The Native Iowan

Woke up, got outa bed, drug a comb across my head…

I succumbed to the external noise at my house about 0855. Was no where near waking up, had hit the sack between 0230 and 0300, so, after having a look at my phone to check for calls and emails I head into the living room in my lava-lava and stretch out on the sofa.

Mornings at our house are manic… I know it sounds opulent (and it is) but we have two house keepers, a Gardner, there is a property maintenance man who is always working on a project on one of the properties, one or two security guards always hosing the deck off or washing the cars, There is my old-man, custom masseur, who I employ just to keep his magic hands around (he also cleans the pool real well), and the contract plumber who is helping the maintenance man initiate a bio-cycle septic system we’ve recently installed. Add to this 4 big dogs (Chewy, Jelly, Bean, and Toughie… have two more ridgeback pups coming in soon so we’ll be adding Iowa and Lauru to this mix)…

And this is without any kids!

Our corporate office is upstairs. The house is split into two units with the upstairs being a nice big area with Connie’s bedroom and living space plus the office.  So the girls are at work. Grace is running somewhere. And the house jiggles with activity.

But I love dozing on the sofa in the confused mix, as the noise comes and goes.

I know it is ugly and embarrassing for all… my big, hairy body stretched out snoring in the front room. Call me hedonistic. Or an islander in that it is not unusual at all in island households to have different sleep patterns happening in different members of the family and having some “sleeping” folks around just means we try to be quiet where in fact we actually get louder.

By 10:00 the cacophony was simply too much to not want to watch. I love the way the ballet of life transpires in a busy household.

Mornings mean that our daily ration of fruit and vegies come in. #1 housekeeper, Nancy, does the marketing.

This and the veggies, and root crops stored away represents our main food for a couple days. We make lots of papaya and cucumber juice, eat a fair amount of bananas, have other items like kumara, cassava, taro, yam, pommeloe, peanuts and items that I may not know the English name of.  About $20.00 USD a day gives us more than enough, and some of the best, fresh food the tropics can offer.

Funny, Grace was recently told by a doctor that she needs to eat more red meat. The meat is not real good here, considering it’s been processed, packaged, frozen and then shipped to us, it is usually too tough for me to bother with. Hell I grew up in Iowa and know what a good steak is… Buying meat here is such a crapshoot that we have our bbqs and rarely cook any other red meat.

Nancy bakes a loaf of nice, mixed flour bread everyday. Makes me a killer vegie sandwich for lunch. Does the juice and cooks most of whatever we have for supper… I note some very nice taro that looks like they’ll be cooked for supper.

Any way, I get up about 10:00, pull my hair back so I don’t scare too many people, adjust my lava-lava, nope, nothing exposed, and go have a look round. There is a big confusion as there is a process happening within the plumbing side of things. We’re flushing toilets and checking traps and generally making a lot of noise. The plumbing job has been going on for about 3 months (should have taken 3 weeks) but then if we moved fast we’d miss a lot of fun, right?

I put the kettle on and head to the shower. Busy morning so everywhere I go someone is there… I walk into my bedroom in the motion of stripping my lava-lava to get my towel and almost step on Linda. Yep, she sure jumped. So did I. So I get my towel and waltz into the bathroom. Nancy is there. Fine, we do the dosey-do and I get the bathroom.

So I’m now hanging out in my towel as I brew coffee and check the email.

Great start to a day…