Total Recall

One last entry, and the blog is complete! I didn't do this last night, because I didn't feel the cues - no air conditioner to turn on in our bedroom for a night of cool sleep, no bidet standing ominously in the corner as I brushed my teeth. I was distracted by this big weird house all around me, all this stuff we own but haven't used or seen for a long time, and had forgotten about. Nightly blogging isn't a Williamstown thing for me. But tonight, I'm doing it - I miss it, I find. People we know might read this, and that makes me happy. So here's one last hurrah:

Absolute clockwork was our trip home. The cab driver called around 6:00 to say he was in the neighborhood, and could come early if we wanted (we didn't); we were at the airport at 7:00, and had only one irratiting experience there, which was this: Everyone going out of Puerto Rico has to have their bags go through a big machine run by the Department of Agriculture before they can even ENTER the airport. Every single passenger and every single bag joins up in a huge line along the famililar, curved drop-off lane. My guess is that they were trying to prevent the illegal exportation of native plants, and also possibly to keep the coqui (Puerto Rico's national symbol, in some ways - a tree frog that squeaks out "Co-KEE!" all night long there) from infesting any other places, as it already apparently has done in Hawaii. Perhaps there's a giant coqui-killing laser that all the bags pass through. Couldn't tell ya. But the line does move fast, so if there is a laser, it must be very deadly indeed. The fast-moving line was good in that it didn't take us long to get in, but it was very bad in that there were two adults in our group, and seven bags, eight if you count Tess in her stroller. Quinn was a trooper, gamely shuffling bags ahead along with Janneke and myself, and the people in line behind us were very good about keeping us from leaving anything behind. But it was a workout.

Here endeth the reading of the troubling times on the trip. Bingo-bango-bongo, onto the plane and into the air in record time. Waited ten minutes, tops, for the bags to come off (last people on = first bags off), and then 30 minutes for Bernie, our driver from Williamstown, who had been delayed by an accident. (Not one he had participated in. Caused? Maybe. But not actually taken part in.) Then on the road, and back at Lindley Terrace by 5:15.

To find that a family of robins had set up a nest under the eaves of our front porch. There are four little ones in there, who appear to be doing great - Ronadh, who had been coming in to water our plants and occasionally swipe something, told us they had hatched no more than a week ago. I had brushed away the first makings of a nest at some point before we left, not wanting to deal with the poo and the guilty feelings every time you open your front door and send the mother panicking into flight. But they were persistent, and now here they are. And it turns out not to be a bother to use the side door instead of the front door. Of course, in two days we're heading to Wisconsin for over a week, so we don't have to put up with it for too long.

The house smelled stuffy, and it took me a lot longer to figure out how to turn on the water heater than it had taken me to figure out how to turn it off. But after a late supper, we were all asleep in our own beds, which really freaked me out in the middle of the night. For some reason, Janneke and I swapped bed sides in Puerto Rico, and now we're back. I was closer to the bathroom there. Now she is. This strikes me as unjust.

I also found our compost pile of last year's leaves to be completely reduced to humus, teeming with earthworms, so today I pumped up the tire on the wheelbarrow and spread a few loads around the yard. Which made the robins very happy - the earth worms came along for the ride, and the robins made quick work of a lot of them. Am I kind for offering this feast to our new neighbors? Or am I cruel for thanking the earthworms for their labor by sacrificing them to shrieking death from above? Tough call. I'm an enigma.

Quinn came home to an enormous Lego Star Wars ship, a birthday present from Grandpa and Auntie Jayne. A godsend, too, because he has no day care, and somehow we weren't up to the task of entertaining him today. But he just sat his bronzed, platinum-haired little self in front of it and was good to go for pretty much the whole morning and most of the afternoon. Tess, meanwhile, had half a day of daycare, which we did send her to. She was very excited to show off her new lunchbox, bought at Marshall's in San Juan, and her equally bronzed little self, so she happily marched off. (A classmate, Kiley, who regularly says things like "Hello, Tess, you look beautiful today!", met her at the door. "Tess! I missed you so much!") They were fine, but we were left to marvel at how strange to us our most familiar surroundings had become.

I'm noticing things I never noticed before. Grass is absolutely everywhere up here, bright green little creeping armies that pile over the edges of the sidewalks like pirates swarming over the gunwhales. That's kind of freaking me out, too - Puerto Rico is so hot that you have to water grass every half hour if you want it to grow. Bushes, palm trees, pineapples - they grow like nobody's business, but grass is too fragile. Here, though, it does great. Again: Am I the grass, or am I a pineapple? The mystery of Joe. Much to ponder.

I had forgotten which switch on the vacuum cleaner turns it on, and which one releases the back so it can fall over and hit you on the bare foot as you prepare to cut your hair in the bathroom. But I was quickly reminded. I had forgotten which way to turn the handle on our faucet to get hot water; I'd forgotten whether we keep the sandwich bags in the right, left, or center drawer in the kitchen. I stood there a while, and then started to tremble. Sank to the floor in a fetal position and rocked back and forth, moaning, until Janneke came home. Then I faked unconsciousness and claimed to have had a seizure.

Don't tell her.

Thank you all so much for reading! It's felt so cozy to have you to talk to every night. It gave the trip so much more focus for me, and I'll be grateful for weeks. Then you'll be lucky if I say hello to you on the street. Again: Enigma.

Say g'night, Janneke!

("G'night, Janneke!")



Our treasures, hard-won, wrested from the sea.



On the left: The book I bought months before going.
In the middle: The book I bought in San Juan, because
I forgot the one on the left.
On the right: The book I bought in San Juan because
the middle book sucked.