Land Life, and a Video

Mel has finally finished her video of the rescue.  It’s over ten minutes long; she apologizes for the length.  However, Greg points out that it is a LOT shorter than the whole ordeal.  Mel has discovered that there is nothing she hates more than editing videos.  So here it is, aptly entitled:

With the return to “land life”, Mel has noticed the return of “land responsibilities”.  All of a sudden, she is not schooling her kids enough.  She is not looking for a job hard enough.  Her dinner menu is bland, the same old stuff.  The house is not clean enough.  She needs to work on her CME (continuing medical education), so she can get board recertified in 2018.  Because that is soon.  She needs to think of things NOW that they need to order, because parts will take forever to get here.  She needs to get Tommy’s hair cut NOW.  This means that there is no time to sit in the hammock, to read, to write, to reflect, to swim, to trim one’s nails, to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

So Mel says, WTF, LAND?  What’s up with all of this burden and responsibility seeping out of the volcanic soil here, accompanied by the resort-town sewer gas they are downwind of every night and can’t escape?  Mel is pretty sure that stable, unmoving ground beneath her feet has nothing to do with it.  It is probably a Pavlovian retreat to her old land life, which was gogogo until the very minute they cast off and then suddenly had not much more to do than check the sails and AIS every 10 minutes.

Getting used to life on the water was a similar transition.  It took time to learn how to stay mentally active while bobbing around without media, surrounded by 360 degrees of picture-perfect landscape.  It took time to learn how to handle all of the introspection and philosophizing one finally had time for, to get used to the prattling of one’s internal monologue.  It also took time to get used to the fact that the lassitude could change in an instant, from reflecting on the light off of a dolphin’s fin to suddenly scrambling for that perfectly sized line in the giant “Lines and Bungees” tub so that you could stop that awful, banging, broken-boat noise.

So right now Mel is reminding herself that she can get used to anything, and that she just needs time.  Which they may get plenty of, given how long it takes Spaniards to make decisions.  She reminds herself again: she can get used to anything.  Even, she hopes, GIANT EFFING COCKROACHES.