Work was such bullshit today. I get in trouble with Nathan for saying such things, but when the shoe fits… I can’t keep your faults bottled up inside me.
We are looking forward to our next Caribbean vacation, even more so after today’s malarkey. Thank you … you know who you are.
I walked the dog before dinner and then finished prepping our dinner, and we sat down to our evening of old folks’ Rick Steve’s Monday Night Travels.
This didn’t use to be a thing. Spending Monday nights revolved around a viewing of Rick Steves on Zoom … which we know we are at least a decade too young to enjoy. But the pandemic made us wanting more exposure to places… places near and wide, and roughly Memorial Day 2021, when we were barely vaccinated and weren’t planning to travel anywhere, we started watching this RS Zoom thing, and as they say, the rest is history.
Actually, I’ve tried to cut us off from this ‘habit’ as it were, but Nathan is the one more tied to the boomer showing of MNT Rick Steves. He is, after all, 6 months older than me, (and it shows!).
So, after a day (only a day!) where I’m sitting there counting the days/hours until we travel again, I was thinking of some of the amazing memories we have had from before this blog was in place.
2014 – Oysters on the beach out of a bucket? Yes, please.
It was only after work bullshit of a different kind back in 2014, that I learned to even like oysters. I had visited my sister-in-law and bestie Donna back in Silverlake, CA after some major upheaval at my first accounting job. She and her husband Josh took me in, right after my birthday, and exposed me to all sorts of unthinkable experiences. Oysters, Uni, yes! …Who am I?
And so I was able to pass on these experiences to Nathan on the beach of the Dominican Republic. What makes you feel comfortable enough to eat oysters out of a bucket on the beach? No idea. But there are a few things I’m so happy about that I did in situ, rather than looking back on, and this is one of them. I’d venture to guess most people with a Master’s in Public Heath, Bachelors’s in Microbiology, and emphasis in Food Safety don’t do, and that is eat oysters on the beach, out of a bucket. I’m so happy I did.
2014 – The Jungle man who cooks lobster! Yes, please.
We’ve been to the Dominican Republic two times, both in 2012 and 2014. In 2012, some experiences happened to us, and we were too green to capture the essence of it with photography. So, two years later we went back to see if we could capture what we missed. And without skipping a beat, everything about Las Terrenas, welcomed us with open arms as if we had never left and the passage of time was still.
This jungle man served lobster on the same beach in 2012 and 2014. Did we expect him there two years later? No. But was I prepared with phrases that start with “Hace dos anos…?” A wholehearted yes.
At the end of the week, new experiences will envelop us. We will be on a beach, in a different country, and will welcome the new experiences with wide open arms. Because this, this here at home, is NOT what it’s all about.