Birthday Bust

Birthdays are a big deal to Rick and I.  We have December birthdays.  As a matter of fact, most of the birthdays in our family are in December.  Most everyone, wants to combine Christmas with our Birthdays and celebrate just once. If our birthdays were in March or July, they would not be combined with Christmas.  So why should a December birthday be any different?

We had big plans for birthdays:  reservations at great restaurants with our friends, snorkeling, boating and drinking great wine. 

Rick got strep throat a week before our birthdays.  I got it a week later along with testing positive for Covid.  The doctor put us on antibiotics and we spent the next two weeks in bed (and not together) and in isolation. We had to cancel all of our holiday plans as well.  We certainly didn't want to share this crud with anyone else.

Our good friends, Brenda and Phil, dropped off a cake with two candles to celebrate our birthday. It was a perfect chocolate cake NOT decorated in red and green. They are the greatest! 

Apparently, there are quite a few of our expat friends with birthdays in December, January and February.  To make up for our lost birthdays, we decided to charter a dinner cruise and celebrate together at some time when we are healthy again.

We still live in paradise and life is still good for us....at least it's getting better since we have been on drugs.

Photo credit:  Phil Shelton

Christmas Morning

Rick and I have a tradition of going to the beach Christmas morning.  This morning was beautiful with white sand and blue water.  It was super busy with two dive boats, 4 tourist dive trucks and snorkelers.  We managed to carve out a place for our beach chairs and cooler.

Breakfast is usually Prosecco and orange rolls.  This year Rick and I have been sick for two weeks and are on antibiotics...which means no alcohol.  So we celebrated with club soda and orange rolls.  We were quite entertained by the divers falling into the water and rolling around in the surf.  It's always fun to watch the divers getting in and out of the water which requires finding your way through coral and rocks and avoiding the surf that rams you into the sand with each wave. We had breakfast and a show.

Just so everyone knows we are still alive...Here is our Christmas selfie on Angel Beach toasting with water.


 

Christmas Lights

When we were kids, my dad took the whole family for a car trip to see the Christmas lights.  In reality it was a tour of lights that were in between parking lots that were my father's accounts.  He owned a parking lot business and did sweeping, painting, snow plowing and maintenance of parking lots.

I make Rick keep up the tradition by touring all the round-a-bouts on the island.  They are each decorated with lights and Christmas decorations.  Christmas eve we saw all the lights.

 

The Catholic church had a nativity scene set up in front of the church.  It was lit up as well.

The tricky part was taking pictures while Rick drove around the traffic circles.  We finally decided to park the car and walk to the decorations.  We were not the only crazies out there.  Other couples were taking selfies standing in the traffic circles.  We saw motorcycles with decorated trees attached to the back of the bike and loud speakers playing Christmas carols.

One house goes all out in putting lights on every part of their house as well as every palm tree. It was lovely.

Not to be outdone, we took our own selfie.  My Dad left us a fun tradition.  We hope we upheld it in grand style.

Merry Christmas 

Birdcage

An Oriental ornamental birdcage came with the house.  It's a wood cage with wire.  The wood had weathered and many of the "spikey things" adorning the cage had fallen off or broken.  It was a grey wood piece that needed refurbishing.

I took it off it's pedestal by the pool and moved it under the patio roof so I could begin renovations.  I glued wood pieces back on, cleaned the wood and prepared it for painting. This was my first attempt at renovating an ornamental wood piece. 

I spent two weeks painting, touching up, painting, touching up and painting.  Painting tiny decorative carvings and getting into all the nooks an crannies was a chore.  So while Rick was laying in bed with strep throat, I painted, and painted, and painted.

 

This is the finished project.

Strep

Rick woke up with a sore throat. Fortunately, he had a doctor visit scheduled. Because he had all the symptoms of Covid, the doctor office required that he take a home test before coming in.

Off to the Chinese market to buy an at home Antigen test for Covid.  All the Chinese markets carry them for $7.95 each. When I got back home, I noticed that the test instructions were in Dutch and German. Not English.  Not helpful.

We used Google translator for part of the instructions.  The illustrations were so small that we had to use a magnifying glass the see them. I hate being old and having bad eyesight.  I found some Youtube videos that gave us instructions in English with pictures. We opened the packaging and Rick took the nose swab test. 

The package also contained a tiny zip lock bag marked  "biohazard materials".  We put the used swab and other detritus in the bag.  We waited the ten minutes it took to show a pink line.  It looked like a pregnancy test.  The test was negative for Covid.

The doctor took one look at Rick's throat and prescribed antibiotics for strep throat.  He was really sick for about 5 days.  The antibiotics finally kicked-in and he  slowly recovered with only a lingering cough. 

We had big plans for our birthdays. As many of you know this is the start of our birthday week.  We will celebrate (Rick's 70th and my 68th) later.

 

Sunset

It has been raining several times a day for two months. Doing laundry that hangs outside to dry has been a real challenge.  Sometimes the clothes on the line get a rain rinse over several days before they dry.  Makes me wish I had a dryer.

Everything is wet all the time. Moss is growing on the gravel, concrete, and planters. 

Every evening we evaluate the cloud cover and decide if a beautiful sunset is really going to happen or will the sun just slip behind the clouds with no fanfare. We had a break from the rain. We made a run to the beach with our chairs.  The sun was actually shining and there was blue sky.  We headed to Pink Beach.  The beach used to have pink sand but got washed away by storms several years ago. Now it is covered with washed up elkhorn coral that has been tossed smooth by the surf.

We were rewarded with beautiful cloud cover and a hidden sun. The waves were a wonderful melody for us. We watched until the sun was totally obscured by clouds.  It was beautiful, relaxing, and calming.  Nothing beats being on the beach for us.