2-21-20 - R-E-L-A-X day

Sleep in day. Sleep in day. Kind of works. We eat breakfast, enjoy the property, catch up on schoolwork, edit papers, work on travel, wrote the blog and do laundry. Kyle works with property’s version of a concierge to plan out our activities for the next 5 days.  He also works on booking additional travel plans. 

Justin takes out the property’s paddleboard for a ride around the ocean.  Kyle and Justin then play cornhole. Dip in the pool. Nap in the hammock. Just R-E-L-A-X in all caps. Sometimes you just want a little time on a white sand beach with people smiling everywhere you look. The only thing planned for today is a sunset catamaran sail set for later afternoon. 

The afternoon’s catamaran sail is relatively uncrowded. At the front of the boat are 9 purple beanbags and we each grab one.  Beanbags?  This must be a pretty chill sail that they can keep beanbags at the front.  We meet another American family - a grandmother named Josie with her beloved son, her beloved 4 year old grandson and an obviously not-so-beloved daughter-in-law.  Josie lives in an affluent beach town in New Jersey and certainly had a bit of an aire about her wearing her Jackie Kennedy-like scarf and a long cotton dress.  We talked travel as that is a common bond amongst travelers. 

Presumably there was no grandfather around or else he didn’t come up; sounded like was it was just Josie and her now-adult beloved son Tom.  Every year, Josie made sure to take her beloved son Tom to some exotic location and he even spent a high school semester living in Costa Rica. It was pretty clear he was her pride and joy as well as a cancer research scientist at Johns Hopkins. She did well raise him. He was a joy to chat with too. 

But....the daughter in law stayed eerily quiet most of the conversation  attending to the adorable four year old who loved the constellations coming out as much as Justin marveled at them.  Now, she wasn’t having the time of her life even though we are here enjoying a beautiful sunset on a catamaran. She had that “always on guard” aura about her we recall having to have when our kids were that little.  And it did seem like it’s wasn’t the coziest of mom-in-law and daughter-in-law connection either.  This new mom looked like this sunset sail was not her idea of fun.  

The sunset is brilliant and we are totally at peace as the giant orange ball melts into the horizon. 

After the sail, we are drawn to a restaurant right on the pier called “Losers” with a boot as the “L” on the giant neon sign.  As we get settled into our table, we notice there are two Nashville singers playing guitar and trying to get the crowd going and hopefully elevate their early career there.  Nothing worse than live music and a huge empty dance floor.  “We have to save their career,” Kyle says.  The kids immediately set about trying to convince them not to get up and dance. “Their career is unsavable,” “Maybe they don’t want their career saved,” “Can’t we let someone else save their career?” 

 Kyle and Leanne go out on the dance floor and start kicking up their flip flops and even get a few other couples up dancing. The singers look relieved. The country tunes are moving but Leanne sure wonders why you’d chose a place called “Losers” for your gig. After some good ole chicken quesadillas, we call it a night.