get him on a date to return the favor. She ended up falling for him, driving across the country to California, and, after he bought her a bedroom suit, she married him. By the time I came around, they'd been married 26 years, and by the time I became able to remember things, it was closer to 30. I remember lots of yelling at each other, Grampa getting fed up and shouting "Goddammit Phyllis!" and them sleeping in opposite ends of the house.

When I visited Gram with Mack last year, she told me a story of a time she was shouting at Grampa so relentlessly all he could do was grab her by the shoulders, look her in the eye, and say, "You are the mother of my children," probably more to remind himself why he couldn't kill her than to get her off the ledge, but that comment took the wind out of her sails. She was a pistol, and she was a fighter, but as her granddaughter, I didn't get her wrath at its most fierce. I knew it was there, but I was spared. Except that one time I sassed her with, "You're not my mom," and she growled at me, "I am your GRAND mother, and that makes me bigger than your mom."

In preparation for her funeral, we were supposed to come up with one word to describe Gram. When I think of her, it's her bossiness that sticks out most in my mind. But not in the overbearing bossy naggy way. Instead it's an unapologetic demand for respect, for acknowledgement, for the right to assert oneself whenever it feels necessary. She was 4'10" but she was a giant among a bunch of men who became Marines. She showed me how a woman stands up for herself and that it is okay to make demands, to raise your voice to be heard if that's what it takes. I'm not nearly as good at it as she was, but hopefully if I make it to 89 I'll find that incredible balance of moxie and softness that I so admired in her. I am so grateful to have felt her love, to have seen her strength, and to have enjoyed such a perfect grandma.

Sixty. And dazzling.

2019-04-25T15:25:00.135-07:00

I can't trace the first memory I have of my mom. I can't really even pinpoint an early one. It's like trying to figure out the first time I saw the sky. She's just always been there, as important and unregarded as my breath and my heartbeat. A constant life force.

This year she celebrates 60 trips around the sun, and my sisters and I decided to throw her a proper celebration. Because, my god, the life that woman has lived.

There is no question that she made it to 60 because she is made of steel. Life has tried, over and over and over again, to crush her, to sap her will, to shut her down. Yet, she persists. She survived abuse that goes beyond the worst horrors you can imagine before she was out of middle school. As a teenager, she became a mother despite having no point of reference about how to do it or support from the grownups around her. I don't know how old I was, probably 3 or 4, when I watched her dodge a glass of iced tea my dad threw at her head one afternoon. She soon left that melodrama and got a job making $14,000 a year, with which she raised Shannon, me and Leiah all on her own. Then she turned 25.

When I turned 25, I had zero children, one dog, one cat, and no clue. Now I'm 40, with zero children, zero dogs, zero cats, and a bit more of a clue about what it takes to make it to 60 with a smile on your face. And not just any smile, but one that readily shows up, one so big it brightens the gloomiest days.

We decided to throw her a surprise party, and what a challenge that was! Somehow we had to get her and Aunt Becky to stop treasure hunting at the consignment store so we could get her to our "dinner reservation." But since we were having her party at an AirBnB, we had to get her in a strange house first. Luckily, Shannon came up with a ridiculous house viewing that had to be done before dinner. As she opened the door Mom saw people on the couch and immediately tried to leave! The surprise we all screamed took a second to register! And then that smile came in and gifted itself to us.

It was such a treat to have all these people who have known her and loved her and been through it all with her in one place celebrating the person she is and the life she's lived. We ate, we drank, we laughed, we sang, we took tons of pictures. One of us passed out on a suitcase.

To be fair, the girl passed out on the cooler busted her ass to help us make this happen. BFFs rule.

It's so incredible when you really see the impact, the reach, the depth of a single person's life. The party was a fraction of who she's known and what she's experienced. I mean, look at this.

This is a woman who became a mother at 17. At 19. At 23. At 27. The last baby almost left before she arrived thank to placenta previa, then almost left upon arrival due to beta strep. While all that was going on, this woman was supporting her sister, whose baby boy had drowned in a river and was fighting for his life. Her three other kids were still being fed, clothed, educated, hugged, tucked in a night... and where she got the energy to do all this, I have no idea. Maybe she really did find inspiration in the quote taped to her makeup mirror: "I am the mountain I climb." Mount Debra makes Mount Everest look like a speed bump.

Were it not for this woman, this tiny little blond beauty in the middle of that love sandwich up there, none of those other people would be. My sisters and I would not be the people we are, know the love we know, or have come as far as we've come. Had she been different, maybe wiser, maybe richer, maybe better cared for, we may not exist at all. With everything life threw at her, and continues to throw at her, she musters stamina to keep trying, to keep growing, to keep smiling.

She is sunshine and love and perseverance, in one dazzling little human package. Happy birthday, Momma.

My Sweet Ginger

2018-12-31T02:31:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning I went to the chicken coop to let the girls out to play and check for eggs. Lemondrop, Clove, and Cinnamon were running around but Ginger was no where to be seen. I opened the nesting area of their house, and my sweetest, friendliest, silliest chicken was slumped over with her eyes closed. My little baby girl was dead.

The day before she died she was slow to come out of her coop and stood around kind of out of it. I didn't pay much attention because I had to get to work and I figured she was just having an off day. Mack said she was standing around shell shocked, but he didn't notice anything in particular when he picked her up. I should've paid more attention. I wish I would've known her funk was something serious. I wish I didn't cry every time I think of her sweet body in my arms, her darling eyes closed, her little neck all floppy, and those perfect yellow feet all stiff. I wish losing her didn't hurt this bad. A couple months ago she had some terrible diarrhea. I was syringe force feeding her probiotic drinks and water every few hours and she seemed to get better. Right after that she started to molt. Her comb never got back to its floppy bologna state, but her new feathers came in and she was so beautifully soft and shiny. The day after Christmas she was downing a leftover relish tray like the Ginger the Binger she is. And now she is gone. Oh, Ginger.

Ginger was my most loving chicken. She'd let me carry her anywhere and would sometimes fall asleep on my lap. She was tolerant of the kids' cuddles. She invited herself to everything I was doing outside, whether it was laundry or cutting wood with a jigsaw. She invited herself inside, too. She didn't care one bit about the chicken hierarchy, eating what she pleased when she wanted and even stealing worms right out of the other girls' mouths and then running away. She was my tiniest puff, and grew up to be my skinniest girl. She ate like a French woman and didn't get fat, which is why she was also called Jean Jae sometimes. She was probably the best Rhode Island Red that ever graced the planet.

I am so grateful for the laughs, joy, and love she brought to my dusty old dried up lifeless back yard, and I miss her so much. Sleep good, my sweet Gingie.

Dulywed: Dirty Dozen

2018-11-26T01:11:00.000-08:00

Mottinson,

It took 12 years but at long last, we have settled into a fearless crazy disregard for what another human being thinks of us and this is what life looks like now. Typical.

Our days start with a thing you've dubbed the Three C's: coffee, chickens, and computers. I, being the lucky one, enjoy a fourth C in the morning: cleaning. While the coffee brews, I harvest dishes from your various drop off spots and try to keep people from knowing we're slobs. You sometimes flavor the day with such hits as Ra Ra RasPutin and Age of Aquarius played at an excruciating volume for someone who hasn't had coffee. Every now and then you'll come up with an inspired jingle, like that one day when I was having a surge of love for you and rather than return the affection you offered a chorus of "Surgin', surgin'... A Surgency!" At some point (hopefully before noon), we release the chickens into the yard, take a seat at the table you didn't know we needed, and sip coffee while scrolling our screens. Sometimes we go to work, sometimes we go for walks, sometimes we have a cocktail with lunch. In the evening, we eat dinner sent to us by Blue Apron because we've become both lazy and fancy. Then you strap yourself into a device that hangs you by your ankles in an attempt to fix your back while I burrito myself up in a blanket and watch Water Wives, a show the rest of the world knows as Below Deck. At about 11pm, we yell at the Xbox to put it on HLN so we can watch Forensic Files and fall asleep on the couch for an hour.

So, I ask you, how does retirement feel? Pleasantly boring or oppressively empty... I still can't tell.

In between all these typical moments, we've had some pretty extraordinary ones this year. We became international real estate moguls. Your parents moved in next door, which means we get Laila on demand. Bubba, Lee, and Mateo have been next door since they moved in too. Having that scrawny boy run into my arms yelling TITA! and saying Woooowwww when he saw the new bathroom floor tile and giving me a thumbs up for the Thanksgiving food I cooked have been some of the best compliments I've ever gotten. Speaking of Thanksgiving, you should come sometime. Work took you away from that and a bunch of other wonderful stuff this year and DIDN'T YOU GET THE MEMO ABOUT RETIREMENT? You started a private practice and then grew that practice, all while working another full time job. The bathroom was renovated and the floors were refinished. We road tripped through ghost towns and around alpine lakes and to wild hot springs. Then you sold the Miata. Then you sold the boat.

That boat, that sweet Kenutu. Letting go of that boat was heart wrenching. As much as she was a pain in the ass, I loved her more than I even realized. We had some of our worst moments and our best moments on her. She taught me that sometimes it's better to just shut up and do what you're told. She taught you to say you're sorry when you're nasty as a response to being worried. We endured fiberglass torture and neurotoxic fumes in a spirit of can-do that our relationship never knew before. She gave us gratitude for able bodies that can bend in strange ways. She gave us challenges that required us to work together to overcome. She was a gift to our character development and I think she is to be credited with testing our relationship in a really significant way. When Kenutu left our lives she took a piece of us with her, not just a piece of me or a piece of you, but a piece of us. She was something we did together and now what do we have left?

The Files.

I left a little mark on our girl before we let her go.

At this point in our story of togetherness and devotion, the space between us is quietly strained with something. Like white noise, something that's there all the time but you have to tune your ear into it to know it's there. Love persists, I know that, and I trust it will keep us coming back to the same bed every night. But there is also a tinge of disdain, a subtle longing for some greener grass, a curiosity about what we would be as people if we were not caught up in this union. I often feel like a servant and am accused of being dead weight or a slug. You often feel tied down or dismissed and see me as the person clipping your wings so you can't go anywhere.

The reality though, at least as I see it after all these years, is that while we are blaming each other for the absence of imaginary outcomes, we should be appreciating each other for being a constant that allowed us to flourish into the reality we live in now. We've got it good. So incredibly good. Twelfth anniversary silk and linen luxury items good. I want you to know, even though you'll never read this, that my love for you does not require your containment. If you need to do something that puts us on different paths, I will be sad but okay. I will be there when you return or meet you wherever you end up, and I will be happy for and supportive of you along the way. I will miss you, I will feel bewildered and lonely, but I will be okay. I love you, more completely than I've ever loved anyone, by choice. That choice is not always a product of my heart and head being in alignment, but it is the choice I make every time I ask myself if this marriage is worth it. The choice I make is the same one I made a dozen years ago: you.

I came across part of a TED Talk by Esther Perel about desire and monogamy a few years ago while listening to the radio and I instantly loved her perspective on long-term relationships. In the few years since then, I've kept up with some of her stuff, listening to her podcast and reading articles she's in, mostly because she takes these very conflicting and ambivalent feelings I have about "wifing" and simplifies them in the most amazing way. The last, best thing I read was in The New Yorker's "Love is not a permanent state of enthusiasm":

Do you have a working definition of love?

It’s a verb. That’s the first thing. It’s an active engagement with all kinds of feelings—positive ones and primitive ones and loathsome ones. But it’s a very active verb. And it’s often surprising how it can kind of ebb and flow. It’s like the moon. We think it’s disappeared, and suddenly it shows up again. It’s not a permanent state of enthusiasm...

I think that definition today of love—“you are my everything”—where you really see it, this complete exaltation, is in wedding vows. Have you ever noticed? I mean, it’s, “I will wipe every tear that streams down your face before you even notice it’s going down.” I think a realistic vow is “I will fuck up on a regular basis, and, on occasion, I’ll admit it.”

So Mack, I will fuck up on a regular basis, as I have done for the past 12 years. And, on occasion, I'll admit it. You try the same. We keep doing that, and someday, we may just get to happily ever after.

Spoooooky

2018-10-23T17:23:00.000-07:00

Brace yourself. Epic reveal coming.

I love Halloween.

I ended up skipping the party planning this year since I spent all my money in Mexico with Heather, but I couldn't help getting in the spirit. I busted out the jig saw and reimagined some old fence boards that had been lingering in the garage for a year and, behold, the Coronado Cemetery.

Mateo has been staying next door and his regular visits to look at the scary stuff at Tita Amber's house is almost as good as that time he gave me a thumbs up for the pasta I made. He's starting to talk a lot more and, I gotta say, the fact that "Trick or Treat" and "pumpkin" are already in his vocabulary makes me really proud. He also associates knocking on the door with saying Trick or Treat, so his little face peeking in my front door knocking and yelling "Trick or Treat!" on a regular Tuesday is like pure sunshine.

He likes to play baseball with the leg bones.

And collect all the skulls around the house to play with them.

All he needs is a seasonal addiction to Caramel Apple suckers and my legacy will live on in this one.

Galownias Go West

2018-08-28T13:50:00.000-07:00

In what is going down as the Best Summer Ever, California got a visit from the Galownias! No easy undertaking loading up three kids and going across two time zones and coordinating a work schedule so that Brother Dave could join in, but Leiah made it happen.

It took two cars to get these people and their things transported from the airport to my mom's house. Luckily Betsy has been in Cali for a long stay and was able to play chauffeur with me while Mom worked. Once we got the transport done, the delightful chaos took over. Chunks played in the sink, Ben ate all the red raspberries, and all was as it should be.

It didn't take too many trips to the roof to look at the ocean before the kids were ready to go swim. We headed down to the beach with about an hour of sunlight left and enjoyed the magic.

Since mom's house is a touch far from mine, I conned Leiah into meeting me for lunch in a town in the middle one day. We went for Ramen, noodles Leiah's children call Momma Noodles. Because it's what Momma cooks them a lot. California's Ramen is a touch different than Momma Noodles, but they didn't seem to mind.

Getting them cultured.

Once David made it to town, we decided to do some tourist things that Leiah, Ben and I had done during a visit 10 years ago. He was about the size of Chunks then, and one of his favorite things was riding bikes on the beach in Venice. We had waaayyy more people than we did then, but we hopped on bikes and dodged scooters and bikes and raced each other to the Santa Monica Pier.

The kids faces tell exactly how much fun they were having.

We stopped in Santa Monica and the kids ate some food while the adults had some libations. The ride back was much more chill somehow, and Lilly and I kicked everyone's asses!

We also wandered Venice Beach for a bit, strolling the canals and taking in the public art. Lilly stopped at Muscle Beach and put the boys to shame. David climbed a street sign, which was crazy and totally normal at the same time.

Touring LA with three kids in two cars ain't easy, so we spent the next day at my house in Long Beach. Chunks got to play in a kiddie pool and meet her "Chicken Cousins" as Leiah named them. She was so cute with them. We'd say, "Touch em!" and she'd stretch her hand out really far without moving her bottom half any closer and groan like she was trying so hard to touch them. That kid is something else.

Ben showing Chunks around Mack's piano, something he's been playing with since he was her age.

We also walked up the street to get some legit donuts, one of which was called a margarita donut and had actual tequila in it. It took about 8 hours but nearly every morsel was eventually eaten.

Somehow we managed to squeeze in a trip downtown. We grabbed a bite at Grand Central Market, which was about 1000 degrees inside. Afterward, Mom took the kids to explore and we met Cousin Shannon for a cocktail at Perch, a cool rooftop bar that Betsy discovered with Isaac.

One thing I really wanted to do was take them to this awesome spot I camped at last month called La Jolla Indian Reservation Campground. The logistics of camping -- tents, air mattresses, transporting all of us and kids -- became a bit much so Leiah and I decided to make a day trip of it instead. Ben was feeling sick and Betsy had to cancel, so we left them at home and took the car-sick prone caravan on some windy roads to the woods. I showed Lilly how to tube the little river there, which was pretty low but still fun to wade in and explore, and Leiah taught her how to slide down rocks. We roasted hot dogs and S'mores before deflating our tubes and heading for home. I really wished we were camping there after we got there, so Leiah and I put it on the list of things to do next time.

Leiah had really wanted to go sailing, but it's not all that relaxing with kids on board. Betsy said she'd stay with them for a couple hours so Mack could take us out, and it was such a treat. The kids got to craft with their aunt Bebe, Leiah was a riot finding her sea legs, and she and David were something out of a book about lovers with their little poses.

After the sail, we relieved Betsy of the hot house (we desperately needed an air conditioner this summer) and took the kids to the boardwalk to play games. Lilly won enough tickets for a ring. Ben won enough to go to college. Chunks learned how to use her small stature to assist so we didn't have to use tokens to play the basketball game.

After a busy couple days of adventuring, Ben taught Chunks how to relax, just like Uncle Mack taught him a decade ago. Chunks got the hang of it real quick.

Since Mom's house is closer to the airport than mine, the Galownia finished up their westward voyage back on the beach. Betsy and I took the kids down early, and they did all the awesome things kids do. They buried each other in sand. They gave up on the boogie board and called it dumb until their awesome Auntie Am showed them how it works. They ate popsicles from the beach vendor in the sloppiest way possible. They somehow elevated the beauty of a place beyond comprehension with their very presence.

I love these things so much. And it's not even about all the wonderful things we did together. It just about the being together. All this joy happens on accident, without planning, often when we're just doing the stupidest waste of time things. Like Snapchat. Lilly was Snapchatting her cousins or friend or something and we did a face swap. For two hours we all face swapped, which caused us to laugh our faces right off. This is why when they leave me, my heart starts to drain. Thank god I've already got my next trip home planned.

Wild and Wonderful

2018-07-18T11:56:00.000-07:00

Something about the 4th of July doesn't feel right unless there's a million mosquitos, a swimming spot, a bonfire, and a bunch of dirty kids running around unsupervised. When I was little, I was one of those kids running around unsupervised, dropping firecrackers into septic systems, fetching beers for a nickel, and drinking as much Hubba Bubba soda as I wanted. It was awesome, true unabashed freedom.

Now that I'm a grown-up living in a highly flammable state, I crave that wild reverie. Luckily Indiana still delivers. Dad's got the woods, Tina's got the pool, Tee's got no sense, and my sisters and cousins have the kids. Some of my favorite memories in life are from 4th of Julys in Indiana, so I grabbed my sisters, jammed their families into a car, and north we went to cause a ruckus.

Dad set up the guest house (a tent) for us, and it was a matter of minutes before we'd eaten all his fresh caught wild Alaskan salmon and depleted his beer stores by half. We sat on the porch watching mosquitoes eat the children and laughing at Nynie who was simultaneously fascinated and terrified by the deer skulls all over the yard. Kieron and Lilly took off into the woods, and we didn't even care what they were doing. Chunks got mostly naked. Life was perfect.

City kids gone full country.

Grandpa Greg teaching the littlest ones how to beat the heat.

Dad feeding the children with the sweetest meat to the skeeters.

My cousin Kristin brought our Grandma over for a quick visit. All the chaos of the clan wore her out in just a few minutes, but it was such a gift to see this tiny little woman enveloped by two dozen people who love her. Dad baited the kids with popsicles and we managed to get a pic of him with his own half dozen sacks of chaos.

We gathered up the sticky, sweaty kids and headed to Tina's, where we swam and ate and drank to our heart's content. Jaden and Kennedy were the responsible adults (they are 16 and 12), and we put all our trust in them and the power of arm floaties. Ryan and I taught the next generation of cousins how to chicken fight. Aunt Becky waged war on UV rays. And we all gathered around a raft for happy hour. No cover charge and hands down the best bar I've ever been to.

Ben one. I was the base for one fight and my neck was broken for two days.

Max will never fully appreciate how much Grandma Wonderful adores him because boys.

Sam. This boy is everything. With a cute floppy hat on top.

Charlene and Nynie. Bonded since Nynie joined us.

I don't know how Andrea made such perfect kids, but Kennedy is absolutely amazing. Chunks knows it too.

Didn't take long for Nynie to find her fearless.

This is after Becky took the beer out of her cleavage and Leiah left to pee in the bushes. Hahaha!

In between swimming, the kids took breaks inside, mostly watching Moana and falling asleep. I caught Renee being nice to the little bits. Busted!

The day wound down with a cookout and some games of corn hole, where Kennedy and I got smoked by Uncle Vince and Jaden. Nynie tried to play too but mostly she just ran around being crazy.

I swear I'm going to steal her one day.

Excellent form. Yet still, we were defeated.

Shout out to Tee for keeping the beer stocked and playing with all the fire products. He's grooming Jaden for the takeover.

The cherry on the top of this mound of perfection that was 4th of July 2018 was getting a quilt custom made for me by my mind-glowingly creative and talented Aunt Becky. To start, the quilt is enormous. Me and 40 of my friends can easily sit on this fabric garden. But what really makes this quilt magical is all the personal touches on it. The flowers in the garden... Becky and I sewed some of those on a flight together. The picket fence... Becky put that in after doing a google image search of my house. The flowers going up the fence post have stuffing under them, making the whole scene a little three dimensional. In two of the corners, Becky put in chickens. CHICKENS! And across the top, she put in a strip of silky fabric because I have a silky addiction. It didn't stop there though. She embroidered the most wonderful sentiments into the silky part, all derived from adventures we've shared. I honestly think this is the most thoughtful thing I have ever been gifted in my life.

Tee gave the day a proper send off with a bonfire so big it sent a bunch of us running to the pool to escape the flying embers and a fireworks show that puts most of the nearby small towns to shame. There's something to be said for being in the middle of nowhere surrounded only by the things that matter.

To think socks almost derailed her...

2018-06-23T12:09:00.000-07:00

Laila is done. She slayed high school with physics and calculus and English, solving problems beyond my comprehension and writing poems so amazing and twisty they should be in a book. At one point during this school year she was talking about some physics thing and I just looked at her and said, "You've passed me up. I am of no use to you. Unless you want to learn to sew. Do you want to learn to sew?"

The kid who threw a three-hour fit about wearing socks to kindergarten has become one of the most extraordinary people on this planet. She's a safe driver, she keeps her room clean, she takes good care of her rabbit, her eyebrows are on fleek, and she is freakin' funny. She has good self-esteem, manners, and expectations. Sure, she's a bit of a noodle and can't open jars, but that means SHE NEEDS ME STILL.

I don't have or want my own kids precisely because I have Laila. She gave me a taste of what parenting really entails, of how children really are, of the capacity of love and the hilarious joy in the unpredictable. I was talking to some of my peers at work the other day about making friends, and I was like, hmmmm, my best friend is probably my sister-in-law. She's the person I call to do stuff with when I know Mack will say no. She's the person I can goof off with or just veg out with. She's on my wavelength. And then I thought, is it weird to be best friends with an 18 year old? Laila assured me it's not and she's a damn genius.

It has been a pleasure in my life to watch her evolve as a person and nurture her as a human, and I couldn't be more proud of her. This girl can be or do anything, and I'm stoked to watch her master this next part of life. I love you, Lablr. Always will.

Lordy, Lordy. Let there be tapes.

2018-05-25T12:11:00.001-07:00

Actually I turned 40. And now I want alllll the tapes to be erased. Ya hear me??!!

My 40th birthday was just a continuation of the awesomeness that is my lucky life. In fact, this May 16th amped it up a notch.

I started the day getting my gray hair covered and getting my frizz tamed with a Brazilian Blowout. At one point two people were blow drying my hair and the whole scene was so utterly ridiculous I could barely contain myself. I am still not glamorous enough for two people to be working this head of mine.

After my hair appointment, I went to my favorite taco joint, El Gringo, and got my favorite taco, grilled mahi taco not blackened with white fish sauce. (I may have put the complete order here in case you ever need to know what food to order for me for my birthday or Christmas or because you owe me a favor. I have learned to helpful over the years.) I sat at a table by myself, and noticed the other two people sitting at tables by themselves were in their 70s. So I'm apparently getting an early start on that aspect of old age. It really is so relaxing to eat a meal by yourself at a restaurant. I can't believe I didn't realize this until I was almost 40. Grab a book and go get your favorite food for lunch. Bliss.

After my taco I went to Target for some reason I can't remember because I'm 40 now and ended up buying a romper thing that didn't seem too age inappropriate. I have wanted a romper since I was 30 but they all accentuate my love handles and stocky legs way too much so I avoided them. But this one I was like, hey, that ain't terrible, you're 40, it's now or never kid.

While I was waiting for my pictures to print -- ohhhh, that's why I went to Target -- I glanced at the ATM and there was a $20 just sitting in there. No one was around. The screen was on its home page. I pulled it out, said to the empty universe, "Is this anyone's money?" and then used it to buy my romper.

In my 40 years on this planet, one thing that I've learned is that when the universe gives you a gift, you accept it without question. Otherwise, it will send you a shit storm.

When I got home, I got the sweetest card from my oldest friend, complete with dancing chickens on it.

That night I met some girls from work for a cocktail. The 20-somethings drank half of their margaritas and I drank two Old Fashioneds and a beer all the way. My other friend, Patrice, who is beyond her 20s and who is the person I want to be when I grow up because she has balls of steel the size of the Jupiter, also enjoyed double rum and cokes. Which just proves that the older you get, the more edge you need to take off.

My birthday weekend was spent putting on an event at work honoring Trauma Survivors. It went off without a hitch, and that night, we caught a flight to St. Thomas to visit OUR NEW CONDO.

In the curious chaos of life, we found a little studio place when we visited the island back in March, and after some hemming and hawing and are we crazy yeah so whating, we bought it. It is about 10 feet from the water, across the street from the Ritz Carlton, and I fully expect a hurricane to come along and wash it away at some point, but for now, it is a little piece of paradise that our friends and family can escape to.

We had to keep our trip short because Mack had bought me second row!! tickets to see David Blaine for my birthday. I have loved David Blaine for about as long as I have loved Mack, but David does magic way better than Mack so in a love duel, he'd win my affection. When I found out Mack was getting me tickets, I was like, are you sure? because we may fall in love and then you'll lose me and I'll be David Blaine's wife. "That's a chance I'm willing to take," was his reply.

Last night, I saw David. He was close enough for me to smack his butt, standing there with an ice pick sticking out of his bicep. He was as gorgeous and wonderfully strange and funny in real life as he was on all those TV specials I watched. But his show revealed his intense nature, and let's face it, I am 40 and hate intensity.

Over the past 40 years, I have come to peace with the fact that I like easy and chill and a heart rate of 65 with a BP of 95/60. I like ordinary, I like the outdoors, I like laughing more than anything in the entire world. I like my family and my job, and I like eating tacos by myself. I like people watching more than I like perusing social media. I like taking walks and drinking beer and reading books. I like forgiving and forgetting. I like true crime entertainment. The thing I like most of all, though, is this life. The past 40 years have been a gift of experience that I was not owed and did not deserve, but I am so grateful for it all, for every precious minute of it, for every joy and every agony and everything in between. I don't necessarily want another 40 years, but I'll take what the universe has to give me... especially if it's free money left in an ATM.

Oh the places a hurricane will make you want to visit immediately... (part 2)

2018-03-28T10:09:00.000-07:00

After surveying the effects of Hurricane Maria in St. Thomas, we flew to Puerto Rico to see what the worst natural disaster on record did there. Annnd we wanted to look at a place right on the beach that we'd seen on Zillow.

Before our trip, I knew nothing about Puerto Rico beyond Rosie Perez and that it was a US territory. Once we found the house on Zillow, we started looking into it more and found that it had an epic radio telescope called Aricebo Observatory, a tropical rainforest called El Yunque, bioluminescent bays, and a dry forest called Guanica. The house we wanted to look at was near Guanica, so we rented a car and headed to an amazing resort on the beach where we lost all gumption.

We headed into Guanica Dry Forest to do a little hike and check out the beaches. The dry forest is a pretty unusual eco-system. It's got pine trees and cacti, gobs of birds, and marshland that is home to bajillions of tadpoles. And condoms. There were an inordinate amount of condoms in this area. Good to see people practicing safe sex, I guess.

Every black dot is a tadpole.

Somebody knows where to find dinner.

We followed the walking path past the marsh to an amazing beach, complete with rocky outcroppings and iguanas doing some modeling. We also spotted some crabbies running around all dumb.

The path swung back inland through some scrubby little bushes and we found cotton! Just growing there! I know, that is not the most amazing, rarely seen plant, but it was pretty cool to see it just hanging out in the dry forest being all strange and puffy.

We kept walking, and, in true Mack fashion, we had to stop for a foot injury. Apparently, Mack had sustained a bug bite on the top of his foot and was unable to resist the itch. He carved off the top few layers of skin and his foot was becoming fly bait. We sat under a twisty pine tree to cool off and then headed back to the luxury of the Copamarina.

It's not vacation til Mack gets a foot injury! And moheads show up on his hands.

After we attended to some real estate business in Guanica, it was time to move on to other parts of Puerto Rico. I desperately wanted to see El Yunque National Forest, at least its waterfall, and the national forest peeps had cleared the road a few days before our arrival. We made a little detour through the steep terrain in the middle of the island on our way to San Juan and found the waterfall. We didn't get to do much exploration because the roads were closed and Mack's foot was dying, but it was pretty awesome to watch the water rush down the face of the flat rocks.

As we were pulling away from the rainforest we spotted this incredible tower rising up out of the mountain. I later learned this is the Britton Tower, which is now twice as visible as it used to be because all those trees got a haircut during Hurricane Maria. The tower was built in the 1930s as a lookout tower and on a clear day you can see all the way to the sea from it. The hike to the tower was closed, but that didn't matter because Mack's foot was dying.

The grand finale of our Puerto Rico trip was a day in San Juan. I fully did not expect to enjoy San Juan as much as I did, but it is a magical city, on par with Amsterdam. Our first taste came from this incredible street performer who was painted to look like one of the fountain sculptures and who did most of his performance with his eyes closed. He started on this fountain, then got down, then walked about 50 feet across the plaza, then walked back, intermittently yelling strange things in Spanish. It was totally captivating.

As we wandered through the blue cobblestone streets, the city kept on enchanting us. The streets are paved with discarded stones that were used as ballast in boats that came through the port, and they are steep and narrow and lined with extraordinary old facades that beg you to look through their ruins and new versions that are brightly colored and tidy.

We headed toward the door to the city to walk around its perimeter and really fell in love. Amazing artwork was set against walls 10 feet thick and 100 feet high, with lookout towers strategically placed at bends in the wall.

La Rogativa, a sculpture depicting a women-led prayer march that the British interpreted as the arrival of reinforcements, one so intimidating that they abandoned their hold on the city.

We followed the wall past a park full of cats with clipped ears and a charming pink house and eventually walked up on El Morro, a fort built in the 16th century to protect the entrance of the bay of San Juan from invaders, particularly the English and Dutch. I loved El Morro, from the gentle green lawn that gives way to the massive structure full of windwashed bricks and rusty cannons. Prepare to see how much I loved this place.

Those cannon balls on the left were meant to shred you sails, in the middle were meant to blast holes in your boat, and on the right were meant to explode into little fireballs and kill whoever they hit and set fire to the rest.

When we left El Morro, we continued to wander along the coast and came across one of the most incredible cemeteries I've ever seen. I looooove a good cemetery. New Orleans, Savannah, and Havana are home to my favorite cemeteries but this one in San Juan really put them to shame. Crowded, ornate, and pushing right up against the sea. I wanted to go walk up and down the dead but Mack was getting thirsty and had his eyes set on Booty's, a country-western bar he'd found on Yelp.

Booty's refreshed us with its air conditioning and mojitos, and Mack blew the minds of the staff by taking a swig of their house hot sauce like it was nothing. I dabbed it on my tongue and, believe me, it was not nothing. The meandering continued into the evening, when we headed back toward the Hotel de los No-See-Ems and stopped by a little roadside restaurant to try some of Puerto Rico's native dishes.

Mofongo, on the left is a fried patty of mashed plantains, onion, and garlic. I don't remember the name of that soup.We also ate bacalaitos, a salty pancake fritter that went down a lil too fast.

Clearly we hated it.

Hotel de los No-See-Ems, also known as the Beach Club Guest House, was in an awesome location right on the beach and super close to the airport. We soon learned that its location made the beach hammocks more of a human buffet area for the bugs and the soothing sound of the air conditioner was silenced by the roaring sound of jet engines taking off throughout the night. Somehow, though, we managed to make it through and left Puerto Rico with a feeling of fondness and hope that she'll get what she's owed in hurricane recovery efforts.

Oh the places a hurricane will make you want to visit immediately... (part 1)

2018-03-26T00:50:00.000-07:00

My Grandma Scott is pushing 90 years old. This is the lady who introduced me to the delicacy known as cinnamon toast and had no qualms about hosing naked kids off in the yard before letting them in the house. She had air conditioning in an era of box fans, and we enjoyed that almost as much as we enjoyed having free reign to play with whatever we wanted in the basement. Once my grandpa hired me to paint the fence for $40 and my grandma sneak helped me get it done. She also taught me not to order dessert unless I'm ready and willing to pay for it.

For such a short woman, she has lived a big life. In 1951, she drove across country with my grandpa before they were married and stayed in hotels with him! Scandalous! She's awesome, one who I cherish and do not see enough of. After my cousins and sister got to have her for a month this fall, as she was evacuating from Hurricane Irma, I got jealous and decided to go visit her in Florida.

Then I said, hey, Florida is close to the Caribbean, whaddya say Mack? He said, let's go see your grandma!

We had a great visit with the general, who wore sparkly shirts and split a pitcher of beer with us. I will always be so grateful she got to meet Mack and he got to see the ornery side of her that I am so enamored with. And that Florida is so close to the Caribbean.

Our first side trip was to St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. The little island was decimated by Hurricanes Maria and Irma, but it has power and roads and rental cars and hotels, so we went for it. I drove out of the airport with my "elbow in the bush" and only forgot about the wrong side of the road rule once. Or twice. Definitely not more than twice.

We headed out to the east end of the island to check into our AirBnb, a place we named the Jerkin' Station because there were so many bottles of gross man lotion everywhere. We were there about 4 minutes before we drove back to Charlotte Amelie and checked into the Bunker Hill Hotel instead. The lodging glitch gave us a quick look at the island and my god is it beautiful. Even in the aftermath of two Category 5 hurricanes, the blue-green hue of the ocean and the bursts of islands on the horizon was unlike anything I've ever seen.

Of course we had to check out the marina, which was conveniently located next to a place selling $8 cups of coffee and $6 bottles of water. The marina was tucked into a huge bay called Vessup Bay, but even with the protection of the bay half of the docks were ripped apart or partly sunk from the hurricanes. We looked at the beautiful boats and walked the docks while drinking our coffee, and we spotted huge tarpons and even a nurse shark in the crystal clear water.

We spent our first night at a little dive bar near the water enjoying a Virgin Islands beer... made in Portland, Maine. The walk to the bar was a little drizzly so I ran ahead of Mack and waited for him under awnings. One of the awnings I stopped at belonged to a bar playing the raunchiest music I've ever heard of in my life, but the guys out front were jovial and made room for me with "don't let the sugar melt." Apparently St. Thomas is like top 4 for murder in the world, but that seems hard to believe. Aside from the rental car lady who spoke literally zero words to us, everyone was pretty nice, there were chickens everywhere with baby chicks, and this is what one of their weeds look like.

The streets of Charlotte Amelie were beautiful, especially at night when the shops closed up and you got to see the different doors all latched up. The roads heading away from the seaside were steep and narrow, and from our hotel patio, we watched cars defy gravity going up one that looked like it was at an 80-degree incline!

St. Thomas neighbors St. John, an island that is mostly a national park. We took the car ferry there for $30 round trip and I got the reversing experience of a lifetime. Huge trucks were taking the car ferry between the islands to transport recovery supplies and refuse back and forth, and we had to cram in there with them. We were so close to the wall at one point I had to climb out the window to get out. No way was I riding inside the car next to those death traps! We perched on a bench by the pilot house and got an amazing view of the Virgins.

St. John was amazing. After lunch overlooking the bay, we headed into the park and hopped from one beautiful bay to another. There was a polar vortex hitting the Northeast of the US, and the effect in the Virgin Islands was huge swell. Snorkeling was out since I'm not a fan of drowning, but we walked along the different beaches and looked at coral and shells and felt the soft white sand smooth under our feet. All throughout the exploration we were stalled by donkeys hanging out in the road, which was hilarious to me. A couple of times their dongs were hanging out and my god I feel so bad for lady donkeys now.

Trunk Bay. This sand was like a cloud.

You see that dong back there on the left, practically dragging the ground? HOW COULD YOU NOT?

We managed to fit in some learning on St. John, too, with a stop at the Annaberg Sugar Mill ruins. Danish plantations occupied the island in the 18th and 19th centuries and the Annaberg Sugar Mill shows just what they were up to. After harvesting the sugar cane, they used a giant windmill or horses, depending on the weather, to crush it up and get the sweet juice. Which we are not supposed to let melt on rainy nights when we're awning hopping.

Just an awesome tree at the mill.

All those little rocks and big rocks and bricks. Walls 3 feet thick. I am too weak for back then.

The windmill has lost its blades but it's still pretty extraordinary. I love ruins.

See above about loving ruins.

Oh those? Those beautiful islands out there. Oh, that's just part of Britain.

Driving away from the sugar mill we went thru a patch of mangroves that was completely de-leafed by the hurricanes. There were still twisty branches everywhere, but not a fleck of green on them. Poor little virgins literally got deflowered, and while spring was starting to replenish the lushness of the island, this little patch was a bizarre glimpse at how a hurricane treats trees and bushes like a stem of kale.

St. John was small enough that we managed to make it to the east end of the island to check out Salt Pond. Mack's dad had lived there for a bit and told us it was worth checking out, and I'm glad we went. It's more village-esque, and we got to see some small spots in the throes of post-hurricane apocalypse mode. We also go to see natural sponges and an absolutely breathtaking look out over the BVIs.

We ended our day of exploration at a luxurious hotel called Estate Lindholm, which had lots of recovery workers staying there and a few buildings splayed open from the hurricanes. We drank a beer from the honor bar and sat by the pool watching the sunset over the bay. And then I decided I need to live in the Virgin Islands.

The next morning I drank coffee out on the patio looking out at the same magical bay and affirmed my decision to live in the Virgin Islands.

As I was ~~pretending to be a millionaire estate owner in paradise~~ reading my book, I kept hearing a scratchy noise behind me. Some people were working on landscaping but the sound seemed closer than that, almost like someone behind me. I kept looking back and seeing nothing. And then I finally spotted this little ninja. We named him George and I love him. Almost more than the donkeys.

Our hearts broke a little bit seeing sailboats washed up on the shore on both islands, but that didn't dissuade us from talking about moving Kenutu to this piece of perfection. Although if she ended up on the rocks, I don't know if I'd ever recover from that. These damn boats become almost like an old friend, and I can't imagine seeing any of my friends with a giant hole in their bodies dying a slow death with no chance of recovery. I hope these boat parents have found some peace.

Even in the face of disaster and in a state of mid-repair, the US Virgin Islands were one of the most extraordinary places I have ever been. I wanted to stay, charter boats, snorkel, swim, get sunburned, catch fish, and lose track of all the time. But we had a flight to Puerto Rico to catch!

Como un presidente

2018-01-18T12:30:00.000-08:00

After two years of travel for work, Mack has earned some epic awards and decided to cash in on his elite status by booking us a week in Cozumel at the Hotel Presidente. I wasn't mad about it.

Our room was on the second floor and looked out right over the beach. Every day started by opening the curtains and looking out at beautiful blue water, boats full of people in pursuit of fun, and puffy white clouds. We got very spoiled and our brains were poisoned into needing to live in this kind of place.

I did manage to go do a workout most days we were there, thanks to Jen's motivation. That was literally the most productive thing I did. The rest of the time I did this.

There were two snorkeling areas, one right in front of our room and another at the other end of the property. So our day started outside our door and progressed about 500 yards down the beach, with restaurant pit stops in between. We took dips in the mostly warm water and looked at beautiful fish playing around a sunken catamaran. I even saw a sting ray fly by!

Everytime we got in the water these decent-sized silver fish came up to us and followed us around. We named them the Welcoming Committee. They'd get so close that every now and then you'd catch a glimpse of one peripherally right by your body and have a little heart attack.

Like a little Secret Service, that Welcoming Committee is.

When we got bored of laying around and snorkeling, we'd walk the grounds. In a nod of Mayan culture and iguanas, the hotel had built these little ruins with PVC tunnels for iguanas to hunker down in.

We also discovered this amazing rainforest tree, which we revisited several times throughout the week. One night we walked down there after stuffing our faces to stretch our bellies and it was full of bats. They were zipping here and there and I freaked out. Mack was like, CHILL, but I couldn't get chill with speed demons almost dive bombing my head. He tried to make me love them by saying, they're just eating mosquitos. He ~~lies~~ tries.

Speaking of stuffing our faces, we did that every day. At first it was twice a day, but then we started to feel extra gross so it became a snack and one face stuff. We had a Mediterranean seafood place, a Mexican place, and a beach pizza place to choose from. One night I had distilados... and a delusion that I was knowledgeable about them... at a restaurant that had this lighting feature on its menu. I have some aunts and uncles who'd love this feature (I'M LOOKING AT YOU, TINA & TONY).

After eating, dodging bats, and looking at stars, we had a little hot tub soak. Life was hard as an elite presidente. It's probably time for Mack to go back to work so we can get another free retreat.

Chicks and chirrens

2018-01-02T13:12:00.000-08:00

Before the Peckerwoods became the best thing in my life, it was the babies. Shannon brought three of my babies for a visit after Christmas and now my absolute most favorite thing in the entire world is the babies with the chickens. It's like a double whammy of perfection.

Of note, Kieron is wearing Renee's pants and my t-shirt from a Lucinda Williams concert because we are such good adults we made them swim in their clothes at the beach since we forgot their swimsuits. But we are such good adults because they were at the beach in December.

Renee should be a farmer. She's a little chicken whisperer. And she has crazy barn hair!

These nerds and their little nerd faces.

Oh my god. This kid is perfection. Grubby, who cares, perfection.

Renee in my leggings. We initially had her in my v-neck t-shirt from Target but it basically v-ed down to her bellybutton so her mom swapped her shirts. See above about how these kids were at a beach in December.

Renee, like Cinnamon, likes dried meal worms too. SHE ACTUALLY ATE THE WORMS!

Look at this beautiful baby. And that boy holding her is totally handsome too.

My Sweet Little Bebe

2017-12-20T12:46:00.000-08:00

Betsy came to California again. Her first time was to bring me and Mack out here. Her second time was to bring my mom out. And this time, it was for vacation.

About time!

It was so awesome having her around for a few weeks, going thrift shopping and taking little hikes and meeting for some Ramen after work. Most of all, though, it was amazing to hear her giggle, her wonderful laugh, her audible joy that bubbles out and brings sunshine to the world.

We even got to do a Little Mermaid reenactment to make my other sisters jealous. We watched so much Little Mermaid when Betsy was little that to this day I can practically recite the entire movie by heart. This was back in the days of Blossom Lane, when I was 10 and she was born. She was so sweet back then too, and I remember one time when she gave me her candy. Before Betsy, I'd only gotten candy from my sisters by sneaking it, swindling it, or trading it. Betsy is a different breed of human, and man, am I so grateful to know and love her.