Well, what do you know…there really was a baby in there! On July 26th at 11:10pm, my daughter decided it was time to be born. Introducing Sydney James Rest!
I gave birth to this little cutie pie in a Puerto Rican hospital with NO pain medication. All I can say is WOW. There were no complications but that whole child birth thing is certainly an experience!! I will write more about that later 
…
Ever since I was a kid, I knew what all of our baby animals would look like when they grew up. That’s the beauty of “purebreds”. But is that nearly as fun as discovering new species in the tropics?!?!
Well, in Puerto Rico, when you adopt a baby animal, you have no idea what it will end up being. Take for example, the cat we adopted (after finding him starving in the middle of the road). We thought he was a mere cat. But, no. I have decided that he is really a cross between a weasel (long body), squirrel (outrageously fluffy tail) and a cat. Chichieto is a Whirlcat. Who woulda thought…
My friend Carrie has two (Puerto Rican) dogs from the same litter and you would totally not believe it. One is tiny (8lbs?) with a short brown coat and the other dog is 4 times his size with a long ivory-colored coat. I really thought she was joking when she told me they were brother/sister.
While I wouldn’t exactly call myself an environmentalist, I try to do what I can to not kill the world. I love those 20oz bottled waters, and now that I live in the tropics, where it is hot year round, Stefan and I were going through a 24 pack of bottled water every four days or so. I was already feeling guilty looking at our trash cans filled with plastic bottles, and then I got the latest Surfrider newsletter that contained an article titled: “Repeat After Me: I Will Never Use Another Plastic Water Bottle Again“. These are the facts:
- Every piece of (petroleum-based) plastic ever manufactured still exists.
- Plastic in the ocean may be noe of the most alarming of today’s environmental stories. Plastics are forever because plastics do not biodegrade, no naturally occurring organisms can break these polymers down.
- Over 300,000 pieces of plastic per square mile have been found in the middle of the North Pacific Ocean. 80% of the plastic comes from land-based sources.
- 100,000 marine mammals and 2 million sea birds die every year after ingesting or being caught in marine debris.
- Plastic is the most common type of marine litter world-wide.
- Globally, the proportion of plastic among marine debris world-wide ranges from 60 – 80%, although it has reached over 90-95% in some areas.
- Plastics comprise up to 90% of floating marine debris.
- Americans consumed 50 billion plastic water bottles last year, that were totally recyclable polyesthylene terephthalate plastic. Recycling rate for (PET) is 23% which means we pitch 38 billion water bottles into landfills per year – more then $1 billion worth of plastic!
I have tried many times to break my water bottle habit, but nothing has really stuck. I really like the convenience of being able to close up my water and if I leave it somewhere (which I do a lot), bugs are not going to fly into it and it will still be good the next time I find it. So, Stefan and I found the recycling center in our little Puerto Rican town and have started recycling all of our plastic and aluminum (for whatever reason, our recycling center does not accept glass). I also found these awesome 750ml, vintage-style glass bottles from France that I have been refilling and drinking out of every day. I love them!
While my family spent time together in San Diego, exchanged presents and ate good food, I got to spend Christmas alone. I spent 12 hours cleaning my house, I ate two Fig Newtons and some cheese and crackers for my Christmas dinner and stared at the ceiling until I finally fell asleep.
So, how exactly did this happen? Where is my loving boyfriend? Oh, he decided on Christmas morning that he should drive to San Juan because his new surfboard landed today…and that I should stay home and clean the house because we have guests arriving today. It just so happens that Stefans best friend is flying into San Juan on Christmas (late at night) too, so after consulting with his buddies when he was out surfing, he decided that it would be selfish if he drove to San Juan to pick up his surfboard and didn’t wait the extra 10 hours to pick up his buddy.
Yes folks, that’s right, “selfish”. That is the exact word Stefan used.
So, off Stefan goes at 1pm, to make the 2 hour drive to San Juan in order to pick up his new surfboard and then wait in San Juan until Connor and Diannes flight arrives at 12am. Then, Stefan was supposed to transport Connor, Dianna and his precious new surfboard back home by 3am.
Notice that I said “supposed to”.
That’s because I awoke at 7:30am this morning, alone. No Stefan, no Connor, no Dianne and most importantly, no surfboard (yes, I’m being sarcastic). Now, what would you think if your friends were supposed to be here late last night and they are currently 5 hours late? Yep. They must be dead on the side of the road. Right? Now, normally you would just call said friends and see where the fuck they are, but shortly after Stefan drove off on his valiant mission, my cell phone ran out of batteries. And my phone charger is in the truck that he drove off to San Juan in. (That also left me alone on Christmas, with no food in the house and no phone to call my family to wish them a merry Christmas…rad.) So, I wake up frantic because my boyfriend MUST be dead because there really can’t be any other reason why he would be 5 hours late after ditching me on Christmas, I contrive a device to suck the last seconds of juice out of my cell phone and was able to retrieve the following voicemail from Stefan,
“Hey babe, it’s 1am and Connor and Diannes flight has arrived safely. Unfortunately my board is stuck in customs, so we’re going to spend the night in San Juan and hopefully we’ll be back in Rincon, surfing by noon…”
OH. So Stefan spent Christmas at an expensive hotel in the city, had an excellent Christmas dinner at some fancy restaurant, gambled at one of the casinos in San Juan and hung out with his best friend and his wife. Cool. I’m glad to hear that they are going to try and make it home soon so they can go surfing…
Stefan is driving to the airport right now to pick them up. I hope they are having an okay flight. I can’t wait until they are safe and sound in our new yard in Puerto Rico!
I can’t believe how much work has been completed on the house in Puerto Rico! In two weeks it has gone from this:
to this:
I’m totally excited, but it also makes me sad that I havn’t been there to help. I’m still working on packing up the house (it’s quite laborious sorting through Stefan and my crap, eliminating 95% of it and packing the rest), but I’ll be heading back down to PR on Thursday. Yippy!
I need help picking out a color to paint our guest bathroom…I think this is my favorite, but I don’t know:
Our toilet, sink and bathtub are almond colored (shown in top left of picture) and the tile we are using is walnut travertine (shown at top right). The bathroom is small, so I don’t want to go dark on the walls and I don’t want to do a standard white color, because I think that’s boring. Help!
More color choices here.
I spent a good hour or so looking for some sort of widget that counts Paypal donations in real time and I FINALLY found it (so I’m posting it here, so others that are looking for the same thing can find it too!). The Paypal donation widget that I found is by Chipin.com and it’s pretty cool. The widget is super simple to set up and this is what it looks like:
Once the widget is created, it tracks donations and contributors and people that donate can leave comments as well. All in all, this Paypal donation widget is everything I was looking for and more. Cool! 
I made the widget above for our CA2PR.com blog as a way for our friends and family to contribute to building our house. Check out the scoop here:
I still have no idea what I’m going to tell the judge tomorrow. I think I’m just going to have to be honest and tell him that I’m completely floored and don’t know what he wants me to tell him. According to the jury I’m a liar that goes out and gets wasted, throws tantrems, trespasses and fights police officers for no reason. Anyone that actually knows me is probably falling off their chair laughing at that description. In truth, I’m the most mellow person that rarely goes out, let alone hangs out in bars. I’m often the designated driver when I go out with friends and when I’m not, I’m notorious for sneaking home to go back to work. If I had actually commited a crime, this would be so much easier…
Any how, I’ve been trying to turn around the way I’ve been feeling and I’ve been trying to focus on the positive things I have going for me. I have an amazing family, boyfriend and future. I don’t want to become a cynical, negative person just because I’ve seen the seedy, disgusting dark side of the justice system. Today, I tried out iMovie for the 1st time and put together this video for Stefan and my California 2 Puerto Rico blog:
I’m back from PR and I’m exhausted. JetBlue had some sort of mechanical problem that caused my trip home to take 19 hours. Weeee. Then I slept for 2 hours and went on trial today from 8am – 5pm. Now I’m working from 6pm – 2am and then I’m back on trial at 8am to start all over again…I can’t wait until this week is over…blah.
