Friday, July 29, 2011

Hasta la vista


As from today the Dawson's are officially en vacance!






We have Saturday to sort ourselves out (washing, getting house ready for the anticipated hurricane on Wednesday 3 August, getting in chicken feed etc) and then we are off to Puerto Rico first thing Sunday morning for some Spanish Tapas and shopping. The large mall, Plaza las Americas has absolutely everything from Gucci to Gap, Macy’s, Sear's, Pottery Barn, Sephora, Zara to keep everyone happy - along with hairdressers, opticians, camping shops and chef supply stores. If we have hurricane curfew in PR (as you can see in the current track below, it is forecasted to go directly through San Juan) we'll just need to make sure we get locked up in the Plaza rather than the hotel. That would truly be a disaster.








We are staying on the Condado, the South Beach of San Juan and have booked to go to Marmalade through Open Table, which has had rave reviews. We'll spend lots of time hanging around Old San Juan and just well, shops, really. Maybe a coffee bar or two. A museum. Kite flying at El Morro. Nothing too demanding (apart from some tennis elbow from swiping the old plastic).

Then we are back briefly on Tortola to pick up our boat and head off to explore the islands around us. The idea is to potter about from cove to cove, staying at little hotels - and some (an ongoing dialogue) camping but no serious sailing anticpated. Well this is the plan, anyway.  After 5 days of that we should feel windswept enough to feel we've had a good break.

Back on dry land again on the 9 August. Until then we'll be watching the tracker rather closely.



Monday, July 25, 2011

Things to do with boys

Georgie by Eben Meyers
Last week was a good one with the boys sailing everyday and William at Willows Summer Camp, with field trips to the Airport and Fire Station where he got to spray the hose and go on our one and only fire engine ( a lovely 50’s Richard Scary-type affair). Little Boy Bliss.

I’m not quite sure why we signed up for mountain biking on Norman Island on Sunday, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. So there we were at 6am – me with a slight hangover having only finished the washing up from the night before at 1am. The Channel was very choppy and we were bounced around a bit, the result of a low pressure tropical wave and all thinking that we would rather be home watching Rango.

Big efforts do reap big rewards however, and Norman Island, which is uninhabited and very beautiful, turned out to be a sparkler.  It was calm with lots of shade in amongst the steep climbs, cliff hanging tracks with dramatic views and pure wilderness (Norman Island is the island which RL Stevenson based Treasure Island on).
After action, satisfaction!

The boys rode the Cadet course, with me hiking some of it with William. Georgie, who really struggled in the beginning, went on to cycle almost 6kms and won with James coming in second.  It was a tough course with real mountain biking, and challenging even for the experienced, grown up riders.

In our politically correct culture which tends to hand out medals just for breathing (we are all winners) it was genuinely rewarding for the boys to achieve something they had really pushed themselves hard to do, and we are proud of them. It was a lovely morning, well worth the slog and we still had time for an afternoon snooze and a quick tidy up before Dad got home from cooking for the Caribbean Heads of State.

My long-term abiding impression of Moms Who Only Have Boys has always been of the hearty, jolly hockey sticks persuasion with booming voices and VW Kombi’s loaded full of sporty stuff, cheering on their team.  It's always slightly worried me that I may end up like this one day with a wardrobe exclusively from Cape Union Mart and ruddy cheeks. 

So not me.

But there I was on Sunday in full hiking gear (from you know where) enthusiastically encouraging my little chaps up the hills shouting : “Come on buddy, you can do it, you’re a Star, what a Champ” and shoving bikes and boys into our large 7-seater Ford Freestyle American Soccer Mom car.  Oh dear.


Boys new favourite expression "knackered"

Friday, July 22, 2011

La Loud

La Concha Renaissance San Juan Resort, San Juan, Puerto Rico
La Concha, San Juan: an iconic re-vamped 50's beauty

When I looked at the TripAdvisor reviews of the hotel where we are staying in San Juan (after we had booked...) I read one comment out to Tyler:  "If you think you're sleeping with an open window and the sounds of the ocean waves, you're sadly mistaken. You'll be listening to JLo and Pitbull instead."

My wilderness-loving Island Boy husband replied "fantastic!"

So it's not just me then!

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Shoes, caps and sanity

Photo by Ed Childs

I've been reluctant to comment too much on the new found joys of full-time parenting as I still have my big L plates on, but I finally have to say something:

Corporate life had its challenges - impossible deadlines, lovable clients and enough politics to make one feel like the little moonblind owls in Guardians of the Legend. Thinking that I'd be leaving chronic stress far behind me, believe me when I say that it all pales into insignificance when compared to the daily challenge of trying to get three little boys ready & out of the house every morning. 

You think you'd get use to it, but you don't, or at least better at it. I approach this task every day with a mixture of dread and determination. I’ve applied systems, processes, bribery, threats of violence, Oscar-worthy screeching Lady Macbeth monologues and have invoked every saint and occasionally Satan to smite the little darlings down – and nothing NOTHING makes the slightest bit of difference.

Everyday at least one child does not have a water bottle or a hat (we lose a cap a week) or matching shoes . We can never find the right suncream (the one William is not allergic too) but can always find the 10 year old bottle of SPF15 Piz Buin. Inevitably the children are dressed in a peculair mixtures of clashing stripes and checks, to which my general view is as long as it includes a hat, then sod it. 

I cannot understand why it is so hard to co-ordinate 3 sets of packed lunches/3 bowls of oatmeal/3 sets of shoes/caps/the brushing of teeth & hair/feeding a cat, some chickens and a parrot, but it is a seemingly impossible task and quite hard on Madam Type-A-Taurus.

We're all left feeling shell-shocked and full of remorse by 8:30 every morning, vowing to do better the next day.

Until just as you're getting in the car - one child cannot find their hairbrush, one hasn't got a belt on so  he's holding up his shorts (for the rest of the day?) and the cat is doing flic-flacs for it's Ocean Sensations and nobody has noticed. It's like finger on the rocket button, and I'm off into ballistic Lady Mac ranting mode again.

Without sounding too much like Charlie & Lola.... I Absolutely Cannot Wait For My Holidays, which kick off next weekend when we are off to San Juan (yes, I know, another island, but a beeeg one) for 5 days.

I'll be happy to feed the children from the mini-bar all week and they can stay in their pyjamas all day long if they want and watch American TV till their eyes fall out, but I'm determined to have a "Where's-your-hat-waterbottle-shoes-bag-suncream-rashie" Free Week. 

I'll officially be sane again in about 3 weeks, and I'll have my first full year of Parenthood in the bag. In fact we should all be experts by then, just like the corporate world really.

Sunburnt

Looking good in the life jackets

After the big rains of a few weeks ago, the killer mozzies are now back with alacrity and have got the better of me already this morning, so I'm up early to make myself a cup pf tea and scratch my legs in peace. I've discovered that DDT  (diethyltoluamide) is alive and kicking - it's now just called DEET. It's actually the main component of Peaceful Sleep, but I've ditched that in favour of the hard-core Caribbean stuff which has about double the quantities and extends your odds of survival. In fact what I'd really like is one of those disco dry-ice machine things which pumps the stuff out in a misty cloud, but I guess those got banned along with the crop sprayers. Pity.

We had an unexpectedly nice weekend. Last week the boys were off sailing all week and I had the Big Boss down from London, so it was a busy week for all. T actually had two consecutive days on-island and the New Business now has a pulse. Sooooo exciting. We're thinking Easter not Christmas, as there is lots to do.

Just as we were settling down for a domestic, cake-baking type of a weekend we were invited to go off to Joost van Dyke, which usually only means one thing - namely the Soggy Dollar (the beach bar where you jump into the water). Saturday was it's birthday party or something, so there were swarms of bikined-up 30-somethings mainly from the US Virgin islands, all dancing up a storm. Huge fun, but I paced the Painkillers.

Sunday morning kicked off with the boy's photo session which we had won at the school fundraiser (which this space) followed by a long brunch (11am to 4:30pm) at the Tamarind Club (where the Bloody Mary's are complimentary) and then on to meeting T at Joasiah's Bay at 5pm for a swim. We tumbled home around 7pm, having spent most of the weekend in the sun and in the water. Despite caps and rashies, we all still looked sunburnt and red-eyed.

Even the boys are now looking forward to shopping malls and some smog.




Saturday, July 9, 2011

Summer 101

"Can William come and play please?"

Being new at long summer holidays, I hadn't entirely appreciated that all it meant was kids, kids, kids and more kids. Till you almost want to scream. No need to point out this was Week One. Also no need to point out that this was the life I longed for (Tyler already has, at his peril).

So I really know I'm not going to get your sympathy vote when I say that 'Living in Paradise' is now playing havoc on our summer plans.  The very last thing that I want to do is (1) See a palm tree and (2) Sit on a white sandy beach drinking mojitos.   

What I really want to do is (1) Have my hair done in a proper hair salon (2) Buy shoes that arn't Brazilian, gold or have dingle-dangles (3) Catch public transport, preferably underground (4) See a painting that consists of more than primary colours (5) Listen to some music that has a minimum of  30 professionally-played instruments (6) Eat something which dosn't have scales, like venison for example.

I have actually noticed that many, many people from here seem to decamp to the North West states at this time of the year. Vancouver and Seattle must be throbbing with recovering Caribs, all drinking in the good coffee and pavements. The occasional frosty morning. Some Nirvana, maybe?

Anyway, suffice to say, we should have planned all of this at least 6 months ago like everyone else, but we havn't. We've already got a week in a little rented boat to trawl around the islands and play pirates. This is of course the part that Tyler and the boys are looking forward to and it will be lots of fun, provided no tropical storms or hurricanes interfere too much.

The second leg of the holiday is the Culure & Shopping part, and requires travelling to some shops in a city ( yes yes yes yes). Problem is we can't decide on which city. There are many boxes to tick, but primarily we need a city that will still feel like a holiday (boulevards, good food, glamour) but wont bankrupt us (New York). We're also not very good with cold anymore and nobody welcomes extended inter-continental travel with 3 young kids.

It's sounding suspiciously like San Juan (Puerto Rico) Notorius Capital of High Bling, but I'm still doing my due diligence on this.

Next year of course I'm going to start planning our summer holidays right after we get back from skiing at Christmas, but for now we have a few days to work out which city has the best Gap but the least amount of palm trees. 




A few Martha moments

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Good day for a good book

William (fourth from right) proudly holding his Kindergarten certificate

We've had two days of the tail of a tropical wave (sounds like a cocktail) and apparently now we can expect Saharan dust. Lawd Have Mercy, as we say in the West Indies (a lot). Anyway this has all meant non-stop torrential rain, so we're back to the Mud & Mould Season.

We did get to the beach yesterday afternoon and I managed to hole up at the beach bar and watch the Mens Semi-finals, but today I've surrendered and we are staying at home - partly because I've got a really good book which I'm devouring - whilst the boys entertain themselves. I'll stir myself soon to get on with the never-ending housework - but for a few hours I've felt 'the still point of a book in a turning world" (TS Eliot).

I'm re-reading Gabrielle Hamilton's Blood, Butter and Bones - a beautifully written book about her life growing up in the restaurant business:
"My mother wore the sexy black cat-eye liner of the era, like Audrey hepburn and Sophia Loren...She pinned her dark hair back into a tight, neat twist every morning and then spent the day in a good skirt, high heels and an apron that I have never seen her without in forty years. She lived in our kitchen, ruled the house with an oily wooden spoon in her hand...her burnt orange Le Creuset potspots and casseroles, scuffed and blackended were constantly at work on the back three burnes, cooking things with tails, claws and marrow-filled bones - stewing and braising and simmering to feed our family of seven".
Writing like this actually makes me want to do housework and put an apron on, in the vain hope that the boys would remember me like this, as opposed to the normal short-tempered, rather flighty mother that I am. Now very keen to visit her restaurant in New York, called Prune, and to which we are now considering a small trip too anyway - as we feel we should be taking advantage of our special Marriot staff discounts (50%). I also really need to get to a good hair salon (before I implode) and the boys desperately need some new shoes. In fact the list of things grows by the day. Just to be in a city for a few days would be lovely, with people you don't recognise. Tyler can also look at bakeries.

I really love my Kindle and have read some outstanding books this year. I know that many of you are in the depths of winter (but then yet another excuse to read a good book!) but here are some of my favourites from this year, that I can recommend you add to your summer reading list:
  1. Blood, Bones & Butter - Gabrielle Hamilton
  2. The Hare with the Amber Eyes - Edward de Waal - not an easy read but haunting and beautifully crafted, just like his pottery. Some very different themes to think about like inheritance and legacy
  3. Three Cups of Deceit - Jan Krakauer. I'm a big Krakauer fan, and his expose on the chap who wrote Three Cups of Tea, is brilliant.
  4. One Day - David Nicholls. I lived in London at the same time of the book and so the incredible attention to detail is wonderful. I imagined the character as Jonathan Ross.
  5. Freedom - Jonathan Franzen. Epic and very good. Good antidote to too much Martha Stewart.
  6. Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese. An incredible book, lyrically written set in Selassies Ethiopia and NYC.
  7. A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian - Marina Lewycka. Very quirky & funny/sad.
  8. The Help - Kathryn Sprockett. Outstanding, charming and awkward. 
  9. The Other Hand - Chris Cleave. Startling and set in London & Nigeria.
  10. Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen. Gritty and rewarding.
Time to get on with folding the laundry and the washing up, but I'm at 78% on my Kindle  - so think I'll just finish the book first!