Winter is definitely here. We've had our first winter storm of the season. 'Cold' temperatures - 60°F - and rain. [Now 60° may not sound cold to you, but remember, many buildings here don't really have inside space. If it's sixty degrees outside, it's pretty much sixty degrees inside at work, at the restaurant, etc.] As always there is a story attached (this is a blog after all).
We had spent the weekend over town to pick up our Christmas decorations from our storage locker and finish our Christmas shopping. These tasks went relatively smoothly, although I ended up doing most of the shopping due to what I'll just refer to as 'technical difficulties'. Anyhoo, we had brought a cooler with us so we could go grocery shopping, but with all the presents and the two boxes of decorations and the Things, there wasn't room in the car for groceries, too, so we ended up not going to the store.
We take the ferry back to the island and return to our house that is pretty devoid of food. Sweetie said "I'll just go over to Avalon tomorrow and go grocery shopping."
"No you won't," I replied, having just looked at the weather report.
So that night it rains, and it was a fair amount for us - 3/4 of an inch on the West End. Doesn't sound like a lot, but when all your roads are dirt, things get messy quickly. And then Monday night it rained, and Tuesday it rained, and we were starting to wonder if we were ever going to get to the grocery store. It was Thursday before Sweetie was able to get into town, and by then the lunches we were sending the kids to school were getting very creative.
Fortunately, when she got there, there was food in the store. Normally, in the winter time, barges come once a week with food for the grocery store in Avalon, and if you get there the day before the barge, there's pretty much nothing on the shelves. This year, we also had to deal with the refrigeration compressors going down at the store, so for several weeks, you'd go to the store and they'd have no dairy products at all, except maybe a gallon of milk. Their consistent lack of bread also leaves me puzzled.
So now we're planning our Christmas feast. We're having another family over for dinner. Sweetie will be serving fresh local lobster tails, some sort of risotto, and prosciutto-wrapped asparagus, with cheesecake for dessert. (Bit of a toss-up on whether the Things will eat any of it, but they'll have other stuff on their minds...)
Look for a blog post sometime after Christmas. We'll be traveling to the farm right after, so it may be delayed a week or so.
Merry Christmas (or Happy Hanukkah, depending on your persuasion), and Happy New Year.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Island Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving was a bit muddled this year, since we have been dealing with Sweetie's surgery recovery and Thing 1's broken finger.
Oh, right. I haven't told you about Thing 1's broken finger. So THE DAY we get back to the island after Sweetie's surgery, Thing 1 wanted to show me the tricks he's been doing on his scooter - wheelies and hops. He was doing that for a while and then went down around the lower set of houses, and reappeared sans scooter and crying. "I fell down" he said. "Are you hurt?" I replied. He showed me his hand, and his pinky looked a little funny, so we took him over to Baywatch. They poked and prodded and said they didn't think it was broken, but agreed it looked funny, so they taped it to his ring finger and told us to take him to Avalon the next day.
So after school the next day, we drove into town (not downtown or over town) and went to the clinic. The doctor poked and prodded and ordered an X-ray. Thing 1 was very good for the X-ray (he did ask why he had to wear the lead apron in his lap...). When the pictures came back, it did, indeed, show a break and in a bit of an unusual position. The doctor said he'd never seen a break there before. Look at the base of the pinky in the attached image. You should be able to see most of the shaft of the bone detached from a disk of bone just above the joint. We were referred to an orthopedic surgeon. "Oh great," I thought to myself, "more surgery."
The next Monday, Thing1 and I did a commando trip over town, driving over to Avalon to catch an 8am boat, taking a taxi up to see Dr. Hand. He was a nice guy, and had a cool device that was not radioactive, but allowed you to see an x-ray-like image in real time. He said he sees breaks like this all the time, and that it should heal up fine if it's splinted in the proper way. Thing 1 then got a cool, high-tech moldable plastic cast. They heat up the material, bend it into shape, then blast it with coolant (like the "magic spray" they use on soccer players) to harden it.
After a quick lunch we realized we would miss the 2pm ferry, so we killed time by going to the Scout store and Your Favorite Bookstore. A 5:45 ferry got us back to the island close to 7pm. Then we had dinner in Avalon and were back home by 9pm. (Exhausted.)
Hrm. We still haven't gotten to Thanksgiving yet. And there's one more trip to the mainland to relate. We had on the schedule already Sweetie's surgical follow-up, and now we also had Thing 1's follow-up. Then to add to holiday stress, Sweetie started experiencing some complications to her recovery. This led to a Saturday afternoon trip to Avalon for evaluation at the clinic. In the end, the doctors decided it wasn't an emergency, so the entire family ended up going over town the Monday before Thanksgiving with hopes that we would be back on the island before the big day. Thing 1's appointment was Tuesday afternoon and took all of 15 minutes for an x-ray (or whatever that thing was called), and everything was fine and we still didn't need surgery (whew!). That evening I took the boys to see Bolt, which was better than I expected, although not memorable.
Wednesday was Sweetie's appointment. We ended up spending ALL DAY (9:30 to 3:30) at the Norris Cancer Center, which, I might add, is a weird place to hang out because nearly everyone there either has cancer or is there in support of someone who has cancer. We felt like the healthy family. So Sweetie needed to see her doctor, get a CAT scan, and get juiced up with a liter of fluids, and like I said, it took all day. The Things were great. They had made up a trading game with a standard deck of cards, that made no sense to me, but it kept them busy a long time. We also found a MCD Playplace nearby, which allowed us to a) eat, and b) burn off some energy.
It was late enough in the day that we had missed the boat to Two Harbors, so we made reservations for the special Thanksgiving day ferry (thank you Catalina Express!). Sweetie was exhausted for the trip back. We had made reservations at the restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner, so getting home late like that was not a concern. We dressed up nicely for dinner (gracious living) and went down to the Harbor Reef. They serve a real whole turkey dinner there, and you get to take home your leftovers. Sweetie couldn't stay very long, but did have some turkey and stuffing with her family before I drove her home. The boys and I ate some more and had a nice chat with the waitress before heading back with turkey carcass in tow.
I have to say, I'm very thankful that we're on the far side of this Life Experience. And I'm thankful that everyone is mending well now. Here's to a return to normalcy.
In other news, USC's new boat that they were going to station out here for us to use has sunk. The waterfront manager left it tied to the dock during rough seas, and it broke loose and washed up on the rocky shore. They hauled the engines and fuel tank out of it, filled the hull with foam (so it would float) and towed it over to Avalon for scrapping. It was a nice boat, and our other one is still broken. (I meant to post about this, but forgot. We were crossing the channel one day, and the propeller broke off the drive shaft - seven miles out, and in the middle of the shipping lanes. Fun. We did have a banjo aboard, though, for entertainment.)
Okay. More trips to the mainland to come. Christmas is coming...
Oh, right. I haven't told you about Thing 1's broken finger. So THE DAY we get back to the island after Sweetie's surgery, Thing 1 wanted to show me the tricks he's been doing on his scooter - wheelies and hops. He was doing that for a while and then went down around the lower set of houses, and reappeared sans scooter and crying. "I fell down" he said. "Are you hurt?" I replied. He showed me his hand, and his pinky looked a little funny, so we took him over to Baywatch. They poked and prodded and said they didn't think it was broken, but agreed it looked funny, so they taped it to his ring finger and told us to take him to Avalon the next day.
So after school the next day, we drove into town (not downtown or over town) and went to the clinic. The doctor poked and prodded and ordered an X-ray. Thing 1 was very good for the X-ray (he did ask why he had to wear the lead apron in his lap...). When the pictures came back, it did, indeed, show a break and in a bit of an unusual position. The doctor said he'd never seen a break there before. Look at the base of the pinky in the attached image. You should be able to see most of the shaft of the bone detached from a disk of bone just above the joint. We were referred to an orthopedic surgeon. "Oh great," I thought to myself, "more surgery."
The next Monday, Thing1 and I did a commando trip over town, driving over to Avalon to catch an 8am boat, taking a taxi up to see Dr. Hand. He was a nice guy, and had a cool device that was not radioactive, but allowed you to see an x-ray-like image in real time. He said he sees breaks like this all the time, and that it should heal up fine if it's splinted in the proper way. Thing 1 then got a cool, high-tech moldable plastic cast. They heat up the material, bend it into shape, then blast it with coolant (like the "magic spray" they use on soccer players) to harden it.
After a quick lunch we realized we would miss the 2pm ferry, so we killed time by going to the Scout store and Your Favorite Bookstore. A 5:45 ferry got us back to the island close to 7pm. Then we had dinner in Avalon and were back home by 9pm. (Exhausted.)
Hrm. We still haven't gotten to Thanksgiving yet. And there's one more trip to the mainland to relate. We had on the schedule already Sweetie's surgical follow-up, and now we also had Thing 1's follow-up. Then to add to holiday stress, Sweetie started experiencing some complications to her recovery. This led to a Saturday afternoon trip to Avalon for evaluation at the clinic. In the end, the doctors decided it wasn't an emergency, so the entire family ended up going over town the Monday before Thanksgiving with hopes that we would be back on the island before the big day. Thing 1's appointment was Tuesday afternoon and took all of 15 minutes for an x-ray (or whatever that thing was called), and everything was fine and we still didn't need surgery (whew!). That evening I took the boys to see Bolt, which was better than I expected, although not memorable.
Wednesday was Sweetie's appointment. We ended up spending ALL DAY (9:30 to 3:30) at the Norris Cancer Center, which, I might add, is a weird place to hang out because nearly everyone there either has cancer or is there in support of someone who has cancer. We felt like the healthy family. So Sweetie needed to see her doctor, get a CAT scan, and get juiced up with a liter of fluids, and like I said, it took all day. The Things were great. They had made up a trading game with a standard deck of cards, that made no sense to me, but it kept them busy a long time. We also found a MCD Playplace nearby, which allowed us to a) eat, and b) burn off some energy.
It was late enough in the day that we had missed the boat to Two Harbors, so we made reservations for the special Thanksgiving day ferry (thank you Catalina Express!). Sweetie was exhausted for the trip back. We had made reservations at the restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner, so getting home late like that was not a concern. We dressed up nicely for dinner (gracious living) and went down to the Harbor Reef. They serve a real whole turkey dinner there, and you get to take home your leftovers. Sweetie couldn't stay very long, but did have some turkey and stuffing with her family before I drove her home. The boys and I ate some more and had a nice chat with the waitress before heading back with turkey carcass in tow.
I have to say, I'm very thankful that we're on the far side of this Life Experience. And I'm thankful that everyone is mending well now. Here's to a return to normalcy.
In other news, USC's new boat that they were going to station out here for us to use has sunk. The waterfront manager left it tied to the dock during rough seas, and it broke loose and washed up on the rocky shore. They hauled the engines and fuel tank out of it, filled the hull with foam (so it would float) and towed it over to Avalon for scrapping. It was a nice boat, and our other one is still broken. (I meant to post about this, but forgot. We were crossing the channel one day, and the propeller broke off the drive shaft - seven miles out, and in the middle of the shipping lanes. Fun. We did have a banjo aboard, though, for entertainment.)
Okay. More trips to the mainland to come. Christmas is coming...
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