before i share happy, sunny pix, i just have to say that my heart goes out to boston and all of those who were involved, directly or indirectly. boston is one of those cities that i am inexplicably in love with ... it's like i must have lived there in a past life or something, and felt at home the minute i first set foot in it. five years ago, i was in boston with marc while he was on business, and managed to end up at the ticker tape parade for the celtics after they won the nba championship. i was with marc's uncle, his cousin, and his cousin's girlfriend, and we stood, literally, across the street from where the first bomb went off on monday. it could have happened just like that: same place, same crowds, same happy ignorance of anything but celebration and pride.
and to whomever did this: if you had some big point you were trying to make, stop being a coward. own up to what you did, get your sick "credit," and tell us what the point was. because right now, all we think is that you are a heartless chickenshit.
and with that, puerto rico:
after our day in san juan and my night of courting the porcelain god, we decided to take it easy on tuesday. which turned into taking it easy on wednesday, too. the kids only wanted to swim in the ocean, look for shells, swim in the pool, and siesta. oh, we got really good at the siesta.
and all i have to show for it are iphone pix ... that's how lazy it was.
we would head down to the patio restaurant, grab a table, then grab breakfast at the buffet. every morning: i had an omelet, harper had pancakes, henry had bacon, and marc had juice. (and sometimes fruit and a pastry.) we would then wander the beach for awhile, ease into the day, and head too far into the surf looking for shells. which resulted in losing half of our wardrobe to salt, sand, and water. you would think we would have learned to wear swimsuits to breakfast.
and there was the one morning when, after breakfast, we ran into the coconut man. he walks several miles up the beach early in the morning, climbing palm trees and chopping down coconuts, then on his return trip he sells the coconuts - chops them open and serves them up. just like that. now, harper is in love with coconut but has only had the dried-out nasty ones from the grocery. she was in heaven, eating real, fresh coconut.
henry still hates it. fresh or otherwise.
when we did finally put on suits and head to the pool, the kids and marc swam, and i stayed in the shade, wearing spf 400, a cover-up, a hat, and reading a book.
occasionally, someone would come visit me.
but about that time, marc would say, "let's eat lunch in the pool!" and they would flee ... to the swim-up bar, to order burgers and fries. and i would then get in the water and go join them. and then we'd all swim for another hour or so.
turns out, you really can't enforce the "no swimming for an hour after eating" rule when you're eating IN the pool. just fyi.
around 2 p.m. or so, we'd make the parental decision that the kids had had too much sun for the day, and we'd head in. at this point, we became firm believers in the power of the siesta. the kids would go to their room and watch "tom & jerry" for two hours, i would read and/or watch two hours of giada and ina, and marc would read (no, seriously ... he read a book! a whole book!) or nap. and it was blissful.
(there was that one ill-advised afternoon when henry joined us for channel-flipping and we lost half an hour of our lives to "amish mafia.")
after that, we'd go back out to the pool until dinner.
one of the days, harper had her other "best day ever!" ... she hung out with an iguana.
we'd seen a couple of smaller iguanas and a gecko just hanging out in the pool area, and harper was determined to see one up close. on this day, the granddaddy iguana came lumbering out of the garden and was walking slowly across the pool deck. harper was very stealthy (as stealthy as one can be while containing giggles of glee) and followed it all around the deck. soon, one of the restaurant workers walked over by her and started feeding the iguana some shredded lettuce.
then he handed harper the rest of the lettuce and told her to feed the lizard, whom he called "pepe."
(and, seriously ... what is it about my girl that makes total strangers just hand her food to feed wild animals? should i be concerned about that?)
but pepe was soon in love with harper and wouldn't leave her side. it got to the point that harper was sitting, petting pepe, feeding him little leaves that she found on the ground.
soon enough, another little iguana came running over to pepe, and then the two iguanas wandered back into the palms.
for the record, yes - she now wants an iguana.
after another hour or so in the pool, we would head back to the room to get cleaned up for dinner. one night we were back on the hotel patio - the restaurant, sirena, made some really yummy stuff - but another night marc found a place online that sounded good. and it looked - on the map - to be about seven blocks away. so we started walking. and it was a pretty walk.
but when the map had us turn down an alley into a residential area, marc had to wonder if we were actually heading to a seafood place. signs pointed decidedly to no.
so we stopped walking, looked up another place, and backtracked about four blocks. around this time, harper had decided she was over the walking, she was hungry, she wasn't happy that we'd dragged her out into this misery of uncertainty, and whatever else she could whine about.
finally, we turned into the el san juan resort, where the restaurant, koko, was located, harper grumbling the whole way.
(i almost wish i had video instead of a picture, so you could hear the bitching and foot stomping. it would have been funny had i not been completely done with her.)
then we got into the restaurant and sat down, and she kept moaning and groaning.
then we ate, she and marc split some mango crepes for dessert, and she decided life was good again.
she's a real treat, that one.
dinner was, again, delicious. we ate some really good food on this trip.
after two days of doing not much of anything, we decided that our last full day needed to be filled with something. so we got a good night's sleep, and made plans for a fun thursday. but i'll get to that next time.