Snorkel Fever and Sexy Turtles

Most important thing first.  My girl -- Camille, Coco, the Paris baby -- turned three years old over the weekend.  Three years.  Conceived thanks to a gorgeous bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape.  Almost born in a taxi.  And according to the French -- always cold.

We sure are happy to have you around, Ms. Cokes.  You are a giggly, goofy, pink-loving (much to my chagrin) perfect little girl.  You also refuse to potty train and give a swift kick to your potty chair every time you pass it but let's not focus on that part, you're THREE!

Lucien was Coco's current age when we moved to Paris.  It seems impossible.  He turned three our first month in Paris while still living in our temporary apartment.  We were so confused and disoriented by the move, we celebrated his 3rd birthday on the wrong day.  And we didn't even do it well.  Not our best parenting moment.

I think Coco's 3rd birthday went a little better because Seattle family came over and -- OH MY GOSH butterfly wings...

I sure do love that little girl but I've got more material about Hawaii now.  Sit tight, tiresome vacation tales will be over soon.

Alex and I signed up for a six-hour snorkel tour off the Napali coast, the cliff-strewn Western coast of Kauai accessible only by hike or by boat.  I love snorkeling off a boat except boats make me seasick and snorkel masks make me intensely claustrophobic.  Six hours on a nausea machine with a strangulation device attached to my face?  The snorkel tour was my idea, which makes me wonder if I've ever even met myself before.

While waiting with our fellow bleary-eyed coffee-drinking snorkelers for the 7:30 a.m. departure time, many people hummed the Gilligan's Island theme song and elbowed their partners in the ribs to make sure their partner noticed they were being funny.  Handfuls of people were doing this exact same thing yet every single one thought they were being original and irresistibly hilarious.  I'm sure the same thing happens in the waiting area of every boat tour, anywhere, ever.

I rolled my eyes at the lot of them just as Alex elbowed me in the ribs and bellowed "A THREE HOUR TOUR...  A THREE HOUR TOUR."  He was wearing his eager Fozzie Bear expression, waiting for laughs that were never gonna come.  Then he said, "You know, normally I think you're a Mary Ann type but at this hour of the morning you really look more like Gilligan."  It was mean but at least it was original.

Our snorkel tour took place on a catamaran.  Beautiful boat.  The guide told us people were allowed to sit up front on the two trampolines but those who did so were idiots  People who sit on the trampolines get drenched.  As in drenched, drenched.

This reminds me of one of Lucien's logic homework problems: is the last sentence in this series likely true or false?

A.) You have to be an idiot to sit on the trampolines.
B.)  Alex and I eagerly boarded the boat and pushed many people aside to be the first people to sit on the trampolines. 
C.)  Alex and I are the biggest idiots of them all.

They weren't lying about the trampolines.  Drenched drenched.  Compounding the problem was the extremely choppy water we encountered.  Plowing through those whitecaps -- up, down, splash, up, down, splash -- was really something.

It's true.  Drenched drenched.

When  you're prone to seasickness, there is one thing you do NOT want your captain to say as he eyes the waves in front of him.  You do not want him to say  --

"Hang on, everybody, the boat's about to do the hula!"  

But our captain did say that.  And our boat did do the hula.  It didn't take long for greenish-faced people to start hurling.  Alex witnessed one woman stumble into the main cabin and vomit many times into a garbage can.  She then clung to the garbage can like it was her best friend and she had an intense fear of abandonment.  The crew scrambled to get bags in front of pale faces before the boat was covered in a wave of a different kind.

In happy news, it turns out I HAVE met myself before.  I knew myself well enough to prepare for that boat.  I wore motion sickness bracelets, took Dramamine for 24 hours before boarding, chewed ginger gum and had those patches behind my ears.  Maybe it was overkill but glory be, I didn't get seasick.  It was therefore a whole lot of fun riding those waves, bordering on a truly intense high.

Alex "Lieutenant Dan'd" it for awhile (you know the scene I'm talking about?  Forrest Gump?  Anybody?) by white-knuckling onto the trampoline ropes as we hit some big waves.  He got slammed in the face repeatedly by water.  The crewman standing next to me cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled into the wind towards Al, "DO.  NOT.  LET.  GO.  EVEN IF YOUR BATHING SUIT COMES OFF.  WE'LL CATCH IT.  JUST.  DO.  NOT.  LET.  GO."  He had a point, too.  Sometimes the water was so forceful Al's ass nearly made a cameo appearance.

I didn't take many pictures of the boat ride, primarily because of hula boat but also because I wanted to experience the spectacular moment for real and not behind a camera lens.  It's not something I do often.  I'll admit, it was liberating.

What do you mean, I'm supposed to actually "look" at something?  Doesn't the canyon only exist in my camera?

We passed a couple sea turtles copulating in the water.  Everybody loves sexy turtles.  The crew members wolf whistled and hooted and hollered until the boy turtle looked at them like, "Shut UP, you are TOTALLY going to ruin this for me, assholes."  FYI, sexy turtles look like a spooning turtle sandwich rolling around in the water.

We also passed through spinner dolphins.  Hundreds.  Spinner dolphins love playing in front of catamarans so we passed through group after group of happy jumping dolphins.  We trampoline people may have been drenched up front but we also had a front row view -- so who's the idiot now, people inside the cabin vomiting in garbage cans and thinking, "F*cking dolphins, who gives a f*ck just get me off this f*cking boat!?"

The snorkeling part was OK.  It's not the best snorkeling location I've been to but Alex saw a sea turtle and followed it for awhile so that's something.  The snorkeling mask lived up to its expectation; it absolutely made me feel like I couldn't breathe and was going to die floating on my stomach looking at pretty fishies.

I just cannot get used to breathing through my mouth, and not just in snorkeling situations.  When I have a cold and my nose gets stuffed up, I'm likely to sit up all night crying, "I'M NOT GONNA MAKE IT THROUGH THIS."

Anyway, we all snorkeled and had some laughs and when we climbed back onto the boat the crew served us lunch and many beers.

 

The water on the way back wasn't as choppy but several more people still succumbed to the seasickness.

Like the hottie on his honeymoon there in the shorts.  Yeah... he didn't do so well.

Those ladies under the towels weren't so good either.

But me and Al?  It was all over. Six hours. And we felt incredible.  

I have still more Hawaii tales but I'm crazy over here.  It's been a busy week.  Thankfully it's almost over.  And best part -- my best friend from high school arrives tomorrow to stay with us for the weekend.  I haven't seen her in years, not since me-n-Al's wedding.  She wore a really ugly bridesmaid dress for me, a sign of eternal friendship, as it should be.

It's unacceptable it's been so long since we've seen each other. 

Come to me, Ohio Mom!
MJ

Wild Kingdom

Welcome to this fantastic episode of Wild Banister Abbey Kingdom.  (It's an obscure show, don't worry if you've never heard of it.)

Banister Abbey has mice.  This fact first became evident a few weeks ago when Al and I were watching the Olympics in our TV room.  A mouse suddenly ran in front of us like the ballsy little jerk he is.  Al and I yelled in unison, "Oh great, we gotta deal with you now, too, asshole mouse?" and punched some walls in fury.  In our defense, it had been a long week of Banister Abbey renovations.

I purchased a humane mouse trap, the type that captures the mouse but doesn't kill it so you can re-release it into your enemy's backyard.  I have many enemies so this is a nice feature.

We've captured a few mice with the trap and re-released them into the same area so they can hopefully find each other again.  Picture the mouse family reunion!  The joy!  That is, if they weren't eaten by much larger animals within thirty seconds of freedom.  If that indeed happened, I hope it didn't happen as they were running towards each other -- "My beloved mouse brother, where you been??  GAH!  PUMA!"

After the mice, we ran into this bastard.  Also in our TV room --

I saw it on the carpet, backed out of the room slowly, and asked Alex if he'd by chance purchased a large scary spider toy for the kids recently.  He said no, so we crept back into the room armed with a plastic storage container and the birthday card my mother sent Al.  It was an effective spider-capturing duo.

We attempted to identify the spider to see if it was dangerous -- even though huge and scary, I didn't want to kill it if it wasn't necessary -- but in the middle of the identification process, Alex freaked the f*ck out and squashed it.  He felt better afterwards.

We found another one in the TV room later that week.  I captured it again and kept Alex and his itchy spider-killing fingers far away from it.  Our workmen came the next morning.  One of them, Dan the Man, sat down with a spider identification chart and gave us the verdict: it was a Hobo Spider, one of the few venomous spiders we have in the Pacific Northwest.

We will likely never go in the TV room again.  A shame, really.  Good light in there.

Lucien attended a sports day camp recently.  One day, he opened his lunch box and discovered a maggot inside.  Turns out the strawberries I threw into his lunch weren't so fresh.  He showed the strawberries and the maggot to every counselor at camp.  When I came to pick him up, they most definitely did NOT hoist me up onto their shoulders and chant, "Mother of the Year! Mother of the Year!" for many hours.  Thank God the day camp is over and I never have to see those people again.

The workmen have recently ripped apart the front of our house.  This has happened not a moment too soon because it's revealed our impressive front entry is built on a house of cards -- or, more accurately, loose piles of rotten wood.  It's a Labor Day miracle our entryway is still standing.

While tearing apart the front porch and balcony, the workmen discovered many wild things up in the ceiling, all of them dead, all of which they saved for Lucien to examine.  This is our best specimen so far --

I'm a dead bird.

In keeping with the Wild Kingdom theme, here's Lucien wearing a purple snakeskin jacket he found at Seattle Mom and Dad's house.  We all decided it was appropriate for Lucien to be wearing such a thing but I'm not sure what any of us meant by that --

Here's Coco, who has taken to standing on coffee can "stages" and singing into marker "microphones."  She's also got some signature moves, one of which, thanks to her big brother, is smacking her own butt and howling like a wolf.  Just really fantastic stuff happening there.

This is what Contractor God found when he removed some stucco and wire mesh block things that were messing up the look of the front of my house --

The thing tethered to the house with an orange strap is an 18-foot high fiberglass column that weighs approximately 600 pounds.  It was perched upon some random pieces of wood under the mesh block thing, most of which were rotten, all of which moved when I pushed on them.

You're lucky we got you, Banister Abbey.  Without us, you would have fallen to the ground in the very near future.  All you passersby are lucky we got the house, too, because when the columns went down, they would have taken a few of you with them.

Have a good Labor Day weekend, friends.  We're having a party.  Here's hoping it's fun.  We will dare the children to play a game of "chicken" in which they will take turns running up to the dangling columns and pushing on them. 

May the fastest kid win!
MJ