Yesterday, the season still felt very much like summer. During the day I was hearing an orchestra of cicadas singing for me. That brings me back to my childhood summers, since Seattle doesn’t seem to have that orchestra. The evening chorus of frogs seems to fit a wider range of seasons, but it still felt like summer.
Today it isn’t any cooler, but it was overcast, drizzled a little, and now that it is evening it is really starting to rain. But a warm, hard, summer rain still.
Yesterday I started working on another item on my ever-present list, but didn’t get make a whole lot of progress–I spent more time visiting with people in the boatyard and speaking to friends thousands of miles away more than working.
Today I slept in (talking to people in other time zones isn’t helping this night-owl get on local time), and did a little more work on the same project…but once again, I didn’t make much progress on that todo list with 92 items.
I’ve been thinking more about other things. You see, I’ve realized that when Meps decided to take her road trip so she could have some time to write and be on her own, having her own adventures, she just gave me the most amazing gift. Something I didn’t even realize that I hadn’t had in the last twenty years. In fact, I may never have had it, since the last summer I had no obligations, I was still living with my parents, and thus had a few rules and a little structure imposed on me.
For this month, I am my own master. I do not have a job to report to. I do not have somebody living with me to discuss things with, or negotiate things with, decide things with, or do things with. There isn’t somebody to do things for, and nobody will do things for me either. I can eat when I’m hungry, or just be hungry. I can cook whatever I like with anything I have aboard. I could go out to a restaurant. If I leave my shoes in the the middle of the floor, nobody else will trip over them. If I don’t decide to do anything, nobody will point it out to me. I’m not really alone–there are lots of people in the boatyard, and I am enjoying their company, but I have no commitments with them.
So I came here thinking that the todo list was my master. But it isn’t. I am my own master, and I choose whether to look at the list or not. And I pick my own item from the list to work on. Or maybe I will pick two or three and bounce around them. Instead….or in addition….or whatever, I spoke with Nancy at Bahia Street and asked what I could do to make their website better. I have a whole world of choices here, and they are all mine.
And I’ve worked on things not because they were the top of the list critical items we need to complete before we launch. Instead I picked a couple things that just bugged me. The fact that they were smaller items I could finish soon helped, but mainly I was tired of having them hanging over me as something I meant to do but hadn’t got to yet. Perhaps I’ll knock a lot of things I’ve been “meaning to do” out this month. Or perhaps I’ll decide that I was really “meaning NOT to do” some of them instead?
Tonight I took a look at the weather radar and saw a rainy evening coming. Now I’m battened down in my cozy little boat, writing for the web, and cooking bacon and eggs and some sort of hash for dinner at 8pm. Actually I think it will be bacon, hash and a extra sharp cheddar omelet. And it probably won’t be ready ’till 8:40 or so. In fact, I’m already eating at 8:35, and I made too much hash, and put too much ground chipotle pepper into it. It is all wonderful, and I did eat it all. But then I didn’t eat much else today.
If it doesn’t rain too much tomorrow, I might get the new section of teak toe-rail installed with the newly polished bronze chocks. I will soon cross something off that big list. I may start back on one of the bigger projects like re-finishing the masts. But not tonight.
Now the season is becoming clear to me. This is a season for me to think. And it is a season for me to feel. I suspect the second is even more important. It absolutely is time for this season.
Unfortunately, I have too many !@#$! lists. The boat list was the one I was going to chip away at. But today I think I figured out my electrical problem with the Squid Wagon–it looks like all the wires are intact and connected, but somehow it ate another battery. Forutnately it isn’t quite a year old, so it should be under warranty. The other one seems to be good enough that it still turns the engine over by itself, although not quite as cheerfully as two healthy batteries would. As a former electrical engineer, I should probably be embarrassed that I didn’t figure it out yesterday when I realized something was odd, but at least I’ve figured something out. Too bad I had to notice that the rubber gaskets where the various parts of the steering linkage are attached all look kinda shot. I think I’ll just ignore it for now, as Squidley’s steering doesn’t feel any worse than usual!
I also realized that I really should have lubed the chains of the clunker bikes we left out in the rain here before we left–they weren’t turning very well, but a little Boeshield T-9 and some riding got the kinks out. And I even found the bike pump in my storage unit without having to dig very deep, so I had full tires when I rode back. (It isn’t far–from the boat to the mailbox is farther than from the mailbox to the storage unit!)
Sadly, both of these items belong on other lists than the boat todo list, so I still can’t cross them off! I think I’ll go and attach the oak trim I previously cut to fit around the outlet I added in the dinette. That can at least be added to the boat list!
I’m back in Beaufort on Flutterby, on the hard at Bock Marine, our “home” boatyard.
Meps is on the road in Spokane, making her way here slowly.
I just counted 92 items on the boat todo list.
Some are simple: “Re-install bow cleats.”
Some are a bit more involved: “Design rig: Size, shape, battens, yard, attachments.”
Many depend upon other items not yet completed.
Some will require Meps’ hands to assist me, or mine to assist her.
Some probably won’t be finished before we go cruising.
Many must be finished before we can go cruising.
Some may not be finished while we own Flutterby.
Some things need to be done and didn’t even make it onto the list yet. If I do one, I may add it just so I can cross it off.
Yesterday I screwed up two pieces of trim in the V-berth. It wasn’t on the list and only took about five minutes.
Today I didn’t do anything at all on the boat.
Tonight I’m just feeling overwhelmed.
Tomorrow I’ll pick one. I wonder whether I’ll finish it or not.
I just closed the window, here on Camano Island, Washington. After leaving North Carolina, it’s a strange feeling to be cold in the summer. But I’m glad for the warm laptop on my legs, and I’m thinking of putting some socks on my chilly feet.
Last year, we drove across the country three times, slowly. We haven’t been on a plane since the end of 2007, so the flight on Wednesday from New Bern, North Carolina to Seattle was surreal and left me disoriented. Not to mention winded from that flat-out run through the Atlanta airport! I feel like I’ve been squeezed through a very tiny aperture and popped out in another universe.
Meps in front of the high bridge from Radio Island to Morehead City
The differences between our North Carolina home and our Pacific Northwest home are vast — starting with the butter. Did you know that butter on the East coast and butter on the West coast is shaped differently? In the east, no matter what brand you buy, sticks of butter are long and skinny. In the west, they are short and fat. You have to have different butter dishes!
The sounds are different, too. In NC, I’m attuned to the sound of the Travelift and the crane, overlayed on the rhythm of cicadas on a hot day. I can identify many boats on the waterway by the sound of their engines, even before I see them. And the voices — I love listening to people speak with Southern accents, even if I can’t understand half of what they say (or, in the case of Randy, all of it). At the end of the day, Anique says she’s going “hame,” and it makes me wish I was born to talk like that. Here, the accents are flat, nonexistent. But I’m delighted to hear the call of the bird Barry and I call the “Sweetie, come here” bird. This afternoon, I napped on the grass — no fire ants or mosquitoes — and listened to the wind whispering like a person breathing in the top of 40-foot pines.
Then there are smells. Last weekend, we went out with Kenny and Nancy and Carlee in their skiff, and I breathed in the smell of the Atlantic Ocean and the marshes along the Intracoastal Waterway. I wanted to etch it in my memory, so I could compare it to the air here, where the tangy scent of fir trees fills the air like incense.
Sunday: Barry, Kenny, and Nancy on the boat with Beaufort in the background
We visited a beach today, Iverson Spit. We waded in the shallow water of Port Susan, ringed on all sides by blue, snow-capped mountains. There were a few other people on the beach, but their quiet energy was completely different from the beaches we visited in the past two weeks — Shackleford Bank, full of exuberant people on boats, and Atlantic Beach, with great big waves and surfers and swimmers. The hot, bright sunshine makes the air shimmer with heat.
Friday: Barry, Julie, Gabriel, Sharon, Emanuel, and Dave wading at Iverson Spit with Mount Baker in the background
The character of the light is different, going from south to north. It’s 9 o’clock now, and it would be dark at the boat. We’d have put our mosquito screen in the companionway and turned on the lights. But here, I could still read outside, it’s so light. The twilight will last for another 90 minutes, as though the light is reluctant to go away.
Only then will we slip out to the hot tub. Under the starlight, we’ll listen to the sound of the wind in the pines and breathe their scent. And miss our dear friends in North Carolina, whose voices are like music, on the other side of the butter divide.
“What’s wrong with your cat’s leg?”
“She’s not my cat.”
“You’re flying to Seattle? What are you going to do with your cat?”
“SHE’S NOT MY CAT!”
To other people, fostering a cat family looks a lot like having cats. We had a cat door, food and water bowls, and a playful, frisky kitty named Buttercup who followed us around the boatyard and frolicked under our boat. All of which explains the number of times in two weeks that we had to protest, “SHE’S NOT MY CAT!”
Aboard our boat, her two kittens spent all their time sleeping and nursing. When their mother climbed into the berth with them, they would make tiny, cute squeaking sounds, and she would respond with chirps. Then they’d find a teat, suckling quietly, and she would purr.
Barry with two not-his-kittens
One night, just after I went to bed, I heard agitated squeaking. Buttercup was responding with more than the usual meeowing, purring, and chirping. When I went to see what was up, there was a soggy kitten on the galley floor. Buttercup’s water bowl was a small Tupperware cup, just big enough for one kitten — and one kitten had fallen in!
That night, she decided the quarterberth was not a safe place. She moved the kittens under the stove, where we had to get on our hands and knees to see them. They hardly noticed us, since their eyes remained closed. We tried not to spill popcorn or sauteed onions behind the stove.
Buttercup Not-My-Cat comes out from under the stove
Less than a week before our departure, we got a very welcome call. Donna of PAWS had found a foster home for the three with a retired couple who are dedicated to cats. Imagine a large house in the country, surrounded by miniature houses, each with carpet, windows, and air conditioning. Our single mother and her babies were going to live in a real cathouse!
So we dropped them off at a vet for the transfer. Even after just three weeks, it was hard to say goodbye. We drove back from the vet wearing PAWS bracelets that say, “I saved a pet.” And in our email box was a timely message from our cat rescue mentors, Blaine and Suzy: “hero merit badges earned!”
But the boat was quiet and empty. The feral cats we feed sat at the bottom of our ladder, puzzled. “Where’d that girl kitty go? We didn’t mean to chase her away!” they seemed to say. We threw ourselves into finishing the masts and packing for our trip, as if working 19-hour days would distract us from missing the friendly cream-colored cat.
We’re in the Pacific Northwest now, with even more distractions. Still, I find myself looking at the photos of Buttercup Not-My-Cat — of which we have way too many — and thinking, “Yes. For a short time, you were my cat. Thank you.”
I was rooting around in the boat the other day, wearing my new summer uniform: Embarrassingly short, frayed cutoffs and a bikini top. I found this weird fuzzy thing in the hanging locker, and I asked Barry, “What’s this?”
It was a fleece jacket.
That’s when we decided we’ve been away from home for too long. I sat down at the computer, sweat rolling off my nose onto the keyboard, and bought airline tickets to Seattle. We arrive at midnight on July 8th.
Don’t get me wrong — I love it here in Beaufort. We are surrounded by wonderful people, and it’s beautiful here on the water. But with the thermometer hovering around 100 degrees, we find ourselves spending too much time sitting around, panting, and not enough time working. Sure, we could rush and get the boat in the water, just in time for the worst of hurricane season. It’s not worth it.
There have been a number of other clues that we’ve been away too long, too. I was down below on Dick’s boat last week, up at the marina in New Bern, and a wake caused the boat to rock. Dick and Barry laughed at the startled look on my face, but I was mortified. I’ve been on the hard too long — it’s time to get on some boats that are floating.
Then there are the cats. Five little kitties, becoming more attached to us each day — it’s like growing feline roots. Time to go and let others take care of them!
So I let my mind wander, and I came up with ten more reasons why we need to come home:
1. Mom and Dad have some Big Birthdays to celebrate.
2. We heard Dave is having some trouble with the Atomic 4 on Whisper. He’s been forced to sail in and out of Shilshole all this time. (kidding!)
3. Ben needs a new F.E.
4. Nancy needs someone to chicken-sit. Don’t you love that term? Chicken-sit!
5. Leilani is incarcerated in the hospital and needs to be sprung.
6. Bill says we only painted half of his house in 2007 and need to paint the rest. He’s willing to pay us in Killer Oatmeal and Coffee Herbies.
7. I need to hear my favorite chiropractor say, “What the heck have you been doing to your body?”
8. I’m dying for some dim sum. And Sichuanese green beans. And a bubble tea! Chinatown, here I come.
9. Two people in Wallingford owe me money. Maybe this should be reason number one?
10. I’m at risk of going native here: Ah seem t’be acquirin’ a Suthin’ accent and a SUNTAN!
The 2009 Meps’n’Barry Pacific Northwest Tour runs from July 8th to mid-September, with a trip to Burning Man the first week of September. We plan to stay with Barry’s folks on Camano Island part of the time, and we’ll be doing two chicken-sits in Seattle, too.
The biggest question right now is where to go from the airport and how to get there. Our tiny east coast brains will think it’s 3 am, so we’re likely to be pretty weird and interesting. Are there any night owls out there who might rescue us from SeaTac and let us surf their couch for a night?
And if you can think of any other reasons why we need to go home, please share them on the blog as comments!
The morning after the kittens were almost born on Charlie’s head, Barry trotted over to Charlie’s trailer and asked to use the bandsaw. When he fired it up, Momma Kitty looked at him askance. Her eyes seemed to say, “What the heck do you think you’re doing? You’re hurting my kittens’ ears!” Never mind the fact that five hours after being born, the kittens’ ears were still stuck flat to their heads.
The next morning, I stopped to see Charlie and the kittens. “We have a kitten crisis,” he told me. “She took one of them away.” We looked at the cat and one remaining kitten sadly. RIP, I thought. Momma Kitty seemed more attached to Charlie and John and Barry and me than to her kitten. “Maybe if you sleep with her tonight, instead of on the boat, she won’t abandon the last one…” I suggested, hesitantly. I hated to ask that of Charlie, but he’s a hero. “I’ll do that,” he said, brightly.
The next morning, I stopped by, and it was deja vu all over again. “We have a kitten crisis,” he said. “She slept with me all night, but she took the other one away this morning. I tried to follow her, but she knew I was tailing her (har, har) and gave me the slip.”
I was a little more successful at tailing her, and I found where she’d stashed the kitten — under the back seat of John’s conversion van, which he’d left open to keep it cool and aired out.
This created a whole new set of problems. In order to buy groceries or do laundry, John needed to drive his van. But it was 100 degrees that day. If he carted the cats to Beaufort and locked his doors, he’d have two roasted cats under the rear seat. And if he did so without Momma Kitty on board, she’d be frantic while he was gone.
Then Barry went back to use the bandsaw. “What was that squeak?” he asked Charlie. I guess he thought one of Charlie’s power tools needed oiling.
Charlie couldn’t think of any power tools that made that sound. So they dug into a huge pile of toolboxes under a bunch of cabinets and found the source — the other kitten!
The family was reunited in John’s van, and then my slippery path to sainthood began. Nancy Bock and I looked all over the boatyard for a place to relocate the cats. But nothing seemed right. Finally, Barry and I decided to cat-nap the three of them and put them on our boat for the time being.
Since the kittens look exactly like Mom, we suspect it was a virgin birth
We walked over to John’s van with a large plastic tote, and Barry put on a fleece sweater in case Momma Kitty tried to scratch or bite. But she didn’t. He gently lifted her out, and she sat docilely in his arms as I put her two squeaky kittens in the tote. Then we walked across the boatyard, carried them up the ladder, and put the tote into a cozy, defensible spot in the quarterberth. Momma Kitty did a quick lap of the boat, proclaimed it acceptable, and climbed into the quarterberth to resume nursing.
It’s been a few days, and Momma Kitty now goes by the name, “Buttercup,” because of her sunflower-yellow eyes and her princess status. The two kittens haven’t been named; we call them the wiggle-worms. At one week old, their eyes are not yet open, although they do have ears now.
It’s a happy story, except for one thing — I have two weeks to find a place for them. My attempts to place the little group with a foster family, no-kill animal shelter, or permanent home have been unsuccessful. I have made numerous calls, posted ads, and sent emails. But if you are an animal, Carteret County is not the place for you! The Humane Shelter here is referred to as a “high-kill” facility.
The few volunteers in the area who work to save pets are desperately overloaded. I call their message phones, and most call back from restricted numbers. “We can’t help you,” they say. “We have too many cats already.” If I was the praying sort, I’d be praying for help about now.
When do I get tuna?
So we’ll keep looking, and in the meantime, we’ll enjoy this snuggly, docile kitty and her two wiggle-worms. If you don’t want a pet permanently, let me suggest that you foster a cat or dog, wherever you are! I can’t tell you how rewarding this is. When these kittens open their eyes — tomorrow or the next day, I hope — what will they see first? Momma? Me? Barry? Or the underside of the quarterberth? They’re sure to think that living on a boat is a natural thing, so we’d better get them settled in a house soon, or they’ll be ruined forever. Just like me.
I was puttering around this morning, thinking of our new friend from Ohio, Charlie, and how it might be fun to start a drinking club here for Ohio expats. This may come as a surprise to our Seattle friends, who don’t even know about our Ohio roots. But as one astute friend said, growing up in Columbus, Ohio inspires long-distance travel.
Just then, Barry came back to the boat with a piece of nicely-shaped teak in his hand. He’d been over at Charlie’s trailer, using the bandsaw to shape a new piece of toe rail.
“Remember the cat that was hanging around Charlie’s trailer last night?” he asked. “She had kittens … on Charlie’s bed.” I grabbed the camera and headed over to see.
Charlie, with his trailer, truck, and boat
Charlie showed up last weekend to do some work on his boat, and everything about his rig — truck and trailer — shouted “BUCKEYE!” There were the Ohio license plates, the Columbus address on his trailer, and the bright red folding chairs with “Ohio State” stenciled on them in white 4-inch letters.
Barry and I, on the other hand, own two Ohio State t-shirts that we only use for painting and epoxy work, because we’re embarrassed by them. No other OSU paraphernalia — we’re very reluctant alumni. Sure, it’s a good school, but some people take the team spirit thing too far. When I lived in Columbus, I worked with a woman who dressed in scarlet and gray on Fridays during football season. I remember that this included a jumper with one gray knee sock and one scarlet one, an OSU sweatshirt, and a giant necklace made of buckeyes. And she hadn’t even gone to Ohio State, nor did she have football tickets!
Despite my reluctance to advertise my Buckeye affiliation, I had to get to know Charlie. We spent a couple of evenings hanging out around his trailer and talking, and discovered that he’s really interesting, and easy to talk to. He’s got a gigantic steel boat that’s trying to rust faster than he can get it in the water. The boat was such a mess, he’d been sleeping in the trailer. But he’s gotten the boat cleaned up, and last night, he said that would be his last one sleeping in the trailer — he was planning to sleep in the boat tonight.
Flutterby's feral cats
Charlie has a really central location, right by the Travelift. The first time we’d hung out at his trailer, there had been a strange, friendly dog hanging around. Last night, when we stopped to talk, it was a cat, instead. She was orange and white and incredibly thin. She was very snuggly, rubbing against our legs and pushing her head on our hands to be petted. Charlie fed her some tuna, and she followed us back to our boat and we gave her cat food. But Flutterby’s two feral cats made her unwelcome, and there was a bit of yowling and cat-fighting under the boat last night. When I got up this morning, she wasn’t around.
After Barry’s announcement, I found Charlie standing outside his trailer, smoking a cigarette and looking a bit dazed. “I’m a Daddy!” he said.
During the night, the little cat had come into his trailer and climbed up on his head. Charlie likes cats, and has a couple of them at home. But he wasn’t going to have this strange cat sleeping on his head. So he moved her down to his feet and went back to sleep. When he woke, she was still at his feet, nursing two tiny kittens.
Charlie’s got a bit of a dilemma — he and his trailer, and the kittens’ bed, are going back to Ohio next week. In the meantime, he’s going to be sleeping on the boat and wondering what to do with three cats that he didn’t have yesterday.
Tiny cat with tinier kittensThe kittens that were born on Charlie's bed
Emanuel's interpretation of a sailboatGabriel's interpretation of pirates
On a May day between my birthday and Barry’s, we were sitting out in the cockpit, enjoying the shade of our beautiful bimini top and eating a mid-morning snack. As usual, the cockpit was a mess, full of tools and parts, which included a pile of teak scraps on top of the refrigerator. They’d been removed from someone else’s boat, so they all had bolt-holes through them, but the bolts had been taken out.
A little wasp, black with white stripes, flew over and landed on the pile. She looked around, selected one of the holes, and climbed in. A moment later, she flew away.
To my credit, I didn’t scream or jump around or do any of the hysterical things I normally do around insects. I simply picked up the piece of teak and studied the two tiny green caterpillars she’d left, now exposed on top of the fridge. “Nice of her to bring us a little gift, but I don’t think we need these,” I said, flicking them onto the ground and cleaning up the pile of wood. When she came back, she walked around for a while, confused, then left us another couple of caterpillars before leaving for good.
The next gift to arrive was even more remarkable and a lot more tasty.
At his gym in Vero Beach, Florida, my Dad met a retiree named Carlo. The conversation turned to Carlo’s passion, making sausage. “What? You haven’t tried my sausage? I’ll bring you some!” After his retirement, Carlo was at loose ends, so his kids and grandkids talked him into making sausage, something he’d done as a child with his Sicilian grandfather. It was so successful that it turned into a business. Now he makes and sells Carlo’s Lean Sicilian Sausage at the local Saturday market, and he also packs it in dry ice and ships it all over the country.
When the package arrived, the first thing we got excited about was the dry ice! We put chunks of it in water and giggled at the bubbles and the smoking effect, and Barry even put it in a drink. Then we fired up the barbecue.
Barry's birthday feast - tzatziki, baba ghanouj, grilled onions, oranges, pistachios, kalamata olives, cotija cheese, and Carlo's fabulous sausage
This stuff is magic! It’s full of flavor, but so finely ground that it melts in your mouth without the greasy feeling you usually get from sausage. I said it was the best sausage I’ve eaten. Barry said, “Yummy!”
And it was a lot tastier than the caterpillars would have been.
The next day, when Barry woke up on his birthday, he had a whole pile of presents. Being the hard worker he is, he spent the entire day doing electrical work on the boat, and he didn’t open any of them until evening, when Val and John came by for a piece of birthday pie. When he came up the ladder, Val had a big box under his arm and a shit-eating grin.
There’s a little back story to this one. Whenever a bunch of boaters get together, certain exciting topics always come up in conversation. These include: 1. Cheap places to cruise, 2. Expensive places to cruise, 3. Marine toilets (this always seems to come up during dinner), and 4. Bedding compounds.
Val is a proponent of 3M 5200, a polyurethane caulk with extremely strong adhesive properties. Barry and I prefer 3M 101, which is a low-adhesion polysulfide caulk, or butyl rubber, which comes on a roll and is also low-adhesion. After a glass of wine aboard Kuhelli one evening, the two of them got into an argument about it, and the fur really flew! Everyone was looking at Val and Barry, wondering if they were going to see a fistfight over bedding compounds.
That night, when Barry and I got home, I commented on the argument. He laughed, and said, “I’m sure Val knows that arguing with an engineer is like wrestling with a pig. Everybody gets dirty, but the pig likes it.”
So when Barry opened his birthday gift from Val, he found a cylindrical object with the following instructions:
FLUTTERBY EMERGENCY KIT
Open in case of a leak from other sealant that gave up. This will happen sooner than you think!!!!
WARNING!!!
This is powerful stuff. Make sure when you use it you line up the pieces correctly, because after it cures, there is no known way to remove it. Why would you remove it if the pieces are perfectly lined up? Not because of a leak. That I am sure.
We were practically rolling in laughter when Barry pulled out the tube of 5200, which had been further labeled “EMERGENCY USE ONLY ON FLUTTERBY.”
5200: For "emergency" use only on Flutterby
It just didn’t seem like there was any way to top such a perfect birthday gift. But wait, there’s more!
A week before Barry’s birthday, we’d gone to the Beaufort Music Festival and gotten hooked on a new band, an alternative group called Bombadil. Our favorite song is called Jelly Bean Wine, which we’ve been playing over and over (you can hear it on their MySpace page, about the 5th song down). Since I have an interest in wine-label design, I decided to create some Jelly Bean Wine for Barry’s birthday. I picked up a bottle of Arbor Mist, which tastes like this generation’s version of Tickle Pink (don’t ask how I know). They take cheap wine, add corn syrup and kool-aid flavoring, and sell it like real wine with a screw cap. It’s the only wine you can buy in the gas station (don’t ask how I know).
My label involved a photo of jelly beans that I ran through the “spin” filter in Photoshop. Under the photo was the line from the song: “Perfect for a Sunday morning hangover.”
Meps' original label for Jelly Bean Wine. Our friend Tom says the label makes him dizzy, so I accomplished exactly what I set out to design!
It’s great as a piece of art. I’m not sure what would induce him to drink it. If he ever does, I’ll let you know.
Most people don’t get a that many birthday presents, let alone such creative and thoughtful ones. But all of these presents paled in comparison to the large, flat, mysterious box that came from Columbus, Ohio. We’d been waiting for Barry’s birthday to open it, but his sister told us, “It’s to both of you! Go ahead and open it.”
Inside, we found a Monopoly game. We looked at each other, puzzled. We knew that the Millers, parents and kids, love to play Monopoly, but how did they know we didn’t have the game? And where would we put it?
Then Barry lifted the lid and took out the board and exclaimed something like “Holy buckets!” (Notice that I said *like* “Holy buckets!” because Barry doesn’t actually say “Holy buckets!” it’s just more interesting that “Omigod!” which is probably what he did say. Or maybe he said, “Wow!” and I said, “Omigod, holy buckets!”)
The center of the Meps-n-Barryopoly board
We bent our heads over the most amazing game board we’d ever seen. In the center were caricatures of the two of us, dressed as pirates, superimposed on the name of the game, Meps-n-Barryopoly. Each location on the board is a place we have been to and written about — Arkansas, Crater Lake, North Carolina, Portugal, Brazil, the Bahamas. Instead of going to “jail,” our set says “go to house,” and the two most valuable properties, instead of Boardwalk and Park Place, are Seattle and Burning Man, our favorite places in the world. The game pieces are sculptures of us and our teddy bears, and the cards are completely re-written to reflect our travel adventures. Even the play money is replaced with Bear Bucks, complete with Frankie the Bear’s head on them.
It was the most marvelous thing I had ever seen.
A day later, when we went to play it, though, we discovered one thing absent from the box: The rules. With our friend Dick, we wracked our brains to remember how to play, and finally reverted to the phone. We admitted to Julie that we loved our present, but didn’t know what to do with it! So she put Barry’s nephew Emanuel on the phone, and he gave us detailed instructions as only an 8-year-old can.
It was a marathon game, lasting until almost 3 am, when we all collapsed from exhaustion. Evidently, there are different ways to play Monopoly, and some take longer than others. If you play by the official rules, the game is only supposed to last about 90 minutes!
One day, we’ll get this boat out cruising, and we’ll stop at Vero Beach to meet Carlo, thank my Dad, and play Meps-n-Barryopoly while we drink a toast with Jelly Bean Wine and watch our 5200 cure. But first, maybe another little road trip? We need to go up to Ohio and thank Julie and Cody and Emanuel and Gabriel personally!
(Pictures of the Monopoly set are below. I made ‘em big, so you can read the hilarious cards!)
The full Meps-n-Barryopoly boardThe Chance cardsThe Burner's Chest cardsThe game pieces - Scuppers in his sweater, Barry with a mohawk, long-haired Meps, and chubby FrankieThe money and hand-colored cards -- all of them places where we've been (except for a few oceans). The $50 fun fee for Burning Man is a little low, but $2000 for euphoria seems about right.
My apologies for not writing much lately. I have a couple of excuses —
1 – We’ve gotten totally hooked by a podcast and blog at NPR called Planet Money. These guys do a fantastic job of tracking down stories about what’s going on in the economy, and more importantly, why. Last weekend, we were driving down State Route 24 here in North Carolina when I saw a sign that tickled my funny bone: “Free boat! With homesite purchase.”
“We have got to take a picture of that when we come back tomorrow!” I said to Barry. Unfortunately, the following day was drizzly, which made it harder to take photos from the Squid Wagon. Barry managed a U-turn (a feat that requires a road the width of a football field) and we figured out which window could roll down and then (more importantly) roll back up again, stuck the camera out, hit the shutter button, and then said, “Thank God for Photoshop!”
I submitted the photos to the Planet Money blog with a note, where they’ve been publishing images illustrating “Half Built America.” It got published today — check it out!
2 – Speaking of websites, we spent a couple of months swearing at different web browsers, then launched a website for the boatyard we call home, Bock Marine. For those of you who have been complaining about how few photos I’ve published, many of the ones on their site are mine, so you can see where we are. We definitely feel like family here!
That’s it for this week’s excuses. I have a much funnier essay ready for you, but the pictures blew up and have to be re-shot. That part’s not funny.
