and baby makes 6!

Coconut, lime and all things good

Sometimes, this is what sailing looks like….

A bright, sunny day, winds 10-15mph, bathing suits on! We load up, cast off, and begin motoring out to the bay.

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. The engine alarm starts screeching. We look aft and see steam coming out. Steam is better than black smoke, but not what you want to see. It means that water is not being pumped into the engine to keep it cooled.

We heave to, head back, go through the routine of docking the boat and take the engine hood off to see what is what.

It is hot down below, and Bill loves to dig around in an over heated diesel engine on his day off.

I hang over the engine asking questions, trying to learn. Bill cuts his arm up trying to reach to the back of the diesel, and doesn’t even notice the bleeding.

After about 30 minutes, he finds 2 problems, fixes them, and I am saying “How did you know to look for that. Is it a recessive gene for diesel engine repair that I am lacking?” because, all of it bewilders me.

So, with the engine repaired, we cast off and head back out…..by this time Bill is channeling Captain Bligh because The Mood has been set. Cory and Bill set sails, with me at the helm, and the rule of “you must respond to my commands instantaneously or be yelled at” is put into action by El Capitán and I have flashbacks to those intense, gut wrenching days of racing Galveston Bay with Those Who Must Win At The Cost of Fun. I momentarily think about pushing him overboard.

Then The Wind From Hell picks up, we heal over and are a bit over powered since we failed to reef the main. Since I am already a bundle of nerves, this is the moment my youngest son (life jacket on of course) decides to go up on the foredeck and send me over the edge. Bill, feeling much less Blighish, tells him to stop and give mom a break and get back in the cockpit. Child back off deck, Bill apologizes for yelling……….

But, like I said, the Mood has been set, and I was ready to go back in. I was DONE. It was not fun.

Not everything we do together as a family is perfect. Some days are just doomed from the get go. Just because we live at the beach does not mean that life is perfect. Some days are as close to perfection as a mortal can get, no doubt….but others are what they are. Challenging, but certainly not devastating.

Once back home, kids fed and in their rooms playing, Bill and I shut the door to our bedroom, take showers and put a movie in. I grabbed some yummy smelling, after sun lotion. You know, the kind with coconut, lime and all kinds of delicious scents. I climbed onto our bed and stopped to look around and catch my breath. The shades were closed, the light was filtering in through the cracks in the blinds. Bill was kicked back on the bed, clean and fresh, tan against the snow white bedspread. I sat lathering lotion on my arms as the movie started and realized that, in spite of how the day had gone, here we were…happy and content.

The craziness and the joys are what make the variety in your life. I am learning that you choose which one to focus on. It is like taking a picture….you can, photograph what is lovely or you can focus your lens on the ugliness. It is your choice.

What do you chose?