Welcome to Paradise (Part 4)

I'm usually pretty good at spotting snakes because I look for them even in winter, but we missed the first one because we were inspecting the old refrigerator we used to gauge the water height. Jaime grabbed me suddenly sinking his fingers between my ribs and under my armpit. There was a long, black snake just under his feet. We screamed and ran. 

That was at the very beginning of our hike. The next two hours were filled with talking about snakes, looking for snakes and worrying about snakes. We didn't see any more on the trail. 

But we still decided the water was a safer activity after lunch. By then, Harper had made it clear that she expected us all three of us to be on the same floating device. Just like she expects the three of us to sleep in the same spot on the bed and sit on the same seat in the living room or car.  

Barack and Margart Cho had a great canoe they said we could use, but it was heavy. Jaime grabbed one side but needed my help to flip it. I grabbed the nose and heaved it towards myself. An enormous snake came flying towards my face with it. I screamed, I ran, we got in the paddle boat instead. 

The next hour was filled with talking about snakes, looking for snakes and worrying about snakes while we powered the boat with our feet. And we did see another. 

I'm a suburban person who grew up a country person who's always wanted to believe herself a city person, so I know how snakes swim. 

Jaime didn't. 

The realization that the animals slither on top of the water just like they do on land made him ill. "It's just disappointing. It's so disappointing." He repeated to himself unprompted over and over again. 

We took our last evening walk along the gravel road instead of the woods to avoid snakes but turned around before the first neighbor's house to avoid neighbors. We ran into Barack and Margaret Cho. Margaret told us we could check out a little later because they didn't have new guests coming the next day. We thanked her and said we'd probably take her up on that kind offer so Jaime and Harper could paddle board one more time. 

We also asked to buy a dozen eggs, and she said she'd bring some by. 

Harper immediately knew something was wrong when we got back to the cabin. I figured it out shortly after. Jaime would have never put it together. 

An animal, we're not sure what kind, had come through the sliding screen door and eaten all the food left on the counter and table top knocking over whatever it couldn't eat. Jaime and Harper searched the house for the animal while I cleaned up frantically before Margaret came by with the eggs.  

She popped in as I was swiffering and told us we hadn't paid the pet deposit. I was more than happy to shove some money in her hands and get her the fuck out before she discovered what had happened. I was the last one out the door, so I was clearly the one who hadn't closed it. 

Jaime knew it despite my gaslight attempts to convince him he was at fault. Harper knew it, too. And I'd be damned if Margaret Cho was going to judge me as the future that liberals want. 

I didn't sleep well that night because I was convinced the animal was still in the house. The paranoia was a nice change from White supremacist paranoia and the crazy doppelganger paranoia that kept me up before. 

The first thing Jaime said in the morning was, "Let's go home." I told him I thought he wanted to get back on the water one more time, and he said, "No, we're going home." 

I love him so much. 

Welcome to Paradise (Part 2)

Although she fell in a few times each event prompting the sort of chaos and panic from all three of us normally reserved for Bath and Body Works sales and bridge collapses, Harper did so well! 

We decided she could handle a whole tour of the lake even though it involved going past the neighbors' docks which isn't normally a scary prospect unless you'd just driven by their signs that read: 

"America: God, Guns and Guts! Let's keep all three!" 

"Repent Sinners!" 

"Make China Great Again" (with a picture of President Biden) 

"Don't blame me! I voted for Trump!" 

And sev-er-al "NO TRESPASSING" signs with pictures of AR 15s. 

Were we trespassing!? I felt like that was up to their interpretation not mine, and even though I don't consider a man wearing a wet suit that conceals no secrets, a nervous lab mix in a life jacket and a woman unsuccessfully trying to find her rhythm with a kayak paddle dangerous, I couldn't shake what I know to be true. 

There is no greater threat than an insecure White man with a gun looking for an excuse. 

But no one shot us that day. Not even the incel with a woman mannequin fishing with him off his dock.  

On our way back to paradise, I noticed Barack and...her named started with an A, so I will call her Margaret Cho...Barack and Margaret Cho's Trump/Pence flag had unfurled. I'd just missed it the first time. 

That night, I chose to watch Jordan Peele's critically acclaimed thriller US, the greatest critically acclaimed thriller made since Jordan Peel's Get Out. It proved to be the stupidest decision I've ever made in my stupid life. 

Note: I did NOT take photos of the neighbors' signs and properties because I want to live. 

Welcome to Paradise (Part 3)

If you have not seen US, please watch it but watch it in a well lit room during the day time with other people and only after you have accepted that your one-sided relationship with Lupita Nyong'o will be harmed irrevocably but that your respect and admiration for her and her craft will go beyond the limits of what you ever thought possible. 

Anyway, I didn't rest well our first night. 

In my twilight sleep, Lupita Nyong'o's children crawled out of the walls and from under the bed. Her voice came down the hallway. 

Every time I bolted upright, my fear of fictional characters was immediately replaced by my fear of the real neighbors. The countryside is dark and silent. Every twig snap and scrape on the roof was a gang of vigilantes coming by torchlight to corner us at the dead end. 

Jaime slept soundly against the wall because he thinks sleeping closest to the door is a gender construct intended to make women feel dependent on men. He's a real fucking asshole. Harper was curled up where my legs were supposed to go despite paying extra for a king-sized bed. All three of us were naked and unprepared. I had to protect my family. But instead of putting pants on or making a plan, I obsessively designed outfits for Lupita Nyong'o to wear on red carpets for hours. It was our salvation. 

In the morning, two of us were refreshed and ready for a hike in the rain. 

For some reason, I'd recently read about flash flooding and knew we shouldn't wade through the creek running just over our boots, so we did. Despite the rain not being heavy, as the article warned it didn't have to be, the creek was already above our knees on the way back. Harper, newly empowered by the life jacket she wasn't wearing anymore, flipped over the bridge rail and got stuck with her head submerged under water. I froze, and Jaime pushed me out of the way to get to her. 

I told him later that I didn't do anything because we have to let her find her own solutions to problems. Neither of us believed me. I also told him we had to check for ticks and leeches when we got back to the cabin. He took that very seriously. 

I've never met someone who loves animals more than Jaime does, but even he has his limits. Ticks and leeches are on his "no" list as is my biggest "no": snakes. 

The second day's rain kept us inside playing a German game called Chinese checkers for hours. I don't know what the fuck the snakes were doing, but they weren't with us. 

Those scary bitches came to play the third day. 

Welcome to Paradise (Part 1)

 Shortly before we turned off the highway, I told Jaime that I thought there were less MAGA signs in the rural part of the state than the last time we'd driven through. 

"Fewer," he said. 

The line between work and home has become way too blurred this year so we booked an Airbnb without wifi next to a small, private lake where we could teach Harper how to paddle board without embarrassing ourselves beyond the inherent humiliation of teaching your dog to paddle board. 

After losing cell service, I began reading the thorough instructions our hosts had written us to Jamie from a screen shot. But even in my distracted navigator's role, I noticed the signs. 

The first one posted on our cabin's dead end gravel road said, "We don't call 911." 

They got progressively more or less threatening after that depending on your gun control views and relationship with the lord god. 

The property owners' double wide was the last house on the road other than our slightly older trailer, and I was relieved to see no symbols of conviction on either except for an American flag on their front porch. 

Our host and his beagle were waiting to greet us under a sign reading, "Welcome to Paradise." He was wearing an "America First" shirt. The beagle wasn't wearing anything. I was wearing one that said, "Bad things happen in Philadelphia." 

I don't know if he got the reference, but I certainly got his. 

The owner's real name started with a B, so I'll give him the completely random name Barack to protect his identity. 

Barack thrust out his hand to shake Jaime's and told me I didn't have to wear a mask. I continued wearing a mask. He'd come by to collect some chicken eggs, which was a huge selling point for us. We don't eat eggs at home, but they are an integral part of the Spanish tortilla Jaime had been craving. 

We decided the chickens wouldn't mind if we ate their eggs before we met them, but the geese were a different story. We hadn't known about the geese. 

Barack told us the birds' back story. It was genuinely romantic, and Jaime decided he wanted to try a goose egg. I sent him out to ask our host because the bigger eggs weren't a part of the deal. The menfolk quickly found themselves at an impasse and asked me to come settle the score. 

Jaime learned that sure we could try the eggs, but they might have some premature goslings inside. Barack couldn't understand why Jaime was pooping his pants (his expression) over this, but I could. It was because we couldn't ask Mother Goose if it was okay with her. 

I felt that if I laid several eggs a week with the goose I loved, I would not mind if someone ate some of our babies. Jaime accepted my feelings and we decided to sacrifice the potential life for a novel experience that we felt could bring us closer to understanding our place in the universe. 

Barack was thoroughly confused at this point, but he collected two eggs and rinsed them off in the spigot.

To our relief, there were no overrated but universally handsome goslings in our eggs. We ate well then took Harper for a paddle.