Heading out again…

These were my bags coming home from my last trip to see J.  Tomorrow morning (yes, Valentine’s Day, I know, it just worked out that way), I am going to where he is  (a new place than from before) to spend a week with him again.

Somehow I lost more weight without realizing it and it isn’t really a good thing. 

My boobs are gonna be swimming in my bikini. Yeah, J has been searching for a good topless beach on this island but apparently topless isn’t AS usual on this new island. It should be, but he hasn’t found the beach yet. Plus, he knows I don’t like crowded beaches.

Sooooo….bikini is likely. Topless would be a gem if we could find a proper place.

But who needs the beach when you can be inside naked? Eating naked? And, um, all that stuff.

This island is alot more foreign than the last one. There is a language barrier for J at the club but it’s working out for him and the bartenders translate. But now, I am a little alarmed, because if you didn’t know I am hard of hearing and wear hearing aids on occasion. It depends on the situation, the acoustics in a place and how soft spoken a conversation may be.

(you can read posts about it here and here)

Due to my hearing loss, I also have trouble with folks who have a thick accent. My audiologist was Iranian with an incredibly thick accent and I couldn’t understand a word he said until I actually got the hearing aids. Not long ago, I was in the market and a man came up to me and asked me something in a very strange tongue. I kept asking him to repeat himself and finally got what he was asking…and then I apologized. You know what came out of my mouth? 

“I’m sorry, I have a really hard time with accents, I am hard of hearing.”

The man threw his head back and laughed and said, “Oh darling, I’m only ENGLISH!” (I finally figured out he was asking what kind of cheese to use for lasagna)

So this new foreign land, I am flying into on Saturday night while J is playing in the club. I worry a little bit about hopping in any old cab and telling them where I needed to go because, a) it’s nighttime and b) this island remotely resembles the one where Natalie Holloway went missing. (but it’s not that island, just so you know). But still, I know, I may be scared of being kidnapped, I am a girl who has now been out of the United States only twice in her life. So that is how I justify it.

I’ve kind of gotten over it, though. Especially when J called me on Skype a few weeks ago and had the club manager there next to him on the computer. The manager laughed and said, “this is one of the safest places you could possibly come to.”

But still, J emailed me after work the last night and told me he arranged for one of the bartenders was going to come pick me up.

Sigh.

But then he told me the guy’s name. Which is foreign. 

The next question out of my mouth was, “How thick is his accent and how long of a drive will it be?”

Because for me, without my hearing aids, the accent thing will be unbearable, I know. I’ll turn in my seat so I can read his lips and I’ll keep saying, “can you repeat that?”

I do know I’ll have my hearing aids with me, so perhaps off the plane will just pop them in.

The girls are healthy now and both back in school. They head on their February vacation with their dad starting tonight and I feel good knowing they are on track, health-wise. Red tested negative for strep and suddenly was feeling well again. Blue is on her medication for her strep and behaving and feeling normal again. I feel great due to all the Airborne, Green Tea, soup and all of the sleep I’ve been getting. 

A little sad about leaving the girls. They know I am going to see J. The love him. They are excited about their week with their dad. They love him too. But a week without them is tough, and for some reason, it is tougher this time around. 

Last night I gave them little Valentine goodie bags. I knew I wouldn’t be able to spend the time with them to give them to them before school today or after school, in the transition between my house and their dad’s. So I did it last night.

I painted them each two little canvases with hearts on them, with acrylic paints. The girls loved them. On the back of each canvas I wrote: “To Blue, Love Mommy” and “To Red, Love Mommy”. The greatest thing is that when Blue took hers upstairs, she put it next to her bed on the table with the heart painting facing the wall. The side that faced out was the back of the canvas that said “To Blue, Love Mommy”. 

I’m packed and waxed. I regretted not painting my toenails on the last trip so I did that too. I’m ready to meet the gecko in his living room. And the ants along the floor. At least there aren’t roosters, like the last place. Geckos and ants are at least quiet.

I packed a Valentine’s gift…should I tell you? Ah yes, I will, of course I will…. 

That is some FUN stuff.

Paranoid, since I am taking my laptop with me, that if something were to happen to it (and I should do this ANYWAY, even if I were staying home), I ran to the Apple store today and drifted around in the Macintosh fog of “i”-everything, and bought an external hard drive to back it all up.

I have trillions of photos of my children, a gazillion pages of writing from when I was about 16, and every single photo of every single piece of artwork I have produced since the early 90s.  I’ve now successfully backed up everything on the laptop. Which sometimes feels like MY ENTIRE LIFE.

So, I’ll be gone, ya know? But I’ll be back.

And  one last thing. 

Thank you, Tom.