Patrick Schulte's Blog, page 128

It’s Getting Easier

Ali was reading a Berenstain Bears book to Ouest today and on one of the pages there was a drawing of just the two kids and Papa bear at the doctor’s office. Ouest asked, “Where is the Mama?”

Ali answered, “Mmmm, I don’t know where Mama is.”

Ouest thought for a second and announced, “Mama’s taking the picture.”

I love how much her mind is working these days. She says little things like that that surprise us every day. And she’s working extra hard on her speaking now too. She’ll be in the middle of a sentence, stop, think think think, and finally come up with the right word to finish it off. You can just see the achievement in her eyes when you tell her what a good job she is doing.

Then this afternoon something miraculous happened. We were at a restaurant with music playing, which meant Lowe was up and dancing. The boy has got the beat in him. Then we said, “Ouest, you should go dance with Lowe.” And I’ll be damned if she didn’t go over and grab his hands and dance with him. They spun around and Lowe was about the happiest child on the face of the earth in that moment.

Then while we were walking home Lowe suddenly turned and walked straight up to Ouest with his hand outstretched, and once again she grabbed it, and they walked hand in hand down the sidewalk.

Blown away was the only way to describe how Ali and I felt. We both were thinking, “Oh my god, it really is going to get easier. What they say is true. These two will be friends one day, and play together, and entertain each other. And life will be amazing because we will have time to go pee by ourselves.”

No, of course we didn’t have a camera with us to capture these firsts. We do however have a totally random assortment of pictures from the day.

Picnic

While Lowe was napping today I took Ouest on a bike ride for a picnic. It’s cute seeing how grown-up she feels when we load up lunch into her mochila (backpack). We had a good time, but when she got home she was acting exhausted. Then at dinner she wouldn’t touch her food. And then she was standing in the kitchen acting weird when Ali looked at her and asked, “Are you going to get sick?”

“Yep.”

I don’t know if it was my PB&J or something more sinister, but Ouest went to bed sick and tired tonight. Fingers crossed that this one passes quickly.

Screwdriver Mystery Solved

Here’s something I’ve been meaning to mention; remember months ago when Ouest was “helping” me with some work and my little screwdriver mysteriously disappeared? I searched everywhere and was sure she somehow lost it overboard despite the fact that we were working in the chain locker. I grounded her for a week and only fed her bread and water, but she wouldn’t admit to anything. Well, the other day I was doing some electrical work and suddenly there it was, my screwdriver, in the ziploc bag full of electrical connectors. I’ve probably been in that bag a half dozen times since then but never noticed it. So good news for Ouest—she’s back on full rations again.

This morning we went over to Bucerias again just for a change of scenery.

Living Dangerously

Just received this 1-star review on my book Bumfuzzle. Thought it was pretty hilarious how she totally nailed the “real” cruiser that I talked about throughout the book.

This book is dangerously misleading to new sailors. Glorifies ineptitude. Sheer luck they weren’t seriously injured or killed while on their journey.

Man I wish I could make more people understand that it isn’t luck at all—sailing just really isn’t that difficult to begin with. Your odds—no matter how stupid you are—of being seriously injured or killed are no worse than they are driving to work. Now, which would you rather be doing?

Today we narrowly avoided death while playing on the docks and running around on the beach. Ouest did get a thistle on her toe at one point, but we were able to staunch the bleeding before she passed out. And Lowe did walk straight into a garbage can and leave a welt on his forehead. He’s now under observation in the ICU. Life man—it’s almost too dangerous to live it.

 

To Market

Spotted this beauty on the other side of the marina today. Only a few things look slightly different than our boat, yet still not sure that it is a Spindrift. Definitely Ron Amy designed, but can’t tell if it is an actual Spindrift or not. Probably just an early version.

Saw the boat while on our way to the Sunday market where we were surprised to find a perfect reenactment of the Portland Saturday market. Seriously, a bunch of gringo hippies appear out of nowhere to sell specialty food and handmade tchotchkes. Pineapple smoked mahi-mahi, chicken liver pâté, jams, French breads, picture frames made out of “repurposed” wood, lots of art with palm trees, more necklaces than even Ouest could get over her head, and a bunch of knit stuff—basically any old weekly market anywhere in the States.

That’s not fair, I’m just giving the market a hard time—it was actually pretty nice. It’s just one of those places that make you sit back, scratch your head, and wonder, “Where am I?” But then you finally stumble across that Mexican who is selling his fresh tamales or tacos, and it all comes back to you.

Dude is teething yet again. Oh, and Lowe got this badass hat. Rockin’ it Vallarta style.

 

Thirty-nine

Thirty-nine today. God I wish I had something to show for it.

Since it was my birthday Ali filled me up with pancakes and sausages. Then she took the kids out exploring so I could have some time to myself—to work on the boat. I dove right in on the rudder post, grabbing a pipe wrench and hammer to attack it with. I wasn’t especially confident that I’d be able to get the big nuts to crack, but with the first smack of the hammer on the wrench the nut moved. I tightened things up just a couple of turns and lo and behold the leak stopped dead. A true birthday miracle.

After that I finished my oil change and fired up the engine to test the new water pump. That’s when things got really crazy. I mean, it worked. No leaking, good water flow, normal engine temp, the works. This was shaping up to be the best birthday ever.

I turned my attention on my TackTick instruments next. Raymarine tech support finally contacted me after getting yelled at by the guy in charge of their Twitter account. Seems these days the only way to get anything done is through social media. Anyway, they shot me a note telling me to check the power. Okay, fair enough, tech support guys surely get a lot of stupid questions, so they start with stupid answers. Power? Check. Any other ideas? As a matter of fact they had another idea and replied to me quickly—redo the auto networking procedure. Okay, done. Nothing. No more e-mail replies for the day. Guess I wait until Monday now. I’m stoked.

Eventually it was time to turn my attention to the business at hand. The family returned and we got right down to it—cupcakes. There was a buzz of excitement throughout the room as the cupcakes came off the assembly line. We raced through one rendition of Happy Birthday Papa, blew out a candle, and dove in. Before any of us had a bite Lowe had his face firmly planted into the top of his cupcake. He made no attempt whatsoever to eat the cupcake itself—all attention was paid directly to the frosting.

Later on in the afternoon we were planning to head down to Bucerias to play on the beach and grab some dinner. But when we started the whole, “Let’s get ready. Everyone get their lotion on and get dressed,” things took an ugly turn. At least once a day the house goes from this peaceful ideal of family life, to full-blown screaming mayhem. And once one of them starts screaming and crying over something the second one seems to take it upon themself to one up the other. Things quickly got out of control so we said screw it, and walked over to the miniature marina pool instead.

Could have been any day around here, but it was a birthday because—cupcakes.

Living Small

On a pretty regular basis we get asked questions like, “How do the kids like the boat?” or “Did your kids adjust pretty well to living in such a small space?” The questions aren’t meant to be funny, and I’m sure they are just worded wrong, but they make us laugh nonetheless. Our kids’ home has always been the boat. They don’t know anything else; they like it because it is where they live, and they haven’t adjusted because there is nothing to adjust from. We stay in condos and visit family, which the kids love, but when we get back to the boat they are both happy. They aren’t moping around because their room is small.

We were just contacted by another tiny living blog (we’ve been featured in a few articles in the past) which is about the only time we really even think about the fact that our home is so stinking tiny. The fact that people, not just us, live for years and years in such small spaces is kind of amazing actually; that we do it without a second thought is doubly so.

When we announced that we were having a second baby we got lots of e-mails about how we were going to have to buy a bigger boat. While the senders were obviously joking, I think that that is sort of the mentality nowadays. But with us it was just a question of how we would rearrange what we already had to accommodate him. Ali and I live this way now with almost no thought given to it. Living small is just sort of what we do now.

That’s not to say we’re perfect. We still buy things that we don’t really need. We motor sometimes when we could raise a sail. We sprawl out and take up thousands of square feet when grandparents’ homes present themselves to us. And somehow we generate a bag of garbage a day.

Anyway, not sure what the point of that was. We just got that e-mail and it got me thinking.

I finished up the water pump install today. I’m psyched about the whole thing. It took me like six months to get around to tackling it, but in the end it was only a three hour job. The new pump is much smaller, doesn’t have hot oil pulsing through it, and gives me much better access to the impeller when replacing. Mostly I’m excited by the prospect of no more water and oil leaking into my bilge (well except for all the water that gets in there from both the prop and rudder shafts).

My Lowe. This boy has been testing me lately. The past week or two when he doesn’t get what he wants he just starts screaming/crying and he won’t stop. Won’t stop until Ali picks him up off the floor anyway. The boy does love his mama. But the great thing about Lowe is his smile. In a second he can make up for any of his nonsense with just one crack of his smile.

Lately he’s been copying Ouest a lot. Whatever she does he does too. She puts her arm out the bus window, he puts his out. She climbs up on a table, he climbs up right behind her. And he looks right at us and smiles proudly. He loves to be told, “Just like Ouest,” whenever he does something new. Today he ate apples with peanut butter, and when we told him it was just like Ouest he beamed at his accomplishment. Funny how these simple little things can bring so much happiness to all of us.

Mexican Weight Loss Program

Ali was up all night puking, and for some reason both kids were up a bunch of times last night. It was pretty awful—especially for Ali. Then we got up this morning and I immediately started in with the cold sweats. This was basically a repeat of our little episode a few months back, but without the sick kids fortunately.

We immediately blamed the restaurant in Bucerias from New Year’s Eve, but eventually remembered that earlier that morning we’d had tacos from a shack along the highway. Like, “Oh yeah, maybe it was that place we ate at with no refrigerator and dirt floors.” The kids weren’t hungry, which explains why they didn’t get it too.

Oh well, cost of doing business in Mexico I suppose. Feeling much better tonight. 

Because we were both pretty well laid up all day we spent a lot of time inside. That’s not always easy with these two. They usually make a beeline for the door every chance they get, but they almost seemed to understand that we just weren’t up to it today.

Bumfuzzle — Just Out Looking for Pirates

I usually give my once a year appeal to buy Bumfuzzle a couple of weeks before Christmas, but this year things just got too busy. And one of the things we were busy with was putting a new cover together for Bumfuzzle — Just Out Looking for Pirates. Our Bum friends over at Worldwide Optimize designed the new cover in order to spruce up our now five year old book because, basically, Ali and I were just tired of looking at the old cover.

So that was kind of fun actually. The Bum book has sold in the neighborhood of 15,000 copies overall—and who knows, maybe it will manage to sell another 15,000 before it’s retired to the bottom of the e-book shelf. Note to anyone thinking they will go sail around the world and pay for it by writing a book after they are done: you might want to consider hitting a whale and sinking your boat days before the completion of your circumnavigation, and follow it up by losing your leg in a shark attack, an attack in which you manage to kill the shark with your bare hands and then (yes, there’s more) survive at sea for fifty-five days floating in a Coleman cooler while eating only shark fin soup. Do all that and you might cover your costs.

As always I’d like to ask that any of you that have read the book please take a moment to go and leave a review over on Amazon. Good, bad, whatever; reviews sell books. Review it here.

Thanks to everyone for your support all these years.

A Bucerias New Year

La Cruz is a sleepy town. After a couple of weeks I dare say a boring town. There’s nothing wrong with it, but wandering its streets doesn’t take long and chances are good that unless you go inside a store you won’t see anybody.

So today, New Year’s Eve, we hopped on a collectivo and zipped down the road to Bucerias where it felt as if all of Mexico had congregated. It felt that way, though in reality it was probably only a couple hundred people. Plenty to perk Ali and I up, and hey, with kids any new environment is cause for celebration. Time to explore.

We walked the streets and bought Lowe a wrestler mask/cape that Ouest promptly commandeered and strolled around town in, much to the delight of each and every person she walked past. After a while we settled down in a shrimp restaurant that was packed to the gills. I say settled down, but that’s an overstatement. Lowe doesn’t settle down so much these days—he’s a runner, always exploring, and not paying the least bit of attention to where the rest of the family is at or what we are doing. He’ll just wander off and never once look back. Ouest has also become less and less interested in eating, so her newest thing is to climb under the table and play with condiments for an hour or so.

We hung out in the plaza for quite a while. Ouest kept busy by picking as many flowers off the trees as she could reach and Lowe drove his cars around and around on the ground while the local kids looked on, coveting his police car which is missing the lights and whose tires barely turn as it has been beat on so badly for so long. I need to look up how to say, “Trust me man, it isn’t worth it.”

We rang in the New Year as a family at six o’clock, and had the kids asleep by seven. Somehow Ali and I were still up at 11:54 when she said, “Looks like we’re going to miss it by about three minutes.” I agreed with her, but before we drifted off for good we heard the fireworks begin—we made it to 2013.