There is a lovely beach swimming distance from where we were parked. My son wanted to swim to shore. So did my daughter. It’s not a long swim for an adult, but you know what it’s like when a child is suddenly tired and can’t (or won’t) go any further. Having to drag a child back to shore wasn’t something we wanted to contend with.
But both children did fine. They were excited to get to a beach (we visited this same beach coincidentally when we were here in December). I stayed back on the boat. I had had a nap while we crossed between islands and there was a lot to get done. The kitchen is in constant need of being tended to with dishes appearing in the sink magically every time you think you have everything cleaned up.
My daughter had wet the bed again the night before and since we don’t have linen service on the boat we had to hand wash and dry everything. The beds aren’t rectangles. They’re actually hexagon shaped with the head and foot of the mattress less wide than the center of the mattress. It maximizes mattress coverage in the room. But making the bed is two sides of extra fun.
I was content, being alone on the boat getting things cleaned up. I present as an extrovert and most people would think I was heavily on the extrovert scale, but I prefer to be alone and by myself a good bit of the time. When everyone returned things were shipshape. Wait a minute—that term is technically applicable here. I’ve never been able to use ‘shipshape' for it’s actual denotation before. How cool is that?
Back to the traveling around on the boat, otherwise known as sailing. two days ago dolphins found us again. They seem interested in the humans on board. They were swimming around and under the boat. They came up for air so close to the bow that we could hear their splashing and blow hole sounds. My daughter and I came up and sat on the bow with our legs hanging off the front. We listened and I told her what they were doing. She happily talked to the dolphins until they headed off on their way.
When we boarded the boat eight days ago we brought with us a large cooler full of ice. We put drinks and water in the cooler, using it as an extension of the refrigerators on board. We didn’t expect to have the ice last long and would likely have to buy more at a port in a few days.
At this point, eight days into the journey we haven’t bought more ice. We’ve been pleasantly surprised by a little appliance on the counter that makes ice. It’s a small, plug-in ice machine. We didn’t expect much from it, but it turns out this little box churns out ice at a fair clip.
We take the ice when the basket is full and dump it in the cooler. Then we open the valve at the bottom of the cooler to get the water from the older ice that’s melted. By adding melted ice water into the ice machine to make more ice we have a cycle of ice going. Everyone likes the little ice machine and reaches in to get ice when needed for a drink. We’re losing ground slowly on the cooler ice level, but we’ll make it the whole trip without needing to buy more ice. The shape of the ice is fun, you can put it on your fingers:
The Big Boy Update: I feel for my son. He’s gotten in trouble multiple time to a fairly serious degree. As a result, he’s gotten a lot of negative feedback from my husband and me. He’s trying to counter the impact to his self-image and psyche by being, “cool” in whatever manner he thinks makes sense. He’s also lashing out in some cases, being mean to his sister because he’s unhappy himself. Some of this vacation has been very hard on him. I told my husband we need to focus on the positives with him. We need him to feel like he’s understood and that we’re proud of him in any way we can show. He just wants to be liked. He’s been very mature in many ways on this trip. I don’t want to lose sight of the positives and let the negatives be what he remembers.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter had come back to the boat from swimming to shore and playing on the beach. When she’s out in the water she wears some goggles in place of her glasses. She is almost never without her glasses on her head. They get pulled down around her neck when we do drops or to clean them. The glasses do very little for seeing, but they protect her eyes. Yesterday as she was drying off on the deck without anything on her face she asked me, “have you paid for the eye game?” I had no idea what that was, I told her, and then she showed me. She opened both eyes and rolled them around.
This, in and of itself, is very interesting. We rarely get to see her eyes point straight forward. She rolls the right eye upwards most of the time. The left eye she has a hard time facing fully forward, which we need to get a pressure reading. So when she looked at me and rolled her eyes around and then did her best to look at me I clapped and encouraged her to do it again, asking if she could do different things.
My goal was to get a full view of her right pupil. When I was able to see it, my heart sank. I know the right eye doesn’t see anything, but I suppose I was hoping for stem cells or some of the regenerative medicine Dr. Trese is planning, to give her eye a chance to see something. Her right eye has shrunk some and the pupil is unrecognizable. It’s almost like it’s being resorbed by the eye. It was awful to see. It doesn’t hurt her though, which is the only positive thing I think I can say.
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