Sister Vacation – Take 3!

A couple of nights ago, my sister and I sat in her condo nervously awaiting our flight scheduled for the next morning. Why were we nervous? Well, if you’ve been following the blog for a while, you’ll recall that a few years ago, we sat in that same condo, having checked in to our flight for the next morning, only to realize that Karen had an expired passport and wouldn’t be on the flight with me. The vacation got worse from there. For a while after that, I refused to travel with her unless she left her gallbladder at home. A couple of years later, she (or maybe the Canadian winter) wore me down and we booked a trip to the Bahamas. We sat in her condo. We checked in to our flight for the next morning. It was March 11th, 2020. A global pandemic was declared. We didn’t get on the plane. We lost what we’d paid for the all-inclusive resort, but we got a credit for the airfare.

Last month, we used those credits to book another all-inclusive, but until we had four feet in the sand, we didn’t really believe it was going to happen. We came close to messing up again because we didn’t realize until a couple of days before our flight that we needed a negative covid test to fly to Jamaica, so the day before our flight we were waiting for the test results. Both negative! And now we’re here!

The trip is also a celebration of my sister’s decision to retire. She’s given her notice and will finish work in April. Yay! To mark the occasion, we upgraded our seats and, for the first time in my life, I sat in front of the curtain. It made the two-hour wait on the tarmac before take-off much more bearable. Such a treat. Tea in a real mug, not a tiny styrofoam cup! Worth the price of admission.

We’re staying at an adults-only resort, but we hadn’t realized the rooms are designed with couples in mind. Although we have separate beds, it’s an open concept design with the shower and bath right in the main room. At least the toilet has a door.

This is the first time I’ve been away from Juno for an extended period of time, so it will be interesting to see how she adapts. She normally sticks to me like velcro. When I go out, she sits at the window until I’m home again. Although Ray is the primary dog-walker, I’m definitely her cuddle-person.

Ray kindly offered to drive me to Karen’s place even though it meant a full day of driving for him. We brought Juno along and it was her first time in the condo since Karen and Tom became cat people. Juno’s past exposures to cats have been rather…let’s say, high-strung. On both sides. We kept the cats in a separate room, but eventually decided to let one of them out. We kept waiting for Juno to react and start chasing Luna around the condo. We thought maybe she hadn’t seen the cat, but it was Ray who said, “I think she’s pretending not to see it.” And he was right. She was scared of the cat and kept looking away. If I can’t see it, it can’t see me.

Nick’s been keeping busy working, climbing and taking a couple of classes on the side. He’s also acting as a mentor for a grade 7 class. He had to do a virtual presentation last week to introduce himself. The teacher let him know that the class had a short attention span, and suggested he keep it brief. They warmed up to him pretty quickly and had some astute questions, like, “Are you and [the female presenter] dating?” and “How does your hair do that?” She had to calm the class down after Nick started talking about his job climbing towers. I told Nick that grade 7 him would have thought university him was pretty cool.

It feels a bit frivolous to be writing these things with what’s going on in the world, but sometimes you have to figure out what you can do to help and then let go of what’s not in your control. Putting your feet in the sand can be good for your mental health, but if you can’t do that, figuratively putting your head in the sand for a while can help too.