You Dirty Rat

As I suspected I've still got a RAT so my poison pellet pucks didn't do the job.  I'm throwing in the towel.  On Monday I'll call the city rat officer and an exterminator.  *sigh*  And I thought I was doing so well in my fight against the RAT.  I hate when vermin is (are?) smarter than me.



I went to the parade and saw wonderful things.  I met DS and OJ there, actually I went early to find and reserve us a spot right on the curb.  I was warmly dressed and found a sunny spot and we had a blast.  There were beauty queens and giant balloons,

a giant shopping cart and vintage tractors,


 




the Peanuts gang,


 


a hawk from the wildlife sanctuary (and a bald eagle flying overhead that I did not get a picture of),








and Santa himself at the end.  We were near the end of the route so there wasn't a lot of candy tossed to the kids but OJ got some and LC got some too when she and DIL1 arrived from being in the parade.  !!!  LC is a Daisy scout so her troop walked with a bunch of others.  Too much fun.


Seeing the Salvation Army float reminded me to get online when I got home to schedule a bell ringing time.  I picked noon on Christmas Eve.  A couple years ago I went over to the store without being scheduled and rang the bell.  The store is a mad house on the 24th and I got a lot of donations by catching people's eye and wishing them a Merry Christmas.  Very sneaky but it's for a good cause.  DD and family will be here but I'm sure that they'll appreciate a little peace one afternoon.

I regret to say that my favorite tchotchke died this week.  It's a Happy Fish clock that I've had for about 20 years.  It used to sit in the bathroom with its cheerful scuba diver pendulum and a couple of swinging fish.  There's no way to fix it or replace the clock.  I'm going to miss it.







I saw a different bird at the feeder today.  It's a starling.  Not a new bird but a different color of an old one.  I like its speckles even though Grandpa Stephan called them spatzies and it wasn't a compliment.

23 November--Barbara Malcolm, Spies Don't Retire. 

Sonia and George stood outside the secure area in Flamingo Airport awaiting the arrival of their old neighbors Harriet and Max.  One thing you have to understand about island airports is that security is either so tight no one and nothing escapes unscathed or so lax that you wonder if the guy in the uniform is some bigwig’s unemployable nephew.  On Bonaire it varied but usually fell on the lax side.  People passed in and out of the swinging security doors with barely a challenge.  Some headed off for the line of rental car kiosks at the edge of the parking lot, others sought out friends to enlist their help in carrying the pile of too much luggage they managed to get on the plane.  Nothing, especially anything official, moves very swiftly on an island.  It takes forever for the Immigration people to work through the line of incoming passengers, carefully filling in the blanks on the Immigration forms, unsmilingly asking questions about reason for coming and where you plan to stay, then enthusiastically stamping the hell out of both forms and passports, before looking up at the supplicants for entry, smiling their first smile of the encounter, and then wishing the incoming passenger a happy holiday.

Then the passengers are made to stand around by the single baggage carousel waiting for about half an hour while two scrawny guys drag all the baggage and cargo out of the plane.  It seems to take forever to get from the plane a hundred yards away on the tarmac to the pitch black area where they load it onto the moving carousel, dribbling it out to keep people standing there sweating and swatting the squadrons of mosquitoes who have learned that there is one place on the island where people stand still and let them feast.  By the time arriving passengers get to that point they have been trotting around the globe for at least that entire day, dragging themselves and their increasingly heavy and awkward carry-on bags through increasingly smaller airports with increasingly more machiavellian customs agents impressed with the gravity of their importance on the front lines of world security.

Sonia and George were really looking forward to spending time with their old friends.  It had been about a year since they had met them for a drink the last time the Clemments were in England, even then both couples had not been able to visit for long because of prior commitments.  It was that too short visit that led to the invitation to spend some time on the island.

Harriet and Max had never spent so long on holiday.  They were a bit younger than the Clemments and their last child had just graduated from secondary school and gone off to university so for the first time they were free to be away for a month without having a passel of children with them or arranging and paying for a live-in minder for their brood of six.

Harriet especially was happy to be away, her mother had been ill most of the last year; since Harriet lived the closest, she was the sibling who spent the most time carrying for her mum.  Her sisters and brothers had helped when they could but it was Harriet who drove Mum to the doctor’s visits and to the hospital for her treatments and then spent the next two days staying with her to make sure she didn’t die of the cure.  Harriet was tired, too tired to face living with Sonia, feeling obligated to accompany her to all her group meetings and just being “on” all the time, willing to engage in endless conversations and feeling guilty when she felt like she needed time alone.  So it was with gratitude she embraced Sonia’s suggestion that she arrange a bungalow for them to rent, near to Sonia and George’s house, but still apart.  Harriet knew that Max and George would spend the month haring around the island scuba diving and fishing, checking out every little bar they drove by, so she was looking forward to having a few days to herself to read or just sit and loll under a palm tree with a glass of iced tea.  She had written to Sonia telling her how much she looked forward to having a few hours alone and was relieved when Sonia wrote back that she totally understood and had not planned a month-long whirlwind of activities anyway.  Happy that she wouldn’t have to keep her company face on all month, Harriet lightheartedly embraced the tiring travel to the island.  She was a bit disappointed that it wasn’t the lush, flower filled island of her dreams, but after a few days decided that the sparse vegetation and rocky shores were more restful on the eyes.  She loved her little bungalow with its full kitchen and many windows that let the island breezes blow through.  She thought she could happily spend the rest of her mornings sitting on the covered patio watching the sunrise and listening to the birds.

Sonia and George had been at the airport a bit early and watched the plane land.  They were accustomed to the long wait for Immigration and the luggage to arrive, so they sat in the airport bar having a drink while George enthused about all the dive sites he and Max would visit and how he hoped to interest him in bird watching.  Knowing that Dimitri was one of the leaders of that group made Sonia frown, but she held her tongue not wanting to start an argument just as their friends arrived.

I added rounds to the ribbing for LC's hat and went to the grocery for ingredients to make fruitcake tomorrow.  Not the fruitcake with the candied cherries, but Emeril Lagasse's creole fruitcake with reconstituted dried fruit soaked in rum, bourbon, and orange liqueur.  Gotta make them tomorrow so they'll be ready by Christmas.  'Tis the season, I guess, seeing as the old guy in the red suit showed up today.
--Barbara