Organized

I did ask Mark and Emily to post from the Bahamas. Normally our posts are a family affair but it looks like when the cat's away the mice will play. Yesterday Emily (she had the day off of school), Mark, Pete and Di spent the day at cabbage beach riding the waves. I spent the day in my sister's garage. Not that I have anything against her garage, it is turning out to be a very functional garage, it's just I would have rather been riding the waves on Cabbage Beach.

I think I am pretty organized. Or should I say I thought I was pretty organized... not as organized as my sister. She has 3 children. After spending the last few days in her home I am realizing that I could never have three children. My patience and organizational skills have a limit. Michelle's? None.

When Mark and I first saw the space that we had to move our business in to we were worried. Thanks to Michelle's organizational skills things are starting to come together.







Michelle's dog Abby thinks she is a bird.

Happy Anniversary Mum & Dad!

Lisa here... did anyone ever use "gotomypc"? It means that you can log on to your computer through the internet and use it from anywhere. It works like a dream - but has one major fault. It doesn't consider the problems encountered when you have a 10 year-old on your computer at the other end who thinks it is really funny to close the mail that you just opened - or open application windows that you don't want on screen. Stop it Emily - or I will be blogging all day!!!

Anyway - not the point of this post at all.

Although I miss Mark and Emily tremendously (yes even if she messes with my blogging efforts) , one of the bonuses of being in PA at this particular time is that I get to participate in events that I otherwise would have missed. We celebrated my nephew Jack's 3rd birthday - but there is an even bigger event.

Happy 40th Anniversary to my Mum and Dad! 40 years! I can't believe Mum has put up with him that long - and don't tell me you weren't all thinking the same thing. Here is to another 40 - and hopefully most of that will be spent fishing on their own lake in Arkansas.

Last night Dad treated us all to a lovely dinner at a beautiful local restaurant. The photo of Mum and Dad above is from that dinner. Here are the re-united Dowler siblings with some absences...(from left to right) Little brother Alan, Michelle's husband Ryan, Alan's wife Diane (pregnant with twins - we think they are girls), Me and sister Michelle. Mark is missing of course, as is oldest brother Con who was working his butt off pouring drinks in his bar (Sugar) in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Here are some other photos just because my Nan has learned how to download them off the blog. My new nephew Tommy in the first and Maggie, Grandad and Jack opening Jack's birthday presents.

Where in the world?

...are the Cabrelli's? We are around. Barely. After leaving the Bahamas - and leaving Emily in the care of our fabulous neighbours, Michael and Cindi - we traveled to Atlanta. We arrived in the evening, celebrated the twin's birthday, packed up the business and went to bed. The next day we drove 14 hours straight to arrive in PA.

Sister Michelle is taking over operations for Emily Rose after the exit of our business partners. We are thrilled to have her on board as we know she will do a fabulous job. It was a little tough fitting the business in to her busy 3 child household - but after much arranging, shelf-purchasing and clearing out (mostly done by Michelle and Ryan before we arrived) Emily Rose has a new US home. The next few days were spent unpacking, organizing and preparing. We also celebrated our nephew Jack's 3rd birthday (picture coming as soon as we are a little more organized).

This morning it was off to the airport at 4:00am (eek) for Mark to fly back to the Bahamas, leaving Lisa here in PA with her sister for the next few weeks while we work Michelle in to the business groove. Mark arrived in Nassau at lunchtime, meeting his brother and sister-in-law (Pete and Di) after their few days relaxing in Turks and Caicos. A flat tire on our car slowed them down a little (at least he didn't need to climb in the window!), but he picked up Emily and two of the 3 Musketeers (plus guests) are back at Water's Edge. Lisa is wondering how many of her herbs are still alive.

We will be back to normal soon - but in the mean-time the blog will be bi-country!

Leaving Home...

Just Lisa here today - It has been a very busy and stressful time over the last few days. Pete and Di finally arrived after being delayed more than 24 hours when their flight was canceled in London. We had a lovely evening last night but today is filled with packing, planning and preparing for our trip back to the U.S.

Something interesting happened to me today. I was packing suitcases and running around trying to remember what I had forgotten - which is always a challenge since having forgotten it there isn't much chance of remembering - when I stepped out on to the patio to breath.

The ocean always helps me breath. So many times over these last few months when problems and issues have just seemed insurmountable, I have stood on the edge of the expanse of blue green ocean and timed my breathing to the sounds of the tide. Calmness descends. Today calmness came, along with a unfamiliar and sweetly surprising feeling.

I have been back to the U.S. twice since we arrived here only 4 short months ago. Both times I felt as if I were going "home" and even spoke about the trip in those terms, "what will I need for the trip home", "I will call you when I get home". On this trip I am going back to my parent's house, which is the most "home" I could ever be in the U.S.

But as I stood in the salted breeze unknotting the anxiety coiled in my ribcage I thought, "I am going away - I am leaving home."

Home - at last we are home.

7 Random Things...

Tammy over at My Life tagged us for a "7 Random Things About Me" meme. Here are 7 random facts about the 3 Musketeers.

1. We are major animal lovers. Mark and Lisa don't like zoos - Emily does and wants to be a zoologist. We once all went to a tiny zoo where we used to live in Reston and after watching the baby camel cry for his Mummy for nearly an hour (he had just been moved to his own stall) hatched a plan on the way home to come back and rescue him using our convertible. Emily swore he could fit in the back with her.

2. We love to travel. We like cities and driving Holidays. If Lisa can get her way she squeezes in an occasional "all-inclusive", if Emily got her way she would live year-round on the Disney Cruise. Mark hates Disney World and we have only been because one of the companies that Lisa used to work for took us for free.

3. Mark can't resist free.

4. Emily "married" Mark and Lisa in their living room in Virginia in front of about 42 of her stuffed animal guests. She planned the ceremony in it's entirety. It included vows, "I promise not to work after I get home" (Mark's) and "I promise to do the laundry" (Lisa's) as well as each of singing our own assigned parts to Abba's "I do, I do" (Emily changed the lyrics and wrote them all out... "Lisa let's try it. You love me don't deny it"). This was after Mark surprised Lisa with a proposal and elopement at City Hall in New York City.

5. Although Emily enjoys a lot of time with her Dad, Mark and Lisa are not often apart. Mark was not amused when our friends (Grant and Miranda) nicknamed us "Meesa". This was after Lisa's nickname of "Yoko" was forgotten when Grant got married himself - oh how things change.

6. We love books and movies. Lisa reads out loud to the family at night (Terry Pratchett is our current favorite) although Emily has just informed us she is too old for that now. Waaaah! Emily is a total book-worm and would read through the night if you didn't make her turn her light out. It is not uncommon for us to go to the movies in the morning and stay all day moving on to the next showing. We haven't tried that yet in the Bahamas.

7. We all miss the Silver Diner. Life was good when you could plop yourself on to a stool at the bar and Diane or Marie would bring you a Salmon/Spinach Omelette, American Favorite or Chocolate-chip pancakes - depending on which of the 3 Musketeers you were. In the Bahamas you get hot sauce in your eggs and tasteless grits instead of potatoes.

We don't mind getting tagged but don't like to tag people. If you would like to play along consider yourself tagged and leave us a comment to let us know.

Mark's brother Pete and his wife Diane were due in from Edinburgh at 2:20pm this afternoon they are already delayed until 6:30pm. Ouch!

Dukes of Nassau...

We have a lot on our minds. There isn't much room in our heads for practical thinking. Why is Mark climbing through the driver's side window of the car? Yesterday - as he was thinking too much - he backed out of the driveway with the driver side car door open (yes his side, right next to him, wide open) and it slammed in to the garage pillar. Now the door won't open. All that talk about the state of the Bahamian roads and we manage to ruin our "new" car in our own driveway.
We keep crawling...

Time, time, time...

Sometimes time just gets away from you. I think this is longest amount of time we have ever let pass before posting. Not only have we been remiss in posting but we have been remiss in reading our own favorite blogs. So here is a summary of our past week...

The Owens left us at 5:00am on Saturday morning after a raucous Friday night with our neighbours Michael and Cindi and the best joke ever. We can't repeat it because we just couldn't do justice to Michael's delivery - but if you are ever in Nassau remind Michael to tell it to you. We haven't laughed so hard in ages.

Saturday was spent trying to de-spice a spicy curry after inviting fellow Brits to dinner - cooking Indian and then discovering they didn't like spicy food... whoops!

Sunday, Monday and Tuesday - Catch up! Boy does work creep up on you when you aren't on your normal schedule. The good news is we are ready to deploy our new store, the bad news is... we can't yet.

Our big news of the week. Our business partners have to leave us. It will be just Emily Rose and us we are afraid. We are very sorry to lose a great partnership but just like Martin Luther King Jr said - "If you can't fly, run. If you can't run, walk. If you can't walk crawl - but keep moving forward". So we will keep moving even if we have to crawl for a while. We have crawled before and we shall survive.

Tonight we all (along with our neighbour Cindi) went to audition to be extras in the new Julia Roberts movie that is filming here in Nassau. We were upset to forget cameras but it turned out there wasn't much to take pictures of. No long lines, no bored and dressed up actors, no bossy production assistants. Just two women - one at a desk passing out cards with about 3 questions on it, and one taking digital photos. It took us about 5 minutes and we were done. If only it had been that easy in New York! At least we had time for Bangers and Mash at the Cricket Club.

The Owens continued...

One of the nice thing about having visitors is that you see your place anew. All of the recent problems like broken air-conditioning, hot-water heater deaths, concrete cracks and sewage issues (you don't want to know) - disappear with the fun of sharing your home with guests. Here are some photos of us enjoying the company of the Owens.

Treasure Trove

The Owen family has arrived! Emily Rose has been semi-closed (no shipping) for the week and Deb and Lisa will be working on transferring to our brand new store-front. Very exciting! Deb, Jason, Emily and the Twins arrived with the following supplies which Mark and Lisa have now decided is the entry fee for a stay at Water's Edge (future visitors take note :-) - JK). The ziploc bags are filled with steaks, boneless chicken breasts and lamb chops.



We are having a lovely time and will share more photos later in the week. But here are the two Emilys (little Abby has taken to calling our Emily "two") in their matching High School Musical nightshirts that Deb brought them.

Night Swimming

Since Emily discovered we had a light in our pool (not sure why she missed that?) she has been desparate to swim at night. Here is she is taking a dip in the lit pool. Can you spot Ow? He was climbing over in to our neighbour's garden on one of his lizard hunts and we just caught him as he was coming back over the wall. He's looking in to the ocean deciding if he wants to go fishing or not. He may be able to catch the lizards but we are not sure he would have much luck with our friendly neighbour the stingray who has started visiting us nearly every day - he's about 3 times his size!

Happy Birthday Mark!

Today is Mark's birthday. This picture was taken while we were touring the favalas (slums) of Rio de Janeiro - he was thrilled to find a Scotland flag among all the football (soccer) graffiti. When we were entering the slums, we stopped with our guide(a Rio local) at a corner shop where the owner, a large and very happy Brazilian, siezed Mark's arm in an iron grip and told our guide (in Portugese) that Mark could not join the tour because she was taking him home... I know how she feels.

Until a year or two ago Emily thought he was the tallest man in the world (he's 5'10...and a half), she also thought he was the strongest man in the world - and still does.

I think he is one of my two favorite people in the world. Happy Birthday Caro!

Bananas!

Lisa spends a lot of time here marveling at the fruit trees. The first time she went to Spain and saw oranges growing on trees was a bizarre experience for her. Although she obviously had knowledge of where the fruit came from - to see them actually growing there for anyone to pick was kind of like an epiphany... "Wow - oranges actually DO grow on trees!"

As we were walking through the garden of another property on Eastern Road - the gardener handed us a bunch of bananas that he had just cut down from the banana tree.

And they do taste different, richer, sweeter and more... tropical.

DEAR Week

Emily's school is having DEAR week this week. Drop Everything And Read. Every day at 2:30 they are grabbing blankets and pillows and finding a shady spot on the many lawns to read until the end of the school day. No Fair! We wanna go to this school!

Corporate Hacks

We would like to hijack what was supposed to be a lovely post about a visit from an old colleague (old as in "past", not as in "age") to rant for a while about large corporate America.

Meet Michelle



Lisa met Michelle when she came to work for her in the old days when Lisa was a corporate hack. We worked for a very large US corporation to remain un-named - other than to say it was, and is, the largest telephone company in America.

Michelle was pretty much working as an admin when she came to work for Lisa (not by choice, she was assigned) and Lisa spent days worrying about how to use her in this very technical group of people with very technical job requirements. Turns out no worrying was required. The size of the workload didn't allow the luxury of only assigning Michelle projects that we thought she could handle - we had to assign her projects we were sure she couldn't handle. Boy was Lisa ever wrong - and happily so.

Michelle turned out to be (as were the rest of her team - Lisa was blessed) incredibly hard-working, quick-learning and committed. It wasn't long before she started leading entire projects on her own (smartie pants!) She also happened to be the nicest person Lisa had and has ever met. We mean "nice" in every definition of the word - like "helping little old ladies across the street" nice, "spending her weekends pulling all-nighters for her charity work" nice, "finding time to hand paint wine glasses for a housewarming" nice.

Why the commercial for Michelle? You need it as background for the rant.

Michelle and her husband Lenny are on vacation here over on Paradise Island. We went to pick them up last night for an evening out. During the evening it came out that nothing at work had changed. She was still over-worked and underpaid - in fact the night before she flew out for her vacation she stayed up until 6:00 in the morning (yes I mean all night) working. Do you think anyone even noticed? Nope. Do you think if anyone did notice it would matter? Nope.

One thing that Mark and Lisa realized after leaving life as a "Corporate Hack" is how completely unnecessary you really are. You work so hard believing that you are making such a contribution and that you are irreplaceable - you're not, you aren't.

Here is Michelle dedicating herself 1000% to a difficult, and stressful job and no one notices (sorry Michelle) - even worse, they take advantage of her niceness. She is the one they go to with their "troubles" when they want something.

Corporate America is like a towering, drooling beast that will consume you within a year or two. The only way to protect yourself is to lie down and give up - be as unnoticeable as possible.

Those who roll-over are rewarded simply for "putting in their time" which starts a vicious cycle when these folks (mostly white men) get promoted and are in charge of persuading as many people as they can to roll-over as well ("don't rock the boat or someone will notice I actually don't do any work")... and the cycle continues. Not a good situation for anyone with unshakeable passion or drive.

Anyway - we had a lovely visit with Michelle and her husband Lenny (Emily wanted to go home with them). Lenny treated us to a great Snapper dinner at Arawak Cay.

View From the Fort

We're stealing photos again. This one is from Mum.


For more Wordless Wednesdays go to 5 Minutes for Mom.

And it goes round and round...

Lisa on my own here. Mum and Dad are on a plane just now in the air somewhere over New Jersey. We had a great visit except for Dad not being well. Emily was hoping in a morbid way that he still wouldn't feel well this morning so that they would stay a little longer... maybe I was too :-) Mark is out to dinner with a business acquaintance. Emily is in her room doing her homework. It's awfully quiet. I'm feeling a little sentimental and weepy.

On that note I am stealing from Emily today. I just got a bunch of photos from her Dad that were taken on her Spring Break in the US. This one is of Emily and her friend Madison. Emily's friend Madison just happens to be the daughter of my best friend from childhood, Lou Ann. When I opened up this picture it gave me chills. Lou Ann and I met when we were both 11 years old and we looked very much like these two little girls in this picture. I wish I had a picture of us when we were this age but I lost most of my photos in our house fire as a teenager. Lou Ann is coming to visit at the end of next month - Lou, I know you have a photo of us. Please bring it so I can scan it and post it with this one. Time marches on.