Blog slacker still on island time (vacation report #1)

Here are a few excuses why I've not updated in almost a month:

• internet connectivity on vacation was spotty at best
• vacation photos require much editing of unhappy angles (meaning pasty white chubbiness)
• the dog required much attention and love after being abandoned at the gulag (boarding kennel) while Egg and I frolicked on the beach
• I went to Maryland Sheep & Wool three days after we got back from our island escape and am still recovering from fiber overload
• I've been in an extended post-vacation slump

So, time to get caught up! Let's start with ten days of salt water infused bliss...

We flew in and out of Daytona Beach using a small flight service that goes straight to the island, bypassing Nassau completely. I'm not a mega-resort and casino/nightclub action kind of girl, and the idea of being stuck on a cruise ship with multiple thousands of people is about as close to Hell as I can imagine, so that suits me just fine. Also great is skipping most of the post-9/11 air travel unpleasantries.

Our original plan was to go sailing with my step-dad, but a combination of his building timetable slipping a bit behind and a rash of scary brushfires in the area made us change plans. It just didn't seem like a good idea to leave their home site unattended for days on end.

We rented a place in Little Harbour, up the way from where my folks are building in Casuarina Point. As the seagull flies, it's only a couple miles; by road it's about 12 or so. Island geography is funny that way. We quickly got into vacation mode. (And dig that farmer's tan/sunburn thing on my arm!)

With generous coating of SPF45 I got back in touch with my salt water self. (BTW, when the label on the sunscreen says "May stain some fabrics", believe it. A couple T-shirts look like they have carrot juice spills in awkward places.) Mother Ocean was a little testy with me at first for having neglected her for the past three years, but she relented fairly quickly. My beach crawls were rewarded with lots of small treasures - beach glass is magic - and in the water I had small finny escorts. After one beach nap I woke up to see a ghost crab eying me as if weighing whether I was dead and worth a nibble; he moved on. Egg preferred a more sedentary and shady approach to relaxing, understandable with his burn-not-tan skin that no SPF can completely protect.

Partly because of the wild fires, partly because that's just the way it is down there, phone service was unreliable while we were there. For quick and easy communication with my folks down the way, we used the VHF radio (kinda like CB radio for boaters), and my call sign was "Wayward Daughter". Egg came up with it, and I thought it was perfect. Since the radio channels are open, there were probably a few boaters wondering where the hell this oddly named boat was.

Time flies...

Yep, Egg and I are looking at five years of wedded bliss. We tied the knot on the deck of a beachfront house on Abaco, one of the Out Islands of the Bahamas, after almost ten years of unwedded bliss. (Damn, we've been together a long time!) His mother had gotten tired of waiting for us to get married and had begun lobbying for grandchildren several years before, which we still haven't produced, but I digress...

So, we're off the the island again soon, and dear sweet "C" gave me this to protect my pastey-white, sun-deprived face from a wicked sunburn. She crocheted it in my favorite color, so sweet and thoughtful. Pardon the dorky, take-a-picture-of-myself-in-the-bathroom-mirror photo; I cropped it, but perhaps not enough. Isn't the hat just wonderful?!!?

Now, decision time: to bring knitting or not? Our original plan was going sailing with Captain Stepdad, which would have been not conducive to knitting. I'm prone to seasickness as it is - and no, I can't knit in the car either - so concentrated fiddling with sock yarn and size 1 needles would equal instant heaves. But plans have suddenly changed (too much backstory to go into why), we're going to be mostly shore-based, and I'm weighing how much of a nuisance it will be to shake sand out of anything I might bring. What impact does saltwater have on sock yarn? Oh, I know what I should bring: that lace shawl/stole I started back in 2001 (!!!), oddly enough with the intention of it being my "something blue", whenever we were to marry. Well, obviously I didn't finish it in time for that, but how about five years later? Hmm... Actually, it's just as well that I didn't finish it for the wedding, because I didn't even wear shoes, and an elegant lacy shawl would have looked out of place, and been hot as hell.

I finally got over myself and made the i-cord straps for the entrelac bag. Like most things that I procrastinate, it really didn't take THAT long... Into the washing machine with the bag and the straps tomorrow, and maybe I'll schlep it all damp to Knit Nite, unless the felting is a complete disaster.