Whodaknown?

With the exception of very agitated and agressive TSA agents in Miami who nearly shoved a wand up my whoseywhattsit, the trip back to aMerica was almost unremarkable, however long and uneventful.

I can blame it on the fact that I live in a cave and only watch MTV (The Hills), Channel 5 News in Belize, the Caribbean News Roundup from Barbados and Bravo TV, but somebody forgot to tell me about the No-liquids-allowed-on-flights because-you-might-light-someone-on-fire policy. And the people in Duty Free were liars also, btw. Chug-a-lug.

Anyheeww, I'm here in Michigan, unjetlagged by now, and having a great time chilling my brains. UNBaby is cold and walks around with a blankey around her shoulders. She can't wait to see snow, we've described it to as just like sand but very very cold. I'm like a bag lady going from daughter-to-daughter's house cooking Mexican Chicken soup. In the past week I've had KFC, Subway, Steak and Shake, McDonalds (2x), Wendy's and I can't button the top botton on my pants.

One last travel tip:
All conch shells must be with your baggage. No carry on blunt trauma weapons allowed.

An Experiment on Ebay

I'm trying something new. I'm selling a couple of paintings by Nelson Young, a local Caye Caulker artist, on Ebay. Click on the painting title below and it will take you right to the ebay page.

Slumber

Untitled Fishes

Taking a Vacation from my Vacation

The Last Days of Summer
Friends came for a little going away party and Supergirl took some photos I'll share with you. You can't help but feel nostalgic.

Supergirl, UNBaby and I are going to cool our brains in aMerica for a while. UNBaby is going back to civilization to start school. Quite a change from being a wild girl living on the beach to a being a city girl. I don't think she remembers what snow is. Supergirl and I are going to civilization to eat IHOP Fruit Crepes, and to see all those new fangled fancy cars they have in aMerica. So we packed the store up like a hurricane was heading for us. It was easier this time, practice makes perfect. This 6 weeks trip will refresh and rejuvinate us. Bigness told me not to come home unless I bring him a bucket of KFC Original Recipe. Awe... he's so romantic. He'll need some rejuvination when we get back because he's on a big remodelling project and roof replacement project. every year at this time he repaints everything and if there's anyting big and important that needs to be done with hammers and drills, he does it in September and October. Can I compare him to a pig in shit on this or will someone call him on his cell phone (again) and tell him that I'm calling him bad names on the internet. Anyhow, you get the picture. He's in his glory, there's lots of drywall stacked everywhere, piles of brick pavers and roofing. Cans of paint and mud paste stacked in rows like soldiers waiting for orders. And I'm so glad I'm going to miss out on all the "fun".

On Being A Bag Lady - A Cautionary Tale

I had a big throwing out party (with myself) today. I am an admitted pack rat. My theory is that mentally I'm very organized, so my environmnet doen't have to be. I appreciate organization and I try to surround myself with organized people, because lawdy, I don't need anyone else like me junking up the place. Today I threw away 5 garbage bags of old clothes and junk (some of it was good stuff but I did it anyway) My excuse has been that its so hard to get anything here that if something was slightly broken or had a little bit of coffee on it, I could fix it or dye it or remake it into something useful. Well, that just silly. I have so much stuff that's been hanging around taking up space. Supergirl promised me that if I threw away some of my old tiedye painting t-shirts that I've had since 1998 she would tell me where she hid my black and white lizard print stretch capri pants that I like to travel on airplanes with, because they are so comfy. But it turns out that she's a BIG LIAR. A BIG BIG LIAR AND PROUD OF IT!

Don't Do That Again

Its been 2-1/2 years since I've been back to aMerica, 2 years for Supergirl. I'm looking forward to using my new e-passport. You know the one where they implant the computer chip so they can track you. I'll let you know how that turns out. I'm not a glutton for punishment so this trip I'm NOT going to pass thru customs entering aMerica wearing a tiedye t-shirt, flip flops and a silly straw hat. Maybe it was the picture of the 5 leaf plant painted on the back (just kidding). They weren't buying it that I was just a starving artist living and working in Belize. That wasn't fun, let's NOT DO THAT again. I tried to pull strings telling them that my parents both voted for George Bush, but they didn't care and wanted to examine EVERYTHING. I knew I was in trouble when the agent put on latex gloves...

Deserted Island

We tired of our own company, so Supergirl, UNBaby and I headed back to Caye Caulker on Friday morning. We expected to see lots of locals taking the plywood off their windows and resuming life as normal, and instead we met an island that looked like a hydrogen bomb had gone off. Lots of empty buildings and no people. It looked like everyone else had the same idea and didn't rush right back either.

Yesterday was a little better, plywood coming down here and there, more foot traffic and a few tourists showed up. A boatload of of tourists coming in was big news on the conch shell telelgraph making its way from the peir down to the split. Today more people, and now there's a local volleyball competition going on at the beach next to the police station to get the juices flowing again. The base from the boom box DJ on the beach is deep reassuring noise that we're gaining speed and not teetering to fall.

I'm O.K., You're O.K. but Nicaragua isn't o.k.

The second time in two weeks that we evacuated ran nearly the same only quicker than the first time. Practice makes perfect. I'm glad the government and The Weather Channel errors on the side of caution and we won't have the likes of Hurricane Keith (Sept/Oct 2000) sneaking up on us again.

For another point of view south of us in Honduras, check out La Gringa's Blogicito.

I feel sorry for the poor people of Nicaragua. Its such a poor country, much poorer than Belize. Its been 2-1/2 weeks since Hurricane Dean and the reconstruction effort by the Belize Government and other disaster agencies in Corozal is well on its way. At least that's what I'm hearing on local news, as I've not been up there to see it myself.

After Felix we decided to not hurry back but to give ourselves a couple of days down time, mental relaxation. Maybe we'll go back to work tomorrow, maybe we won't. Let's see how the weather fares. UNBaby has a cold and fever, Supergirl is crocheting a baby blanket for a friend due in a couple of weeks, and I'm using my time wisely of course, re-reading all the back issues of The New Yorker that MB has sent over the years. No one is on the Caye right now, the whole island emptied out again and this time of the year it's mauger season (translates into "hungry") so it will be days and days before we get any new tourists.

What, Me Worried?

You better Belize it! I was sweating bullets for a while.

Bigness and I were already on the mainland with UNBaby when the evacuation order came down on Sunday. A couple of days before we had decided to give Supergirl a break and take UNBaby with us to our little house in the bush. She promised not to color on the walls with green crayon again.

At noon on Sunday hurricane Dean drifted downward and directly in the path of Belize. Supergirl called me with the news as we have no internet and get one TV station (sometimes). So I advised her to get the plywood, and guess what? No plywood... again, so she bought the last 4 sheets of beaverboard (a thin masonite) and charged up the drill. She and Miss Barb had the store packed up in 3 hours, her suitcase packed and everything stored upstairs in our safe room.
Whew! I'm getting a headache just thinking about it.

Sunday afternoon we went into Belmopan to Brodies to pick up a few things, just of in case of... and I bought comfort food like chips, diet soda, a bag of chocolates, cookies. Not the real evacuation hurricane foods, just the I'm-starting-to-feel-sorry-for-myself foods as we contemplated and discussed what the storm turning towards us meant. Brodies was completely empty. I joked with the clerk that we were the only ones worried, she and me. We stopped by Cousin Carlos' house to look at the satellite on the internet and I made a quick call to Supergirl to confirm what we were seeing. Yes, we were going to get a whopping, do what you gotta do and get out of there. No posessions are worth lsing your life over.

We are adequately insured on the contents... and that helps me sleep at night. What we can't get is building insurance, because we are a 40 year old building on the beach. It is a reality that we live with every day. What would we do of in case of...? We would do the best we can, collect whatever we can from the insurance and start over. You can take the proof of talent away, but you can't take the talent inside of a person away.

Supergirl's been through a few disasters in the last couple of years, when my studio and gallery burned to the ground along with the rest of the block in downtown Wyandotte, Michigan, a fire at her own house a few years later in Detroit with a total loss, a few hurricanes, some scares here and there. A seasoned pro, she works through the list and prioritizes, not stopping until it is done.

Monday morning the sirens started at around 4:30 a.m. on Caye Caulker. Supergirl and guests from the Alamina Beach House had purchased their water taxi tickets the day before knowing they would try and leave on the earliest boat out. Supergirl peeked out the kitchen window and saw OJ (who is the disaster guy for Caye Caulker) talking to the police Sarge and noted that the sarge was completely dressed, not just in his underware as sometimes happens when disaster strikes and he's hauled out of bed to deal with it. (his apartment is on the second floor of the police station) OJ turned as she was coming down the stairs and asked her if she was bringing all those bags with her. She had a big suitcase, a big plastic bin with all the business papers in it, the laptop case and her carry on bag. He informed her that locals were allowed one medium size bag, plus your purse tourists were allowed their regular luggage. They were trying to pack as many human bodies on these boats as possible. So back into the house she went to repack. Gleefully she tossed the plastic bin with the business papers into the safe room, (and said "Woo Hoo to You!) and then packed the laptop into her suitcase. She and the beach house guests arrived at the peir at 5:45 a.m. and when she got there there were about 3 boat loads of people waiting already so they lined up and as soon as it was light enough, they loaded the boats to go. Every water taxi available was lining up and they would only release as many people onto the end of the peir as could fit on that particular boat. It was very well organized and mayhem did not break out.

Spin went to the city to pick her up and when she arrived at our little house in the bush I had already determined that I had bought the wrong foods. (duh) So we headed off to Belmopan again to fill the car's gas tank and to make another trip to Brodies and this time the place was packed. The same clerk joked with me as I asked where the D size batteries were and I mentioned to her that I forgot to buy ice cream. I bought all kinds of crappy food that I owuld never ever eat. Cans of beans because you don't know if you'll have cooking gas, cans of little weenies, cheeze whiz, saltines, cans of tuna, tins of meat, canned milk. You get the picture right? Food that makes you eternally constipated. Oh, don't forget the room spray!

We had a couple of extra people who came prepared and well organized as they have been through this many times before. We listened to LoveFM on the radio all that day and into the night. I gave up eventually and went to bed waking from time to time hearing Ernest Vasquez or Rene Villanueva's voice reassuring us that we were still here, that we still existed.

We had evacuated far enough aaway from the storm that we didn't even get any wind. It was dead calm and sprinking rain. Spin started calling around in the morning to see what the damage was and was happy to hear that it was storm surge and some wind but we did not get the battering like they did in San Pedro on the island of Ambergris Caye just 10 miles north of us. Cousin Ragio's beach had washed sand onto our beach. We actually gained beach during the storm. Turnaround is fair play because during hurricane Mitch in 1998 Bigness lost about 10,000 bzd in sand to cousin and it wasn't returned. I can see the sand wars are going to start soon.

We came back on Wednesday morning after they turned the electricity back on Tuesday night. We decided not to open right back immediately but to repaint the interior and do a general de-junking, after all how often is this store completely empty? Oh, about once every 3 years.

We opened back up all clean and sparkly this morning and a few tourists have come back to the island and are wandering around.

We're grateful to be here. Thank you to everyone who emailed me. All is well.

The Long Walk Home

Caye Caulker in Black and White
After shooting a sunset wedding way down the beach, I started walking home... with the late afternoon sun behind me, its my favorite time of the day to shoot.

The Civilization of UNBaby

In an effort to get caught up on all the news, here are photos from UNBaby's preschool graduation (Miss Sue's Preschool). And as you can see from the photos, she sat still and did everything the teacher told her to do, patiently waiting while mayhem and hysteria erupted all around. She totally disproved Bigness's theory that she has chiggers up her batty and can't sit still. She looked to sweet AND CLEAN! It was a proud moment!

She's made some real strides in becoming civilized this year. Through the suggestion that she watch out to not slam her tail in the door, Bigness has taught her (and me too) to close the door when you come into an air conditioned room, and to knock before entering. One day I overheard her telling her cousin Jelly Bean "What's de matta gial, you fraid you slam yer tail inna de dowa? Close de dooowa!"

Of course most of the credit for the "Civilization of UNBaby" should go to her preschool teacher who is the kindest most patient woman you will meet.

Wild Sunset

I took this photo near our house on the mainland. Anyone have any idea what creates this phenomenon?

The Before and the After

The day that Adria, Jay and May left for Mexico and then subsequently to the U.S., Malibu MalMal, Jelly Bean and Baby JoJo came. We had planned it that way to minimize trips to Mexico and the airport in Cancun. So, its been a busy summer. Mal, Jelly and JoJo stayed 7 weeks living la vida loca with us on the Cayes and got to experience Caye Caulker, after the vacation feeling wears off.

But back to Adria's family.
I thought I would show you the...

BeforeAnd the After... these photos were taken the day before they left and went back to reality, relaxed and suntanned.