Same shit, different day

Same shit, different day.  Same day, different shit.  Same shit, different drama.  I went to the doctor last Friday and my perforation is not healing like he thought.  He said to come back again in 2 weeks to see how it’s healing.  There would be an ear specialist on the island who could tell me more information.  The doctor wasn’t too optimistic, of course there is the language barrier, but he said that I might need surgery to have it fixed.  Really?  How can that be, I really am having a bit of bad luck.  I have one small little thing to do in the water to finish my dive masters training.  What do I do?  The surgery could work, but I only have 2 more months here.  Is it worth it to be here waiting?  I’m so bad with patience.  It’s the trouble of being an Aries girl.

So Robyn left.  Mo and I took her to the airport before I went to the doctors on Thursday.  The night before we had a bit of a dance party at Nova.  Robyn, Mo, Peter, Chase, Kala, Michael, Amanda, Conal, and Kala’s cousin and best friend that are in town and we went out to party the night away.  It was 80s night at Nova and we had a great time.  Good music and good dancing always makes a good goodbye party.  After the dancing we thought it would be a good idea to go to DMT2’s (that’s his nickname that even he doesn’t know that I made up) apartment in the woods, well it’s actually up malaria hill where I used to live and got malaria.  Is it bad when you like a guy’s house more than you like him?  I know he could tell at the beginning and I could too, but tried it anyway.  Well, it’s the cutest little top apartment.  Perfect cabin in the woods with everything minimal that you would need to survive comfortably.  Simple.  As the drinking, drama and shenanigans ensued; I fell asleep on the simple DMT2’s bed.  Well, as it was my roommate Pete didn’t come so I ended up not going home and staying in the comfortable bed.  An argument ensued between a best friend and a local dive master.  It’s so hard to communicate here, but on the same hand I’ve found amazing conversations almost every day.  People come from different backgrounds, they have different accents, different languages and different ways of communicating and more importantly everyone seems to dive so their hearing seems to be bad with all the build up and then at night we all go to these loud bars with local music or the iPod playing too loud.  And me, I hear half of what everyone says because of my ear infection or perforation now.  The infection is gone, but the hole remains.  But there are those beautiful moments where you meet someone and connect with them even if just for one of those small moments in time.  Well, the best friend and the local get into an argument about really I’m not quite sure, because remember I was sleeping?  I did wake up at a certain point, right in between the drama and could definitely identify with the best friend.  The local is a very good guy, but it was a bit like déjà vu.  A few months back the local and a few others and I were having a great Sunday at West Bay.  We watched the sunset, we had a few beers, we watched the crab races, and we watched the fire dancers and the local had too much rum.  The type of rum that makes his black eyes turn red and his normally sunny and nice disposition turn into looking for a fight.  He crossed a line with me and I put up my boundaries and then it became the type of drama that doesn’t go anywhere and can’t be fixed no matter what you do.  The next day sober, we made amends.  I’ve seen it again, with the local getting into pointless shit and having an argument.  I think the best friend and local worked it out later, but maybe not.  Well, the best friend and cousin went home and I stayed at the DMT2’s perfect cabin in the woods.

mo and me dancing

Since I don’t have to be at the shop at any particular time I was able to sleep in before taking Robyn to the airport with Mo.  DMT2 made some breakfast and then I went back to sleep for a few hours until I got a call from Robyn.  It was time for her to leave.  I went to the shop, found Mo and then we went to the airport.  It was bittersweet sitting around the airport with her until the last moment before she had to go through security.  As we were waiting, Kala, Chase and the best friend show up to pick up more of Kala’s Canadian gang.  Her parents and her sister and boyfriend were coming in.  Since Mo had driven the truck to the airport, we waited for the Canadian crew to go through Customs and drove them back to the Jenny Blenny House where they were staying in West End.  I stayed at the Jenny Blenny cabin with my mom when she was here.  Jenny is an amazing woman.  Blenny of course isn’t her last name remember?  She was a diver and great at finding the small stuff.  But then Jenny had a bit of an accident and can’t dive now.  It’s good to see how someone can survive on this island without diving, but at the same time I don’t want to be that survivor.  The Blenny House is much bigger than the cabins and an absolute retreat.  So beautiful, simple and looks out on the iron shore. 

Well, after Mo and I went to the doctors, we went to pick up their laundry and Mo looked at me and I started crying.  It’s already been 2 and a half weeks out of the water, now I’m looking at another 2 weeks and on top of that what if I have to wait even longer.  Remember I’m horrible with patience.  Mo said it could be much worse and I could be in the predicament of never diving again.  As my sober sister Anne says one day at a time.  Well, with all the random drama and shit on this island one of the saving graces for people is diving.  As Fish, the 44-year-old dive instructor, once told me how he moved down here and quit his corporate bullshit in America, diving for him was a release.  It’s the moment for 45 to 50 moments where you don’t have cell phones, you don’t have people telling you their bullshit, it’s just you and aside from the other people you are diving with (making sure that they are ok), the only thing you have to worry about is yourself.  After you get to a certain level of comfort with diving even the worrying leaves.  It’s just you, the water, the fish, the coral and the peaceful abundance around you.  Watching a parrotfish eat coral, watching the damselfish fight for their 2 inches of square feet from the blue tangs or any other fish that want to eat their beautiful garden, seeing the barracuda watch you from afar with his evil eye, finding something you have never seen before or an interaction between the fish such as mating or catching their lunch is a sight that calms me.  The water is refreshing.  Being a fire sign I’m attracted to the water, and it’s changing life, like a fire.  The stormy days are as good as the perfect days.  Sitting at the Beach House at Half Moon Bay on a beautiful day or watching the waves crash during a stormy day while sitting at the Blue Marlin makes me happy.  The beautiful days have been a little bit harder, because those are the days for diving.  The sun shinning off the crystal Caribbean Blue Ocean, the clarity underwater most likely being 100 feet or more unless it’s after a day of rain and run off.  The water temperature is perfect, refreshing escape from the heat from above.  Yes, I miss it a lot.

I even miss the fiascos of the new divers, the instructing the new divers, watching them breath underwater for the first time.  The person who gets so excited by discovering a new fish that maybe I’ve seen a thousand times before and remembering the feeling of the newness of the underwater adventure and creatures.  It brings back the feeling and the emotion and you get to enjoy their moment with them and connect with them on that feeling and experience.  It’s exciting.  Well, at the shop recently they had another bit of a fiasco.  An older German Canadian gentleman came to dive.  He has had a bit of trouble with sea sickness but is the type of person to get on the horse even after he has been bucked off more times than he can remember.  True perseverance.  Well, Mo led a refresher course for him and then they went diving.  It was a rough day in the sea.  It seemed as if a storm was coming or maybe going.  The waves were big and knowing your limits is the foundation of diving.  The gentleman and Mo and Michael took him for a dive, but immediately the gentleman felt the seasickness.  Being on the boat would be worse than underwater and there was another group with Chase diving.  The sea gives and takes when it wishes.  After the dive they surfaced and the waves were big and the gentleman hadn’t fully recovered from the sickness before they went down.  He was tired and sick and had to be towed back to the boat.  After the ride back he had to lie down and recuperate.  His lovely wife came by and just like all couples she was worried but angry with him for pushing his limits.  The next day at the Blue Marlin I found the gentleman and Mo having a conversation about what had transpired.  The gentleman is quite articulate and a very charming man.  He is learning to write, taking a course in writing and said that he was writing about his experience down below the ocean.  He was humble in his demeanor about what had happened and knew that the situation could have taken a turn for the worse.  Speaking with the gentleman was one of those conversations that make me happy being here and above the water.  The connection and sharing of ideas and values makes life beautiful.  The gentleman tried again a few days later with a different dive shop on a calm day and then decided to take another trip with Mo and Conal to try diving again.  Unfortunately through miscommunication or misunderstanding or misperception the gentleman again almost got into a life or death situation.  I’ve heard the story from a few different sources, but what I pieced together is that after going to the reef wall the gentleman started to descend.  He is open water diver and has a limit of the depth that he can go to.  He descended quickly as Mo and Conal then saw him he was already too far away to chase after.  Luckily Chase and Michael saw him after hearing the loud banging that Mo was doing to get the gentleman’s attention.  Chase and Michael were at a lower depth because they were diving with more advanced divers, including a woman named Kimberly who is an amazing diver and gem of a woman.  Chase and Michael put air in his BCD to stop his descent and then the gentleman regrouped with Mo and Conal and slowly surfaced.  The most important thing about diving is knowing your limits.  As you progress along the certification and become a more experienced diver you learn the slogan “Stop. Think. Act.”  A good slogan for life, unfortunately in life as well as in diving sometimes we act, think and then stop.  Neither progression is exact and will get you the results that you want, but to live by one of them especially when diving is a must.  But a lot of divers don’t live by it.  Not to get too philosophical, (oh man- tangent- all these philo prefixed words: philosophical, philander, philanthropic what does philo mean?  It’s love right?) Ok, not too philosophical but to live here or maybe anywhere you need a base to live by, you need rules and boundaries.  I think that might be why people get into religion, that’s why they get into relationships that maybe aren’t the best but stable, we constantly strive to find something that defines us, we put labels on ourselves and others so we aren’t so lost.  Maybe that’s why people also push their boundaries and their limits.  The question I find myself asking is it to find our limits or is it to be destructive?  Well, stop, think, act works for diving.  That is what Mo did as she was slowly descending knowing her own boundaries before pushing her limits while banging on her tank to get his attention to stop his descent.  Hopefully the gentleman will write about his experience and learn more about himself and his limits.  Writing is quite therapeutic, at least for me and at the moment it is my religion in this crazy beautiful fiasco of a paradise.

Another night with DMT2 and the next night was a complete shitshow.  During the day I did some philanthropic work, no I didn’t give money, but I did give my time.  Marcos, our boat captain, has a “wife” and an 8-month-old boy who has been in the capital Tegucigalpa because he has a kidney infection.  Marcos is one of the best boat captains on the island, but has had little education and although he understands English he has never mastered the language.  Marcos had told me a month ago about his wife and child and that they were getting treatment for infections, he also told me that they needed money for the private hospital.  He was unclear about what exactly his child needed.  The young boy has a bad infection in one of his kidneys.  He is too young for a transplant and they have been giving him treatment before the next step which is to remove the bad kidney and hope that the other will sustain him.  Well, I had asked over the weeks, but with dealing with my other shit I hadn’t heard too much about it until the day of philanthropic work.  Marcos had come to Dorte to ask for a loan for his child’s operation.  The information he had given Dorte was a bit of a mis-mesh.  It seemed he didn’t know the exact amount, what has been done, what needed to be done but he knew that he needed money that he didn’t have so that his baby would have a chance of surviving.  He came to Dorte, but the amount was more than was possible for one donation.  Well, in my experience you have to look at your options on a whole.  For me, I’m not one to give money to people on the street, I don’t adopt children in different countries, I don’t usually feed stray dogs, in general philanthropy for me is more about figuring out the problem first, finding a solution and then acting on it if it can be solved.  I don’t usually act without thinking before action is needed.  Stop, think and act has been within me for a while.  Well, Dorte and I figured that even though they couldn’t give the full amount there were other options, there are many other people here who would give even just $10 to help a child in need.  I spoke with Marcos (in Spanish of course) and told him our idea of going to the different dive shops and people who could donate even just $10 for his son to have the operation to remove the kidney.  The operation is to be next Thursday and half of the amount is needed so that the doctors will perform the surgery.  Marcos did not want to ask for money himself for his own reasons and Dorte and I stepped in to help.  I don’t mind asking for help for a child, especially someone I know.  We got the information from him and more from his wife and put together a flier and started asking people and telling the story.  It’s easy to find a cause, to find someone to help here.  It’s hard not to want to help the crack-head not to do crack or to give the little kid on the street money so that their life will hopefully be better.  But your pockets will drain and your emotions will soar when you see the crack head on the street later higher than a kite.  And you’ll think you have wasted your energy, time and money.  But for me this is different.  It’s Marcos, I have spent the last four months with him every day.  And even though I have my own thoughts and opinions about him, his baby deserves a chance and if I can help or put in some effort, in the end even if it doesn’t give the results I wish for at least I know that I have helped.  We already have a few donations that make the amount for the half of the deposit possible.  A chance, even though it might be futile is available with a little work.

Later in the day, a bit exhausted from translating and working my brain and emotions I had a great conversation with Kimberly.  Kimberly is from Colorado, she lives up near Vail and is an artist.  She bought a house down here a few years back and is fortunate to come down here for a few months a year.  This is her escape, but because of things back at home she has been struggling to find her peace here.  To connect with another person, to hear their story and how they got to where they are at right now is a beauty in life.  Kimberly is an amazing diver, from what I hear, although I haven’t been able to dive with her since I’ve had my ear issues.  Kimberly and I were talking about life and relationships (what else is there really to talk about J) and she said to me “Same shit, different day”.  A connection, a yes, I know that feeling, a light bulb went off.  The feeling here, the shit, the drama on the surface and being out of the water has hit me hard.  Figuring if I stay or if I go.  While talking with Kimberly, Chase and Conal run past in a blur.  They had been in West Bay with the Canadian crew all day drinking.  They invited me to Kala’s for dinner.  I say my goodbye to Kimberly and head off to the Jenny Blenny house where the swirl of chaos is brewing.

The Canadian crew are a blast.  They are warm and friendly, sharing, caring all those good qualities you would expect from Canadians.  But from drinking all day and me being stone cold sober it was a bit of a whirl.  Fish was there, drunker than I’ve ever seen him.  It was a sad moment when he told me that he had been broken into the night before.  He had lost his prized scooter, his transportation, his way to travel.  Other things had been stolen as well, but I think he was most upset about his scooter.  In his drunken moment he said to me in so many words that he was sad that we had ended our adventure together.  But I told him in a non-negative way that it was his decision.  Does everything happen for a reason or is it just circumstance?  I had been chatting with my good friend Megan that day about how I might be coming home sooner rather than later.  She said that maybe it was meant to be, maybe it was supposed to happen this way.  It gave me something to think about for sure.  Well, Fish left and the crew started the journey down to the bars.  I was in the mood not to drink, to get myself as healthy as possible, but my roommate Pete was nowhere in sight with the keys to the house.  I had seen him earlier and exchanged the keys with him.  I told Pete that I might be going back sooner rather than later to Colorado and he told me that he is planning on going back to Boulder as well to get his apartment situated.  We could be back in Boulder together, which would be a trip and hopefully I could get him to love Boulder again.  Pete has said that he is leaving the island multiple times and has packed his bags and gone to the airport a couple of times only to see him later in the day drinking a beer because he has missed his flight.  I adore Pete, one of my best friends on the island for sure.  I don’t watch the tv show Lost that much, but what I have seen reminds me a bit of this island.  Is it an island thing or a life thing.  Of course there is the running joke about Lost that you are lost when you watch it, but the more you get into it the more you figure stuff.  Truly brilliant writing.  And from what I remember it’s hard to get off the island, people keep on returning or never actually leaving.  Kinda like here.  Not all who wander are lost.

The drama of relationships and misunderstandings came out that night.  Everyone I interacted with was in a weird mood.  It was interesting because earlier I had told Kimberly that being here I found so many beautiful connections and conversations.  I guess the off night is meant to be once in a while.  Like someone told me recently when I was telling them about my bad day, they said but the bad days make the good days so much better.    Wow, in the whole philo state of things; I think I might be more of a philosopher more than a philanderer or philanthropist.  Oh wait, is a phila different than a philo.  I should have taken Latin in high school.  I saw DMT2 who was completely in a different mood.  Granted, I don’t really know him, but he was at the bar with no shirt and sunglasses on in the middle of the night.  Same shit, different day.  He says to me I’m going home alone tonite.  Ok, all night long I wished I had found Pete so I could go home.  Apparently he was at home, sleeping.  I should have just knocked on the door and he would have let me in.  Well, other people’s drama got a bit too much and then I found Mr. 2.  Remember him?  I had kissed him a few months before, a truly amazing guy who when my best friend came to visit told me that I should date him.  Well, Mr. 2 was my saving grace that night, my buoy.  As soon as I saw him I had someone who I could have a good conversation with, a good vibe with minimal to no drama.  Besides of course the attraction which I’m still not sure that I want to delve into because shitty drama with other people it was good.  Well, my safety stop conversation with Mr. 2 helped me decompress and then my Pete came to the bar.  I love Pete and Mo.  The three of us are a little island.  Good conversation, good vibes, good times.  Even in bad moods or off days we can connect and love one another. 

mo and pete dancing like rockstars

The next day, DMT2 and I went to West Bay for a philanthropic event, a fundraiser for the Marine Park.  It was their 5^th year anniversary.  We met up with Rita and Fou.  Two other gems on the island and had a good day.  Later at the Blue Marlin with DMT2 asked me if I want to go to another bar with him to hit on girls that he had met and I say, actually that’s a little out of my comfort zone he tells me that he thinks I’m really great but he just doesn’t feel it.  Of course, not.  Again, I liked the idea of the house more than the substance.  Ouch, that was harsh but at least he was honest and I was honest too.  Same shit, different day.  After he left to flirt, I caught up with Rita and had a great conversation and as she’s getting her pizza delivered the guy delivering it tells her that he wants to marry me.  The pizza guy works at the pizza shop next to Tyll’s Dive.  I am the first girl to say that he is a nice guy and that he wants to marry me.  Of course he wants to marry me, and I’m sure that it will be a wonderful life and lasting relationship.  Does the sarcasm come through in my writing, because that sentence was dripping in sarcasm, after all he is an islander.  Then I found Pete at Nova.  As I was hugging Pete a friend of his comes up to hug him and accidently punches me in my left ear, the ear that doesn’t have a perforation.  Ouch, but I’m fine.  Sometimes you just need a good punch or a good nights sleep which is what happened after that.

So the job at the Argentinean is off for the moment.  They can really only do on call work.  I talked to Mystery Guy, who still is so yummy, and his brother owns a local dive shop that is looking for an office manager.  Since I’m out of the water and quite good at managing an office it might be the perfect opportunity until I decide what exactly I’m going to do.  Should I stay or should I go now? 

Tonite I’m doing a much needed girls night with Amanda; a bottle of wine, a movie and good conversation.  She’s an Aries like me, her birthday is the day after mine and if willing I’m still here by then we will have a birthday party with Max whose birthday is the same as mine.  Max has a long list of birthday presents- motorcycle, plane, bicycle, water scooter, a watch- well he is going to be 3 so he can want all those things and still be happy with just toys.  For me, I’d love to be able to stay, to dive and to get job.  It’s not like I’m asking for an airplane.