Back home

Sorry that there were no more posts from the island- their internet connection was lousy and even though I tried every day, I generally gave up on the idea after having already spent 15 minutes just trying to check my email. They charged by the minute and B was convinced that it was some sort of scam to make us pay more. He's like Mel Gibson in that (bad) movie where he plays a crazy cab driver who sees conspiracy theories everywhere and he helps Julie Roberts, the sexy journalist, uncover some big story. Except B's big conspiracy theories are limited to 10 cent a minute internet cafes and set-ups on Video Gag. Don't think anyone will be making a movie about that.

Anyways, super sad about the lack of posting because I was all excited to tell you about Wasabi, the little Japanese toddler that B befriended at the pool while I was off diving. I had all kinds of kooky diving buddies as well, but none so entertaining as the 71 year old Japanese lady. It was like swimming around with a sea-turtle in a pink wetsuit. She had all kinds of wrinkly skin pushed up aroung her neck from the collar of her wetsuit which kind of gave her a very turtle-y look when she was craning her neck around underwater. And since she was an excellent diver, she had this totally serene deliberate way of moving underwater that was very turtle like as well. And the rather skinny arms and legs attached to a very round torsa sort of added to the overall effect. Sadly no photos so you will just have to imagine it all. She was with a group that went diving three times a day for their entire holiday and it clearly exhausted her. I kept seeing her slumped over in various places around the hotel, her mouth hanging open, her head at some weird angle. Her skin was nearly glow in the dark white since she covered herself in thick suncreen whenever outside which only added to my recurrent fears that she wasn't sleeping but had actually died.

The British couple (the Lovelies, B's name for them) went fishing a few times with B so he ended up getting their whole story. They were newlyweds and very very young and very very sweet but absolutely the most backwards people that you could imagine. B told me all this, and he swears its true but I have my doubts. He said that Mr Lovely had asked if there was an airport in Paris and if that is where the Eiffel Tour was located. French pride could only gap open-mouthed at these enormous holes in his general knowledge. There were lots of other comments like that but obviously these were the two that B mentioned over and over again with an incredulous shake of his head.

Biggest disappointment about holiday has to be tanning related. I don't know what has happened but I am suddenly a light-weight when it comes to laying out in the sun. I remember a holiday in Cancun when we parked ourselves on our beach chairs at around 10 am and basically laid there, sucking down pina coladas and strawberry daiquiris all day long, only getting up to put on more sunscreen and swim over to the pool bar. I was brown as a nut after a week and have the photos to prove it. This holiday, I was quite busy at the dive center but had to take a break one day due to a head cold so I thought that I would take advantage and just do some tanning. At the end of the day, I felt like death warmed over and ended up spending the next 24 hours in bed. I didn't even want to eat anything, I was so ill. I think it was quite obviously a case of heatstroke or the like and as a result, I never sat out in the sun again until after 4pm. Not surprisingly, I was by far the whitest person on the island. I think I even out-glowed the Lovelies. Back in Paris, the situation doesn't look so grim. I am ever so slightly golden but after 2 weeks on a tropical island, I was hoping for more dramatic results. I know, I know- when I'm sixty I'll be praising my lucky stars over my well-timed sun allergy since I'll be wrinkle-free and passing for a sassy 50 year-old still. Sadly, I'm not too big on delayed gratification.

Was also a bit disappointed with the books that I bought for my beach reading. Clearly I think that I am far more clever than I really am. I bought "Mill on the Floss" by George Elliot, which is not exactly light reading. I dragged myself halfway through "L'elegance du herisson" by Muriel Barbery. The language is a little bit above my level and I kept having to ask B for definitions, only he didn't know what a lot of them words meant. OR so he claimed. I think he was just getting irritated by my constant interruptions (I think I already mentioned that B did nothing while sitting around the pool- no books, no magazines, crossword puzzles, writing, sketching, etc. He concentrated mainly on gazing into the distance blankly, sunscreen application, and drink ordering. No wonder he got fed up with all the interruptions...) Anyways, it ended up being too much of a bother so I put it away. I forced myself through the first chapter of "Their Eyes Were Watching God", and ended up really loving it, but it was a slog at the beginning. I enjoyed "Consuelo and Alma", the biography of Consuelo Vanderbilt and her mother, but only finished it because my other choices were so grim. Same for "Julie and Julia"- a book that I mostly liked (enough to have ordered the Julia Child's cookbook that the story revolves around) even though I felt like it was one of those books that needed to be severely editted of the side stories and comments that added nothing to the plot and made me really dislike the author/main character. Could not get into "the accidental" by Ali Smith, which is supposed to be so good. And I still have a stack of books from my mom to read, which are much lighter and hopefully, more entertaining than my choices. Luckily, this means I have reading material stocked up for a few weeks.

I have gone back through my photos and it all just seems so long ago. Paris has been grey and rainy since we got back. I can't tell if it is just the post-holiday depression that is bound to occur after any great vacation or if it is a post-birthday crisis, or if it is the weather/"that time of the year" thing, but I have been in a rotten mood since we've been home. I actually was thinking about it and I do tend to have a breakdown nearly every year at this time. I think its the fact that it is spring and it starts to get nicer out and I have lots of energy and if I don't have a good way to use that energy I get very antsy. Every time I have quit a job its been March. Most of my stupid "adventures" have happened in March. The list is long but basically what it boils down to is that I need to be very careful about the decisions I make at this time of year because my judgement is flawed (at best).

So, really the lack of blogging this month can be mainly attributed to that. But its almost April! And April is not March, so i have high hopes that things will soon be turning around.