Spring of Loss, Summer of Babes

Oops, I did it again. Right after my last post, it became increasingly obvious that our cat Bowie was ready to head on over to another plane of existence. Euthanizing a pet here on Crete is an experience. I have other shit to talk about today, but it wasn’t fun for a lot of reasons.

And then about a month later, when things were finally starting to suck less, we had a huge dust storm. People who have been here for decades say it was the worst one they’ve seen. BMO’s lung function had been decreasing for months, and the air being full of dust was the last straw for him. So we had to say goodbye to him too.

Epic dragon fruit Felix and I turned into ice cream!

So the last couple months of months have been kind of shitty, but also totally magical. It’s been hard to wrap my brain and my heart around the opposing feelings sometimes, but let’s talk about some good stuff.

I moved my monstera to a different patio location on the advice of my friend/bartender/plant guy/prettiest man in the village, and it is THRIVING. I’m gonna have to invite him up for dinner again soon so I can see what other rookie patio gardening mistakes I’ve been making. Haha! But for real, I’m learning here. After a pretty high failure rate on a lot of my plants last year, I haven’t killed anything yet this year! Not counting my garden, but I think most of the deaths have been due to clay soil and garden location. The garden is a new project, so I’m giving myself grace and keeping my expectations very…medium.

Around when we lost Bowie, this gal started showing up on the patio. We thought she was pregnant and started feeding her, so she started hanging out every day. After a while we realized she was not getting bigger but was definitely rocking some working titties. We watched her leave one night and suspected her babies were across the street somewhere. After we treated her for parasites, she started getting comfortable coming inside. In fact, she’s currently curled up on the couch with her tongue out.

And then one random day she brought her children to the house! They’re so little and so cute and so scared. They’re slowly but surely getting less scared of us. We were able to get them treated for parasites the other day, so we’re starting extensive work on socializing these little gremlins! Their mother, who we call Leslie Mackeral, was spayed a couple days ago. No more babies for Les!

Felix has been into learning to cook some things, which is fun. This night he wanted to eat homemade pizza, so I said he had to help. Some cheese got on the pizzas, but a lot got inside Felix with some on the chairs?

Paulina turned 40 while she was away in Chile, and her husband threw her a surprise party after she got back. I’ve been spending a TON of time with these babes. Cezara worked hard to be able to take the summer off, so we’ve had tons of beach days and shopping days. Paulina is working so is a little harder to pin down, but we’ve had several awesome girls’ nights lately. Last night we painted sea stones on Cezara’s patio while drinking wine and laughing until it hurt.

It reminded me of Olya’s art nights before she moved!

We went to the Cretan Beer Festival in Myrtos a couple weekends ago. I’m used to the Colorado ones with a bazillion breweries present, but this was a totally different experience. There were maybe eight breweries there? Which makes sense because I live on an island. We stayed in Ierapetra, which is where the big fire is currently raging on the island. The news articles are all WATCH OUT CRETE IS ON FIRE STAY AWAY, but the island is big, and it’s about as far away from us as you can get.

Unfortunately it’s dry as a bone here right now, so the danger is always real.

Paulina and I made it to our first panigiri, which is a village party. Live music, traditional dancing, wine in plastic bottles, meat on a stick, a ceremonial burning of the may day wreath followed by jumping over the bonfire. You know, the usual.

Please enjoy these penile cacti and then pretend that I didn’t disappear. We have so many good adventures planned for the future. A getaway to Santorini for a long weekend in a couple weeks and then a couple of my favorite people will be here for a visit for a week. Current adventure plans for the day include buying patio furniture for the pool so we can get more use out of it. Current lounger situation is zero, and mama needs some shade too! Then we’re going to the beach for a while. This will be my forth/fifth time at the seaside this week, depending on how technical you want to be with day counting.

All in all, things are going well after an emotionally harrowing period. This time last year felt like we were on stress vacation. Our house hadn’t sold, we didn’t quite officially own this one yet, things were strange and new. This summer the stress is gone, and the views and activities we can get up to do feel like we’re on vacation almost. Except you can spend the day at the beach and then go take a nap in your own bed with your own cat and your own pillows. Or you can just go to the beach for an hour and not feel like you’re wasting beach time if you don’t stay long enough. It will be there tomorrow!

Be back soon, I promise. I promise mostly to me.