Take Your Vitamins......

Oh Bequia!

A guy down the road had a heart attack recently.  He didn't make it.  That's the thing here.  It's all fine and dandy when you're chowing down on mangos and getting sand out of the crotch of your bather bottoms.  But when shit hits the big one - it's a long way to The States.  Even to Barbados - where they have a much greater capacity to stop you from kicking the bucket early, it's a mission - the plane schedule isn't exactly encouraging.  Basically you're rooted.  So in other words.  Try not to die.

Oh Kirsty!

That news would have freaked me out when we first started travelling with our three month old bundles of cuteness.  I was right onto it with hospital addresses and Western style doctors every place we went.  But you get slack.  With anything.  Take this blog for example - I'm slacker than the waist-band of Kirsty Alley's old tracksuit pants after Jenny Craig threatened to take off the payroll if she didn't stop burying her face in burgers.  And I know she wears tracksuit pants, because I saw her once in Paris.  It was at the Ritz while we were scoping what the mega rich get up to.  You have to just have a tiny look at the Ritz when you're in Paris, the building is beautiful  - or perhaps you could buy a cup of tea for 50 euros in the dining room and fake your ability for ostentatious spending.

I'll take the presidential suite thanks

A $500 glass of champagne for me please

Just a comb Kirsty, just a comb

Anyway, I saw Kirsty and her daughter standing in the doorway as we sat down.  Time had not been kind.  She was wearing filthy black stretched out tracksuit pants that looked like a homeless person had dug them out of a Kmart reject bin 50 years ago.  The stains were obviously food related - I didn't doubt that she'd cut sick on the room service, ate it in bed and then dragged herself down to the dining room for extra croissants.  The hair was pretty feral.  In fact ferals themselves have better hair than Kirsty did that day.  Look, it's her life she can obviously do what she wants (and does).  But seriously - you're at the Ritz in PARIS.  For god's sake cover that mess with a beret...or something.  Unfortunately I had my back to her over lunch but I kept asking for updates on what she was doing from Chalks - so I wouldn't appear too much like a stare bear.  He got so sick of my questions that he told me that she was eating her soup by faceplanting it.  I actually twisted my neck trying to get a look.

But back to my now nonchalance about medical services.  Sometimes I did find it inconvenient before the kids came along not to be able to just pop off to the old family doctor for all my woes.  It was always a mission to sort out medical help - language, location, actually getting there.  Not to mention the expense.  I once got charged nearly $400 to see a doctor for 10 minutes in a hospital in NYC.  The accounts lady actually apologised for the US medical system and advised me that if I asked to get billed rather than paying on the spot, they would never chase it up.  Thanks love.  Therefore, I rarely sought the advice of the anatomically gifted.  Could have needed it on occasion though.  It's like beauty treatments.  Sometimes you just say fuck it and wax your own stray pubes.  I would NEVER recommend this by the way.  Once I tried to brighten my teeth with a homemade mouthwash made from hydrogen peroxide.  Yep, I wouldn't go there either.  Unless you enjoy having about 30 ulcers on the under side of your tongue.  I think I swirled just that minute too long.  Actually a visit to the doctor would have been a good idea there, but I was in Iceland on a road trip, and it just wasn't happening for me.  It was an excruciating experience.  Really truly bad.  In fact possibly worse than childbirth, because it lasts for days and you can't eat or speak.  Has anyone ever tried to talk by not moving their tongue.  Test it out.  That is, if mild retardation is your thing.  I grew tired of the jokes, and as Chalks from that day onwards always refers to our passports as "Carscorts", that memory of agony refuses to fade.   I constantly took Panadol Fortes for 4 days to deal with it, and ate only yogurt by tipping it down the back of my throat with a small spoon.

I'm fully aware this is disgusting - note the left side

Bequia - and more to the point the stunning property we get to live in, we thought, is worth the risk of not having access to everything you may imagine you need.  We decided when we first came here that never for one second were we going to have a situation where one of us wasn't watching the pool.  Basically it's an unfenced death trap for toddlers.  Chalks did a CPR course - and I actually don't think they even have a ambulance here.  But even if they do - the destination doesn't not exactly inspire confidence.  Basically we are just counting on everything going right.  But sometimes it doesn't.

Unfenced deathpit

I was out for a run one evening.  I'd driven our car to the other side of the island where I can run in peace without people staring at me and cars beeping.  Someone tried to high five me out of a moving van window one day - I find that kind of thing annoying.  I like to be alone to concentrate on my pain.  Anyway as I drove back from town I was flagged down by one of the local taxi drivers who informed me "Valli be in the hospital".  It's not exactly the news you welcome when you're dealing with your own self inflicted heart attack.  The hospital was about 100 metres away so I high-tailed it in there.  And there was my little baby sitting on Chalks knee having blood washed off her head.  She'd taken a fall off a stool and freakishly landed straight on her head and straight on her hair elastic.  Again freakishly, the hair elastic made a tiny puncture in her scalp.  Apparently it bled alot.  Head injuries always do.  She got all dizzy and insisted on lying down, I wasn't there, Chalks had no car, so he called a taxi to take him to the hospital.  After cleaning her head, the nurse said that the little puncture was an issue and needed the attention of the doctor - who was watching TV at home, about 30 metres up the road.  What was also disturbing was that Valli was saying that she couldn't see properly - that everything was blurry.

Just not inspiring confidence

It's in the basement you see there....

So off we went to the doctor.  His office was in the basement of his falling apart house.  The entry was filled with boxes of half-unpacked medical supplies, and there were old faded Christmas decorations on the walls.  He took a look at the wound and checked Valli for concussion.  This was after informing us that he "Trusts God first, and this (gestures to medical tool) second"  I began to wonder if he had actually attended medical school or it was just his night job outside the church.  Apparently it was just a reasonably mild case of concussion, but he still advised us not to go to sleep that night.  Instead we were advised to watch her all night in case she started bleeding from her nose or ears.  Comforting.  He offered to put her in the hospital for the night - but honestly after seeing the place I felt safer at home.  He said that head wounds can infected easily here, and put her on antibiotics to prevent meningitis.  Again, comforting.  We debated what to do.  Try and get our arses to The States the next day?  Well, we couldn't do anything about that night.  I didn't sleep much, and I kept waking Valli up to make sure she actually could. I had the "Doctor" on speed dial - his business card consisted of a large religious quote across the top and a phone number.

The offender

Watch out for chickens

Of course she was fine.  It's just when these things happen, you can't help but imagine the worst.  Who would have thought that a hair toggle could do that.  Seriously?  After later research we discovered that apparently heaps of kids have got brain damage and skull fractures from hair accessories.  So there you go everyone, there's a new thing to worry about.  Forget broken limbs on playground equipment  and getting all the skin scraped off after particularly bad bike accidents.  Or how's this one - my Mum once dropped a frozen chicken on my baby sisters head at Coles.  She bawled her eyes out - my Mum, not my sister.  She thought she'd damaged my sister for life....and we haven't ruled it out yet - she's one of those people that asks you a question every 5 seconds during a movie.  Anyway, also forget rock hard poultry - now you have to consider the possibility that a hair elastic could permanently fuck your kid's head up.  Flowing locks never looked so good.  But for us, it was of course a happy ending - we just had to keep her quiet for a couple of days (almost impossible), and there was no TV or electronic devices for 2 weeks on the doctor's orders......

Now that was the worst news of all.........

I love you my darling

Why Do I Do It?

Love them so much....in a photograph

There is one hyphenated word that is more delightful than a rainbow coloured unicorn dipped in white chocolate.  And that glorious term is pre-school.  We are currently in the middle of a pre-school life revolution and those sunrises have never looked better.  Monday is my new favourite day, while Friday sees the need for alcohol and prescriptions.  I am also making future plans so that the child monarchy will never come back to cripple me once again with slavery.  Schools in.  Forever.  And it's a unbridled street festival of slackery.   Life is ace.  Who cares if they cry at the gate?  A few strong shakes of the leg, the grip is loosened,  we're freeeeeeeeeee.  "Love you Mum....."  "Yeah, yeah, whatevs.....bye".  They do look adorable in their uniforms though.

Those smiles turn to howls at the school gate

And with school, comes school activities.  I have already been to a parent teacher meeting and sponsored a walk-a-thon.  But what this update is really about is my first school excursion.  Growing up in Tasmania, school excursions weren't exactly trips to see real dinosaur bones at the New York Museum of Natural History, or a journey to Buckingham Palace.  I think I've mentioned the trips to the Hobart Museum, - some dusty models of a Tassie Tiger and an Aboriginal family in a canoe.  Then there was the typical annual visit to see the puppet show version of Peter And The Wolf, and on special occasions, a trip to Farm-a-rama where a morbidly obese man forced us all to walk through the battery hen sheds.  That smell.  Those worn away feathers on the chicken's necks. Puts you off your eggs.  But let me tell you something though - I would rather go to a showing of Peter And The Wolf performed by battery hens at the Hobart Museum than go on the excursion I endured last Monday.  I should never have piped up with a "Sure, I could come" when pressured at the parents meeting the Thursday before.  It was all my fault.  But I was just trying to get one of the teachers to like me after an inadvertent and unfortunate accusation of change pocketing.

Cruz attacks from the front

I was dreading it.  My life of leisure rudely interrupted by actually having to leave the house.  I considered making excuses about some commitment I had - basically impossible to think of something....hmmmm, had to eat an mango, or had to pick some leaves out of the pool.  Maybe - had to watch the night before's Game of Thrones.......I just wasn't coming up with anything viable.  The housekeeper would know it, and then tell the teachers I was faking.  Her grandson goes to the same school - he was the only guest at Valli and Cord's party last year.  Here's an interesting thing I found out - apparently he is so fat that he can't physically reach around to wipe his own bottom.  That's an issue.  Let's hope he gets on top of that before the teenage awkward years set in.  I also thought about pulling a sickie, but again with the being sprung.  I'm too gutless to take the heat.  I have an insatiable need to be a popular parent.

In the end, I decided to bite the bullet and hope that at least I could get a blog entry out of the whole experience.  I wasn't expecting it to be good - a trip to the unfinished airport and a swim at a black sand beach on the next island - The "Mainland" - St Vincent.  But it was actually far far worse than I imagined.  As far as a good blog entry goes, I'm clutching at straws, but let's give it a bash anyhows.

Cordi is disturbed, while Valli's perturbed by all the chucking

I had to get up at 5.30 to get out shit together so as to make the 6.30 ferry from Bequia to St Vincent.  I didn't take much food considering we were told their was a cafeteria there.....or were we?  When we stopped to pick up our housekeeper and her grandson I noticed she had an esky of food she had cooked for the trip.  Ok, then.  I had a box of cut pineapple, a mango, 2 apples, some cheese and some crackers.  Surely we'd be right....with the lunch cafeteria and all........All aboard we climbed, and off went the ferry.  As we pulled out of the harbour one of the shipmates handed out small black plastic bags.  "Are these for rubbish?"  I asked.  "No, they be for vomit".  I see.   Due to the recent rainy weather, the sea was extremely rough.  It was actually kind of scary.  And before I knew it, all the school kids were heave ho-ing into the bags.  The teachers were filling theirs to the brim, and some little shit chundered all down his mother's arm while she was trying to eat a sandwich.  Nice.  Valli, Cordi and I were the only ones that didn't join the chorus of calls to Bert.

Eventually we arrived in St Vincent's port, and all the parents chucked their bags of sick in the bins.  We were told there was a wait for the buses.  This ended up being a two hour wait.  And there was no cafes, shops, anything.  Basically we sat in the ferry's waiting room while all the parents and kids pigged out on pizza, oily meat roll ups and chips at quarter to eight in the morning.  When I broke out the pineapple, all the surrounding pizza eaters were into that too.  But after that 2 hour delay, the buses arrived and we were on the road.  But before we took off, our housekeeper - who was the self appointed tour guide had everybody shut their eyes and say a prayer.  This little shout-out to the Lord, kicked off a day-long bus sing-a-long, dedicated to Jesus.  At least I now know why the girls keep saying "Jesus, loves me - yes I know!!!" all the time.  More food was brought out - thick white bread sandwiches with that orange fake cheese seemed to be a popular choice for one and all.

This valley was a stop off and a highlight

The initial highlights of the trip were, the girl's high school, the bank, an oval and KFC and Pizza hut.  When the last two "sights" were announced the whole bus broke out in cheers.  The first stop off at the unfinished "new" airport wasn't exactly bringing the thrills.  Basically some dirt and some excavators.  I can see that on the block next door.  I decided not to get out of the bus.  We saw some cows, and a field of peanuts.  I declined to take any photos.  Then at last we were there. At the beach.  All I saw were a couple of gazebos, a toilet block, and most importantly no cafeteria.  I had already discovered through trial and screaming that I'd accidentally purchased "wasabi" flavoured rice crackers.  So they were useless.  We we settled into the gazebo and the call went out - "It be time for lunch".  It was 10.45am.  Lunch was a no holes barred piggery of pizza, chips, cold fried chicken and more fake cheese sandwiches.  I gave Valli and Cordi everything I had, and ate the left-overs- so basically my lunch consisted of 2 apple cores and sucking on a mango pip.  Plus, I certainly was no popular parent.  It's hard for me to chat with the mothers seeing as we have absolutely nothing in common.  Plus I just for the life of me can't understand a word they are saying.  Hence thinking I didn't have to bring any lunch.

Yes Cord - we are spending 6 hours here

Before the mystery attack

Then it was time for a swim.  I wasn't holding out much hope, but there was a large rock pool by the shore.  It was actually quite nice.  I was enjoying standing around in my bathers being ignored.  Then suddenly the teacher screamed "Mother of our Holy Lord, get out of the WATER".  She bolted out grabbing Valli under one arm, and some other brat under another.  All the rest of the kids and parents started stampeding for the shore screeching their heads off.  "What in the name of the Good Man Above was that Aunty Glenis?  A crab".  "That be no crab Aunty Neva.  Praise the Lord whatever it was didn't take my foot off, I felt it's mouth".  Well that broke up the party a bit.  After that everybody lingered in water about 3cm deep until someone's kids laid a cable in the water and it broke up and floated out towards everyone.  It was well and truly over after that.  We all went back to the gazebos, everyone brought out the chocolate biscuits and the giant packets of cheese puffs, and we all waited two and a half hours for the buses to come back and get us.  The highlight for me were the two trips to the toilets.  They were very clean.

The bloody black sand got into every fibre of our bathers

The gazebos of boredom

Finally we were back on the bus.  Out came the food again.  Cheese dippers, Tupperware containers of last night's fried chicken and more sandwiches.  We were driving along when suddenly someone screamed out "HE'S GOT CORN".  The bus pulled to a screeching halt in the middle of the main road and all the ladies leaned out their windows and started yelling at the man by the side of the road selling blackened corn "I want one of dem two dollar pieces,  one of dem four dollar pieces, two of dem three dollar pieces - pack dem separate ok".  The bus driver keeps nearly being killed in the on-coming traffic while ferrying corn and money back and forward over the road.  I wanted some, but couldn't get a word in edgewise.  The corn was all gone.  Luckily someone took pity on my and gave me a piece.  Usually I hate that dry shit, but due to starvation it tasted like caramel ice-cream with chocolate sauce.  My teeth were filled with charcoal.  I cared not.

Then the bus pulled into KFC and all the ladies were out stocking up on giant buckets of chicken and chips, which they carried on board the boat for the return journey.  We were an hour early.  So we sat there.  Out came the food again - this time, Kentucky fries, giant bags of marshmallows, bags of chocolate bars, mixed lollies, and corn chips.  They were all passed around.  Valli and Cordi - who rarely eat crap, were losing their loads.  And finally the boat started it's engines, the vomits bags came out and everyone puked the day's pigout back up on the journey home.

A puke over the side perhaps?

My only saviour

I have never been more happy to spot Chalky waiting for me on the harbour at 5.30pm, after what had been a twelve hour ordeal.  The only thought that had got me through the day's trauma was thinking of the downloaded episode of Game of Thrones that should be waiting for me.  Unfortunately it wasn't on last week.  Lord have mercy.........At least I could eat again.  Chalks and I have often wondered what on earth people eat around here that makes the majority of them morbidly obese.  Well after today I was able to announce with certainty that it isn't just what people were eating, it's the sheer volume of it.  But then again they did vomit it back up on the way home.  A sort of unintentional bulimia I guess.   One thing is for sure - they have no monitoring of their own, or their kid's diets around here (says the uptight, anal, and hungry whitey with a superiority complex).  This is further accentuated by the stalls of candy and soft drinks that people set up outside the gates of all the school.  It's like the good old days of the 70s and early 80s in Australia.  Before mother's groups fucked up all our tuckshops by banning cream buns, mixed lollies and choc-wedges.  Anyway, there's only one more month of school to go before the summer holidays.  Surely I won't have to be involved in anything else......Help me.......Jesus.

Nothing will make me leave here again.....