Monday, March 09, 2009

What I did on my spring-break vacation

I'm in the Bahamas with Child One visiting my dad. I enjoy coming here to see him and his wife, but after some 35 visits to a town that's now sleepier than ever, things can slow down.

We arrived March 2 and ever since, I've missed Wife One terribly. Remember, we've only been in each other's company for seven days since February 13.

I miss her, and I mope. My vacation for our first five days here consisted of chatting with her online and waiting to chat with her online. Sure, I can do it in warm weather in an outdoor jacuzzi that overlooks the ocean, but still.

I haven't been completely useless. I helped my dad tear down two trees and place a boulder in the waterfall basin that runs into the swimming pool. Our intention was to remove one casuarina tree but physics got out of hand. One major branch took out the pride of the papaya trees on its way down. The base of the papaya tree split like a dropped watermelon.

We tied the papaya with rope to return it upright and used electrical tape and soil to seal the split trunk and protect the spongy exposed innards. I have little hope for our patient, but recovery is not impossible.

The second major branch we felled got loose of the guiding rope and plonked itself down on top of the waterfall's rock wall. The resounding "ploosh" told us that one of the boulders had been knocked loose. Fortunately, it's a relatively small one and even more fortunately, my youngest brother is coming here this weekend with a friend and will have to fish it out instead of me.

While I was mopey at the best of times, last week brought some bittersweet news that seemed a lot more bitter than sweet. We have friends who moved to P.E.I. last spring/summer, and they have realized that they want to come back. The man of the family has job interviews next week in the Montreal area, so he and the whole family (with dog) are coming to town for a week or more. They need a place to stay, so Elvi invited them to stay with us.

That's fine - I look forward to hosting them. The problem is that their stay cramps any time I have to spend with Elvi between this trip and my Passover visit to Houston scheduled for April 7. Our guests are scheduled to arrive March 15, the day scheduled for Child One and I to fly home. They will probably stay through the following weekend, and the weekend after that we are due to spend at a synagogue retreat and before you know it, I'm flying away again (with the other two kids).

I want to spend more time with my amazing wife. I need to spend time with her. I explained this to my father, who had sprung for the airfare to bring us down here, and asked if he'd mind if we skipped out early so I could get this coming weekend with Elvi. He may have been disappointed to lose me for two days, but he generally was fine with it.

I called American Airlines. It would cost $800 to reschedule our tickets and that's just too much. While I resigned myself to my fate, my father found a different flight that could get us home for a total of $325 and bought that for us, which I wasn't expecting. Thank you so much! I think it might be worth it to him, though, because today he remarked that it's been a while since I walked around smiling or seemed so content.

We will now light out Thursday, in a manner we've never attempted yet. My father is a pilot and owns a Cessna 182. He has to visit Florida anyway, so he will fly us to Fort Lauderdale Thursday morning and we'll take a commercial flight from there. We've never done that before in either direction. I wonder how many times Child One will lose her breakfast.

Bonus Bahamas:

Yesterday, a small bug flew up my nose. I instinctively pinched my nostrils to try to get it out, but all I could do was detect the smell of something faintly mildewy. I think I squished it in my nose. In any case, it never flew out.

I also almost broke my toe. I got up from my seat (which was plastic and had a hole in the middle), not realizing that my left foot was asleep. My big toe buckled under my foot on my first step (off the pot) and I heard a resounding crack and felt quite a bit of pain through the sleep numbness. There seems to be nothing wrong with it now, except for some slight soreness, so I think I only cracked the toe knuckle.

1 Comments:

Blogger Don said...

Credit where credit is due dept......

Your father and his wife were discussing airfare options, including WestJet via Nassau. I pointed out that the Freeport - Nassau connection made it impractical; Ft Lauderdale was a better connection point as I had a trip planned anyway at some point. My video techie wiz/life partner did the rest.

March 12, 2009 10:47 PM  

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