Author's Note: For those not savvy to the technology blogs, an “unboxing” is a recording of a blogger's experience opening a new piece of really cool new hardware.
DrC flew into Zihuatanejo with exactly 98.9 pounds of gear in two enormous duffel bags. The precision with which we can tell you the weight is due to the parsimony of the airline industry. At 100 pounds, you start paying an unbelievable surcharge to ship your crap with you. DrC was enormously relieved to see results when he dropped the bags on the scale in Seattle. However, I think we'll all have to agree that he cut it pretty close. Even one more package of Pecorino Romano, and the whole thing would have cost us a fortune.
The kids and DrC treated the arrival of these bags as tantamount to Christmas morning. In fact, given our rather tame offerings from Santa this year, the arrival of our Seattle care packages was a considerably greater, more chaotic, and wonder-filled moment. In addition to the aforementioned cheese – critical to our happiness and survival as a family – there were dinghy wheels and books from the Seattle public library, solar deck lights and oil filters, packages for other boats, new sheet music for our guitar players, candy for mommy, and nearly 30 pounds of books donated and gifted by friends and family.
And there was a big plastic box from my Mommy.
Background is useful here. My Mom is “That Mom” – the kind that make other moms look like pikes. My Mom sent me mail at camp. In fact, I was the only kid at camp who would get mail on the first day I arrived because My Mom remembered to send the letter a week before I left home. I would get a letter every day. By the middle of the week, letters were insufficient so My Mom would send stuff. Cool stuff. Small but really really cool stuff like little chocolates, new stationary, the 1970's equivalent of gel pens and Hello Kitty stuff. A clean pair of panties.
My Mom also took very seriously the notion that everything that goes to camp should have your name on it. She would carefully print my name on literally every item of gear and piece of clothing. Literally. One year I distinctly remember that every individual Q-tip and the toothpaste cap had my initials in tiny black block letters. Now lest you think she is some odd, anal retentive bookkeeper (which I guess she sort of is), I want to be very clear. My Mom did this because My Mom loves me. And every time I stuck a Q-tip with my initials in my ear to scoop out a gallon of lake water, I knew I was loved.
In the interest of full disclosure, it should be mentioned that I am in no way as cool as My Mom. I entirely forgot to send a single letter to any of my children the last time they went to camp. I even forgot to send email – which is nothing short of blindingly stupid given that I live on a laptop.
So here I am a middle aged mother of three floating on a boat on the Mexican Riviera with a large translucent box full of stuff from My Mom. Just looking at the box gives me warm fuzzies. I didn't open it immediately. When it arrived, you'll remember, I was doped to the gills on muscle relaxants because of my completely gimped back. I waited. I put that package on the shelf in my cabin, and I looked at it every day. But I didn't open it until my back was on the mend, and I'd gone at least 24 hours without any semi-narcotic medicinal drugs.
Today is the day.
As I open the box, I am greeted by a wave of vanilla. Tucked into corners are small, vanilla tea candles. We don't burn these any more; Instead, we put them in the sun in the windows. As the wax melts, they fill the salon and cabins with a pleasant, sugar cookie smell. Before continuing, I must pull out several copy machine prints of her recent appliqués. I believe she was working on both of these when last she visited on the boat. My Mom is appliquéing and quilting up a storm right now. It's her latest hobby.
Okay, there's a sheet of labels. The labels have spice names! And the box is full of little translucent plastic jars with rubberized lids. Woot! I get to move my spices from their current mini-baggies in a big zip lock bag into nice neat little jars I can line up on the sill. Leave it to Mom to remember the labels. Of course, I don't have saffron or mustard. Maybe I need to go shopping. I think she's trying to tell me something.
Now I had requested that she “build me a new sewing kit.” Mine was lifted in La Paz. The fabric down here is abundant and cheap but the notions are of universally cheap quality. Even the thread sucks. The box itself is an expansive, divided job with a thread organizer. It looks like she raided a Joann Fabric store: at least 3 dozen bobbins of thread in a variety of colors, box of quilting pins, ribbon measuring tape, jar of safety pins – mixed sizes, embroidery scissors, excellent sheers, large gauge sewing machine needles (you can NOT get those down here), box sewing pins, rubber finger thingies for hand sewing, thimble (my size of course), bunch of small Mexican coins and bills (must be leftover from Mazatlan visit), hemmer's ruler, fine tip Sharpie, and a truly astonishing number and variety of hand sewing needles. Some of those last look like they are 50 years old. I'm betting she cleaned out her sewing closet, but I need them so no complaints! Oo! And a new pressure foot for my Elna 3000 sewing machine!
To get to all this, I also had to pull out... okay, you're not going to believe this... six pairs of clean panties.
My Mom is still That Mom. And My Mommy loves me.
Friday, March 06, 2009
Monday, March 02, 2009
Hair Hair Hairay!
I’ve read any number of cruising books with photo inserts. The people are all tan, half naked and the hair flocks in 60’s chic down backs, off chins and out of handsome smiling noses. The boating crowd of the early cruising boom apparently didn’t own a pair of scissors. And why should they? Part of getting back to nature, getting in tune with the inner dude, is to let those locks go! Let the hair hang down! Oh yeah!
Oh no. Oh no you don’t. Not on my boat. I swear to god I’m going to shave everyone naked crisp bald. Including the cat. Then I’m going to seal all hirsute portions of anatomy with candle wax. Maybe I’ll seal it with candle wax first and do the spa treatment on all the hair everywhere. Maybe I’ll buy one of everything at the Farmacia Similar and start experimenting with a cocktail that renders everyone hairless, witless, and immobile.
“Where does all the hair go in the real world?” is what I want to know. I want to know how the hair fell from our heads and drifted around our house and somehow escaped my attention. Alternatively, please explain why every single hair from eye lashes to pubes, from kitty whiskers to toe nail fuzz manages to fall from its source and adhere itself to the fiberglass of my boat. It doesn’t float away, it doesn’t biodegrade, it doesn’t get eaten by an army of dust mites. The hair sticks.
To everything.
To every surface and nook, to every cushion, brush, and cloth. It collects in corners and bunches in hatches. It bonds like dead bread dough to sponges and melds with the area rugs. There are long hairs tan hairs from Jaime and short blonde hairs from Aeron. Sticky pokey wirey black old lady hairs and soft silky dark brown hairs gleaned from Mera’s mane. There is hair in the sink, on the floor, and in the refrigerator. There is hair on the salon windows making odd traceries that provide distraction and amusement, and there is hair clogging the bilge pump on the port side.
I can not wax sufficiently poetic about how much I hate hair. Where is Shel Silverstein when you need him.
In my next life, I’m going to birth a family of jelly fish. Slimy but at least they’re hairless.
Oh no. Oh no you don’t. Not on my boat. I swear to god I’m going to shave everyone naked crisp bald. Including the cat. Then I’m going to seal all hirsute portions of anatomy with candle wax. Maybe I’ll seal it with candle wax first and do the spa treatment on all the hair everywhere. Maybe I’ll buy one of everything at the Farmacia Similar and start experimenting with a cocktail that renders everyone hairless, witless, and immobile.
“Where does all the hair go in the real world?” is what I want to know. I want to know how the hair fell from our heads and drifted around our house and somehow escaped my attention. Alternatively, please explain why every single hair from eye lashes to pubes, from kitty whiskers to toe nail fuzz manages to fall from its source and adhere itself to the fiberglass of my boat. It doesn’t float away, it doesn’t biodegrade, it doesn’t get eaten by an army of dust mites. The hair sticks.
To everything.
To every surface and nook, to every cushion, brush, and cloth. It collects in corners and bunches in hatches. It bonds like dead bread dough to sponges and melds with the area rugs. There are long hairs tan hairs from Jaime and short blonde hairs from Aeron. Sticky pokey wirey black old lady hairs and soft silky dark brown hairs gleaned from Mera’s mane. There is hair in the sink, on the floor, and in the refrigerator. There is hair on the salon windows making odd traceries that provide distraction and amusement, and there is hair clogging the bilge pump on the port side.
I can not wax sufficiently poetic about how much I hate hair. Where is Shel Silverstein when you need him.
In my next life, I’m going to birth a family of jelly fish. Slimy but at least they’re hairless.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Encountering Authority
Author's Note: I had pictures. I had a whole roll. They "disappeared." Let's just pretend I've got pictures of big guys dressed in black with guns.
Getting stopped by the authorities at any time is a nerve jangling experience. We have all been there. The pleasant highway patrol dude pulls up behind us, our palms start to sweat, our breath hitches and a tightness forms in the pit of the belly. We haven’t done anything wrong -- and in fact at that particular moment, the speedometer reads a mere two miles above the speed limit. On the other hand, we know that at some point, some where, at some time in the not so distant past, we were bad. If you haven’t gone 40 in a 25 at some time in your life, you are not living life to its fullest.
Multiply this nervousness by four when stopped on the water, because inevitably the folks doing the stopping are armed to the teeth. The scariest guys by far on the seas we have traveled are the United States Coast Guard. USCG boats are highly efficient craft designed to play hoppy jumpy fun and rompy in the Potato Patch outside the Golden Gate. They come equipped with very large, automatic bazooka things mounted to the front. The men and women of the USCG take their job very seriously, the bull horns are loud, and they do not respond well to small talk. Last summer, we heard stories about the USCG stopping boats crossing over the US-Canada border that were spine tinglingly icky... enough so that the proprietors in harbors along the south coast of Vancouver Island said the USCG was scaring all their customers away.
Double the fear factor again when stopped by the floating military of another country -- though it appears unnecessarily so. Our first encounter with the flotilla of a foreign power was when we were waved down by the Canadian Coast Guard near Winter Harbor. While I’m frantically trying to find our paperwork, passports, and spare PFDs to demonstrate our legal permission to be drifting around in Canadian waters, DrC handled the formalities on the bridge:
“Hoy there! Y’all doing well?” asked the Canadian on the deck.
“Um... Yeah, yes, we’re doing well,” responded the ever glib and talkative DrC, “um... uh... and uh... you?”
“Oh yeah. Doin’ well here. You want some fish, eh?”
“Fish?” DrC was now utterly baffled.
The Coastie gave a friendly nod and held up two fish, “Oh yeah. We got ourselves a real nice catch here, and it needs eating. Your family would enjoy some rockies, eh?” During our Canadian Coast Guard boarding, we learned that the Canadian system of coastal service is a little confuzzling to the non-native as it combines their fisheries service with the more traditional defend and protect responsibilities customarily associated with flagged, armed boats. Apparently, these guys wanted to off load some by-catch of their research efforts before it went bad. Good eating, eh?
The Mexican Armada is considerably less glib albeit -- believe it or not -- even more polite than their Canadian counterparts. Just last night, we were politely hailed and then politely told we were going to be boarded for a “routine inspection... routine inspection, okay?” “Si. Okay,” because how else was Capitain Cone-her supposed to reply to a very large, extremely well armed military vessel. In very broken English, the radio operator invested a lot of effort in explaining to us precisely what was going to happen, when, how, and for what purpose. This gave us enough time to put on clean shirts and a skirt, stow dirty laundry, wipe off the salon table, and get water started for coffee. We couldn’t find the Coast Guard cookies so the girls made due with icing on graham crackers.
The sunlight was nearly gone when the larger vessel finally dropped a little patrol boat which sped towards us at high speed to conduct the “routine inspection.” Every single individual we interacted with -- from the patrol boat bristling with armature to the hand gun toting radio guy to his two rifle toting guards -- repeated this phrase “routine inspection.” It must say somewhere in the Mexican armada manual, “When approaching an American yachtista, do not scare the shit out of them.”
Or... it just occurred to me... maybe they were worried we would pull out our own guns. Because they asked.
You have any guns? No No. We do not have guns.
Do you have any drugs? Medicines, yes... drugs no.
Do you have papers? Yes. Can we see them? Of course.
How many people? How old is the captain? What was your last port? Where are you going? Can we do anything to help you?
Huh?
How can we help you?
Um. Well, yeah. We were -trying- to get to Maruata before dark, but now because you stopped us it is pitch black. Do you have better charts than this piece of crap we got from C-Map?
OF COURSE! Come on back to our really big boat with the scary weapons all over the front. We’ll just whip out several copies of the chart of the coastline. And don’t worry, we’ll escort you all the way to Maruata which is just around the corner. We’ll make sure the locals here don’t feel any notion to rob you. It’ll be just fine. It’s all okay. There are no scary armed men here. It’s all just a “routine inspection.” Okay? And by the way, would you please take this little survey about your satisfaction with your routine inspection experience. How did you find our service personnel? Was everyone courteous? Did it take a long time? Did you get all your questions answered? How can we improve our boarding operations in the future?
I am not kidding you. It was like having dinner at Applebee’s. They wouldn’t let us leave until we let them know we were fully satisfied with our boarding opportunity and released them from liability for any damage taken during the process. We even have papers to prove that we have already “had our boarding” and don’t need another one. It was a complete This Is Mexico (TIM) moment... also known as WTF?
I admit, there was something very comforting about the large military craft that dogged our heels all the way into our anchorage. We let them know when we had safely dropped anchor. They were most solicitous, asking about the quality and set of the anchor and whether there were any pangas disturbing us. It was like getting put to bed by an overly solicitous parent.The captain then wished us good night’s sleep and a successful voyage before he motored off to protect, defend, and conduct polite and satisfactory boardings of other vessels plying the Michoaloan coastline.
Getting stopped by the authorities at any time is a nerve jangling experience. We have all been there. The pleasant highway patrol dude pulls up behind us, our palms start to sweat, our breath hitches and a tightness forms in the pit of the belly. We haven’t done anything wrong -- and in fact at that particular moment, the speedometer reads a mere two miles above the speed limit. On the other hand, we know that at some point, some where, at some time in the not so distant past, we were bad. If you haven’t gone 40 in a 25 at some time in your life, you are not living life to its fullest.
Multiply this nervousness by four when stopped on the water, because inevitably the folks doing the stopping are armed to the teeth. The scariest guys by far on the seas we have traveled are the United States Coast Guard. USCG boats are highly efficient craft designed to play hoppy jumpy fun and rompy in the Potato Patch outside the Golden Gate. They come equipped with very large, automatic bazooka things mounted to the front. The men and women of the USCG take their job very seriously, the bull horns are loud, and they do not respond well to small talk. Last summer, we heard stories about the USCG stopping boats crossing over the US-Canada border that were spine tinglingly icky... enough so that the proprietors in harbors along the south coast of Vancouver Island said the USCG was scaring all their customers away.
Double the fear factor again when stopped by the floating military of another country -- though it appears unnecessarily so. Our first encounter with the flotilla of a foreign power was when we were waved down by the Canadian Coast Guard near Winter Harbor. While I’m frantically trying to find our paperwork, passports, and spare PFDs to demonstrate our legal permission to be drifting around in Canadian waters, DrC handled the formalities on the bridge:
“Hoy there! Y’all doing well?” asked the Canadian on the deck.
“Um... Yeah, yes, we’re doing well,” responded the ever glib and talkative DrC, “um... uh... and uh... you?”
“Oh yeah. Doin’ well here. You want some fish, eh?”
“Fish?” DrC was now utterly baffled.
The Coastie gave a friendly nod and held up two fish, “Oh yeah. We got ourselves a real nice catch here, and it needs eating. Your family would enjoy some rockies, eh?” During our Canadian Coast Guard boarding, we learned that the Canadian system of coastal service is a little confuzzling to the non-native as it combines their fisheries service with the more traditional defend and protect responsibilities customarily associated with flagged, armed boats. Apparently, these guys wanted to off load some by-catch of their research efforts before it went bad. Good eating, eh?
The Mexican Armada is considerably less glib albeit -- believe it or not -- even more polite than their Canadian counterparts. Just last night, we were politely hailed and then politely told we were going to be boarded for a “routine inspection... routine inspection, okay?” “Si. Okay,” because how else was Capitain Cone-her supposed to reply to a very large, extremely well armed military vessel. In very broken English, the radio operator invested a lot of effort in explaining to us precisely what was going to happen, when, how, and for what purpose. This gave us enough time to put on clean shirts and a skirt, stow dirty laundry, wipe off the salon table, and get water started for coffee. We couldn’t find the Coast Guard cookies so the girls made due with icing on graham crackers.
The sunlight was nearly gone when the larger vessel finally dropped a little patrol boat which sped towards us at high speed to conduct the “routine inspection.” Every single individual we interacted with -- from the patrol boat bristling with armature to the hand gun toting radio guy to his two rifle toting guards -- repeated this phrase “routine inspection.” It must say somewhere in the Mexican armada manual, “When approaching an American yachtista, do not scare the shit out of them.”
Or... it just occurred to me... maybe they were worried we would pull out our own guns. Because they asked.
You have any guns? No No. We do not have guns.
Do you have any drugs? Medicines, yes... drugs no.
Do you have papers? Yes. Can we see them? Of course.
How many people? How old is the captain? What was your last port? Where are you going? Can we do anything to help you?
Huh?
How can we help you?
Um. Well, yeah. We were -trying- to get to Maruata before dark, but now because you stopped us it is pitch black. Do you have better charts than this piece of crap we got from C-Map?
OF COURSE! Come on back to our really big boat with the scary weapons all over the front. We’ll just whip out several copies of the chart of the coastline. And don’t worry, we’ll escort you all the way to Maruata which is just around the corner. We’ll make sure the locals here don’t feel any notion to rob you. It’ll be just fine. It’s all okay. There are no scary armed men here. It’s all just a “routine inspection.” Okay? And by the way, would you please take this little survey about your satisfaction with your routine inspection experience. How did you find our service personnel? Was everyone courteous? Did it take a long time? Did you get all your questions answered? How can we improve our boarding operations in the future?
I am not kidding you. It was like having dinner at Applebee’s. They wouldn’t let us leave until we let them know we were fully satisfied with our boarding opportunity and released them from liability for any damage taken during the process. We even have papers to prove that we have already “had our boarding” and don’t need another one. It was a complete This Is Mexico (TIM) moment... also known as WTF?
I admit, there was something very comforting about the large military craft that dogged our heels all the way into our anchorage. We let them know when we had safely dropped anchor. They were most solicitous, asking about the quality and set of the anchor and whether there were any pangas disturbing us. It was like getting put to bed by an overly solicitous parent.The captain then wished us good night’s sleep and a successful voyage before he motored off to protect, defend, and conduct polite and satisfactory boardings of other vessels plying the Michoaloan coastline.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Cooking Tip - Better Jar Sauce
Look, sometimes you just want to make spaghetti. It’s easy. Throw pasta into a pot. Boil it. Upend a jar of sauce on top. Toss it in front of the animals in your salon. Walk away. Then at other times you’re more willing to make a beautiful, Martha Stewartian homelife for your family.
Even the Perfect Housewife, however, can still throw jar sauce on the table with a little bit of extra work. My mother calls this “freshening” the sauce. I think of it as just using the jar sauce as the tomato foundation of a really good meal.
Better Jar Sauce
1 jar of spaghetti sauce, try to get a brand without too much sugar
4 - 6 italian hot sausage links or ~ 1 pound hot sausage
1 lg chopped onion
2 tbs garlic
1 tbs chopped fresh basil -- dried if you’re not growing a plant in your salon
1 lb diced vegie -- my favorite is zucchini but green peppers and egg plant are also popular with our crew
Sautee the onions, garlic and sausage meat. If you have links, you have the choice of squeezing the meat out of the tube or slicing the meat after the links cook. Both methods taste good. Your family doesn’t really care. When everything is nicely soft and cooked, dump in the sauce, basil, and vegie. Slap a lid on and simmer for a few minutes. You can turn this off and set aside if you need the burner for pasta water. Serve over a pound of cooked pasta, any variety.
Note: If you are not already making multiple use of your pasta water, now is the time to start. While boiling pasta, you can hard boil eggs or boil root vegetables for the next day’s meals. You can also pour off used pasta water to use in poaching or steaming fish and vegies.
Even the Perfect Housewife, however, can still throw jar sauce on the table with a little bit of extra work. My mother calls this “freshening” the sauce. I think of it as just using the jar sauce as the tomato foundation of a really good meal.
Better Jar Sauce
1 jar of spaghetti sauce, try to get a brand without too much sugar
4 - 6 italian hot sausage links or ~ 1 pound hot sausage
1 lg chopped onion
2 tbs garlic
1 tbs chopped fresh basil -- dried if you’re not growing a plant in your salon
1 lb diced vegie -- my favorite is zucchini but green peppers and egg plant are also popular with our crew
Sautee the onions, garlic and sausage meat. If you have links, you have the choice of squeezing the meat out of the tube or slicing the meat after the links cook. Both methods taste good. Your family doesn’t really care. When everything is nicely soft and cooked, dump in the sauce, basil, and vegie. Slap a lid on and simmer for a few minutes. You can turn this off and set aside if you need the burner for pasta water. Serve over a pound of cooked pasta, any variety.
Note: If you are not already making multiple use of your pasta water, now is the time to start. While boiling pasta, you can hard boil eggs or boil root vegetables for the next day’s meals. You can also pour off used pasta water to use in poaching or steaming fish and vegies.
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