Waivers and Warnings

A few people have pointed out that I haven’t mentioned how Charlie and Maia are doing on the cursed-ship-Ceilydh (seriously, we are starting to wonder if someone has hexed us because all these breakdowns are not normal…)

As far as the sailing part of things, Charlie is fine. He’s a cat, and not that bright of one. He’s found his six or seven secure sea-berths and wedges himself in them when things get noisy. He comes out to be sick when things get rough – then after eight hours or so he feels better and wants to sit on the chart we’re using, or play.

Which is why we have Maia.
She only seems to get queasy if she insists on reading too much when we first start out. We’re thinking of banning books for the first hour or two and just listening to podcasts together. She’s recently discovered Stuart Mclean and the Vinyl Cafe (we think she identifies with Sam) so that might be an idea. Once Charlie is feeling better they tend to play together, forage for food and wander about.

Maia’s noticed that we’ve had quite a few things go wrong--but with no frame of reference I’m not sure she knows it’s not typical. She did surprise us by supplying our most recent guests with waivers.

Her home schooling program really encourages communication so she’s found a number of other ways to express how she’s feeling and doing. When a large rusty fishing boat moored on top of our engineless selves in Morro Bay and the Harbour Patrol needed us to move she was clear on how she felt. Because she posted it in a window where the harbour patrol (who was moving us to a safe place) could see it, she also got to express herself in a letter of apology.

A big reason for doing this trip now – was to have more time to spend together as a family. And while I’ve been home with Maia all her life I’ve also been working a lot for the past four years. The most startling thing to me has been to discover she’s eight – I mean, really discover it. Somehow she was still mostly four in my mind – this little person I could carry on my hip, who hung on my every word, who did what I asked with a minimum of protest. I’ve felt like I’ve been rediscovering her on this trip. She’s a neat person.

That alone has made it all worthwhile.