Life on a Desert Island

I am preparing to take a little vacation to the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. A grown up, women-only adventure with two of my best pals. In reviewing our itinerary, we discovered that it will be touch and go for us to make the 4:30 ferry from Fajardo to Vieques, and if we miss it we have to wait until 8:30. So we decided to streamline our transition from airport to ferry by packing everything we need for a week in carry on luggage.

At first, I thought this would be easy. My last trip to PR was a family affair, so there were books and blankets and toys and stuffed animals, oh my! When I visualized the essentials for one adult woman, it seemed like a little backpack would do it. HA!

Challenge #1: the snorkle gear. I really want to bring my snorkle gear, because: I'm cheap and don't want to rent gear, I'm averse to putting things in my mouth that have been in other people's mouths (not a fork/water bottle/ ice cream cone sharer, this one), and my poor snorkle gear hasn't seen water since January 2007.

Challenge #2: hair that really, really hates humidity. Or loves it, depending on your perspective. If you've seen the episode of Friends where Monica's hair morphs into a Diana Ross mega-fro, you understand. Not too long ago, I discovered the miracle of hair products, and not just any products. Through many years of experimentation I have the perfect 1-2-and sometimes 3 step process to keep my hair more or less in check, if not always styled. I am seriously not a high maintenance person - no hair dryers, no mani/pedis...but I gotsta have my leave-in conditioner and curl enhancing mousse, and these things don't come in travel size.

Challenge #3: Books. I am looking forward to plowing through a few, and maybe doing some writing and sketching. Books are heavy and they take up space. This could be a deal breaker.

So this has become a bit of an exercise like those quizzes "what would you take to a desert island if you could only bring five things." Today my travel mates and I will engage in the final negotiation around this. Stay tuned...

Vacation All I Ever Wanted

Day two of my mostly stay at home vacation. It hasn't been quite what I expected, as work invaded about 4 hours of my first vacation day, and my daughter stayed home sick from tennis and day camp. Today she had a "recovery day," so my plans of having a couple days to myself to decompress and transition into full vacation mode were thwarted. But today we made the best of it. Instead of a road run with my dog, we headed to the track so the girls could roam safely while I ran my 3 miles. I even did a little speed work, inspired by the monotony of the oval. Then home for a little time in the garden while my girls did some "creative reapportionment" of saplings in the woods behind my house, which will soon be flattened from a steep, forested hillside into a girls' softball field for the local high school. (Grrrr) They even rolled a nice sized stone that I had admired down the hill for me. Way to go, girls!

Next, I regrettably gave into an impulse to cut my own hair. It's not terrible - no one in my family even noticed - but it's not quite...right. Oh well. Then on to bread baking with a nap squeezed in between first and second rise. A risky move, but it paid off with my best bread yet.

The highlight of the day has been watching the river by our house rise, and rise, and flirt with the top of the bank, making me wonder if I should evacuate my five barred rock hens from their new chicken coop. This is the highest the river in the four years we've lived here - a good 9 feet above its standard summer depth of about a foot. It is something to see, with entire trees raging by, and our own trees along the bank cracking ominously. We watched a Merganser mama and her 6 ducklings navigate the swollen waters with amazing skill - flapping madly and skimming the surface when they crossed the racing current, but otherwise tracing the shoreline, making improbably quick progress upstream.

Mama Merganser plans her approach...Then shows the youngsters how to do it!

One of our less favored fauna, a woodchuck, found himself flooded out of his den, so in spite of the presence of a bunch of humans, he had no choice but to come out and join us on the river bank. He announced his displeasure with a series of chatters, but we soon made our peace.

The river began to recede while we ate dinner. I finally had enough food for my regular foursome plus my strapping young adult stepson and his buddy. It's taken me almost 2 weeks to adjust my shopping and cooking to accommodate those adolescent appetites! But I made it up to them with steak, corn on the cob, pasta salad with fresh mozzarella, veggies from our CSA basket, and herbs from my little garden. And of course the fresh homemade bread. Yum.