Family Sunday

We scrubbed up for church yesterday (it took me a long time to find my lipstick and mascara, which just shows you how standards have slipped here on the island ) as not only was James being made a deacon, but we needed to say goodbye to the wonderful Patterson's and Kalama's who have been our backbone over the past few months.

Then we went on to our friends Jane & Peter (our secular backbones) and we had one of those wonderful 8 hour lunches with much laughter and good food and the kids turning into wrinkled prunes with red eyes as they spent the whole day in the pool. We all slept in the car on the way home, then Tyler and I slept through our DVD rental which we'd already slept through on Saturday night and then the weekend was over. But it was a good one.

We've definitely turned the corner as you can see, and Tyler has now gone back into the bakery fulltime this week, although things are very different. I'm spending Monday to Wednesday in the Bakery's Carrot Bay HQ (ie home) and Thursday to  Saturday in the Bakery, as we really are very busy over those days. Tyler is going to have Tuesdays as his business day and not be at the coal (oven) face all the time. We are very excited about all the new developments and plans, and so grateful for the growing popularity of our little bakery. It is hard work, no denying it, but so fulfilling.  We are very focused on the future and hope to continue to add more baked goodies and other delights, as we find more space!

Much time now is also being spent on Travelocity and Expedia as we look at Summer flights and the boys are starting to get excited about seeing family and SA friends again. I'm back at gym again this week and Tyler and I are on a healthy eating kick (although we blew it with mutton curry on Saturday night, delicious but hardly slimming) as we need to be able to fit into our jeans and jerseys again soon!

Life is good.

Snaps

Carrot Bay House: From Top Left - the balcony, Madam, garden, study, backyard, sitting room tablescape, entrance hall hat rail, guest bedroom and all our mangoes

With all our drama over the past month, I quite forgot that Tyler had given me a rather fancy camera for my birthday. I've had fun fiddling around with it this Saturday afternoon, and took some snaps of our house. They are all of downstairs as I was too lazy to walk upstairs.

Expect a new and improved and snappy blog from now onwards!

Above water again

 

 

We slept for 10 hours last night, something neither of us have done for the past three years and I actually felt like a human being again this morning which was further improved by a delicious brunch cooked by Tyler of rosti, chorizo & eggs and a couple of litres of coffee. I'm ignoring the house which is now beyond redemption and lying on the sofa catching up on 3 months of Vanity Fair's and Saveur magazines, with the parrot happily screeching on the balcony and the new cat (which arrived 2 days before Tyler collapsed) bouncing off the walls. The cat is called 'Scratchy' - need  I say more?

The family is slowly getting back to normal. Tyler has just taken the boys off to Brewers Bay to try out his Birthday freedive fins which he still hadn't manage to use yet. He is improving daily, and despite some continuing health niggles which we want to get to the bottom of this coming week - seems to have turned the corner both physically and mentally. He's still weak, gets tired very quickly and is stiff and sore - but he's back to working mornings in the bakery and is quietly very pleased at the changes we've made and the growth over the past few months.

The bakery's New York shipment is finally happening this week after so many delays and setbacks and the shelves should be going up (carpenter never pitched up again this weekend) with the AC unit's imminent installation. Once all of this is in place, we are expanding our product range quite significantly which we'll test-drive over the Summer, in time for next year's season.

I do think we should have a bloody great party on September 5th, when we would have been open for one whole long year. We should style it on the Oxford & Cambridge Commom Balls' Survivor Parties, held at dawn with some bacon butties and beer tankards of Pimms. 

That will be me dancing on the tables.

Slowly coming back

Tired and a few more grey hairs but still standing
 

Life is slowly getting back to normal after our apocalyptic past four weeks. Tyler is still at home convalescing, and will be for a while, but has just started to drive a bit again and is feeling stronger everyday.

The bakery has been really busy this past week and we are obviously thrilled that we've not only weathered this awful blip, but are thriving. Tony (our new assistant baker) Vee and I work flat out from 5am till 5pm, 6 days a week baking, cooking, ordering, serving and prepping - and all this used to be done by one person! I'm completely shattered by the end of each day, so I'm really in awe that Tyler not only did this for 9 months on his own, but also remained civilized as well, something I struggle with a bit. Things will be different when Tyler does come back. We are looking for another assistant and the phantom night baker, and only then do we think we will be getting on top of things.

We've had a lovely gentle Sunday today. Awake at a decent hour, a fabulous brunch at Frenchman's Cay, a long soak in the beautiful, warm sea to ease aching bones and bodies and some minimal housework to stave off anarchy (St. Claudette could not have chosen a worse time to be away). The boys are upstairs watching the Hobbit with Tyler as I write this and I'm roasting the Sunday chicken. I'm so grateful for 'everyday' things again.

We've had to live hour-by-hour and then day-by-day for what seems like an eternity, but the kids are now in their final month of the school year and we have flights to book and winter clothes to think about for the first time in almost 3 years.  Not to mention the whole homeschooling thing. During some dark moments I do admit to feeling pretty hysterical about yet another responsibility, but have now gone back to my original view that it is an excellent idea - selfishly speaking I'll have some lovely time to enjoy with the boys and it will be at home! 

I do feel that our 3 year island adventure apprenticeship is now over and we are sailing with full sails. It's been harder than I could ever imagine hard to be and we've truly gone through hell these past weeks, but it's behind us now and the only way is up.




 

 

Blink again and we nearly lost it all...

 

Everything is always OK, until it is not.

Over the years, I've read up quite a bit about survivors and disasters and the reality of most disasters is not the Big Bang event that wrecks death and destruction (apart from the odd volcano explosion or something similar) but the inevitable slow onslaught of a million small warning signs, accumulated mini-disasters and a vague sense of a vortex spinning faster and faster until one is sucked into it and then all hell breaks lose.

Such has been our life for the past 3 weeks. A few days after I wrote my last blog in fact.

It started with Tyler throwing the garbage bag off the truck early on Sunday the 28th April. In doing this he must have dislocated his shoulder and by the time I saw him later that day in St John, he was in great pain. On Monday I had to drive him into the bakery to help start the daily baking. Amazingly our new baker Tony walked in at 6am to start with us. I say amazing, as most people we've recruited either never pitch or arrive very late - so we were aghast that (a) he arrived and (b) he could bake.

Tyler was grey with pain, but that afternoon he saw the orthopedic doctor, who put everything back (under anesthetic) and prescribed some painkillers. He's done this several times before, so I didn't think too much of it, apart from how we were going to manage with him out of action.  A bakery in the Tropics is very, very hot.  Ours is also tiny with our teeny shop part of the bakery.

In taking so many painkillers to keep going, Tyler started to become severely dehydrated. This meant that he was constantly nauseous and slightly loopy, so he stopped eating and was trying to keep himself hydrated with Gatorade and other energy drinks. Sometime on Wednesday, as he was so blurred with pain and dehydration, he broke his foot - although he didn't really mention it. By Friday (our busiest Friday ever) he was haggard, limping, and becoming increasingly disorientated - but amazingly he carried on baking.

Saturday was very hot and  I knew we had a problem right from the get-go when I saw the order book at 5am. We had to get 80 packed lunches out to Nanny Cay by Noon and cater for 120 that night in addition to a very busy normal Saturday morning in the bakery shop. I started cancelling orders early in order to make the day more manageable, bar one.

I could see Tyler deteriorating rapidly - and on my return from delivering to Nanny Cay I asked him to cancel the remaining order of 12 cupcakes which was met with a slammed down phone. After that he sort of crumpled and said he couldn't carry on and looked visibly distraught. I managed to get him out to the truck and put the AC on full blast, but he had essentially collapsed from severe dehydration.

The shop was still full, but luckily my friend Emily who was a trained nurse arrived to pick up her loaf of multigrain, and was posted to look after Tyler whilst I tried to finish up and close up.

We got to Peebles about 3pm and Tyler was immediately admitted into ER and placed on an IV. To cut a very long story short, 24 hours later by Sunday afternoon his temperature had been spiking at over 106, he was still very dehydrated and on oxygen, his white blood cell count was off the chart and he was so ill they couldn't get the IV in, as his veins had collapsed. Things became very critical. He was being pumped full of antibiotics but there was so much going on that they didn't pick up that he also had bacterial pneumonia and various infections, which were complicating matters.

In amongst all of this I was having to do all the catering commitments which meant that I learnt how to use a deep fat fryer very quickly and also nearly ripped off the head of a rather belligerent  mother who complained that the food was 20 minutes late.

It took nearly 48 hours to stabilize him and then move him out of ER into a general ward (of our small public hospital) all hooked up to his oxygen and IV's. Unbeknown to us, visiting hospitals is very much a social occurrence here. Nor did people realize how gravely ill he was (one of the visitors remarked how ill he looked...). The upshot was that on the Tuesday many kind people decided to pop in, many we barely knew or didn't even know, including our car mechanic, someone looking for a job and a church group praying over him in Spanish.

Not only was Tyler rather bemused by this all, he was also exhausted and relapsed with spiking temperatures that night. Luckily he was promptly moved into a private high care room, as by now the pneumonia had been diagnosed and was also being treated. It was only after this move that he really started to respond and stabilize and by his second weekend in hospital, he was starting to recover.

He is now home and is slowly on the mend. He's exceptionally weak (but quite chuffed that he lost over 20 pounds) but the build up of lactic acid in his body from the lack of potassium, the oxygen and the bacterial pneumonia is agony. The only thing that helps is slow walking in the salty sea, which gives him some relief and the salt draws out all the toxins. Luckily we live on a tropical island, eh?

I must admit to have seen our lives flash in front of me a few times with some very dark moments. Scariest was when we realized that all the bread recipes are in Tyler's head and he was too confused to remember them. Needless to say when he did, they were promptly written down. The young lawyer whose 12 cupcakes were cancelled, when told that the baker was critically ill in hospital was heard to say that she "didn't care" and "how dare" we cancel her order.  For the record: The cakes were ordered the afternoon before and the 'party' was 8 people on a beach for a very young child who was probably more interested in eating the sand. I think I reached a watershed moment then - that it's OK to say that cupcakes are more important than a life. Suffice to say that the young lady's name and phone number remain in our order book - highlighted for future reference. A special mention should also go out to the customer who called our home, completely irate that he couldn't get hold of Tyler on his cell phone - to say that he needed his 2 blueberry muffins and a loaf of multigrain bread please, for 9am tomorrow morning.

This has obviously been a terrible setback for us and we are slowly putting our lives back together again. It has been very hard on the boys - but we 've had real love and support from good friends which has got us through the worst. I've had to focus on keeping the bakery running and have even started baking. The biggest godsend has been Tony our new baker who is simply wonderful and our lovely Vee, who has gone an extra mile + mile + a few more for us, and the bakery is thriving and growing.

I still feel too in the middle of it all now, to write anything but facts, but the bizarreness hasn't escaped me either. The backdrop to all this High Drama was unseasonal tropical wave conditions which meant loads of thunder and lightning and torrential rain - which lent a decidedly epic and biblical awfulness to it all. The soundtrack was unquestionably the ear-shatteringly loud gospel music played early morning in all the supermarkets, which always featured a fair amount of wailing and uplifting choral refrains - and which in a weird way helped. I most definitely feel like one of the Toiling Masses now, nothing 'Living the Dream'  about running a real bakery and business start-up with 3 young kids and a very ill husband, believe me.

Life will eventually get back to normal again, although things will need to be different to avoid a repeat of all of this. 'Ship Happens' and 'Life's a Beach" but we'll come out stronger for it all, I know that.

Blink 123

How did we go from Gorgeous Baby on the left to Big Boy on the right? I think we blinked and then our eldest son James was 12 years old. Rather puts life and things into perspective, doesn't it?

James had his 12th birthday last Friday in St Croix, doing what he loves most - racing for Team BVI.

Nine sailors participated from Tortola with William and I flying from St Thomas and the kids sailing over on a 50' catamaran in very rough seas. James apparently managed to sleep through 30+ knot winds with waves crashing over the deck, which rather impressed the Captain but is pretty indicative of his sanguine approach to life.

The weekend was Boy Heaven. They all whizzed around in boats and when they weren't doing that they were playing Fuzeball or jumping on the water trampoline or eating, which meant that I was either in the galley or on the rib watching the racing. The St Croix Yacht Club bar also made the best Bloody Mary ever (apart from the Phene Arms in SW3) which helped.

James came third in Blue Fleet, which he was chuffed about and Georgie poodled around in Green Fleet. I think George may be more of a gymnastics person although he certainly enjoys messing around on boats. He doesn't really feel the urge to win anything however (unlike his older brother) but seems to have a good time anyway. William's dead keen now to get in there too - so next season it will be three of them to organize. A Fleet of Dawsons. 

Could life get any better for a 7 year old chap?

The weekend was in fact 4 days, something I can now do in my new life. It was an absolute blast - both literally (winds mainly over 20+ knots the whole time) and figuratively, as I quite enjoy playing 'Sailing Mama'. It beats Soccer Mom anyday.

Click to enlarge

I am today in fact even a SAHM (Stay at Home Mom) as my Ford is still in the hospital, and Tyler felt he could manage the day (school, piano and aikido). I wasn't going to argue. QuickBooks and housework isn't exactly the High Life but it beats driving and sweating, anyday. I'm not too sure who's more excited about our imminent homeschooling - me or the kids, though I'll still have to drop James off and the afternoon activities are island-wide.

We've thought this too many times now to get excited, but the bakery is tipped to take-off with a night shift, a bakers assistant and a shipment from New York which includes a convection oven for cakes and patisserie and a bread slicing machine.  We're designing more labels, shipping in more packaging and wondering where the hell to put it all. Although the bakery has only been open for 8 months now, it feels like a decade. We take it day by day but we are slowly beginning to breathe again as we start to get wind in our sails. It's all good.

  

How to Vapourise Time

I'm having a rare day at home on my own, whilst the truck gets serviced. The day started off without electricity, but that was OK as I had time to make a list of all the things I urgently needed to do, like finish the accounts, sort out insurance, study for my Food Handlers certificate and write my report for the RBVIYC Board meeting tomorrow. 

Have I done these things?

Hell no.

I spent over an hour looking through Savuer to find an article on rum. It was, of course, in the very last magazine I looked at. Then I spent an awful lot of time trying to get the scanner to work. So I 'rewarded' myself with a bit of Facebook. That was 30 minutes vapourised. Then I decided to catch up on my blog. After fiddling with camera's, Windows 8 and links - I'd lost another 2 hours. As a short aside, can I tell you howmuch I truly loathe Windows 8. It's for teenagers with lots of time to waste. I'm middle-aged with no time at all. Windows 8 and Me are incompatible therefore.

Anyway I'm pretty much back to my normal day now, with nothing started yet. I despair of myself somedays. But I'm not the only one. This was a brilliant article in the Financial Times a few weeks ago by Lucy Kellaway:

"One day last week I was sitting at my desk reading an academic paper on cyber loafing when I glanced at my screen and saw a colleague had tweeted: “This shouldn’t be funny but it is.” I clicked on the link and found a series of pictures of ships with silly names. There was HMS Gay Viking, HMS Spanker, SS Lesbian, USS Saucy, SS Iron Knob. At first I laughed but, as I read on to HMS Cockchafer and HMS Grappler, I thought: surely not? Thus I found myself checking on Wikipedia and discovering HMS Cockchafer was the fifth Royal Navy ship of that name, that it was built in 1915, defended the southeast coast of England during the first world war and was later part of the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran.

The reason I’m flaunting this disgraceful theft of time from my employer is that I was reading (before I got distracted) a shocking piece of research telling me that...the average US worker spends 60-80 per cent of their time online at work doing things unrelated to their jobs.

Until a couple of years ago I thought skiving was a non-problem. The answer, I thought, was to fire extreme slackers and give the rest of us more work to do. But I don’t think that any more. I cyber loaf even when I’m extremely busy, which means I often work at weekends to catch up. I find the temptation to waste time online is so great that it swamps everything else. It feeds almost every need I have. It’s a drug, and I can’t help myself.

Some people heroically try to pretend there is nothing to worry about. Researchers from the National University of Singapore recently concluded that surfing the internet at work is actually a good thing, as it reduces stress and leaves you feeling refreshed. I dare say this might be right for the first five minutes or so. It was soothing for my mind to alight briefly on SS Iron Knob. But what wasn’t soothing was the helter-skelter ride I took from there that left me guilty, angry with myself, stressed about undone work and about as satisfied as if I’d eaten a whole tube of sour cream and onion Pringles.

...I’ve just sent out a tweet asking if anyone has found a fail-safe way of getting off Twitter and back to work. The great Tom Peters replied at once: “Just ignore it and move on!” – the speed of his response rather undermining his advice. More honest was the man who simply tweeted “no”.