That's what you have to do to survive living on this island - go with the flow. Life is lived at a slower pace. People are used to waiting. Things seldom start on time. The power WILL go out. Your repairs will take much longer than anticipated and the job may not be done right. You get used to it or you go crazy. It takes a bit of adjustment every time we return to the island after our 6 month absence, but it does make life here more enjoyable.
Our weekend began with our car being returned, the battery being dead and me having another day without a car (day 6). I also had no wifi signal on my blackberry phone that I use to call the family back in the States. Couldn't go anywhere and couldn't make my usual weekend phone calls. Not to worry. It sort of forced me to finish up the painting and get the kitchen done. The cloud cover kept the temperature down, making it a pretty nice day to paint.
Our much welcomed rain of the night before also produced a bumper crop of insects that found their way inside and dive bombed us as we attempted to go to sleep Friday night. We turned the lights back on, got out the flyswatters and got to work. Finally, we had eliminated most of them and were able to get some sleep. So, Saturday, after I finished the painting, I had piles of insects to sweep up and a floor to mop.
A cooler day meant I could use the oven without passing out. I was inspired to make taco pizza with my homemade crust, a job that takes about an hour of mixing, kneading, rising and baking. It was worth it.
Sunday morning the power went off, as it so often does on a Sunday morning, usually for some routine maintenance. Generally it is only off for a couple of hours. Don had just turned on the coffeemaker with our remote bedside switch when the power went off so only about 4 cups had dripped through. We learned later that this scheduled outage was expected to last about 6 hours and come back on around 11 a.m. We were thankful that our church has backup generators so the fans were running during worship. It was a hot, muggy, still day. Many people were also without water because the pumps couldn't run. It would not have done much good to have showered before church anyway; we were soon covered with sweat.
Lunchtime came and still no power. We usually go out to eat after church anyway and certainly wanted to this time. It's best to not open the refrigerator during a lengthy outage. We thought about who would have backup generators, be able to serve food and possibly be cool. The Hungry Monkey came to mind. They're located in West Bay, about 6 miles from our house. We were planning to go to the beach in West Bay anyway, as we usually do on a Sunday afternoon, so we got our swimsuits on, pulled on our coverup or shorts and shirt and set off. As we topped the long hill by the canopy tour, we were greeted with a spectacular view of the mountains on the mainland 40 miles away. We had never witnessed such a clear view of them before. It was truly breathtaking. Unfortunately, I did not have my camera with me.
I could have kicked myself!! Actually, my camera probably would not have been able to do it justice anyway - the distance is just too great.
The Hungry Monkey was open and cool, and we were happy to find some friends already there. After lunch, we made our way down to Infinity Bay to wait on the gang from church. Everyone was glad to spend the afternoon there, sitting in the shade, visiting, snorkeling, walking on the beach. There wasn't much of a breeze there either and still no power, but we made the best of it. Around 3:30, we heard a cheer erupt - the power had finally come back on, after 10 hours.
You learn to take these things in stride. I don't mean this to sound like a big complaint; these are just minor inconveniences which don't outweigh the joys of being here. All in all, we're pretty content.
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