It's Time...

This blog was started purely as a way to keep everyone at home in touch with us as we embarked on this grand adventure of moving to Water's Edge. During the past 3 years that the blog has been around several things have happened... Facebook has become ubiquitous and taken over as an easy way to keep family and friends up to date, Nassau is a small island so we have run out of new things to share, but most of all... this has become home. Home, although wonderful, gorgeous and lovely - doesn't seem like much of an adventure anymore. This is evidenced by the lack of posts in recent months!

Not to say we aren't still feeling adventurous!

This month we put this fabulous house on the market. We hope to sell it at a price we can live with. If we can, we are off for a year of road-schooling Emily through Europe, if we can't, we will need to have a re-think. Although we love Nassau (and especially Water's Edge) it is becoming clear that we would like for Emily to go to high school in the US so we expect to head back there.

I have found a website that will allow us to print out this website as a book. I think we will do that for Emily to keep, and then delete it.

Moving on... to the next adventure!!!

The Ninth Life

It was the scales that tipped me over.... tipped so unexpectedly in one direction that I fell off. Tumbling down an unexpected abyss that had appeared out of nowhere.

I couldn't exactly say that he was a good cat. He really wasn't. My earliest memories after bringing him home are those of pain. He earned the name "Ow".

As a kitten, only days after he arrived, he tortured me through lonely nights. He pounced on even a fraction of exposed skin, biting so hard as to wake Sleeping Beauty from her slumber - and in a steamy old Victorian townhouse in the middle of Jersey City, I was no Sleeping Beauty. No air-conditioning, just a playful kitten with no manners in 100 degree temperatures. And how I loved and hated that sheet that suffocated me. It locked the heat and humidity against me and keept me from even the stale, lazy breeze from the tired fan - yet it protected me from him - from his claws and teeth as he tried desperately to keep me awake.

He made friends with no one... Not the other cat, shocked and dismayed to discover she would have to share her space... Not me, after he leaped at my wedding veil (hung on the wall to ensure the drying of the fresh flowers) leaving torn ragged shreds of tulle... and not family and friends who only felt the pain of his attack in response to efforts of friendship.

He was always there - hissing, growling, spitting. Yet, occasionally and unexpectedly, he would crawl up on to my chest in bed and throw his paws around my neck. Sometimes he would flop over on to his back for a 10 minute belly rub from my daughter. Sometimes he would walk up to the other cat and give him a big, old affectionate head rub. He was there - around for 16 years... but then he got old.

I wasn't happy about taking him to the vet. He didn't like the vet. But he didn't look well. He looked skinnier than his usual 12 lb frame and maybe he needed antibiotics. Something was up with him, he obviously didn't feel good. But it was the scales that did it.

"What's his name", said the vet.

"Ow", I replied, "as in ouch that hurts".

"Hmm", said the vet as he plopped a cartoon version of my cat, all bones and tufty, crazy fur on the scales.

"Well Ow weighs 7.2 lbs"

The scales tipped, and I tumbled. I thought he just needed antibiotics.

It turns out he's not invincible, that mean, nasty, lovable, incredible, wonderful cat.

RIP Ow - died in his sleep peacefully today - at home and loved.

Maturity

Emily: "Some of my friends have boyfriends but I don't like boys they are too annoying."

Lisa-Marie: "Don't worry Em you will - they will grow-up. Boys just mature slower, they are a little behind... right Mark?"

Mark: "Hee, hee - you said behind."

Hola!

The instant that Mark dropped Emily and I off at the airport we knew that he should have made the decision to come with us. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity - time with family at a wedding in a gorgeous farm in Las Pampas, Argentina with time also to explore Buenos Aires again. We learned a lesson here.

Moments from our trip...

Emily discovering "Submarinos" - a full glass of frothy steamed milk with an accompanying bitter-sweet chocolate stick to dip and stir until it melts in to chocolate Heaven.

Meeting my wonderful new sister-in-law (Emily's new Aunt) Vero at our first "all meat" dinner in Buenos Aires (there were lots of all meat dinners to come).

Vero and Family at the farm - a very lovely group of people who made us so welcome and felt immediately like family.

Watching Emily follow Diego (Vero's brother) climbing through an electric fence in to a muddy field full of nervous cows - she tried her hardest to pet one but did not succeed.

Emily discvering the farm's kittens.

Standing in the back of the pick-up truck with Emily looking out at the road ahead over the top of the cab. Driving bumpily down the dusty dirt road in the sunset and feeling like we must be on a movie set.

Seeing Vero in her dress and having to leave her room so I wouldn't cry.

Watching Con and Vero get tossed in the air by the wedding guests.

Con dancing.

Diego helping Emily make friends with the small children at the wedding - watching them play together all day even though they couldn't speak to each other.

Emily's face when Jimmy (Vero's Dad) suggested a midnight bike ride through the farm.

A moonlight armadillo hunt in the back of the pick-up truck instead.

Emily making friends with the funny deer, rabbit, kangaroo animals at the zoo.

Learning to Tango.

Wat Is?

Overheard in the stands at Mark's football game last night as two young Bahamian guys discuss music.

"My Girl" plays softly from their radio.

Guy 1: "Wat dey call dis kinda music again?"

Guy 2: "What kinda music?"

Guy 1: "Dis kind. Wat is?"

Guy 2: "Don't know"

Silence for a few minutes....

Guy 1: "You know...listen - it's got these loooong notes"

Silence for a few minutes...

Guy 1: "I remember now... It's called Opera"

Haiti Relief

We volunteered (and Mark even played) in a footie benefit game in Nassau for Haiti Relief on Sunday. The event proved a tremendous success with a total of some $11,000 raised for the fund. A very commendable event - there were concession stands, face painting, raffles, 2 games (ROW Vs Jamaica followed by Bahamas Vs Haiti), food and drink. All good stuff but it got us to thinking.

The Haiti tragedy was close to The Bahamas in several ways. Physically the quake happened a few hundred miles away and too far to have any effect whatsoever. But emotionally and demographically it was extremely close. The Bahamas has been regarded in recent years by Haitians (and other less fortunate island countries) as a land of opportunity and prosperity. As such there is a huge Haitian immigrant population, mostly illegal, that carry out the tasks that Bahamians won't - mostly gardening and labouring. As a generalisation, they are tireless workers and responsible for much of the "heavy lifting" round here. Most are low down on the totem pole and make little money (much of which is sent back to Haiti). Most reports were that Port-au-Prince was a seedy, dangerous impoverished city with little saving grace. The city and country is so poor that people regularly take their lives in their hands to make sail on hardly sea-worthy sloops for the Bahamian coast. If they make it, and don't get caught by the authorities, they make contact with some acquaintance and start the daily trudge of grinding out a wage in some backyard in the baking sun.

All the more poignant then that this awful natural catastrophe should happen to such a country and people. As I see the horrendous images from Haiti and read the heart wrenching reports I can't help but wonder "there but for the grace of God go I." Sunday's relief event was terrific not for the money it raised - the massive international relief funds will hopefully take care of that - but to make us all stop, think and consider how fundamental life can be and how a tragedy can turn a world upside down.