Back To Life, Back To Reality

- Soul II Soul

A week ago, I was lounging under a palm tree overlooking the beautiful turquoise coast of Guardalavaca, Cuba...sipping a mojito, contemplating my big worry of the day (take a nap on the beach, or go for a swim...talk about stress!). Yes my friends, we couldn’t take it anymore. The accumulated exhaustion over the past year (no vacation for 1 ½ years + moving+ months of renovation) took its toll on us, and finally we caved and booked a last minute trip South.

In fact, we left our house in total chaotic disarray; a messy heap of electrical wires hanging from our kitchen ceiling, plaster dust covering the main floor, grout haze spread across our tiles in the bathroom and various plumbing tools strewn everywhere, not to mention plastic dropcloths draped over every possible piece of furniture....

It all started 2 days before Xmas. There I was, scrubbing my house inside and out, trying to get it spic’n’span for the 17-person sit-down supper I was hosting for my family. After mopping the floors and dumping the dirty water in the bathtub (which insofar was unused) Al and I noticed the following day that the paint on the ceiling of the kitchen (at the exact spot beneath the bathtub) was all warped and wrinkled...Great! Just we needed a freaking leak in the piping....

We called our carpenter and asked him to check it out. We were hoping that the problem could be solved from the kitchen ceiling rather than through the bathroom, otherwise, since we have a raised podium tub, he’d have to destroy tiles to get through from the bathroom (something I wanted to avoid..) Anyhow, he assured us that he could fix it from the kitchen. We told him we were looking to take care of it in the spring and that we’d let him know when. The next thing you know, he calls us the last week of March to tell us he’s free, that he needs work, and that he wanted to do the work right away before he gets booked up for the spring.

So he shows up, like the day we book for our trip (5 days before departure), and he tears up our kitchen ceiling. We run the water in the tub, and as expected, drip, drip, drip. Then came the dreaded part...our carpenter in his heavily accented English saying....."Hmmmmm. I see"

Nobody wants to hear a tall, skeletal, pensive German man utter the words "Der eez a problem" while massaging his goatee. Lars flipped his blond bushy long hair aside and decreed that the problem could not be fixed from the kitchen, but indeed through the bathroom we must go!!! Panic set in....luckily, the previous owners had left a few extra tiles in the garage, so I told him that he could only destroy 4 tiles, no more! N-E-ways, after countless trips to the hardware store, and he and Pacino nearly having aneurisms trying to undo the existing drain that was stuck, he finally fixed everything. But by the time it was all done, and everything was plastered and tiled back up, it was time to pack and leave, so we left it all as is to go frolicking on the beach.

The trip was great. It started off a little wonky as the old guy sitting next to me was completely hammered (and our flight was at 6:50am). When he wasn’t dozing off in an alcohol-induced stupor, he was chatting me up about the wonderful deals to be had on Cuban liquor. Needless to say, he ordered Courvoisier and beers as breakfast was being served and I myself was on a buzz just by smelling his breath. On the bright side, at least the immediate air I was breathing was disinfected which is better than standard airplane air... At least there was no turbulance (the suckers on the Air Transat flight the day after ours were stuck on the flight from hell as the plane rocked for 45 minutes and a third of the plane upchucked and screamed their way to Cuba.

Once we landed, mi amigos, it was 30-35 Celsius everyday. The weather was hot, the cervezas were cold, blue cloudless skies, amazing snorkeling right off our hotel’s beach. We went several times to snorkel and admire the coral reef and our Nemo-like friends. We met lots of nice people, Brits, Germans and countless fellow Canadians from all over, toting insulated mugs and even Tim Horton’s big gulps filled to the rim with rum (and I thought us Quebecois were big drinkers...man I was wrong!).

All in all, it was great to sit back and relax for a week. I think it was a good choice. Paris would have been nice as well, but we needed a relaxing vacation. If we had gone to Paris, we’d have to travel with family, and our stay would be short as we’d have to hurry onto Lyon for a cousins’ wedding there, and all the hoopla that surrounds this type of thing would have voided any possible inkling of relaxation. Besides we’ve been to Paris before (that’s another blog altogther)...

Needless to say, we arrived home from our trip to be greeted by the glaring reality of the mess in our kitchen and bathroom, as left by us in our hurry to escape the reno-route even for a short week. Now we’re back and the renos continue. I do believe I need another Mojito...