Y’know, I keep directing people to this little neck of the virtual woods, usually with a note like, “Here’s what’s happening in our life.” But as I look over these entries, I realize I’m missing a lot of fairly major events. So I’ll touch on a couple just so I can justify calling this an account of our lives:

·         Syd’s reading like crazy now. She keeps asking the teacher to send home more and more books and I swear the teacher’s gonna send her home with War and Peace one of these days just to shut her up. I should be proud but I can’t stand it now when I’m reading to her and she keeps interrupting with stuff like, “Where does it say, ‘chocolate’? Why is that spelled with an ‘a’?” and useless crap that breaks the lyrical rhythm I’ve so meticulously built-up. Can’t she just keep quiet long enough to find out what a Zizzer Zazzer Zuzz is?

·         She’s in piano lessons now and, surprisingly, she loves it. I had visions of strapping her down to the stool every day with duct tape to get her to practice but it’s the opposite. I need a &$*%# crowbar to get her away from it. And again, I should be proud but the songs she’s practicing are driving me nuts. She knows only three notes so they’re amazingly repetitive. Plus it’s brought back a whole lot of painful memories. Syd’s asking about drum lessons but I think we’ll stick to instruments less likely to inspire a revolt from the neighbours. And I’ve grown increasingly sensitive to noise in the last five and a half years.

·         Syd and I went to the beach last weekend for the first time in, oh, I dunno, let’s say six months. Wandered down to the one next to the Atlantis resort and the first thing she said was, “Let’s go to the pool at Atlantis”. We did end up at the Atlantis but they allow you in only if you’re a guest (who all have these wristbands which has always struck me as a little Orwellian). Of course, you don’t exactly need Navy SEAL training to get past their crack security team so we managed to make it into the pool. Syd had a blast but I kept glancing over my shoulder expecting the Bracelet Police to come at me wielding little fluorescent strips of plastic. One alert lifeguard did look up from his book long enough to tell us to get a wristband which ended our fun at that pool. Luckily, the resort has three others…

·         Scott and Conchita were out again for a visit with two of their friends, Beth (“The Educator”) and Marty, and it was a good visit as it always is. On the last evening, we went out with our neighbours Andrew and Tara. Andrew invited us to one of his local hangouts assuaging Tara’s concerns with, “This one’s not bad; they should be okay.” Had a great time at Scoe’s Bar which is essentially a big room with alcohol along one wall, mix along another, and about half a dozen guys rotating through a continuous game of dominos. After a few mistrials, Marty and Scott learned the fine art of slapping dominos against the table without scattering the existing ones to the four winds, which is apparently the dominos version of “pissing for distance”. The evening ended with one of the neighbours yelling at us unintelligibly as we returned to our vehicle. This was a bit of a concern for me because although the seven of us technically outnumbered him, I was the only one in any condition to actually feel the effects of any ass-kicking, if you get my meaning. It didn’t help that everyone else was laughing hysterically at everything he said but Scoe, himself, escorted us out with the keen intuition of a bartender who recognizes the danger of losing potential repeat business in a drunken brawl.

I was going to claim that I didn’t touch on these things earlier because they wouldn’t make very entertaining reading but I sure had fun writing about them…

 I think I’ve been here long enough that I think I’m justified in starting a list of rules for living in the Bahamas. I’d like to say this will be the first in a series but I don’t want to commit to anything just yet. So we’ll start slowly. The subject of this post will be:

 Rule One: Shake It Out Before Putting It On

The impetus for this rule arose yesterday, apparently to counter the positive aspects of living in the Bahamas (let’s look at that picture once again, shall we:)

So anyway, as I got out of the shower and unwrapped my towel, this Flaming Cockroach of Death leapt at me, with a cry of "LONG LIVE THE GLORIOUS COCKROACH REBELLION AGAINST THE GREAT SUBURBAN BOURGEOIS OPPRESSOR SWINE-PIG!" And lucky me, I’ve inherited my mother’s tolerance for bugs. So, naked, dripping wet, and doing my best to pronounce b, I ran from the bathroom to be comforted by my loving wife who always knows what to say to make me feel better (in this case: “Shut the &%$ up, I’m trying to sleep!”). Fearing another attack if I got another towel, I eventually dried myself off with Sydney’s toothbrush.

Corollary to Rule One: Flush Before Sitting (and I SHAN’T elaborate)

Two other items of interest just to keep you on your toes. It has become clear that I am not meant to keep animals penned up. I’ve already accepted this with Tiger and Smudge and we’ve come to a tentative arrangement where they agree to leave the yard only after dusk and I agree to research British common law with regards to lawsuits from people who have been bitten by dogs.

But you may recall that we have another pet, a bird named Tweety. One day, two weeks ago, while ma and pa were visiting, Dad was kind enough to point out that Tweety’s cage (which we normally leave on the patio during the day to taunt Tweety with other birds who aren’t so immobile) appeared to be missing its key tenant. After fingerprinting, a full spectral analysis, and using the keen observation that the cage door was open, we determined that he had lifted his cage door and flown out.

The only natural course of action was to buy a new bird, of course. We waited over a week though and after six or seven days, Syd finally noticed the cage wasn’t quite as bird-y as it usually was. I wasn’t about to launch into a speech on the importance of taking care of your pets so I did what any parent would do: I outright lied to my child and said Tweety was at the vet’s getting a bath. A great line, by the way, ‘cause when Syd grew suspicious that the new bird looked different, I just said, “well maybe we should have bathed him earlier”.

Second item of note: the software that runs this little online oratorium has a feature that lets me see who is linking to it. Once in a while, I browse through it and it’s usually search engines searching for something obscure that I’ve written about (e.g. DefCon Five, Air Canada Customer Reviews, Massage Therapists in Bahamas). This morning, I notice that someone is searching Google for “alpacas mating”. Nice to know we’re reaching our target audience.