The shuttle for the airport arrived at 7 a.m. My brother and his wife walked over from the Japanese hotel. At the hotel they have a huge black guard dog that scares the daylights out of you as you hope the gate holds. Apparently there was lots of barking. Once that settled down, they did get to sleep. No gunshots reported.
Everyone said multiple goodbyes. As far as we can tell, no one left anything behind. That must be a first! Cali was especially sad and started to cry. We turned on the cartoons and that seemed to fix things (no really my family, you can’t all be replaced by an animated yellow sponge, honest). Madi and Cali were all settled in for a bit of tv, Kier slept until after noon, Paul and I went for a coffee. The usual Saturday morning. Paul was only here for one day before our company arrived, so we were finally getting some time to talk, just the two of us.
We continued working on operation “bugfree beds.” With the (alleged) infested mattress now gone, we’ve decided to keep all the mattresses wrapped in plastic. Not sure what else to do. We went to the store and got more raid spray. Then we took the small wooden frame that I had made, out into the backyard and sprayed it. We sprayed the mattress that was out of its plastic bag. After it dried we rebagged it in plastic, taped up any holes and made the bed.
Paul and I also set up beds for the girls upstairs. We are still using the mosquito netting to keep them and the spiders out. There was a trail of ants going up the one wall, so we sprayed and taped an ant trap to the wall. Seems like we put a lot of effort into keeping bugs out of our beds, [and diminishing the number of uncomfortable bites on the girls would make my life easier.]
Kier and Madi went to trapeze and silks practice for two hours in the afternoon. Paul and I took Cali to rent a movie, since it was her turn. Then we went shopping for jeans which I thought would be easy, since my body type is Mayan-like. But my style preferences, I discovered, aren’t. They like jeans here with all kinds of crazy stitching, fairly gawdy pockets, loud designs. Subtle and plain is not a big selling point. But in one store I found some hollister jeans with plain pockets. They needed to be shortened, so next we went to the tailor. I like to have my pants tailored so they are about half an inch longer in the back than in the front. I showed the tailer this and he just shook his head. He wanted to do them straight across, couldn’t convince him otherwise. You just never know what request will be…wrong. Hope I didn’t offend him greatly.
We got ice cream for Cali and flip flops for me, both important.
Paul and I rode our bikes to the large hardware box store to look for expandable foam to seal up some cracks in the downstairs. The entire store was lit with natural light, which meant there are clear panels in the roof and all the floors are open in the middle to get light. We were there in the middle of the day and it was pretty hot. We didn’t find what we were looking for, but we did see fans, vacuum cleaners, lots of plastic flowers, brooms, plastic plumbing pipes, rope, cement. I was the only woman in the entire store, hardware is clearly a man’s domain.
Kier is a fast reader. I think I mentioned before that I have difficulty keeping her adequately supplied with reading material. She found a book she liked on the shelf, finished it in one day.
After trapeze/silks practice Kier went to her guitar lesson. Paul, Madi, and I worked at the bed situation some more.
We decided to go to the Porch for supper, because it’s one of the few places where you can get live music and it’s family friendly. Actually, there are other places that have live music, but then it’s more classical, and we like rock (songs that Paul and I can recognize). We saw lots of people we know. Paul went over and sat with the band for a while. The guitar player was talking about misplacing his son. The band plays over in Santiago on Friday nights and his 13 year old son usually calls and checks in with his dad in the morning when he gets back from his gig. But it was evening and he still hadn’t checked in. He was more annoyed with his son than worried.
We ordered our food around 7 p.m., which is way too late for Cali. She went to her regular bench, that has lots of comfy cushions and went to sleep. I don’t know how she could do that with band playing, I think the nightly church music is turning her into an extra-heavy sleeper. After we ate, Paul took the girls home and put them to bed.
Later six of us went over to cheer on my friend’s son who was playing a basketball game. We were the loudest cheering section, by far. At half time our group decided to leave and go and listen to the live music at Circus Bar. There was some kind of friend connection there. Basically, we were only at the basketball game for about 10 minutes and everyone was ready to leave. I wanted to see more of the game, but the train was leaving the station.
We walk over to Circus Bar and the music was great, but they took a break right after we got there. The duo was high energy drums and guitar. Don’t know how to describe the music except that it made you want to dance. But there was no place to do that, it was crowded. So we went over to PanaRock where a younger local band was playing, lots of Spanish music. The whole place was singing to the songs. We stayed there for one drink then the friend I was with thought she’d call it a night. We went back to Circus Bar to give someone a key, but then ended up talking to people there for an hour.
Next the four of us moms went into the Chapiteau, where the kids were dancing. Much to our own delight (and no one else’s) the mamas decided to stay and dance. Let me tell you, the kids cleared right out and went to a different/higher level of the dance floor. It’s not that they weren’t claiming us, because everyone knows who your mama is here. We just changed the dynamics for them. The four of us were having a great time! We danced until the place closed. It was the kind of crazy dancing we used to do at off campus dances when I was in college–wild, fun, carefree dancing. When they realized we were there to stay, the kids came down and danced with us a few times. They kept saying they thought it was cool that we were there. I think they thought it was cool in a way they hope it never happens again.
The mamas had a rocking amazing time. We promised each other we would do it again soon, if for no other reason, to bug our kids. For me a life well lived will always include some dancing and bugging my kids.