Tuesday, NOT in Dominica

I am going to try to load a picture of the sky. It will go here if I’m successful. I would take pictures of the fish, but my reactions are too slow. Sorry, Lucia, no tropical fish photos from me. But the idea of tropical fish knitting is inspirational! A parrot fish sweater? Angelfish mittens? Amberjack stockings?


DH got up at 8 and we went to breakfast in the dining room where the service is phenomenal and the food is superior. Much as I love a nice buffet, there is not much to be done with eggs that are kept hot in a steam-table tray for thirty minutes. They will be tough and watery, no matter how superb the cook. It was open seating, which means you get seated next to strangers. I wound up next to Bob, who is a marketing consultant with a brother who has written a book. Oh my, didn’t WE have a lot to talk about. In fact, we went on for so long that I realized with a jerk that we would have to hurry back to the room to get ready for our excursion. Just as we were headed up the stairs, a ship-wide announcement came on telling us that one of the passengers had suffered a medical emergency during the night, and the ship had returned to the excellent medical facilities in St. Thomas. However, this meant that our visit to Dominique had to be cancelled. As much fun as I would have had innertubing down a tropical river, I could not be upset on having an extra day at sea. I LOVE being lazy and indulgent, and that’s what the days at sea are all about.

So I am sitting on our balcony, learning how to download pictures into the computer, and watching the flying fish. Every so often we pass through shoals / schools / flights / floatillas of flying fish. Their world is invaded by a huge noisy creature (the ship) that surely wants to eat them (everything wants to eat them) and they hurl themselves, singly, in pairs in dozens, out of the water and into the relative safety of the air where they sail for meters, pectoral fins outstretched to catch every bit of lift and ground effect. They flash white and silver in the sun, white and blue in the shade, coasting along the troughs of the waves, getting hang-time that would make a basketball star envious, until finally they slap fins to sides and dive back into the water. My monkey brain insists on identifying them as birds and every time I look up to see them, it takes a conscious nudge to remember that those are fish. FISH! Flying fish. My totem. Creatures who transit between two elements. Beings who are not what you expected.

Limited work on the knitting. One of my balls of silk yarn has gotten out and fallen into bad company