Ethan’s Journey

 Ethan had his biopsy today. We arrived at the hospital at 7:00 am. They took Ethan back and had me wait in the waiting room. Ethan was nervous that they were going to make him do this procedure with anesthesia. He did NOT want this. Once his IV was in, he was in a gown and had signed his consent forms, they had me join him. There was a question about on of the medications he was taking. It was a newer medication that Ethan had forgotten the name of. No wonder, it was hydrochlorothiazide. Say that three times fast. Once it was time to take Ethan to the biopsy room, I headed straight for the cafe. It was after 9 am and I was hungry. I got a sandwich for Ethan when he was done, and one for myself. I sat at a table in the cafe, pulled out my computer and started working. I heard a song playing. Hey…I know that song! It was my phone ringing. “Strong Hospital” was calling. Oh god! That can’t be good. I answered it just in time for the person to hang up. Damn it!!!!!! As I was trying to ...

 I called the surgical center for our appointment time for tomorrow. 7:00 am! When I shared that with Ethan, he was annoyed at first, but quickly followed up with “that means we will get to leave sooner in the afternoon.” He put a positive spin on it! That made my day. We see progress continuing with his outlook and mood. I have a few positive things I am taking away. 1. We don’t have to drive 6 hours for this and invite all the expenses associated with that. 2. I can work while we are waiting but still be present. 3. Ethan will get to hang out with me all day….who wouldn’t want that? I am already working on my annoying jokes that I can tell him. I had my day of punishment today. Punished for going on vacation. 160 emails I had to sort through. Ugh! My alarm is ready for tomorrow. Bag is packed, we are ready!

 We had happy dogs today! They were so glad to have their people home.  I saw Ethan quite briefly as he was leaving to go with his buddy to a car event. He came home mid day and said he had fun. I did a training session with Moe. We only have 2 sessions left. One of the sessions is a test. We will both be graded. I am grading us on the pride I have in Moe. He has done well. He also has to come even further…but that will give us something to work on.  Paul and I did boring chores today to catch up from being away. I even emptied the dishwasher which is my most hated chore.  Tomorrow is going to be intense, but I think I am ready to tackle the day. 

  We woke up early to make sure we got to the airport with plenty of time. I am not going to miss the hair pin turns with potholes and the panicked opposite side of the road AND opposite side of the car driving. It took about an hour and a half to get to the airport. We went through TSA with no issue.  We boarded the plane by walking outside and going up the steps of the rear of the plane. Bye bye, beautiful turquoise water, blooming flowers and warm sunshine! We landed in JFK without incident. It was grey. No turquoise waters. No sunshine. We found that our flight to Rochester had been delayed for an hour. Ugh! We went through customs and then had to go through security again at JFK. Each one of the guys had purchased spiced rum at the Duty Free store in St. Lucia. Each one of the guys had their carry on flagged due to the purchase. I was the only lucky girl that got felt up by the TSA agent. They had to touch my entire body looking for contraband. They found none. We killed ...

 Today we had beautiful weather! We decided to have a pool day overlooking the beach. This way we could still keep our drinks cold, not worry about our things on the beach and no people trying to sell us stuff. We had some good tunes and good drinks. The beach had some seaweed wash up a couple days ago. Last night Paul and I walked to the beach and it smelled yucky. No thanks. We were visited by a few different types of birds. There are a lot of doves here. They sound like mourning doves but they aren’t. Anna came back with a partner and for 2-3 hours prepared an authentic carribean meal. She had chicken with a spicey chili sauce, corn on the cob, salad, veggie kabob’s, and creamy macaroni and cheese. Yum! They don’t really seem to have many sweets here. There was a pumpkin pie option stuffed with tuna and tomato’s which sounded NASTY 🤮. Everything Anna made, was delicious. She had the table set all fancy. We cleaned up after dinner and sat around chatting for a bit. We decided to...

 Well we are down two more shoes. The boys were not careful last night and left their flip flops out. Paul is down a flip flop and Seth is down a sandal. They were both pissed. They were both cussing the mongrul dog that took their shoes. Brian came today. Brian is the gardener. We shared with Brian how we are down two more shoes with a total of 4 shoes missing that the dogs took. Brian took a walk and started looking for the shoes.  About a half hour later he came back with two shoes. One was the match to Seth’s sandal. The other was a lady shoe that belonged to none of us. Apparently this dog takes shoes and clothes a lot. Brian went back and looked again. He came back with A shoe of Janice’s. He also found the match to Paul’s flip flop.  Brian became an instant LEGEND! Not only did they share a beer with him, Brian got a nice bottle of expensive rum as a thank you gift. Brian then shared a few things with us about his upbringing, how long he has been working for the fa...

 Today we had our super fun boat tour. Because the sun rises and sets about every 12 hours, we are finding that we are waking up fairly early. We made it to the place we were supposed to meet our tourguide. We were a little late due to not being able to find parking. We drove all around looking for a place to park as the instructions were not overly clear. I did have to hop out at one point and ask the locals for help. They were kind and pointed us in the right direction. We got on the boat and sat next to a family originally from Hungary, but lived in Boston. We also had a couple from Denver and a family from North Carolina. We traveled along the west coast of St. Lucia to see large mountains on the coastline with smaller towns nestled in the bay areas.  We traveled to Soufriere to see the Toraille waterfall. This was a land and sea tour. We met up with our driver, Alex. As we loaded into the van he had, Heather grabbed the seat up front because she gets car sick. As she went...

 We slept in today. When we woke up it was warm. We were in the pool by 9:00 am. Today was pool day. We could see the beach had lots of seaweed wash up.  The sun was in and out offering reprieve from the glaring warm temperatures. The pool was refreshing. We did lots of applying and reapplying of sun screen.  Later in the afternoon, Janice and I went to check out the beach. Yes, it was still gross with smelly seaweed washed up. We headed down to a rocky area to look for shells, sea glass, and anything else interesting. We found lots of coral, a sea sponge that we touched (it was soft). There were very few shells. The shells we did find had stuff living in it. We also found lots of debris. It seems like a dirty island with discarded trash everywhere. We ended up going to dinner. Most places close for dinner around 6 pm. We finally figured out that lunch is their major meal. Dinner is more like lunch is for us in the USA. We are ate at a place that overlooked one of the shi...

 I woke up early this morning and was able to watch the sunrise. I made coffee and sat out by the pool alone. The sun was dancing across the sky. Some guy stopped us as we were walking. He told Paul that he watched a movie last night and he was wondering if Paul was the actor in the movie. The movie was called Drop. We figured out later that the guy thought Paul was Ed Weeks.  Today I planned a day of excursions. Our first stop was the Latille Falls and Fish Spa. To get there, we drove on crappy roads that were narrow with multiple curves every second.  The drivers here like to be risky. They pass you on hair pin turns and we hold our breath each time as they escape a head on collision by fractions of a second. You can tell they are natives because they have different license plates than foreigners do. We arrived and were greeted by a man that shared with us all of the plants he has planted. He had multiple types of mango trees, but they weren’t in season. We meandered to...