Made Stupid by Bliss

Oct. 9

Today’s post will be short for a delicious reason: We didn’t do anything. Omigawd, it was awesome!

I don’t mean we didn’t do ANYTHING. We met some of the local birds at breakfast (this fellow with his bright yellow Zorro mask is dapper as hell).

 We also saw Fijian parrot finches, which were about three inches long and flew in up-and-down swoops like a woodpecker. Extremely cute. I got no photos.

Then we commandeered two of the “cabanas” along the water’s edge. (I put cabana in quotes because I thought cabanas were canvas-sided tent-like things, and these are wooden platforms with Don’t Care If You’re Wet mattresses and pillows on them, and a lattice ceiling that let in dappled light.) That’s where we spent most of the rest of the time. I fell asleep at least three times, draped myself in massive quantities of sunblock AND clothing AND towels and so hope I avoided solar radiation, and read books.

Oh, I also finally made edits to the upcoming Christmas story. It features an Italian hero who loves to cook, and my beta-reading sister Lexie called FOUL on the recipes I pulled off the interwebs. (I am NOT a happy cook, unlike Rafi in the story, and had relied on questionable websites.)

But Lexie is my LITTLE sister which means I am honor-bound to question her…so I sent the book off to Anthea and Bettina, a mother-daughter team of readers who have helped me with Italian recipes in the past. They read the book while hunkered down because of the hurricane and were kind enough to write me very politely to agree with Lexie. Somehow I’d gotten a little Middle Eastern in my recipes, a little Greek…

Anyway, I sat crosslegged on a cabana bed in Fiji and corrected the manuscript, formatted it, and uploaded it to Amazon to be ready when it publishes on Nov. 1. THIS BEGS THE QUESTION: If I can do all that from a beach in Fiji, why would I live in crowded, angry northern Virginia??

A question to ponder for a later time. Instead, Twig and I took a swim in the adults-only pool which features many coves, a large sail over part of the pool to keep the sun from my pale and vulnerable skin, and a bridge we lurked under, thinking about calling out “Who’s trip-trapping across my bridge” to the next passing Bula Waiter. We restrained ourselves. It was utterly dreamy.

Then back to the cabanas to do it again—dry off, read, sleep. A passing waiter took our order for lunch and brought the food right to the cabana. I had a “local fisher Man Fish Burger,” which was grilled fish on a hamburger roll with grilled zucchini and I don’t know what all—it was superb, and healthy, and indulgent. I’m so fortunate.

Harry in the cabana. He prefers his picture not be tossed casually around the internet, and who can blame him? I love this non-photo of a brother-in-law I'm really enjoying!

At three we stirred our stumps, found our bags at the bell captain’s stand (well, they’d temporarily lost mine, but it was located eventually; bula and joy all around), and took a taxi to the nearby Sheraton Hotel. So now we’ve checked in to the rooms for tonight (which I think are even nicer than the Sofitel), and met the Lindblad person on the ground, named Erin. She’ll give us a briefing tonight at six.

And now I have an hour and a half to possibly take a nap. Lying on the beach all day turns out to be madly exhausting.

I’m wiggling my toes in contentment. Ain’t this a hell of a life?!