Another tournament, another trophy. Our little group played a squad match against the resort town yesterday. Elle ended up in a sudden-death match after a three-way tie for second, ultimately placing third.

My day began in a torturous fashion, having to endure 15-minute rounds of sub-juniors who could barely get the ball over the net. The coach thought he was going to take a couple singles players over to the other court leaving me, with so little patience, to manage the festivities, but fortunately for me he stayed put, having to coach, referee, and score each and every match. He's a very stoic man. My expertise was needed for organizing the player draws, recording scores, and keeping the time. I'm very skilled at watching the clock.

After a while, about halfway through, excitement levels began to rise. You could see the kids' games improving and we even had a few real rallies. At one point things got very interesting. A crowd gathered around the sidelines to look at something down on the court, concerned parents ran over to see if there was an injury, and then the entire mob in unison let out a piercing shriek and broke apart like confetti in a party popper. It was only this little guy, but he managed to bring the game to a complete standstill.



We finished up with the awards presentation and a sausage sizzle (oh, how I am dying for a good old Hebrew National), and in the end it was really a fun day.


Accept the challenges so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory.

-- General George S. Patton

Lest We Forget

I have been doing you a favor by not posting lately. Really. Until yesterday you would have had three weeks worth of: He's going, he's staying, he's going, again, oh, wait, he's staying, no, he's going, maybe... And probably would have been very annoyed by our indecison, much as I have been, but yesterday morning we made it official: Jorge got on a plane headed back to the States. In fact we are expecting a call any minute to say he's arrived.

In case you're wondering, there are no attorneys involved, no custody battles ahead. He's just got some work lined up and should be able to float us for a while longer. Salaries here, while fairly high, still can't carry living expenses here plus multiple mortgages there. I'd say we did prety well getting by for the past eleven months. Maybe he'll solve our unsellable property problems while he's there and we can continue on with The Plan.

A reunion is tentatively planned around Christmas.

In the meantime...

Today was ANZAC (Australian New Zealand Army Corps) Day and it's huge! Bigger than Easter -- by the way, I discovered Easter Monday is officially the day for picking up small bits of colored foil from all around your house -- and even bigger than Melbourne Cup Day. It was so big the students were required to wear their full dress uniform, meaning they had to put shoes on. We were treated to a memorable small country town parade led by the local constable and a contingent of active military, followed by retired service personnel and the students from the two local primaries. There were speeches, most notably delivered by Grice and her co-captain, which led to some good humored quips about the Yank and the Pom, and a reading of the names of local fallen from WWI and WWII (a dozen in all.) There was one small hitch when the newly added Kiwi flag (without which the day might only be properly called AAC Day) became terribly tangled and would not go back up from its half-staff position, but otherwise it was a perfect day, followed by a barbecue at the school.


They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

-- Laurence Binyon

Easter Monday

Yesterday was Easter. It was a rather chilly, blustery day, Jorge worked, the girls discovered treats at the foot of their beds in the morning and gorged on candy all day. I nursed a cold, wrote a bit, read more, and drank gallons of hot tea snuggled under a wool blanket.

Today is Easter Monday. I'm not sure what to make of this other than, for most people, it's a day off work. Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, I understand those, but Easter Monday? I am going to celebrate that there was no new ant infestation in the kitchen this morning. I hope it will be a regular holiday.


They don't mind it; it's a regular holiday to them -- all porter and skittles.

-- Charles Dickens (Pickwick Papers)

High Anxiety

Hon, we're evacuating the resort. A major earthquake in the Solomon Islands triggered a tsunami that's supposed to arrive in 25 minutes. I have to get all the guests out and I don't know if I'll even be able to get out of here or when I'll be able to call you again...

Grice was safe and sound at her school, along with Elle and me, up nice and high on the mountaintop, but Sarabelle was down there and it would take me 30 minutes to get to the high school if the roads were not jammed with hysterical drivers. And then what? We'd all be swept away in our car?

I called the high school not expecting to get through, but did, remarkably on the first try, and was advised that they were not under orders to evacuate yet, and that they were a regional evacuation center so they should be safe in any case (except, I thought, you're barely above sea level and situated on a major river) but parents were free to pick up their kids.

Jorge got through again and said he was going to get Sarabelle, with maybe a couple panicky Canadian women in tow -- they had asked another couple fleeing the resort if they could ride to higher ground with them in their car, a five-seater, and were told no, there wasn't enough room -- when I heard a news report on the one channel that had any news on about the situation, in between the regular morning show's fashion and cooking segments, that the threat had been downgraded. So we sat tight and waited.

And waited.

And when it became clear we were not going to be subjected to a disaster, I wondered, if the earthquake struck at 6:40 AM (our time) and 15 minutes later the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii issued a warning that is sent out immediately to public safety officials around the world, and we were expecting to feel the effects by 9:55 AM, why were the buses still picking up the children and depositing them at school, why school, which starts at 9:00 AM, had not been cancelled or at least had the buses drive the students back home or evacuated to a safer location, and why was there only one television station intermittently broadcasting the news?


In all things it is better to hope than to despair.

-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe