Gifts

For Valentine’s Day Michael got me a new alternator, a freezer, and some type of supersonic antifouling paint for the propeller (Propspeed).  Isn’t that romantic?

You may be laughing, but a better alternator equals more power and more power equals more hot water, more juice for the microwave and access to a blow dryer on those emergency hair days when my curls come out making me look like a wack job.  Who’s laughing now? This guy has been toiling in the boatyard through cold winter weather and I do appreciate it. He will have to blog for accuracy at some point, but I’m pretty sure he added new galley drawers, installed a redundant auto-pilot, and constructed a freezer from scratch so far.

I baked banana muffins from scratch yesterday. That’s a joke, but also true. I’m also working on the medical kit, excel sheets to organize our lives and the major project of selling and/or giving away our remaining stuff to Goodwill. Admittedly, it will be mostly pink and blue tasks until March, but I plan to get down and dirty with the hull antifouling paint, sail and engine maintenance and a slew of other testosteroney projects then.  

Here’s a tangent, but if you’re patient I will circle back.  When I was little, I really liked rhinoceroses. Truly, I was obsessed with rhinoceroses and I maintained a rather large collection of the real-to-me replicas to boot.  Regarding my unrequited love for these prehistoric-looking mammals, my mother used to say, “That’s a face only a mother (meaning me, their adoptive mother) could love.” At the time, this made me feel sort of proud because to me it meant my love was apparently stronger than run-of-the-mill kid love.  My love was “mother love.”  

Fast forward thirty years and sprinkle this little memory with a whole lot of perspective and I could write a book right here if I had the time.  But instead, I’m just gonna tell you what the best gift for your mom is if you decide that you want to do a prolonged sail one day. Drum roll please . . . an Iridium Go, because “mother love” is that kind that requires a good connection when you’re stuck in the middle of the ocean, whether your ocean is the big blue one or some other massive thing.  Honestly, I thought we were buying it for us to reach them, but we may have gotten it backward. Or did we? No matter, she is very, very happy with this product!