Postcards...From the Edge

Cottage vacations are life, man.

I'm midway through week 2 of 2 weeks of additional cottaging, over and above that week we spent at the beginning of August with my family.  When you have kids, there is nothing better, vacation wise. We rented a cottage with Dr. Rei and Hanbo and baby Zoony and it was perfect.  It was perfect because they are perfect people and best friends. It was perfect because you never have to worry about haggling over who gets what room at the cottage, or money, or anything that can remotely be a chafe with other people because they are exactly like us and they know how to be and are chill and fair and make things easy.

Things I'm Going to Strive to Always Remember:

 the intonation of how Zoony says "yeah" and "I don't have it"

city slicker sees a beaver dam, loses her G-D mind.

my kids floating in the lake

The Dotytron calling me "Future" every time I donned this sun hat 

 watching my three kids launch themselves off the dock, in Twin B's case, preceded by his own cheer: "Go, Lindsay!" 

Hanbo asking Twin A if he's going to do a cannonball, and Twin A replying, matter-of-factly, "No. My feet are too smoll-uh [small]"

- a blue heron taking off in flight during one of our runs

 this GIANT frog, who was a dead ringer for Michigan J. Frog

- playing Catchphrases and Dutch Blitz
- watching Dr. Rei do a choreographed 90s video dance to Dotyron DJing
- arguing with everyone on the dock about Peter Thiel and his relative goodness/badness
- recording the first episode of my podcast with Dr. Rei...it's a good one guys, it's gonna be our ticket out of this two-bit town
- a visit with some K-W friends
- discovering the Swiss Bear Schnitzel House and Tarts store in Apsley, Ontario
- the terrifying appearance of a bold water snake, our first day at the cottage
- Hanbo riding hard for me learning how to dive
- So. Much. Laughter.
- a week that went by too fast for words

From there we drove from the Haliburton area to Prince Edward County and we're holed up in a house built in the 1820s with wide-planked hardwood floors and exposed beams on the main floor.  We're here with the Dotytron's mum and sister for the first half and then we'll be joined by the Roomie and family, our friend Montréal I, and our friend Pingy.  This house is about a 4 minute drive from North Beach Provincial Park, which is a more chill, low-key version of Sandbanks, so we've spent about 4-5 hours of the past two days camped out there.  The glacial sand deposits made thin strips of beach that made a little calm lake one one side of the strip, and angry, wild, Lake Ontario on the other side.  We set up shop on the calm side and let the kids splash in calm waters with the minnows and roll around in the sand dunes.  Today we convinced the kids to go to the wavy side and I watched the Wonder Twins continue to show their general fearlessness and life gusto, by hurling their bodies head-first into 2 foot tall waves (which is almost their height?) and living out a less sexy version of Madonna's "Cherish" video, with about 100000 times more metric tonnes of lake water consumed.

Things I'm Going to Strive to Always Remember:

- the sight of Twin B running towards...anything.  His little legs egg beater out in opposite directions and his heels comes thisclose to touching his bum, like a little drunken leprechaun.
- getting thrashed by the waves and rinsing sand out of every unmentionable nook and cranny
- Twin B in the car, as we got looped around some farms, after taking a wrong turn, "Are we going to a little farm? Is that a little farm?" *pause* "Oooh! I see a little farm!  I see a little farm dere!"  Twin B's stream of consciousness and his little exaggerated, "ooh!" and exhalations of surprise and joy, are so endearing. That kid is basically like a giant St. Bernard in human form.
- Momma D doing her obligatory small-town bakery run and coming back with half the things in a store.  There's nothing Momma D loves more than a small-town bakery.
- playing games with my outlaw sis and Dotytron, laughing at all kinds of in-jokes
- getting an annotated close-listen of Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill, courtesy of my outlaw sis
- Twin A's "bobs" in the water.  He knocks his head back, pauses for a millisecond, and then throws his whole face into the water with gusto.  He also has a way of pronouncing the o-sound in words like "bob" that makes him sound so funny...almost like a Jersey boy.
- my nature boy kids. Never wearing shoes, if we'll allow it.  And the shoes are the thin edge of the wedge. If they had their druthers, they'd be naked running around and tackling each other all the time. They are rambunctious, feral, wild boys...especially the Wonder Twins.  They do best allowed to just express that side of themselves, much to the chagrin of most adults.

I'm so grateful for this opportunity to give them these memories.  Of seeing so much of the beauty of this province. To be in nature and to glory in being wild and dirty and unkempt and unstructured. I love the rhythm of packing coolers and dragging deconstructed loose lunches to the dock and back.  I love watching the circuit of bodies in and out of puddle jumpers and the lake.  Teeth chattering and hooded towels stretched out like capes or wings, the sound of fat, flat feet slapping the worn wood of a dock, the scrape of shovels in wet sand, the cycle of making and unmaking in double-time.  I loved watching Dr. Rei, Hanbo, the Dotytron and I positively decimate a 1 lb baked brie in about 5 minutes and then push the tray away from us in self-disgust.  I love that my kids will know some of Ontario's provincial parks and be used to hiking trails and camping.  I love that the Big Yam learned how to cast at the Dr. Rei and Hanbo cottage.  In fact, he got so into it that he stepped right off the dock one morning.  I love detaching from social media and spotty internet coverage and shedding the layers of caring.  I love this all.

Fin.

I Love...

...napping in a screened porch, hazily hearing the buzz of bugs that want in, but can't.

...putting on a pair of dry underwear after a full 8-hour day in a bathing suit.  Really, that feel of dry underwear hitting your nethers is a golden gift.

...long canoe rides with the Dotytron, exploring a lake's nooks and crannies. We've been doing it for so long...I think the end of our second year together we went up to his family cottage for the first time.  No lake will ever be as magical as that one.  The sun burning the mist off an abandoned beaver dam we happened upon; drifting into a mess of lily pads and catching glimpse of a 1 1/2 foot shell of a turtle disappearing beneath the canoe; bobbing beside a family of loons; hearing the reedy scrape of grasses against the canoe hull as we pass through a cathedral of fallen birches; watching a blue heron take flight off a rock; pretend-buying cottages.  Healey lake is filled with so many fingers and inlets and bays - I loved that time we spent there with the Dotytron's mum and dad and sister, before we had kids, when we were still kids, pretending at being grown.

...canoeing with my kids now.  Perfunctory canoe rides punctuated with constant sharp admonishments to the twins (mostly Lenny) to STOP LEANING OVER and to PLEASE SIT STILL.  Loud canoe rides because my youngest (Lenny) is so pure of heart and without guile and filters and lives in a perpetual present, and therefore, the canoe rides are filled with: "I want to go over dare, wit the grasses. Ooh!  We're going over there!  Are we going over dare?  Are we going over dare...wit the grasses now?" Endless loops of his stream-of-conscious narration, scaring off any potential wildlife for a 5km radius.

...being with my family.  My crazy, loud, contentious, hilarious, inappropriate family.  Building upon nearly 40 years (!) of sibling in-jokes and now inter- and intra-generational jokes and folding in outlaw siblings by marriage.  Seeing my eldest nephew forge a special bond with Twin A (Quincess), the two of them thick as thieves.  Little little Cuz and the Big Yam skulking around pretending to be spies and sitting, heads together, lost in their Minecraft universe.  I have the best family in the world.

...being with my kids.  The twins have a knack for finding frogs?  And we never believe them, and each time, they find a bigger one.  When we went camping we did a gentle hike on this path through an abandoned beaver village (?), and Twin A and Twin B ran up ahead and we saw them crouched over a bridge over a small creek and babbling away: "We found a frog!" The Dotytron and I were very skeptical and we walked up and sure enough, there was a tiny dark green frog head just popping out of the water.  We showed up at the cottage this week and they immediately ran to the dock and when we checked in on them after unpacking, they were once again crouched with their little butts in the air, peering over the dock and yammering again about a frog, and once again, we were like, "Yeah, whatever, I'm sure it's a rock or something," and we look over and it's a GIANT BULLFROG THE SIZE OF A COW HEART.  LOL!  It's just so funny how these clowns legit can't "find" a giant toy that's right in front of their faces and meanwhile, are frog-spotting savants, and each time we doubt them and the frogs keep getting bigger and bigger.

...playing board games.  Taboo, Catchphrases, Telestrations, Apples to Apples, Pictureka, Guess Who?

...eating a giant baked pasta dinner after a day spent basking in the sun, lazily floating on my back in the water

...floating on my back in the water.  Ears submerged, my hair fanning out in the current, the sky above me, the sound of my breathing filling my ears, buoyant, relaxed...like I'm in a sensory deprivation tank.

...all the good food.  Bags and bags of salty snacks, multiple desserts, big egg-based breakfasts, everyone trying to outdo each other in the cooking department.

...the mostly stupendous people in my life.  My family, my friends, my bff.  I'm in love with all the inspiring, beautiful people I've met and continue to meet, who are all so different but at some level all share the quality of wanting to unravel the universe with me.

...time to read, and write.  Plowing through books. That little death you feel when you get to the last page of a book.  Time to spend thinking about what I want to write, how I want to write.  Time to let the words come to me, the things I want to capture, to reflect, to talk things out with smart people I love.

...being with the Dotytron.  Always.

...turning 37 (!).  Being firmly in the back half of my 30s. Spending my birthday surrounded by people I love, with the sun setting on a gorgeous lake, the smell of outdoors in the air, lazily working on a blog post while various people are splayed on in repose in various parts of this giant house.  Being okay with my age and mostly okay with who I am at this very point in time.  Settling into it.  Feeling myself.  Feeling so much love for the people I know.  Just being in love with it all.

 So basically, the cottage is great guys, is what I'm saying.

Fin.

In Like A Lion

I have many, many back posts either half or three-quarters drafted, or spooling around in my head, and yet, only 5 posts in 2015 to speak of.  Time is a bit precious around here, as you can imagine, and March has been a bit of a doozy.

I started a new job.  The process of getting this job was a bit fraught (I'll explain later).  I'm on loan from my regular job for a 9 month secondment with the Ministry of Magic, doing policy work, for which I had to take a pay cut (which smarts).  On the plus side, I've already stretched myself and learned how to do new things (hello, finessing a cost-sharing model in Excel, when you don't have access to Youtube tutorials or the data sets on which the model was based? All the fun!).  I've also felt stupid almost every day that I've been there and there has been more than one occasion where I've been left squirming under the steely gaze of my director, giving me feedback on a briefing note I produced that's been marked up beyond all recognition, as she waits for me to explain why something is "germane" to the paper.  All the fun!  Starting a new job, it's not nothing.  New work environment, new colleagues, new administrative and operational processes (where's the lunch room?  What time do people eat?  Is it okay to leave at 5 when I got there at 8:30?) ALL THE FUN!

It's probably a contributing factor to the eczema flare ups on my face?  Just guessing?  After 8 years at one job, it was easy to be a rock star.  My days were predictable, as were expectations, and I was in a comfortable position.  Having to "fight" (in a sense) again - to figure out my position and how to be good at something requiring a whole new skill set is good for me in the long run, which is why I took this job, even with an inopportunely timed pay cut (did I mention that 3 months into 2015, we are on track to spend FORTY THOUSAND DOLLARS on childcare? All the fun!)

So there's that.  Then, Captain Save-A-Ho finally kicked the bucket.  After saving many hoes, true, but also AFTER we spent $500 putting a new muffler on him.  So now we have to buy a new (used) car.  On the same day we made that fateful decision, I was replacing the windshield wipers on Eddie Van Halen, and cracked the windshield and we had to replace that (did I mention I took a pay cut?  And FORTY THOUSAND DOLLARS on childcare?)

On that same day (yes, this series of unfortunate events is still going), I took Boddington into the veterinarian because he had been looking unwell, and it turns out we had to put him down. He had lost 7 lbs since his last visit (almost 2 years ago), and the doctor said she would run up a quote for diagnostics (almost $2000), but that there was a likelihood that what she found wasn't going to be treatable.

Imagine how I felt.  Imagine what it feels like that this member of your family (for 12 years!) had gotten so sick and you didn't notice until it was too late.  The vet did her best to make me feel better (cats try to hide illness, it's common for the pet owner not to notice gradual weight loss, etc), but when you're holding that little furry body and they're listless and you're trying to comfort this creature in its last moments, you feel like total hell.

RIP, Boddington.  You were the cat that the Dotytron and I got when we first moved in together.  We called you "Big Nose."  You had already been adopted out and then someone brought you back and for some reason, we decided to take you even knowing that.  You were super affectionate and had a poor sense of boundaries (the Roomie called your signature move "face rape").  You were possibly on the spectrum and you did gross things like obsessively like the back of the toilet, lick the tub scum after a shower, and lick the corner of a window repeatedly until we could hear the squeak of your dry tongue on the dry glass.  You were also endlessly forgiving of the torment of three children over the last years of your life, and you gave Smudge (who loves being a father figure) something to dote over.  You were a greedy goomba who was very particular about how full your food bowl was, and you were riddled with anxiety.  You are missed.

After my second week on the job, we went to Disney World.  With two toddlers.  And a four year old (that's three under 4, if you're keeping track).  Our flight over was direct (from Buffalo).  What I didn't know about flying Southwest is that it's "open seating."  You can't reserve seats and you pay an extra $20/ticket/direction in order to get on in the first grouping to get the best pick of seats.  Families and people who require special assistance are seated between the A group and the B group.  We managed to get all five of us in a 3-seat row (babies were going to be on our laps), but then we found out that we're not allowed to have 5 in a 3 seat row as there's only 4 masks.  Gah!  Our flight attendant was kind enough to occupy the extra seat in the 3 seat row while the Dotytron moved across the aisle with the Quincess.  We ended up having that seat extra so the flight there was pretty smooth, all things considered:

We arrived in the afternoon.  We stayed on-resort (the only way to do it, IMO), and got picked up by the Disney shuttle.  We rented a stroller and picked it up at our hotel and then headed off to our first park, the Animal Kingdom, where we had planned a 1/2 day.  The good thing about staying on-resort is that Disney has special buses to transport you from the hotel, and they'll drop off your luggage at your hotel for you.  All we had to do was pick up our "magic bands" (which is linked to my credit card and has all our itinerary/dining information linked to it) and head off.

The Animal Kingdom is one of the weaker of the various parks within Disney World.  It's pretty much a big zoo.  There's some thrill rides (a roller coaster, a Jurassic-park-type dinosaur experience) that were too intense for our crew, so we went on their wilderness safari, had a Dole whip, and called it a day.  The safari was super fun - The animals are pretty much free to wander around (the docile ones at any point) and we saw cheetahs, wildebeast, giant bull type things (which had Lindsey shouting "PIIIIIIIIIG!" in ecstasy) and lions, zebras, etc.  It's pretty cool and was a nice way to ease into the experience.  

Here's the thing with people who don't stay on resort to save a few bucks - you're honestly better off saving money for a longer period of time, until you can afford to stay on resort.  And get the meal plan!  Paying for food on the park is so expensive!  $12 for a tuna sandwich?!  There are many, many ways to maximize your meal plan credits (and so many blogs from Disney psychos to guide you through the process), that it's well worth it in the end.  Travel from the resorts to the parks, on the Disney buses, can often take 30-45 minutes.  If you had to park your car?!?  And walk to it?  And then had to stay at the park ALL DAY (without a hotel break) to maximize your dollars?!?  Why would you do that to yourself?  YOLO.  

Day 2 was a day at the Magic Kingdom.  Going into this trip, the Dotytron and I made a solemn pact that we WEREN'T GOING TO BE CRAZY.  That meant that we would be chill - whatever happened, happened.  The money was spent - there was no going back, so there was no point stressing about the trip.  Knowing the Big Yam and knowing that he's a bit of a scaredy cat, and also is not into meeting characters, allowed us to book our "fast passes" (which allow you to jump the queue at particular attractions during hour-long blocks of time) in advance, knowing what would give us the best ROI.  We would eat a snack at our hotel, go to the parks as close to opening time as possible, then either go on rides we already had later fast passes for (but that we knew would have a big pay-off for the Big Yam, so he would want to ride it twice, and would be able to with the fast pass) or would have epic line-ups later.  Then we would do our fast pass schedule and hit some things that were more low key, then eat lunch at the park.  We would return back to the hotel for a mid-day swim (when Orlando is at it's most blistering), a nap, and then back out for dinner and a walk before a late bedtime.  It was the best possible way we could have managed things.

We discovered a place that had LOBSTER ROLLS as a counter service meal on our meal plan, and we hit that up (twice).  Other people were using their meal credits for the aforementioned tuna sandwich (why?!).  We obviously had Dole pineapple whips (twice!)

Despite making the best of the trip, it was challenging travelling with this many kids and in this age range.  It is an incredibly overstimulating environment - for them and us.  Then you add the heat, and the disruption of the routine, and the fact that the Dotytron and I hadn't been full-time parents to all three for this duration in months, and it was exhausting.  You don't go to Disney for a break, that's for sure.  I saw parents who seemed to be having a wonderful time and I'd ask how old their kids were and they'd say "12 and 9" - which makes sense.  Two toddlers and a 4 year old?  It's insanity.  We were getting side-eye from like, Mormon families with 12 kids, because all their kids were older.  

Orlando department of transportation says you have to fold up strollers on the buses, which meant every time we went to a park, we would stroll over to the bus stop, then I'd wear a baby, hold another baby while the Dotytron folded up the stroller and grabbed all the crap we had stowed underneath, and I would hustle the Big Yam onto the bus while the Dotytron tried to find a place to put the stroller.  I'd say that 60% of the time, people were kind enough to give up a seat for us or the Big Yam.  The overwhelming obesity problem in the US means that very often, people weren't giving up their seats because they actually needed it more than us (sorta).  I met another woman who was saying that they'd been to Disney about 5 or 6 times and they loved it.  It had apparently gotten to the point where her kids were old enough so that she and her husband went out and had a "nice dinner and a glass of wine" and she was saying how wonderful it was.  I just thought to myself, if you're idea of living it up is a nice dinner and glass of wine at Disney, then lady, you need to expand your definition of travel.

The food is good, FOR DISNEY.  As far as theme parks go, I can say unequivocally that it's the best.  It's so family friendly, and they set up all these smart things to make your trip as nice as possible.  The people they hire are very nice and have the patience of saints, even when they're treated abysmally by the guests.  But would I go there if I didn't have kids?  Hells, no.  We've been there, done that.  It is ONLY worth it for the kids.  Even at that, when the Dotytron and I were tallying things up at the end of the trip, it was only reasonably affordable because we didn't have to pay for the babies' flights/park tickets/most meals.  If we factored that in, we would have spend almost 10K, at which point, I would rather go someplace that's more stimulating for ME.  Picturing Disney as an adult escape is very, very odd to me, even if I did get to eat a cronut!  

Big Yam had no interest in meeting characters, but for some reason, the Dotytron was so enthralled at the fact that we were positioned so close to Belle from Beauty and the Beast that I came back to a camera with more than a few Belle back-side shots.

Look at how haggard having kids has made the Dotytron! 

Sunglasses hide everything!

Quincess turning it on at 10pm for the money shot.

 

Our flight home was a nightmare.  We flew out of Orlando at 6pm to Baltimore.  We'd already had a full day of the Magic Kingdom and the flight straddled baby bed time.  The Quincess dropped a deuce around 7pm and then we hit turbulence so the fasten seatbelt light was on and I couldn't go anywhere and he wailed for a solid hour.  I got some nasty looks from this lady in front of us.  Listen - if you're on a flight with someone with a crying baby, THEY ALREADY FEEL BAD ENOUGH.  Glaring doesn't help!  Also, WE PAID THE EXACT SAME FOR OUR SEATS, YOUR HIGHNESS, so can it.  Then, our connecting flight from Baltimore to Buffalo was delayed by 2+ hours.  We didn't end up arriving in Buffalo until close to 2 in the morning, and we didn't get home to Toronto until around 4am.  It was brutal and made the Dotytron swear off flying anywhere for the next 10 years.

That was my March in a nutshell.  I'm waiting for some out like a lamb action any time soon.

Fin.

What's the Spanish word...

for neti pot?

My immune system finally succumbed to the viral bath that I've been floating in for the past two weeks.  While on vacation in Puerto Aventuras.  Le sigh.  I woke up mid-trip with a wicked sinus infection and a head stuffed full of gallons of mucous.  It was not buddies.  I took the Dotytron's nasal steroid spray about 3 times while I was down there, just to get me through (luckily, the worst of it hit all on one day and I was able to rally the rest of the time), but then we came home and read up on it and pregnancy and there was all this bad info floating around about how inhaled steroids have shown links to cleft palates and stuff.  Which had me promptly bursting into a pile of hormonal, sleep-deprived tears (did I mention we took a midnight flight back home???)  It was not the best.  Then we checked Motherisk which said that there are no such associated risks with topical and inhaled corticosteroids, which made me feel much better.  At this stage in the pregnancy, all their gear should be formed, it's just a matter of getting fatter from here on in.  It was still scary though and I felt bad for not taking the time to read up on it before exposing the twerps to potential risk.

The vacation was lovely, overall.  I think 5 full days and 4 nights was definitely sufficient for me, for this type of vacation.  By the time the week ended, I was ready to go home.  But I just love my G-D house so G-D much, ya know?  My preferred mode of travel is to do my own thing and explore and seek out amazing food and soak in the culture, which are all things you can't really do on an all-inclusive resort.  I got a lot of napping and resting in and a lot of QT with my outlaw fam and the Big Yam and the Dotytron, which was really nice, and a perfectly acceptable trade-off.  For intergenerational travel, resorts and cruises and the like are really the best.

Our resort was pretty swank and really family friendly, which was good.  Our initial room had a loft/tv space!  So fancy!  While we didn't have an ocean-view suite, we had the "garden view" which was cool, because it actually faced onto the dolphin (and manatee!) aquarium, which was non-stop fun to look at.  It also overlooked the "adults-only" pool which was considerably quieter and less Vengabus-y than the main pool and beach.  We had rain one day which resulted in a leak in our room, which resulted in them moving us (at my request).  We lucked into the honeymoon suite, which had a jacuzzi on the balcony.  The Dotytron couldn't reiterate that enough (he was the one to actually go and view the room) when we were trying to decide what to do.  So we had mad jacuzzi times at balcony high.  They also threw in 25 minute massages for me and the Dotytron for the hassles (which I also requested - Chinese bargaining say what!)

I'm glad we didn't have to pay for the massages.  I am very, very lucky in that I have probably the best RMT in the GTA.  I love my deep tissue massage and she RUINS us.  I don't feel like a massage is effective unless it hurts, and my RMT makes me hurt so good.  This was kind of like, gentle non-erotic petting.  I guess some people find that relaxing?  But in my head I found it more irritating than anything else...like, if you're going to touch me, touch me with PURPOSE.

There were 5 or so restaurants on the resort and none of them required reservations and they didn't have wristbands, which I thought was quite civilized.  You could just show up and sometimes there was a bit of a wait, but we never had to wait more than 20 minutes for a table, which was fine by me (although not as fine for some of the irate tourists we came across).  Breakfast was by far the standout meal.  They had tostadas!!! And a chilaquiles station!!!  And a taco bar every morning!!!  It was heavenly!  The annoying thing was dealing with the other tourists - I found some of them quite rude.  Like, it's a chilaquiles station - don't try to order your egg white omelet there just because you don't want to wait in line at the omelet bar that's 10 feet away.

I felt like if they could just offer Mexican food, then resort food wouldn't be so maligned.  But I guess for them, it's really about adhering to the palates of these tourists who want their food replicated.  Like, I can't tell you how many people just wanted bacon and eggs and pancakes instead of the the delicious salsa roja and pickled red onions and fried plantains.  Yes, the Italian food didn't taste like Italian food...but why would you expect that to be the case?  It's not like there's a huge ex-pat Italian population like there is in other areas of the world that aren't Italy but that do great Italian food.  I would never travel to Florence and expect them to be able to turn out amazing Japanese food, but for some reason, that attenuated expectation is okay for those tourist destinations, but not for resorts.  It's very, very strange to me.  JUST EAT THE DELICIOUS COTIJA ALREADY!  Having dined at my share of "HK style cafés" where as a style of restaurant they replicated for the ex-pats a taste of their home countries but with the ingredients available, creating a delicious (to me) new form of mestizo cuisine (think, spaghetti with ox tongue and a "tomato" sauce that tastes like Alphagetti), I totally get how these kinds of diasporic iterations of food can become legitimate styles in their own right (the tomato is not native to Italy, lest we forget).  This kind of globalization-of-the-plate is not happening at all inclusive resorts, though.

Another feature of the resort is that it sat in a natural cove sheltered by a reef.  There was one part of the resort where they had a natural salt water pool with steps leading down and all kinds of fishies hanging out that had taken refuge from the Gulf of Mexico.  Our first time down there, there was a heavily tanned, Dog the Bounty Hunter-type who was feeding the fish Kellogg's cornflakes.  He offered some to the Big Yam and Ehmdo said, "Uhh, but the sign says you're not supposed to feed the fish..." and he said in reply, "This is Cancun baby! You can do what you want!" (Something tells me this guy is not an international law specialist).   Ahhh, Americans.

Yesterday was the first day of rotating daycare for the Big Yam while J's on vacation.  He spent the day with Ehmdo and she's been super-cute about it.  She's like, way better at being home with the Yam than I am.  Last message I got from her, she was blowing the insides out of eggs to decorate with him next week during her shift.  Awwww.

Today I'm on duty.  Ugh.  It's only 9am and the day feels looooong.

Fin.