Thirty-nine

Thirty-nine today. God I wish I had something to show for it.

Since it was my birthday Ali filled me up with pancakes and sausages. Then she took the kids out exploring so I could have some time to myselfto work on the boat. I dove right in on the rudder post, grabbing a pipe wrench and hammer to attack it with. I wasn’t especially confident that I’d be able to get the big nuts to crack, but with the first smack of the hammer on the wrench the nut moved. I tightened things up just a couple of turns and lo and behold the leak stopped dead. A true birthday miracle.

After that I finished my oil change and fired up the engine to test the new water pump. That’s when things got really crazy. I mean, it worked. No leaking, good water flow, normal engine temp, the works. This was shaping up to be the best birthday ever.

I turned my attention on my TackTick instruments next. Raymarine tech support finally contacted me after getting yelled at by the guy in charge of their Twitter account. Seems these days the only way to get anything done is through social media. Anyway, they shot me a note telling me to check the power. Okay, fair enough, tech support guys surely get a lot of stupid questions, so they start with stupid answers. Power? Check. Any other ideas? As a matter of fact they had another idea and replied to me quicklyredo the auto networking procedure. Okay, done. Nothing. No more e-mail replies for the day. Guess I wait until Monday now. I’m stoked.

Eventually it was time to turn my attention to the business at hand. The family returned and we got right down to itcupcakes. There was a buzz of excitement throughout the room as the cupcakes came off the assembly line. We raced through one rendition of Happy Birthday Papa, blew out a candle, and dove in. Before any of us had a bite Lowe had his face firmly planted into the top of his cupcake. He made no attempt whatsoever to eat the cupcake itselfall attention was paid directly to the frosting.

Later on in the afternoon we were planning to head down to Bucerias to play on the beach and grab some dinner. But when we started the whole, “Let’s get ready. Everyone get their lotion on and get dressed,” things took an ugly turn. At least once a day the house goes from this peaceful ideal of family life, to full-blown screaming mayhem. And once one of them starts screaming and crying over something the second one seems to take it upon themself to one up the other. Things quickly got out of control so we said screw it, and walked over to the miniature marina pool instead.

Could have been any day around here, but it was a birthday becausecupcakes.