Sunday, September 5, 2010

An Afternoon On The Water

I've transitioned myself into my happier life. I am again by the ocean. Sigh. Thank goodness. It didn't take much to get here, but in a sense it did. I had inertia just to get myself physically moved and to actually leave. And then the 2.5 day drive down, 30 miles short of Key West. It's all good now.

Saturday we went to move my friend/roommate's 30 foot sailboat. We amazingly put this humongous anchor in my suv. It took three people to get it out. Gypsy's friend Doc and his girlfriend Esther took us out on their pontoon to find Gypsy's boat. Driving to our starting point on Cudjoe, we saw little ponds everywhere to remind us of the torrential rains in the night. It was cloudy on the way over to the sailboat.

With high winds from all the hurricane season storms swirling around, her boat moved inland quite a bit. It was in shallow water. It was actually stuck in the four foot something water we could stand in the bottom full of seaweed and sand. Holy tangled anchor ropes! It took Esther, Gypsy and Doc about two hours to untangle the ropes, chains and anchors and prepare them for re-anchoring.

Another setback we thought we had was the boat pretty much being stuck or non-moving in the shallows. The powerful pontoon motor pulled it right out. We were relieved. So everything was taken care of in it's own time.

We didn't plan on being gone almost seven hours. Lucky Bella and I haven't been hungry since we arrived in hot hot hot Florida. We had plenty of drinks, compliments of our fabulous boat friends. As always too with a child, you can expect things to go okay for a certain amount of time. Sometimes I get tired of apologizing to others for my daughter's behavior when she gets out of sorts. She didn't want food. She wanted to jump in the water and swim. At first, it wasn't possible. In fact, after Gypsy fell in and almost hit the running motor, she punched a nurse shark in the nose. I didn't realize this. I just kept hearing or seeing her suddenly disappear, falling off into the water.

Bella loved the water! Esther had a lavender-colored noodle, so I was okay with Bella swimming by herself. Pretty soon I jumped in too. She really loved both of us swimming around together. We kept taking laps around both of the boats. Esther kept taking pictures of us laughing in the water, but soon Bella didn't want her picture taken.

My little Bella does well with me. Sometimes she has her tantrums, or her moments. We talk about things. She gets things taken away occasionally but it usually doesn't come to that. It's just been her and I. One of the reasons to move away again to live by the ocean is so it can be only her and I living our lives together. We're successfully destressing from living with my parents for 9 months or so.

One thing I dislike is when others try to tell you how to take care of your child. The woman we were with kept drinking beer after beer. None of the rest of us drank. I enjoyed talking with her, finding out about her near death truck accident on US1 a few months ago, and talking about how she had a daughter who is already 20. Because she kept drinking, I had less respect for her when she tried to philosophize to my daughter about life in relation to her behavior. I didn't blame my daughter for not wanting to listen to her.

I think we certainly had a fabulous and worthwhile day. You have to leave room for expecting to be gone a short while and being gone for many extra hours ~ this I say directly in relation to caring for my daughter. I am hoping we find better people to spend time on the water with. I would love to see the dolphins down here - we both would!

1 comment:

  1. boy, that woman on the boat would have bugged me quite a bit! when bella is old enough to hold her own beer and stand up for herself in such a conversation, then FINE...be my guest. Go Bells & Amy!
    crazy story all in all!

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