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Our Christmas Break

12/26/2016

Our Christmas tree

Let’s take a break on Dawn and Penn's Panamanian Adventure so I may send you all my best Holiday Wishes. We’ll finish up our adventure in January. There are three stories left to tell.

If you’ve been enjoying this series, please drop me a line. Click on the “Contact Penn” button on the top of the page. I’ve been thinking about incorporating these stories into a congruent whole and publishing a chap book about our time in Panama. Would you read such a book (if you hadn’t already read my blog)?

As you must suspect by now, living on a boat is a little different from living on land. We hate “stuff.” There is limited storage space on a boat, so if it doesn’t have at least two uses, it has no place on our boat. It’s a Spartan life, but it fits us.

Christmas is also a little different. The last thing I want is a bottle of Scotch in a commemorative Chicago Cubs World Series bottle or a brass door knocker shaped like a lion’s head. When I get stuff like that, it is quickly donated to Willy Willy. (My grandfather, Teodoro,
used to call Goodwill, Willy Willy.)

(If you would like to know what Santa’s visit to a cruising sailboat is like, click here.)

It’s Christmas Day on board the Victory. We’ve had our Christmas breakfast, opened packages from Santa, had a neighbor drop by to say “hi” and are settling in to a quiet afternoon.

This evening we’re going over to Larry’s Vagabond 47 for cocktails before our Christmas dinner.
Larry’s sailing south for Mexico on the 29th. We’d love to help him sail his boat down, but have commitments on New Year’s Eve and early January.

Dawn has done her usual spectacular job decorating the boat. I contributed the outside lighting, running strings of lights all around the life lines. Dawn decorated a three-foot Christmas tree on the chart table. She put a string of LED lights around the perimeter of the aft cabin. They can be either soft white lights, or red and green Christmas colors.

When I got up this morning, the elves had visited the galley. The tabled was done up with a white table cloth, Christmas napkins and set for breakfast in bright Christmas colors. Soft white lights lined the shelf around the galley table. The shelf was decorated with Christmas cards, presents and a couple of bottles of wine.

It would have been a merrier Christmas season except for the unusual weather. After a two of weeks of rain, the San Diego sunshine returned and the world is drying out. We’re expecting good weather on Tuesday when we march with the San Diego Zoo float in the Holiday Bowl Parade. After the parade, the Zoo kindly provided us with tickets to the Holiday Bowl where Dawn’s Washington State Cougars are playing the Minnesota Gophers. (Gophers?? Really???)

It has been a wonderful, low pressure Christmas season for us. This morning I got up and saw the decorations in the cabin and rushed back to the aft cabin shouting. “Dawn, Dawn, Santa came last night.”

That reminded me of my favorite Christmas memory. (At this point, your screen goes waving and out of focus, taking us back to Christmas Day, 1991.)

Christmas morning on board the Victory

It was the tradition in our house, when the kids were little, not to put any Christmas presents under the tree until Santa came on Christmas Eve. We’d get the girls tucked into bed and Connie and I would watch an hour or so of television, then turn in. After Connie fell asleep, Santa would magically appear. All of the presents were hauled up from the basement, the stockings stuffed and any last minute decorating completed.

After Santa left, I’d climb back into bed with a smile on my face and wait for Christmas morning.

Libby’s first Christmas was nothing out of the ordinary. While Katie was all excited (as a five-year old should be) but Libby didn’t know what was going on. She had no prior Christmas experiences to think back on.

For her second Christmas, Libby didn’t remember last year and what happened on Christmas Day. We got up, went into the living room and opened our stockings while Mom got an extra hour of sleep.

When Connie got up, we opened presents. Libby figured it out fast and ripped the wrapping from her boxes.

Now Libby is three. She remembers last year and is excited about the coming Christmas. It is almost impossible to get her to sleep on Christmas Eve.

I read The Night Before Christmas to the girls and trundle them off to bed. When I return to the living room, I can hear Libby shuffling around in her bedroom.

I go back in to try to get her to sleep. She wants me to read “The Night Before Christmas” again. I read it two more times and she is no more ready to go to bed.

When she was nought but a wee bairn, I sat with her in my lap in the rocking chair and sang to her to get her to sleep. I don’t know how she endured my singing and sometimes thought she went to sleep to get me to stop.

This night, I went back in to try to cuddle and sing her to sleep. I sat in the rocker and she climbed into my lap. I held her close and started with “Silent Night.”

This went on for over an hour. I sang every Christmas song I knew, then went back to my playlist and started again. Sometime in the wee hours, she finally gave it up.
we
I put her in her bed, tucked her in and returned to adult world.

About five o’clock the next morning (Christmas morning) I felt a tug on my blanket.

“Dad! Dad! Santa came!” Then she was gone like a shot from a cannon.

By the time I got my robe and slippers on, she had made it to the living room, grabbed the first package she could see and tore into it. It wasn’t for her.

It took me some time to calm her down, then Katie got up to see what all the racket was about and we opened our stockings. Libby showed no regard for the pretty wrapping, tearing off ribbons and ripping wrapping paper. (I am so cheap that I save the wrapping paper for next year.)

The rest of the day went as planned. We had a wonderful breakfast (I cooked, of course), and we started a family tradition of going to a movie on Christmas afternoon to give the girls a chance to come down from their Christmas morning high before our big family dinner.

We’ve had many wonderful family Christmases since then, but nothing compares in my memory to that three year old girl, eyes all aglee, charging into my bedroom shouting, “Dad, dad, Santa came.”

Now your screen goes wavy again and comes back into focus.

I hope you and your family had a tremendous ______________(fill in the blank with whatever you celebrate this time of year) and are headed for a prosperous New Year.

I’m looking for nothing but good in the New Year. Catrina will make another appearance in her first full-length novel, The China Town Murders, Ted and crew will be back fighting ISIS hackers out to destroy our country, then Catrina will have a twisted time hunting down a serial killer in Panama and who knows what other adventures await us.

I hope that you’ll keep in touch and follow this blog all year as these and other events unfold around us.

The best New Year to all of you all and to all a good night.

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Dawn & Penn's Panamanian Adventure - Part 19

12/22/2016

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Dawn and Little One take a break after a long walk

Still Early September, 2016

Wes and Joyce return!

It’s been a long three months, but it’s been a short three months. I’ve commented on the time paradox here in Panama before. I can’t believe the time has gone so quickly. For the last couple of weeks we’ve been counting down the time we have left on the island. As the end gets nearer, we have a growing feeling of sadness.

We made a last minute run through the house cleaning anything that didn’t move. Little Bit was taking a nap, but when Dawn started sweeping him, he high-tailed it for the jungle.

Really, Dawn keeps things so neat and tidy we had little to do, but we cleaned already clean surfaces anyway.

What we did have to do was to move out of their bedroom. After spending three months living in a thousand square foot master suite, we were once again relegated to a guest room the size of a walk-in closet.

The Tallman’s caught an early flight from Panama City to Bocas, so we picked them up at the airport at seven thirty a.m. They were tired and stressed from the travel, but I could tell they were happy to be home.

It didn’t take us long to slip into their routine. They get up early in the morning, Dawn gets up with them, I think out of a sense of duty. I join them a couple of hours later. We have coffee and eat Johnny cakes, then attend to whatever chore is the most urgent. The general philosophy in the house is “don’t do today what can be put off until tomorrow.”

We eat dinner around six p.m., much earlier than Dawn and I usually eat. After dinner, they read for a couple of hours and go to bed. I usually turn on the TV and watch a TV series or a movie. The amazing thing is that Joyce has joined us for a little television at night. Wes usually sits on the sofa and either reads or watches for a little bit, then goes to bed. If we’re watching a movie that Joyce is interested in, she may stay up until it’s over.

The dogs are either confused or in heaven. With three people showering them with love, they don’t know where to turn. They’ll come in the room and go to Joyce. She pats her chair and tries to get them to jump up, but they notice Wes and go over to him.

Wes talks to them and tries to coax them to jump up and join him, but they see Dawn. She coos and talks to them and they don’t know what to do. Finally, they seem to have settled into a routine of Peanut jumping up on one end of the couch and Little Bit on the other, with Wes in between. They soon fall asleep and all the fussing and fretting over them seems to have been a waste.

The poor dogs are exhausted. Wes takes them for a long walk first thing in the morning. An hour or so later, Joyce takes them on a walk through the jungle and on the beach. Then Dawn decides to go check the beach for turtle tracks and the dogs go with her. By the time all of this is done, Wes is ready for his mid-day walk and off they go again. Then Joyce decides to throw the bones from last night’s dinner in the ocean. By now, I’m awake and Dawn wants to show me her latest discovery on the beach, so off we go.

We get back and it’s time for Joyce’s next trip to the beach, so the dogs are close behind. Then Dawn walks down to the creek (Our blue lagoon has morphed into a creek) for some solitude.

Guess who goes with her?

After Wes’s evening walk, the dogs are dead tired. They find their favorite spots for a nap and are gone.

I will say that all of this walking keeps them in good shape. I hate to admit that our walking schedule was somewhat less strenuous than Wes and Joyce’s and Little Bit was developing a bit of a belly, but those days are long behind them.

Yikes! More snake stories

Speaking (or writing) about all of this walking, I need to tell you about Dawn’s latest adventure.

Our heroine was on her favorite walk down to the creek. Most of the trail is through the jungle, occasionally coming out on the beach until there is an obstacle, then it jumps back into the jungle.

Dawn was walking through the dense forest when she had to duck her head to get between two tree branches. For some reason she doesn’t know, she stopped and looked at the branches.

One of them moved!

A small yellow snake, which we later determined to be a slender hogshead pit viper, was on the branch. By the way, pit vipers are lethal. We’ve talked about snakes a lot once we discovered we were living in the land of snakes. Some of my Boy Scout training must have rubbed off on her. She froze, then carefully backed away.

When we get to that spot on the trail, we usually just brush the branches back and go through. I hate to think what might have happened if her instinct hadn’t made her stop before plunging through the trees.

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Dawn & Penn's Panamanian Adventure - Part 18

12/14/2016

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We are on the upper left side of the map

Early September, 2016 – Top Ten List

Today I take a light-hearted look at life in Bocas. Living here isn't all battles with snakes and saving tortoises. There is plenty of time to contemplate the meaning of life.

Some time ago, Dawn and I began making our top ten list of reasons why you might be late to work in Bocas. The problem was, we couldn’t cut it down to ten reasons. There are so many. We finally managed to keep it to thirty.

But who cares? Why would you want to go to work in Bocas anyway?

With apologies to David Letterman, here is our top ten (plus twenty) reasons why you might be late to work here in Bocas.

The Top 10 Excuses For Being Late to Work in Bocas

There was a sloth crossing the road
I was behind a dump truck
A tree fell on the road (there was a storm last night)
The gas station was closed
My dog got its head buried in the sand
I didn’t know what day it was
The howler monkeys kept me up all night
The road caved in
A pothole ate my car
We ran out of water so I couldn’t take a shower
The plumbing backed up so I couldn’t take a shower
My hot water heater broke so I couldn’t take a shower
I don’t have a shower in my house anyway
The wheel fell off of my truck
A broken down Toyota pickup was blocking the road
There’s no cell service at my house
The surf ate the beach away and I had to rescue my beach chairs
The door to my house fell off of its hinges
I got tied up reading the latest Stephen King novel
I had to go to Juanie’s Café to use the Internet and got stuck behind a bus that was loading
Light headedness due to lack of blood from mosquito bites
The cockroaches ate my homework
I got hit in the head by a falling coconut
I got hit in the head by a coconut that was thrown at me by a monkey in the tree
A howler monkey shit on my head
I had temporary amnesia while the surf was up
The giant spiders attacked
A turtle got stranded on the beach and we had to rescue her
I had to get the giant snake out of my bedroom
A giant snake attacked me in the driveway

Why do you want to go to work anyway? There is no work in Bocas.

That's it for today. Next time we'll get back to our adventures.

Why would you want to go to work anyway?

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Dawn & Penn's Panamanian Adventure - Part 17

12/4/2016

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Hard at work

Late August 2016 – More Excuses

I’m sitting here, working on this story. Occasionally I look up, see the beautiful deck on which I’m working, look past the deck to the gorgeously landscaped yard, then the beach beyond it, then the turquoise Caribbean Sea. I think to myself “Somewhere, up in heaven, Hemmingway is looking down on me, and he’s JEALOUS!”

Now for the excuses. I have not kept up with the postings on my blog this month because I have been sick all month.

If you’re a long-time reader, you know I have Meniere’s Disease. Meniere’s is a malfunction of the inner ear. I won’t go into all the details, I’ll just say that it affects my balance, makes me dizzy and nauseous, gives me massive headaches and I have a constant humming in my head.

It’s not pleasant to deal with.

Since this is such a rare disease, there has not been a lot of study on it. As of now, it is incurable and they don’t have anything to moderate the symptoms. The doc just told me to go into a dark room and lay down for a couple of hours. Don’t read, don’t watch TV, don’t do anything that stimulates either the visual or aural senses.

I’ve been dealing with this for the past fifteen years or so. Sometimes it’s a problem, most of the time I hardly notice it. It decided to hit me hard in Panama. For three weeks I was helpless as a kitten. I couldn’t stand up straight long enough to go into town, so I couldn’t check my email or post on my blog.

The pain was neigh on to unbearable. I would lay down for a couple of hours and get some relief. Then I’d get up and try to go about my day, then it would come back with a wallop.
I was almost totally disabled for three weeks. You can bet Dawn was having a good time too. I don’t know why I get so grumpy just because it feels like the top of my head is going to blow off.

I told you that Meniere’s is incurable. Well, I might have found the cure. I will patent this and offer it to medical science. It’s just that the cure may be worse than the disease.

Highway to heaven

You remember all the fun we’ve made of Zika Virus? I’m truly sorry if our light hearted attempt to deal with the possibility of this disease made anyone who has had to deal with it uncomfortable.

Last Friday, I was feeling well enough to go into town. I needed to get to the bank, do some business on the Internet and restock our grocery supplies. In the morning my Miniere’s wasn’t too bad, so I took off.

For some reason, the mosquitoes were out in force in Bocas. I sustained several new bites. One of them had a hard, red circle around the bite. I suspect that was the bad one.

When we were getting ready to go to bed that night, Dawn asked, “What is that rash all over your back?”
I didn’t know I had a rash on my back. I looked in the mirror and, sure enough, my back was covered in red welts. It didn’t hurt so I just went to bed.
The next morning, my entire body from my neck to my knees was covered in the rash. It didn’t itch too badly so I went on with my day.
By late morning I began to feel ill. The room started spinning. This was a different dizziness than the Miniere’s brings. I was burning up, then freezing. I actually got out a sweat shirt to keep warm for a couple of hours.

We had done a lot of reading about Zika before we came down to Panama. The consensus was that it wasn’t a problem for healthy adults. It was like a mild case of the flu.
Bull Pucky!
It’s been years since I’ve had the flu, but this wasn’t a mild case. I was heavy duty sick. I had a fever, chills, nausea, dizziness, diarrhea, the whole nine yards. Friends said that it was probably Zika and that it would pass in two or three days.
When, after day three, I was still sick as hell, I drove into town to see the doctor. She wasn’t there. Even though I was at the clinic during business hours, they were closed.

I drove in again the next day. Still no doctor. This time, there was a sign in the window saying they would be closed from the 18th to the 23rd. I went home.
I was still sick and not getting any better. This thing had lasted a week now. On the 23rd, I decided to go back into town to see the doctor. This time Dawn drove me because I didn’t feel well enough to drive.

We arrived at the clinic only to find it closed. Somewhere in my feverish mind, I did the math. If they were closed from the 18th to the 23rd, that probably meant that they would be closed on the 23rd. I needed to come back tomorrow.
Finally, on my forth try, I saw the doctor. She looked at me and said I had some form of the Zika virus family. Could be Zika, could be Malaria, could be Dengue or a couple of other choices. She said I should go home, eat chicken soup and lay down. If it didn’t get better in a couple of days, I should go to the hospital emergency room and have blood tested so they knew what strain of virus I had. Then they could treat it.

I wanted a pill that would fix me and I wanted it right away. That’s not the way the medical system works in Panama.
We headed home and I went back to bed. In a couple of days, I started feeling better. I recovered a little at a time. I’d feel better and get up and do stuff, then I’d feel ill again and have to go back to bed. After about three days of this, I pronounced myself back on my feet.

So that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it. I wasted almost the entire month of August being sick with one thing or another. It ain’t fair, McGee.

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Our Christmas Break

Dawn & Penn's Panamanian Adventure - Part 19

Dawn & Penn's Panamanian Adventure - Part 18

Dawn & Penn's Panamanian Adventure - Part 17

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