Coviding

We started social distancing on a Friday sixteen days ago. I downloaded twitter just to keep up on the spread of COVID-19, and I started reading about the need for people to stay away from others. At first, it was just that: we were not meeting friends, we were shopping as little as possible. Our friends were still getting together. 

By Monday, the city was shutting down. 

J. and I are lucky to have jobs that can be done from home, mostly. We are hampered only by a baby who is in full-on explore mode. 

We joked with my parents not long ago that W. was born a toddler in a baby's body. Really it's probably more like a five year old in a baby's body: he wants to do things, and he wants to do them himself. He is more and more pleasant a baby as he can control more and more things himself. No wonder he was so angry as a tiny infant. He couldn't do anything himself, and we didn't know what he wanted. (Hint: it was not food or a diaper change. It was entertainment and movement.)

So the baby is adorable and requires constant attention. 

Every day we trade off baby-wrangling. Our goal is two hour chunks, but we manage that exactly never. An hour or so of this baby one-on-one is about all a human can manage without a break. He is busy. In that hour, he has probably crawled up the stairs and tried to fling himself down (1-10 times), attempted to knock over the dog's water bowl and cried when it was put out of his reach, gotten a gleam in his eye and gone for the space heater, opened the bottom oven drawer and crashed cookie trays together until we are all temporarily deaf, turned over the bead-wire toy thing and gotten his hand stuck underneath and cried, grabbed at the leaves on the plants in the living room and tried to pull them off, and cried to get on the couch and then tried to fling himself off (10-50 times). 

He won't eat real food unless it is puffs, teething crackers, freeze-dried fruit, or bread-like products. Today he deigned to put a bit of soup in his mouth, but only because I gave him a real, grownup metal spoon instead of the pretty silicone ones that are supposed to protect his teeth. 

Ever since W. was about 4 months old, we've been letting him come sleep in our bed after his first long sleep in his own space (currently a pack n play in our room). Many was the night that we had to bring him into bed with us by midnight, and he woke up every hour thereafter, requiring nursing or patting or repositioning to get back to sleep. Lately, though, I've noticed that he can sometimes put himself back to sleep, and I watched early this morning as he rolled himself over and fell back to sleep, back to back with his daddy. It was very, very cute. 

He is just really, really not into being a baby. Nonetheless, here we are. He is a baby, and he's fighting it all the time. 

...

I went into a drugstore the other day to pick up a few things we needed. An employee was coughing as he scanned products on the shelves, and a woman walked by me, then back past me, almost brushing against me. People! Have you not heard of distancing? I was so paranoid afterward that I came home, took off my clothes, and took a shower. I also wiped down or discarded outer wrappings for everything I'd bought. 

I've never been a germaphobe, but this pandemic is turning me into one. 

Isn't it strange that just a month ago I dropped J. and the dog off at the dog park and took W. to T@rget? I set W. in the seat of the cart without wiping it down, and we lingered in the aisles. I didn't worry about how far away other people were. 

I wonder, will we get that back? 

Now the dog park is closed, and going to T@rget seems dangerous. 

I thought I fully appreciated the full, varied grocery stores here in the US, after living in places where the options were not so great. 

Turns out I didn't appreciate them enough. 

The Great Poopsplosion of 2019

J. and I got a babysitter yesterday so that we could attend a couple of functions without a cranky baby. (Totally destroying my dreams of taking a chill baby with me everywhere, this baby has been intense ever since he was born: he is either very happy or very mad, sometimes within seconds of each other, and he does not believe that sleeping is worth doing). When we came home, the baby was happily sleeping in his space in our room, which lasted about 30 min, as if he knew we were home. That was fine - I needed to nurse him anyway - but it did not bode well for the rest of the night.

After approximately three resettlings necessitating rocking his little butt to get him back to sleep, he started acting more upset around 12:45 am, and I picked him up and sniffed him. Something smelled odd. Something smelled poopy, but not like normal baby poop.

This kid started solids, off and on, meaning when we have the energy for it, this week, so I thought it might be that. It sounded like he had pooped, and it smelled bad, so off we went to the changing table. J. followed with the little egg-shaped light that we use to try to keep from turning on brighter lights that will wake the baby up. 

I took off the diaper. Yep, poopy. I sniffed it to check if it smelled like the weird poop smell. Nope. Normal baby poop smell of fermenting milk. 

And then the poopsplosion began. 

The first round sprayed poop not just onto the changing table, the cloth diapers we lay underneath him, and the clothes he'd been wearing, but onto my stomach, chest, and face, as well as the whole height of the dresser next to the changing table. I covered the area with a cloth diaper and left J. in charge as I ran to the bathroom to clean myself off. While I was there, round two was mostly contained by the diaper. 

J. got the baby into a new diaper and sleeper and handed him off to me. I wiped down the dresser and the changing table while the baby happily smiled at the ceiling from the bed in his nursery. 

When I carried a beaming, wide awake baby into the kitchen, J. was scrubbing diapers and sleepers in the sink. 

"His poop is changing," J. said. "There are chunks of it in the sink." 

And there were. Apparently solid food can cause constipation when you start it. And apparently this baby managed to get it out by using some force. Good job, baby. 

J. cleaned the sink with kitchen cleaner twice. 

Needless to say, neither the wide-awake baby nor the wide-awake momma got much sleep for the rest of the night. Which is pretty normal for this one. I have not gotten a straight six hour stretch of sleep since he was born, not even the one time that J. sent me downstairs to sleep in the basement for six hours. I was too busy worrying about how much trouble Mr. Demanding Baby was giving J. upstairs. 

Send help. 

AMA

What nobody tells you about pregnancy cravings (see what I did there?) is that it isn't really a matter of "I really want this thing right now" so much as a matter of "I feel like I am going to throw up if I don't eat something right now and the only thing in the entire world that sounds like it won't make me want to throw up even MORE is this one particular thing." So you'd better get that particular thing, and you'd better get it now. 

The other thing nobody tells you about pregnancy cravings is that you will only want one thing for days or weeks, and then suddenly you will never want to taste it ever again. For a while, the only thing I could drink was limeade with ginger grated into it, and then one day I couldn't stand the thought of it (after J. squeezed/grated copious amounts of it), and then only thing I could drink was watered down raspberry lemonade, and then one day I couldn't stand the thought of that (leaving a full gallon in the fridge), and now all I drink is ice cold water, with an occasional club soda, splash of cranberry, when I'm out and about. There is a lot of waste in all the things I bought in bulk when they were the only thing I could eat or drink, and now the thought of them makes me sick. 

I'm supposed to be feeling better about now, but I'm not. I'm still feeling barfy every day (although not, it must be said, actually barfing, so I'm lucky that way). Maybe today was a tiny bit better, finally?

...

J. and I decided that, since I'm old, we would attempt the whole baby-making thing immediately after the wedding. It seemed like now or never. 

Three weeks later, I had a positive pregnancy test in my hand, and I raced to show J. before it finished developing. 

It was somewhat surprising. I spent about a decade reading infertility blogs, and I fully expected getting pregnant to be just as difficult as finding a partner was for me. Namely, nearly impossible. I know way too much about what can go wrong, thank you internet, and I knew that trying in your late 30s is a risky proposition.

And yet, apparently the genes of my Dutch great-grandmothers who had babies until age 46 are still running strong. Trust me, I know how lucky I am. I keep hoping that things stay as boring as they have been so far. 

The baby is a boy. We had the initial set of "you are an old mother" genetic testing done, and everything came back low risk, except for the risk of more testosterone in the house. That came back pretty much guaranteed. J. is gearing up his dad jokes.

We saw the little guy on the ultrasound screen at 8 weeks, and we heard the heartbeat quick and strong on a Doppler last week. 

So here we are, with a baby due 9 months and 3 days after the wedding. I almost wish we still lived in an era where the old ladies of the community would count the months, just for the fun of it. Alas. No one here cares. They would be excited for us regardless.

house

Oh, hey. We bought a house.

We did not set out to buy a house, other than the fact that we've been going to open houses for well over a year. But that was just for fun, right? We'd sort of decided that buying a house while planning a wedding was a little too much.

Oops.

I happened to see that there were open houses near the park where we almost always take the pup, the park with the big trees for shade or shelter from the rain, the park with wood chips so it doesn't get too muddy or dusty. It was a whim, something to do on a weekend afternoon between errands and housework.

The next morning, J. went back with the realtor, and a month later, we had a (second) house. (J. already owns one.)

It just so happens that this house has a wall of south-facing windows, and a finished basement, and a yard with beautiful trees. It just so happens that it has a fireplace, and a bright clean kitchen, and a garage for all the stuff we've been cramming into the small third bedroom here. It just so happens that it has fruit trees in the yard, and a cozy family room, and a pantry cupboard. 

So we bought a house. We're moving stuff into it a little at time, and we're never quite sure where things might be - is the dog's second food dish here or there? For that matter, is the pup herself here or there? (On hot days, we sometimes bring her over to the cooler basement there to wile the day away without constant panting.)

Because we are just that smart, we also went camping twice in the weeks before our wedding. 

I even took a day off work to drive out to the mountains - J. and the pup were already there with another friend - and hang out next to a lake. The pup learned to swim. We all got a little sunburned. It actually cooled off at night, which was a welcome break from the unrelenting heat in town. 

When the pup woke me up at 6:05 am, I walked with her the nearly 5 miles around the lake, through the woods, through the campgrounds, hrough the white trunks of trees that burned years ago and past the views of the mountain, to keep her from waking everyone else up. She bounded over logs, then raced past me to sniff something invisible, then dashed past the other way. 

I breathed in mountain air, and all was well. 

Then we got back, and we made some lists in lieu of panicking about all that we have to do before the wedding. 

backdrop

On Monday, our second full day in El Nido, we took a tricycle to Las Cabanas beach, a few miles down the road. Whenever we asked anyone what to do, this is what they suggested. "Oh, go to Las Cabanas. It's the best beach." So off we went. 

It really is a lovely beach. The thing about Palawan beaches, and the reason we chose Palawan over all the other islands in the Philippines, is that it has beautiful sandy beaches, but then it also has all these little rocky islands and outcroppings out in the water. There's no here-to-eternity-of-water view until you get out past the smaller islands. 

We walked all the way down the beach to the end, and then we walked back, and on the way we asked about the zipline. The zipline ran from above the beach across to a small island. The tide was low, so we could have walked across the wet, slimy rock to the small island, but where's the fun in that?

Someone walked us up the steep hill to the zipline, and then we sailed out over the water toward the other island.

Unfortunately, there was a headwind, and no matter how aerodynamic I tried to make myself, I drifted to a halt most of the way over and had to be rescued by the guys running the zipline.

We had lunch on the beach, and settled into beach chairs. I read a book, and then I took a picture of the top of the book and the ocean behind it. I laughed at the picture, telling J. that I couldn't post it on social media, because I accidentally took a picture of a page on which a girl fended off advances by saying, "I'm engaged. To be married," and people might take it the wrong way.

We moved to open sand and laid on the beach for the rest of the afternoon, until we had to go do our fluo night dive. 

The next night, after a day of cruising the islands with a bunch of Russian 20-somethings, we took a tricycle back to Las Cabanas beach to catch the sunset. We found a little bench facing the setting sun, with a bench table in front of it. We ordered a ginger soup and some other food I've forgotten. I'd taken off my motion sickness patch, and apparently taking it off after a day on the water resulted in rebound nausea (I really wasn't made for boats). 

And after dinner, J. proposed. 

This was surprisingly surprising to me. I know that proposals are a thing these days, but I never felt like I needed one. I expected just to do what my parents said they did - have a conversation and decide that it was time. 

Spoiler: I said yes. 

We hadn't talked about rings, or wedding dates, or anything in other than general terms, and so J. did not have a ring. He tried to get an O-ring for the top of a scuba tank from the dive shop, but the person he asked seemed very skeptical, so he was ringless when the right sort of moment presented itself.

A few minutes later, he went to the bathroom and came back with a piece of toilet paper twisted into a ring, and I put it on and took selfies and he was embarrassed not to have had any kind of ring, but I loved the toilet paper ring. I loved the surprise. I loved the quiet moment between the two of us. I loved it all.

A day or two later, we did scrounge some O-rings from the dive shop, and we both wore those on our right hands until we got back to Gone West, by which time they had stretched out enough that they would not stay on our fingers (even my middle finger), and we ordered silicone rings online, in blue, which we are both wearing on our right hands while we wait for the jeweler to finish the rings she designed for us, which we will also wear on our right hands until our wedding day in August. 

It turns out that when you wear a silicone ring on your right hand and don't post an engagement announcement on the f@cebooks, no one knows that you are getting married unless you tell them about it. We may drop some more hints as time goes by. It's fun to have a little secret, although here I am blabbing it to the 8 or 9 people who read my blog. You're in the know, now.

And if we are friends on the f@cebooks, you can go see the photo of the book with the words, "I'm engaged," in front of a beautiful beach in the Philippines. 

beautiful misery

We decided that it would be smarter not to schedule dives for the day we arrived in El Nido, because jet lag is a jerk.

So we scheduled four of them for the next day. (I said smartER, not smart.)

I had a grand idea a few days before we left on our trip, and I had my doctor call in a prescription for the motion sickness patch. This thing had some downsides - it didn't completely get rid of my motion sickness, you can't drink on it, and it makes you sleepy, to start - but it worked pretty well the first couple of days.

So we hopped into the water and dove, three dives. And then we went back to the dive shop, where I took the night diving class, and we went back out and dove again.

I'm not going to lie, I was exhausted. I was jet lagged and dopey from the patch and, actually, diving at night is a little scary. It's really, really dark down under water.

Fortunately, we had the next day to zipline from one island to another and lay on the beach.

That night we went diving again, again in the dark, but this time with fluorescent lighting. I'm not sure that I would have done this dive if I'd known what a fluo dive meant. I thought it meant phosphorescence, but no. 

What it meant was that we wore amber lenses over our masks, and we held blue lights, and the only thing we could see at any given moment was the living thing at which we were directly shining the blue lights, which then started fluorescing, and it was extremely claustrophobic, and I don't even get claustrophobic. It was the most claustrophobic I've ever been. 

During our safety stop at 15 feet, near the end of the dive, the dive master suddenly grabbed me and pulled me toward the surface, and on the way up he grabbed J. and pulled him up, too, and it turns out that we were surrounded by tiny, lovely, blue-fluorescing jellyfish that would hurt if they touched you, and a bigger one had been right where I was going but I didn't see it.

This was kind of the story of the rest of our dives: So many pretty, dangerous jellyfish. One of our dive masters got stung (by a little one, thank goodness). I got massively motion sick, because I managed to put the second motion sickness patch on wrong so it wasn't in full contact with my skin, and then when I moved it, I managed to get some of it in my eye, so my eye dilated way too much (a known side effect) and things were blurry up close. Two people got separated from the group on one dive, and I mistakenly followed the instructor when he went to look for them instead of staying with J., who was my buddy. The instructor and I got back to J. and the group, but we had to surface early to find the missing pair. (They'd gotten lost taking photos.) We had a strong current on one dive. The whole boat got so motion sick in the large swell that I had to stand at the front staring forward while other people lay in agony inside the boat. I got a little panicky about my breathing, even though I've loved diving since the first time I went under water. 

I make it sound miserable, and sometimes it was, because diving can be, with the wetsuits and the ocean swell, but then I would look out at the gorgeous green water with the gorgeous green rocks standing up out of it, and I wanted to stay forever. 

pre-Thanksgivinging

I like Thanksgiving a lot. It might be my favorite holiday. No presents to buy, no decorating to do, just lots of delicious food. This year, though, J. and I are getting on a plane on Thanksgiving morning to go scuba diving in the Philippines. 

I've known that we would miss Thanksgiving for many months, ever since January when I got all excited about scuba diving and started looking at the best dive spots in the world and then checking kayak for flights costs to those spots. Fiji was $1000, which seemed pretty good. But Manila was $630 if we left on Thanksgiving Day, so we bought flights without stopping to think about it. 

I'm excited about this trip. I have a whole new regulator/dive computer/octopus set, thanks to J. thinking ahead on my birthday and a quick trip to my favorite dive shop. (My own! My very own regulator and dive computer!) We have eight dives scheduled, including my first two night dives. (I also bought a dive light at the dive shop.) The island looks stunning. 

I also started feeling a little sad about not getting to have Thanksgiving dinner. Wherefore the pies?

So I managed to talk J. into having a pie and game night last night. He also wanted mashed potatoes, so we made those. And corn pudding and burgers and brats. Because what says Thanksgiving like burgers and brats? 

We invited people over, and we did the cooking and baking, and we ate the delicious things. And now we have leftovers until we get on the plane. I just had a veggie burger with a side of mashed potatoes and corn pudding. 

I'd call that winning Thanksgiving.

lasik, part 2

At the surgeon's office the morning after my lasik, I still had my dark mask on. I could see through it, but it scared me a little that I would hurt my eyes if I left them open, so I would look at the world and then close my eyes again.

Then I went into the exam room and they told me to take my mask off, and then they turned on the lights. 

So much for protecting my eyes. 

When I went back out into the waiting room, J. told me that the woman who had surgery right before me the day before and the appointment right before me that morning had a problem with the flap. Her person left her there so that they could fix the flap.

Me? I was fine. Not even an itch in my eyes. 

It was a beautiful sunny day, and I walked out into the sunshine without sunglasses. I wasn't supposed to spend much time looking at screens, so I didn't go to work. Instead, I walked to the tea place. I wore sunglasses out of an abundance of caution, but my eyes didn't hurt.

I was supposed to sleep in the dark mask for a week so that I did not accidentally rub my eye or stab myself in the eye during the night (a legitimate concern, since I stabbed myself in the eye with my finger while turning over just this week), and that worked for a few days, but as time went on, I found myself ripping it off sometime during the night. In the morning, it would be under the pillow, or on the floor next to the bed. I was, apparently, getting less cautious about my eyes.

I was also supposed to wait at least a week before climbing (chalk dust is everywhere). I made it six days, but it was cool. I just took tears with me and used them when someone above me knocked chalk dust down into my eyes, instead of rubbing my eyes and dislodging the flap.

Two weeks after surgery, back at the surgeon's office, after reading the 20/10 line, I asked her if the flap was ok. (I was a little paranoid about the flap.)

"You wouldn't be seeing 20/10 if there was a problem with the flap," she said dryly. 

What we've discovered, J. and I, by comparing our experiences, is that lasik seems to exacerbate whatever sensitivities your eyes have. J. is still, 10 years later, more bothered by light than I am. I am a little more light sensitive than before, but my real issue is air blowing at my eyes. This has always bothered me, but now I can't stand the air blowing through the vents in my car or standing by my coworker's desk when the little space heater is on.

I now wear sunglasses in the car, even in the dark rain clouds, to block the blowing air (the vents are off and closed and pointed down but some gets through), and I wear layers in my office so that I don't have to turn on the space heater.

It's worth it. It's so worth it. 

I can SEE.

The strangest thing, after 21 years of taking my contacts every night, is going to sleep without taking my vision out of my eyes. I am still using tears at night, and allergy eye drops, so I'm using that ritual to convince my eyes that it really is okay not to take anything out of my eyes before I sleep. It's weird, though. It's really weird. 

It's also the best money I've ever spent.

lasik, part one

I wasn't sure until the morning of surgery that I really was going to get lasik, because at my pre-op appointment two days before, I tested as needing an entire diopter of correction less than I had needed in October. 

It seems that some people with myopia will accept just about as much correction as they can get, and I am one of them. 

You know when they keep switching the lenses in front of your eyes and asking if 1 or 2 is better, or 3 or 4? Some of us nearsighted people will keep saying that a stronger prescription is better, even after we can see 20/20 with a weaker one. This is because, the doctor explained to me, the stronger prescription makes the shapes darker, and we mistake the darker shape for a clearer shape. 

So I brought in my contacts and glasses prescriptions from the last ten or 12 years, digging them all out of my wee little filing cabinet, and the doctor re-tested my eyes herself the morning of surgery, rather than having her assistant do it. "It's valuable information for me to know if something is darker or lighter, even if it isn't clearer," she said, "so just tell me what you see." 

I kept making her go back and forth, leaving each one for longer than usual, to make sure the prescription we came up with was exactly right. Lasik is a permanent change, after all, and if you do too much correction for nearsightedness, you might need reading glasses sooner. 

We settled on the same diopters as my contact lenses have been for a decade, and the middle of the astigmatism correction I've had. My astigmatism correction has, shall we say, fluctuated. Probably because, "which is better, 1 or 2? 3 or 4? 5 or 6?" always goes so very fast, and it feels like there should be a right answer, even through there isn't. There is only what is right for your eyes. So I've had a bunch of different astigmatism corrections - my glasses and contacts were not the same, even though they came out of the same eye exam - and they've all worked.

J. and I walked up the hill to the main hospital cafeteria and got some fish and chips. We took some photos on the deck overlooking the city, commemorating my last few hours in glasses.

After I checked in and paid crazy quantities of money ("your card isn't working," the lady said, but I looked at the machine and said, "It's a connection problem, not my card," and it eventually went through fine), I took the valium they had given me and went to the bathroom one more time. There were people in the lobby waiting for all kinds of eye surgery. A mother and grandmother waited for news of a child.

They called me back right at 1:45, and explained all the post-op procedures, which I promptly forgot. 

For every other surgery I've had, I've been half-asleep, even if I was talking. I can't remember any of them except a snippet of the wisdom teeth removal. But for this one, I was awake. You have to be awake so you can direct your eyeball. I remember it all.

This is where you should look away if eye surgery makes you squeamish.

.

.

.

The surgery takes place in two parts.

First, in a room with a big laser, they numb your eyes and put betadine in them. "I bet that would sting if my eyes weren't numb," I said, as the brown washed over my vision.

They cover one eye and move your chair so the other is directly under the machine. A round piece lowers onto your eye and suctions the middle up. Everything goes dark, but you try to look at a light. The laser does something that you can't really decipher, and when the machine moves, everything looks like you are looking through a foggy glass. 

What's just happened is that a laser has made a bunch of little air bubbles in your cornea (pulses of one quadrillionth of a second!), creating a flap at the front of your eye.

The second eye, the left, hurt more than the right. I felt like someone was pushing through my eye into my sinuses. Instant sinus headache. But that was the only real pain of the whole thing.

When both eyes had been air-bubbled, they had me stand up and walk into the other room, looking through the fog.

I lay down on a padded bench, and the assistant moved the knee rest under my knees. 

They put more numbing drops into my right eye and wedged it open with a little eye speculum. I looked up at a diffuse green light that pulsed. I could see the doctor working on my eye with a little tool that looked like what the dental hygienist uses to scrape your teeth, sharp on one end and folded like a spatula on the other, only the surgeon was gently lifting the flap that the first laser created. 

I had to look up at the green light, which sometimes disappeared for an instant and then came back red, and then green again. Red lights moved around the edges. I could smell burning eye. It only took 15 or 30 seconds before it was done, and the surgeon was patting down the flap, smoothing it into place and tamping down the edges. 

The longest part of the whole thing was waiting for the flap to re-adhere, it seemed. Finally they took out the eye speculum and let me blink, then re-checked with a bright white light to make sure it was smooth.

The surgeon and the assistants kept telling me how calm I was, which surprised me, because they seemed surprised, but who would flinch while someone has a sharp tool and/or a laser near their eye for surgery purposes? That would end badly.

Between eyes, I asked if they had any blankets. It was so cold in the room that I was struggling not to visibly shiver. I had even expected that and worn a warm fleece jacket, but it wasn't enough. Fortunately, they had pre-warmed blankets, and the second eye was much more pleasant just because I wasn't so cold.

After the second eye, they put a flexible sunglasses material mask on my face, rubber band around my head, handed me a stack of papers, and walked me out to J. 

It was 2:15. 

I tried to keep my eyes mostly closed, but I snuck peeks. At the first stoplight, I braved opening my eyes a little, and I could already see better than before the surgery.

When we got to the house, I deliberately walked into a telephone pole on video for posterity, and then I took a vic0din and went to sleep.

They had warned me that some people feel a sensation like red pepper in their eye after surgery. I was one of those people. By the time I got home, my eyes were burning. The vic0din fixed it, though, and it was gone by bedtime when the second vic0din wore off. 

Sometime after I went to sleep, I woke up and sat up, wondering what time it was. The alarm clock was across the bed, and I looked over at it and read the time perfectly clearly. It was 4:36. I never could read it from there before.

I tried not to get too excited, but I woke up in the middle of the night, since the pain pills had worn off and I'd been sleeping off and on since 3 pm, and laid in the dark with my dark mask still on, looking at the tree branches outside the window, silhouetted against the street light, and smiling to myself. I couldn't see those tree branches before.

The next morning, my vision was 20/15. 

I do not yoga (I do Mexico)

I do not yoga, as we know, but somehow I found myself signed up for a yoga retreat in Mexico.

Re. Mexico: I also never really had Mexico on my radar for travel purposes. It's so close to the States, and so many people go on vacation there, and I tend to want to go further afield for my adventures, so I wrote it off. I mean, I figured I would end up there someday, because it's next door, but it wasn't on the list of places to go because, well, it's close.

I loved Mexico. We stayed at a little resort at one end of a beach that had a park in the middle and a town on the other end, where foreign tourists sat drinking margaritas at the beachside bars and Mexican families played in the surf. 

"I forgot how much I love riding in the back seat of a crappy taxi through a new country while the driver plays pop music way too loud," I texted T. 

The days were warm and clear, except when it poured down tropical rain. 

J. and I played in the Pacific Ocean waves like kids. The only person who played in the waves as much as we did was 12 years old. We skipped yoga class to jump over and through waves. The other J., the 12 year old, taught us to angle into the waves so that we launched out the other side like dolphins leaping above the water, and we compared how successful our launches were after nearly every wave. 

We went scuba diving along the edge of a rocky island, with battered gear and three older people, two of whom flailed even more than I do, beginner that I am. On the first dive, I bit off the edge of my mouthpiece and had to hold the regulator in my mouth with my hand. My depth gauge didn't work. On the second dive, my mask kept fogging up. But M., my diving instructor, taught us to deal with those eventualities, and I was fine. 

We saw a cornetfish lingering motionless in the water, and schools of thousands of fish swam between us and the light. We swam down through a tunnel in the rock. 

On the way out to diving, we saw a whale breach, and on the boat ride back, dolphins swam under the  boat. 

There was yoga. We did yoga from 7-9 am and from 4:30 to 6 pm. 

"Set your intention for the week," said the instructor peacefully the first day.

"My intention is not to kill anyone while doing yoga this week," I thought to myself. 

I managed that just fine the first day or two, so by day three I thought I was ready for more. I upgraded my intention.

"Don't hate everyone while doing yoga," I thought. That one didn't work - halfway through the class, I wanted to cry or quit - so I went back to resolving not to kill anyone. Turns out I'm pretty okay at not killing anyone while doing yoga. I am less okay at not hating the world while doing yoga. 

I survived six days of yoga, although, to be honest, I was down to one class per day for the last three days. 3.5 hours of yoga a day is a little excessive for a beginner. I did a shoulder-stand thing, though. (My neck has been bothering me, so no attempts at a headstand.) J. did headstands galore. 

Between yoga and eating and playing on the beach and taking a few naps (they made me get up at 6:15 am. On vacation. There were naps), a week flew by.

I quite like Mexico. I'd like to go back. 

I don't know about the yoga, though. Maybe. I've gone to a couple of classes since I've been back. (Shhhhhhh. Don't tell anyone.)

glasses

"I love your glasses!" people keep saying to me, and I say, "Yeah, I like how they look, but I can't see through them at all." 

I started wearing them the day after we got back from Mexico. I made up my mind that the day we got back from Mexico would be the last day I wore contacts, and so when I took out my contacts after flying all day, I put the case in the cupboard in the bathroom and put my glasses case on the nightstand.

I have worn contacts for 21 years. 

I have worn them in the muck of a South Sudan rainy season, when I had to put them in before I could crawl out of my mosquito net, because I had to be able to see if there was a poisonous spider or snake in my gum boots. 

I have worn them in the dust of the desert in State of Happiness, where I had fine granules of blown-dry clay on my hands that I couldn't get rid of, so I had to blink the grit off my eye before I could see clearly.

I have worn them through the fine blown dirt of roads in Rwanda and Liberia and Kenya and Tanzania and Honduras and Cambodia, always finding a bottle of water to clean off my dirty hands first thing in the morning. 

I have kept them warm in my pocket in a freezing tent, put them cold into my eyes at 3 am after 5 hours of sleep before climbing a mountain, washed my hands with sanitizer before rinsing in water. 

I have put them burning into my eye when the hydrogen peroxide solution wasn't fully dissolved. 

For 21 years, I wore contacts an average of 365 days a year. I never had an eye infection, so I occasionally tried a pair of glasses - I got a pair in 2006, and one in 2016 - and wore them for half a day, or even a day, and then went back to contacts. 

T. used to laugh, because for many years I always had a bottle of the same kind of multi-purpose solution, the one from the store in the Mitten. 

Meanwhile, for 20 years, eye doctors have told me that I would get used to my glasses if I would just wear them more. If I just kept trying, if I wore them for a day or two or three, my eyes would adjust. The prescription was right; I just wasn't patient enough. 

This is a blatant lie. I've been wearing glasses for almost four weeks (tomorrow will be Day 28), and I am not used to them. 

I'm better at wearing them. I've figured out how to keep them clean. I've figured out how to look right through the middle if I need to see something clearly. 

I haven't figured out how to keep them from hurting the back of my ears, no matter how they are adjusted.

My phone isn't a rectangle when I look down at it. 

I feel dizzy when I walk down stairs - I can't quite tell where the steps are. 

I have to leave extra space in traffic, because I can't tell how far away the car in front of me is. 

When I take off my glasses and put them back on, I still feel disoriented and unsteady, even four weeks in. By the end of the day, my eyes ache from trying to find a way to see clearly and my head hurts from trying to make sense of what comes into my eyes. 

This whole month feels like a dream, fuzzy around the edges, because I couldn't really see what was happening. 

I have a list in the back of my journal, a countdown. I'm crossing off days. There are five of them left. Five days of glasses. SaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesday. And only two of them involve staring at a computer. 

So close.

Next Thursday, I'm getting lasik. 

certified

I had lofty goals of blogging at least once a week this year. That was my plan. Not a resolution, exactly, just a plan. 

(My other plan for the year, signing up for and using digit, is thus far a success. I have finally begun to train digit on the fact that I want it to save more than $0.17 at a time by forcing it to save $10 or $100 at a time. If you want to try digit, by the way, let me know. I have a referral code. It is addicting.)

So anyway, blogging. I was going to do it. I was going to do it regularly.

Then I realized that if I want to scuba dive in Mexico at the end of February, I should get certified now. I figured this out the day before the first of five Tuesday night classes that culminated in open water dives last weekend. This means that I had class from 6:30 - 10:30 every Tuesday night, and also homework. 

I loved, loved, loved the scuba classes. I got all excited every week when I knew that I was going to get to go underwater that night. 

On the first pool night (which was actually the second class, because our first pool night got canceled due to the apocalypse snow), we had to swim 400 yards. I started off slow, because 8 laps is a lot of laps. By my return on the first lap, I had switched to the time-honored swim stroke of the women in my family: the side stroke. By the third lap, I was way out ahead of the other two students. Tortoise and hare, people. It pays to be the tortoise.

On the second pool night, we had to take off our masks and sit underwater without them for a minute, then put them back on. People panic over this, mostly because you just about have to keep your eyes closed lest the chlorine destroy them. It didn't bother me at all. I knelt sightless underwater for a minute, just enjoying the feeling of being underwater. I knew that the regulator wasn't going to fail me - I could breathe - and I knew that the surface was up there if I needed it. (I would worry if I were in 50 feet of water without my buddy, but this was not that situation.)

At the end of the class, we drove up to Other PNW State for the open water sessions. J. came along, because he's a diver, and the dive shop said there are usually other people up there diving.

To dive in 36 degree water, you need a serious wetsuit. Actually, you need more than just a wetsuit. You need a 7mm farmer john (a sleeveless wetsuit) covered by a 7 mm shorts/long-sleeve combo. You also need 5mm gloves, hood, and boots. And you will still be cold just about every second you aren't moving. (For comparison, in Honduras I dove in a 3mm shortie - shorts and short sleeves.) 

It's really pretty down there. The sea anemones stand a foot or two off the ground, orange and white, faces turned into the current. There are tiny jellyfish the size of a baby's cupped hand floating through the water, opening and closing slowly. Schools of fish swim between you and the sky.

By Saturday night, after three dives and a lot of standing around in and out of the water, I was chilled through. There was no reprieve out of the water, with the wind blowing on the wet neoprene, except the few minutes when we could stand directly in front of the propane heater. Sitting in the hot tub and taking a hot shower in the evening did not raise my body temperature back to normal. I went to bed still cold. 

I guess it probably didn't help that I was in the worst days of a cold. I felt like I'd been hit by a truck - and that was before I doped myself up with Sudafed and Afrin and ibuprofen to get my congestion to the point where my ears would not explode with the underwater pressure, and then jumped into freezing water.

Sunday morning before the final dive, standing out in the 33 degree air in a still-wet wetsuit, my hands were so cold they burned. J. had to run inside and get a bottle of hot water to pour into my gloves before I could move them enough to get my gear on. My instructor's regulator was frozen, spewing air in free flow when he tested it. 

When we dove, I had an extra 3 lb weight on one side of my BCD (the diving vest) to make up for the different air tank I was using, so I kept tipping to one side. I couldn't get warm. The water was so murky that I just followed the orange fins of the instructor. All I could think was, "Is this over yet?" I'm usually pretty good with air, but I tore through it trying to stay warm and not give up. 

And then we were out of the water, and we were certified, and I took another hot shower and put on layers of clothes and slept in the car most of the way home. 

So I'm good to dive in Mexico next week. I'm guessing that will be a little more pleasant than the frigid waters of the sound.

Christmas in Honduras

I've been back to Honduras four times since I studied there, but I keep wanting to go again. I especially wanted to go again after nearly back-to-back ice/snow storms in Gone West during December.

We had all the usual travel problems. Flight delays meant that J. and I got the last evening shuttle to our hotel from the airport in Houston. But bright and early, there were our parents, eating breakfast in the lobby.

J. sat with his parents in one row on the flight to Roatan, and I with my parents in the row behind them. I made my mom sit by the window so that she could see the Caribbean below us.

"It's so hilly," she said, as we flew over the spine of the island. I had forgotten that, too, but I had not forgotten that the plane flies in over the water along the coast or that the runway starts right at the edge of the water. We flew past all the colorful houses along the bays, lower and lower, until suddenly the wheels were on the ground.

I also neglected to mention that it would be hot. Not as hot as Liberia, but it is the tropics. 

We'd rented a house back in the jungle down some of the steepest roads I've ever driven. (We didn't know that at the time, of course.) 

It rained on Christmas Day, and we exchanged presents in the morning. Not much - we couldn't bring much with us - but everyone got a little something. 

J. and I brought Hydro Flasks for everyone. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out which of the six blue-green-purple colors to give to each person. J. and I each had a favorite, but we decided that we would be happy with any of them. In the end we (okay, J.) just wrapped them all and handed them out at random. 

When we opened them, J. had my favorite color (mint) and I had his (pacific), so we immediately handed them off, without even saying anything. Then our dads switched so that my dad had dark blue and his dad dark green. Our moms got the apple green and the purple. Which is, in fact, just about as close as possible to what we would have given them if we'd had to pick. 

In the afternoon, I read in a hammock for a while, and then we walked down to the beach with snorkel gear. J. and I swam out, looking for the reef.

As it turns out, we picked one of the spots where the coast curves in and the reef out. J. didn't have fins, because I was using his scuba fins, which didn't fit my feet very well. It was a lot of work. By the time we found the reef, we were ready to turn around and head in. 

My parents met us on the beach, and we walked down to West Bay, over a funny little bridge high above a channel. 

"Hey!" I said when we got there. "This is Bite on the Beach! T. and I ate here in 2002 when we were here!" and I made them take a photo of me with the sign. Beyond the restaurant, though, the beach was unrecognizable. What had been a long stretch of empty sand lined with jungle and one long pier back when T. and I were the only ones on the beach was instead a mess of beachside bars, beach chairs, and jet skis. Sigh. 

For dinner, we drove up over the hill and down to West End. The restaurant we wanted to visit was serving a $60 prix fixe holiday meal, so we ended up at an Argentinian restaurant. 

As one does, on Christmas Day in Honduras. 

below the surface

For a long time, all I could do was work. The job that I had in Universe City and then back in Gone West was all-consuming. I managed sometimes to take a weekend off, but work sucked so much energy out of me that I felt like I had nothing left to give. 

Then I was unemployed, and that takes everything you have to give, too.

But this last year was good. 2016 was so, so good to me. 

I have a job that I love. I hate the commute, but I love the work. 

I have a cute boy to kiss (hi J.!!). I flew to meet up with him one of the times he was in Spain, and we went to Croatia.

I climbed mountains. I camped. I hiked. 

At the end, we went [back] to Honduras, to Roatan. Back for me, the first time for J. and his parents and my parents. 

We ate frijoles and tortillas at least two meals per day. An ATM stole 512 of my dollars (error message with no money three times; turns out it withdrew the money each time but never gave it to me; I have complained to the bank). We drank a lot of drinks full of delicious juice and not much alcohol while sitting beachside. The two little Hyundais we rented struggled with potholes bigger than their tires (we lost one wheel to a pothole; oops). We ate lunch out on a dock over the water. I complained that the most beautiful beach has been taken over by beachside bars and lounge chairs and way too many people.

One day, J. went diving in the morning. In the afternoon, I met with a diving instructor to learn the basics for a discovery dive.

When we first put our heads under water in the shallows, I was worried. It seemed hard to breathe through the regulator, like I had to pull on it too hard to get air. But then we tipped forward horizontal. Everything fell into place. 

The parents piled onto the boat to snorkel, and J. and I and the instructor to dive. Out in the water, I watched the parents start to float off in different directions, and then I held my regulator and mask as the instructor told me to, and I dropped backward off the boat.

The instructor had me hold onto the mooring as we descended. We followed the rope down, blowing out to equalize our ears and masks. At the bottom, among the coral and fish, we swam. I was surprised to find that I wasn't at all bothered by knowing that my only air came from a tank through a tube. Just like rappelling, it was only scary until I did it. 

J. pointed out a huge eel snaking through the coral. A grouper sat under a shelf, underbite silently open. A lion fish waved its feather-like fins out of a crack in the coral. 

Far too soon, we had to ascend. I popped out of the water exhilarated and ready to do it again, despite being exhausted by the novelty. 

Also, I was pretty proud of myself for only using 10% more air than J. did, despite it being my very first dive.

days

J. and I hosted Thanksgiving at his house. Truthfully, J. did most of the work. And bought most of the food. I ordered the turkey, but J. picked it up and made the sage butter rub and basted the turkey every hour.  

But I made two pies and a sweet potato dish (you're going to want to make this asap: Crispy Sweet Potato Roast. The chili lemon vinaigrette is perfect), and I helped with the general prep. 

And the cleanup. The cleanup has taken days. I guess it didn't help that we decided to make stock out of the turkey carcass. And then we had to figure out how to transfer all the broth to another pan even though we'd left too much of the turkey meat on the bones. We still have to get all the broth into containers. And I'm fairly sure the butter is still sitting on the counter. 

Yesterday we went downtown to watch the tree lighting. A year ago yesterday (or today, or tomorrow, depending on how you count; we decided to count by the day after Thanksgiving), J. and I went on our first date to the tree lighting. We stood in the crowd again. Then we went to wait in line for the same restaurant we waited in line for last year. 

Only this year, we went rock climbing first, and J. isn't a stranger. 

The woman standing behind us in line said uncomplimentary things about the peanut curry, which is what I was planning to order. I ordered it anyway, and it was delicious. "I knew you were going to order it as soon as the guy mentioned green beans," J. said. (The green beans were perfect.)

Today we went for a hike in old growth forest in the rain, deterred at one point because there were many signs forbidding entrance onto private property. I neglected to keep my hood up. Rain dripped down my back, and we turned around when we started hearing closer gunshots; we'd forgotten to wear orange during hunting season. 

On the drive out, when we hit pavement, we heard a strange noise. "I'll check," I said, and jumped out to look. "Drive forward a little."

There was a bolt stuck in the tire, so we pulled off in an opportune place (namely, the middle of a dying timber town) to change it. J. jacked up the car. I wrestled the muddy tire into the trunk. 

We limped back to the suburbs on the donut, with the tire pressure light on all the way. I read the manual. Blah blah blah, driving on the donut may make the tire pressure light come on. It's fine, right?

We left the car at the shop, and I shivered as we walked to a nearby restaurant (the same one where we attended a wedding a few weeks ago). J. kept one of my hands warm, at least. He can't believe how fast I lose body heat. I can't understand how he manages to retain his. It took changing into the dry clothes that I had in my bag in order to warm me up.

When we got back, J.'s car was up on the lift, and two tires were off. 

Turns out the car had picked up two bolts. 

But we made it back in time for J. to catch most of the game. Some sort of sportsing, I don't know. There may be a ball involved. 

good

I walked down to the waterfront tonight. I haven't done that in a while. Last year, when I was unemployed, I walked down there often, because I had to get out of the house somehow, and I didn't have money to spend. I watched a lot of sunsets over downtown.

As I walked along the esplanade tonight, there was a cloud of smoke in front of me. It didn't smell like anything by the time I got up there, though, so I didn't think much of it. I assumed someone had done something involving smoke and then walked away.

Soon thereafter, I stopped at a railing at a good turnaround point. There was a firefighter peering over the railing (just in a t-shirt, not in gear), and I realized that he was looking for the source of the smoke. 

I started walking back, partly following the guy out of curiosity. The smoke was more clearly a column now. Looking over the edge when I got there, I saw something smoldering in the brush. The firefighter was climbing down around the end of the railing. 

Another firefighter passed me as I turned to go. "Garbage," he said. "Smells bad, doesn't it?"

I smiled at him, but what I was really thinking is how familiar it smelled. We burned our garbage in Liberia and in Rwanda. I know that smell, and it feels like home.

(Side story that I may have told before: I was at a music festival during my college years. It was very hot, and things sometimes got thrown on the ground and trampled. At one point I sniffed the air and said, "Ah. Smells like rotting garbage in the hot sun. I remember that smell from Liberia. It smells like home." One of the people I was with said, "Don't you think it's a little messed up if a smell like that makes you feel at home?" But I do not, in fact, think that is messed up. I never have.)

Walking back along the water, I thought of a conversation I had with my mom last summer, while I was unemployed, about how things could change at any time but it's really hard to enjoy all the free time of unemployment when you don't know when it will change. 

But change it did, and it's all so different now. I have a job that I love, I just agreed to buy a car that won't make me feel like a bug about to get squashed on the highway, and a cute boy brings me turron from Spain. If I could tell the me of a year ago how it turned out, she never would have believed it could be this good. 

endingless

A few weeks ago, I was downtown on a Saturday afternoon. It was cold. It was 28 degrees F cold (that's cold, for here). I was wearing many layers, and also a warm hat and mittens. I walked downtown, so my car was far away and the wind blew hard across the bridge.

I stopped at re1 to see if they had any good snow pants (later purchased at a cheaper store), and on the way home, I passed a man lying on the sidewalk. He was wearing a white t-shirt, khakis, and an unzipped soft-shell jacket. His shoes were off, exposing his white cotton socks. He had his hands tucked under his arms, and he was rocking and moaning.

There was a police car parked next to him, with an officer inside looking at his phone. 

Never one to leave well enough alone, I went over to the man lying on the ground and started talking to him. "Are you okay?" I asked. He moaned louder. 

"Do you need a blanket?" I asked. After some time, he and I ascertained that he did, indeed, need a blanket. I wasn't sure where we could get a blanket (or several blankets, given the temperature) short of going back to re1 and getting a sleeping bag, which would be beyond my financial capabilities at this point, but I knew that there was a drugstore not far away, and I figured we could go there and buy a fleece throw or two. I also figured that getting him moving was a good idea.

Very slowly, with a great deal of moaning, we got his shoes on his feet. Even more slowly, with even more moaning, he finally stood up.

As soon as he stood up, the police officer, who was very young, shockingly young, came over, said, "Do you still want to go to the warming center?," patted him down, and put him in the back seat of the police car. 

Hey. HEY. This was my victory. I was helping this guy. I got him to stand up. I was annoyed that the police officer just snatched my opportunity to help someone away from me. I was practically dancing around in frustration.

"Where are you taking him?" I asked the officer. "Which warming center?"

He told me and then said, "We've been getting calls about him for a while. He'll die out here overnight."

"Are you going to take his stuff?" I asked. "Can I talk to him?"

The man was calling frantically from the back seat of the police car. "Whyyyy? Whyyyyyy?" 

The officer rolled the window down so I could talk to the man while the officer gathered his things in a garbage bag and put them in the trunk.

"He's just taking you somewhere warm," I tried to assure the man. 

"Why do I have to go?" he moaned. 

"It's too cold out here," I said. "It's not safe to be out when it's so cold."

"Whyyyyy," he said. "Why do I have to go?"

And then they left, and I don't know what happened next. I guess we don't always know what happens next to the people we meet, and I don't know if that man stayed in a warm place for the night or if he ended up back on the street that night or the next very cold night. I hope he's okay.

desert

Far out past the mountains and the high desert and the mountains again, there is a strange little desert, a few square miles of dry, cracked earth. 

Most of the year, it doesn't rain at all. In the spring, it sprinkles now and then. 

There are bluffs to the east and a mountain to the west. The wind blows in gusts that seem like to bring down your tent, and simultaneously the sun shines so hot that you can't be inside the tent during the afternoon. 

The cracked ground beneath your feet is like cement: gummy and thick when a moment of rain passes through, hard and unforgiving when dry. 

The dust covers everything. It gets on your hands and into your sleeping bag and behind your ears and in your food, and pretty soon you stop seeing it and start thinking of dust-covered hands as clean. The desert is clean, right? It feels clean, seared by the sun.

During the day, there is hiking up into the mountain, or up on the bluffs. It rains on the mountain, and I take off my shirts to get rid of the bottom cotton layer, not caring that the group is milling about, caring only about getting warm again. Back at the edge of the desert, there is a hot spring, and we all crowd into it as the sun sets and the air cools.

My tent is a refuge from the constancy of people, all having too much fun. "It's like a little Burning Man," we say doubtfully, as we go to bed and the young crowd who cares more about partying lights fireworks off above the campfire. 

The noise of their party abates right around the time that SHO calls quietly outside each of our tents. The sun is coming up, and it's worth rolling out of a warm sleeping bag to watch the golden light of morning begin its sweep across the desert.

The eastern rim seems like it's right there, so close, but after a quick rain shower, it's a muddy, sticky 7 miles away. Two cars get stuck. We push the little one out, two of us, nearly falling on our faces when the tires finally catch and it takes off without us. Far off in the mud, we watch them put snow chains on the SUV, which works, too.

We all pile into the only 4 wheel drive, and drive far to the south around the worst of the mud. The sunroof is open, and we stand up to stick our heads out, beaming into the wind. "This is my crazy thing for the weekend," one person grumbles, before admitting that it's great fun.

Up on the far bluff, we talk about rattlesnakes. I've only seen one before this trip, up on a butte outside of Universe City. "I saw a documentary once about a kid who got bitten by a rattlesnake," I say. "His mom knew exactly what to do, because his dad was a doctor who studied antivenom."

At that very moment, there is a rattle off to my right, between me and the edge of the cliff. It's our second rattler of the day, a big one, and some people (not me) get close, filming it. 

"How was it?" my friend asks when I pick up my car on the way home.

"It was amazing," I say. "It was totally amazing."

meet

I keep checking the weather, hoping that the 100% chance of rain every hour for the next twelve hours will change. It doesn't. The good news is that it has changed for Monday, making my hopes of a little hike more possible.

I have some friends coming into town from Universe City today. This makes me happy. Sometimes I forget that I have friends all over this country - and the world, really - because I am caught up in the daily business of getting up and going to work, and it's fun to realize that the people you leave behind - or who leave you behind - aren't really gone. 

I was walking to work in [new work city - I haven't come up with a name yet] the other day and suddenly someone screeched to a halt across the street and jumped out to hug me. It was one of the same friends I am meeting tonight. She just happened to have something going on in my new work city. 

As my friend said long ago in South Sudan: the world is small and round, and people always meet.

I like that about it.

tins #4 and #5

Tin #4 of the Advent Calendar (which I forgot until tonight because I spent yesterday evening helping a friend move) was full of Trader Joe's Coconut Flakes. So delicious.

I immediately opened Tin #5, even though I thought about saving it for tomorrow so as to save the treat, only it wasn't a treat! It was cute little gold-and-green earrings left by Sinterklaas, because it is Sinterklaas Eve.

I will take little surprises every day all year long for $800, Alex. This is fun.