From where we got on the boat in the Tennessee River, we’ve come down a number of locks. It’s a much lower key affair than the Panama Canal locks (here with Adagio, here with Woodwind, Time Machine part I, and Time Machine part II). We simply call the lockmaster on the radio as we’re approaching, he gives us the green light, we drive on in and tie up. The most complicated it gets is when he requests that all hands on deck wear life jackets.

The above is the floating bollard we wrap our line around.

The lock doors are shut behind us and we are slowly going down.

All hands on deck in their life jackets (Nigel too!). I’m trying to persuade Ronin to let go of her nap so we can get a better picture.

Our “better” picture, sans nap.

HOLY COW. Nap replaced and baby cool.

Gipsea, Tucker’s trawler is a little 30-foot thing but has about 50 times the interior volume of the Time Machine. Not only is there standing head room in all parts of the boat, there is refrigeration, a proper marine head, hot water, a SHOWER… It’s mind boggling really to take a hot shower on the boat. It is a great little boat. It is, however, a diesel boat that moves by way of a large noisy motor. When we shut the motor off for the day after anchoring, I always feel my body relax, unaware that I had been sort of tense the whole time the motor was on. I don’t know if it’s because of the noise or just because motoring on the Time Machine was often under duress and it always stressed me out a little to run the thing.

Ronin is handling the boat life well. We go to shore every day at least and give her some time to run around on the beach and she loves that. This is not ocean sailing by any stretch and the water is flat calm always, with the exception of wakes. She hasn’t even had to adapt to a rolling motion. We did get into a large lake right as some thunderstorms blew through. A captain of a tug going the opposite direction on the river told us, “it’s rougher than a cob there in the bay,” and frankly, we weren’t sure what to expect. We had some chop and whitecaps and the radio mentioned tornado warnings (!!) but we found a little inlet to anchor up in and we waited out the storm drinking coffee spiked with rum. Now we are in the Tenn-Tom waterway in northern Mississippi, heading south. It’s very narrow but sort of boring; once we hook up with the Tombigbee river, it will get interesting again.

It was rainy and cool for the first few days after we arrived but it cleared up on the third day. Naturally, I bemoan the lack of beautiful weather but then gripe about having to wear sunscreen when the sun actually comes out. I am hard to please. It’s back to being rainy and overcast and today is actually rather cold. We’re heading steadily south though so presumably it should warm up again and I can bitch about something new.

Ronin napping in the V-berth; I block the edge of the bed with suitcases so she doesn’t roll off. I’ve tried desperately (in vain, probably) to keep her on Oregon time but I think Ronin runs on a 23.5-hour clock. She always wants to get up earlier and nap/go to bed earlier. Lately, she has been getting up at 6am before it is even light outside, demanding juice, bunny grahams, and her table (a little teak folding table that serves as her activity headquarters here on the boat) before calming down, accepting her nap back, and settling down to sleep a little more. Of course, she refuses to go back down on her own bed and instead, insists upon wedging herself up into my armpit. She usually goes back to sleep for another hour or so but I don’t usually get much more sleep. I don’t know if this is a bad precedent to make; she has never before slept with us. She never liked to cuddle and could never lie still, preferring instead to roll around and kick me in the boobs.

Much of our time underway is spent upstairs in the pilot house, which has a fully-enclosed little room and the best view on the boat. We wrapped the rails of the back deck with rope to create something of a net but it’s less stressful if she stays inside the enclosure.

She likes to sit up on the counter in the pilot house and try to push buttons when we’re not looking.

Nigel likes to be wherever Ronin is.

A particularly awesome anchorage. We got ashore just as the sun was setting behind the trees and everything was a beautiful golden color.

Cypress tree.

We’re in Texas! [Edited to add: No we’re not! We’re in Tennessee now, on Tucker’s boat ‘Gipsea’ preparing her for the trip downriver and back home to Texas.] That of course does not explain the inexcusable absense of new posts recently… That can only be attributed by my general lameness. I feel like I am so busy but there never seems to be anything accomplished. Maybe a load of laundry done, maybe a trip to the store to get half and half (but forgetting the coffee filters). That is a pretty typical day for me now.

We had a reasonably decent travel experience, considering that we were toting along a wildly unpredictable little monkey in the throes of sprouting canines. It took all day starting the moment we got up in the morning (which, shall I say, is rarely a leisurely hour) and ending when we got to Tucker’s house in Rockport at 11pm. Happily, we had no screaming tantrums ON the plane nor did she poop on any of the unfortunate passengers we had trapped in the window seat. In the airport terminal however, she threw a whopper of a shrieking rolling flailer and bashed around in a blind rage practically in the boarding line. Prudently we decided to wait this one out instead of preboarding with the other docile, drowsy babies. Our fellow passengers danced gingerly around her, the whites of their eyes showing as they shuddered and sent off a plea to please please do not let this be their air travel fate. The ticket checker gave us the eye and bade us a solemn “good luck” as we wrestled Ronin down the chute. Miraculously, she stopped freaking out the moment she entered the plane and was relatively genial for the entirety of the flight.

[Jeff getting Quetzal (Condor 30) ready for the race.]

The day after we arrived, Joshua left on his father’s sailboat with the majority of the friends and relatives to Galveston for the Harvest Moon regata (offshore race from Galveston to Port Aransas) and I soloed with Ronin for four days at Grandpa Tucker’s house. Ronin did super well really, with only the usual antics. I had it in my head that I would try to potty train her when we were here because since it is so warm, I could just let her run about naked all the time. Unfortunately, Joshua’s grandfather’s house is carpeted (not to mention populated with thousands of antique, breakable, irreplacable, heirloom, valuable, delicate, and entirely reachable articles—but that’s another story) and I imagine that Tucker wouldn’t exactly be happy with mysterious puddles or unexpected surprises on his upholstery. I did take her for a long walk the other day after a norther came through (and the weather changed from hot, mosquitoey, and humid-humid-humid to deliciously cool and dry); I put a long T-shirt on her and let her run amok about the streets bottomless. When we got back to the house, we wandered around the downstairs garage area and I took her into the bathrooom, set her on the toilet, told her to pee, and SHE DID! I was so happy and made a huge to-do out of it, let her flush, did some celebratory dances, etc. We shut the lights off and exited back into the garage. As I was about to step down onto the main level, I spotted a … thing. It was scary looking and I bent closer thinking it was perhaps some freaky sort of bug larva. A big larva. It seriously looked like something that would mutate into a face-eating parasite and holy shit, I had better alert the authorities! Ronin came over to help me investigate. “Poop,” she said. And right she was. Somehow in the split second I left her alone she managed to poop in the middle of the garage floor. Oh well. I was still happy about the pee.

[Ro’s preferred spot for drawing. Between teething and solo parenting, I gave in and let her have her nap (the pacifier—she calls it the ‘nap’—which she usually only gets when sleeping) when she found it. She has been super manic about the thing lately and we have been trying to summon the fortitude to take it away from her. I will feel bad about it though; she is so fantastically happy when she finds it and pops it into her mouth.]

We had a good time hanging out with Grandpa Tucker, went to the beach every day to splash around in the water and play on the playground equipment, we went kayaking with Ann-Marie (Ronin promptly fell asleep on my lap), and had some good dinners with Tom, Ann-Marie, and Keely. Ronin was very excited when Dada and Grandpa Jeff came back on the boat. Sadly, they broke the main halyard about 50 miles from the finish and were having trouble with steering, so they didn’t finish and returned home. In addition, Bill (Wing and a Prayer) and John (Gimme Samoa) didn’t make it either. Bill’s motor broke en route to the start and John was dismasted during the start. They had wind on the nose the entire way up the ditch (ICW) to Galveston and then on the nose for the race back—that is, until they got the screaming norther at 4am and had to mince along all reefed up with the sideways rain stinging in their faces. I’m glad I wasn’t invited, let’s just say.

Ronin has totally turned into a little girl when we weren’t looking (actually, we were watching but it’s still rather mind-blowing). She sings and talks nonstop (often not coherent) and now that I got her some markers, she likes to draw on everything. (Before, we always had crayons but she doesn’t like to push very hard so her marks were always faint and unimpressive. Markers are dark and bold and she’s into that.) The markers are washable, which I think belongs in the Best Inventions Ever hall of fame since I’ve been washing marker marks out of everything lately. She’s tall and runs, not walks, everywhere.

[We got to meet cousin Danielle and Heath’s little boy, Hoss Roquette. He is eight months old and quite the big-eyed charmer.]

Anyway, now we’re on the boat in Tennessee. To get here, we drove nonstop all night long (Ronin dislikes car travel and so we decided it would be the least painful to do it when she was likely to sleep). It was mostly a success. We got here at any rate and she spent the day in a manic freak out (didn’t nap after the night of poor sleep), crawling all over the boat and trying to kill herself by flinging herself down the stairs to the V-berth. Today is better and she seems to understand that climbing up onto the rails makes everyone freak right out and she’s only fallen down to the V-berth once today. Now my major concern is that she’ll drop Nigel overboard. We fashioned a lifejacked for him out of a can wrap and he’ll wear that on deck when Ronin has to wear hers.

The weather is a startling difference from Texas; it’s been cool and drizzly. This is mostly tolerable but as a boat is generally a damp experience overall what with the water underneath, water being tracked in, water in the bilge, water trying its damndest to get into the bedding, etc., having water also falling out of the sky doesn’t make things any easier. So far everything seems to be in working order, including, I’m overjoyed to report, the head.

We got this chair at a garage sale for $2. Aside from the disgusting stained seat, I though it was rather pretty. It is more or less sturdy (no wobbly legs) and made of what looks like mahogany—just needs a bit of sanding and some finishing oil. No problem!

We huffed it home and I took it apart to inspect the seat. It had four layers of totally disgusting fabric and about fifty billion disintegrating staples, which I pried out with a screwdriver. Joshua came to check on me an hour or so after I had started and was surprised to see me still bent over the seat-back, pulling bits of metal out and swearing (well, he wasn’t surprised about the swearing). Look at this fabric; can you even imagine the splendor of what once was? The mind boggles.

Here are the seat covers I removed, each more stained than the previous layer. As I picked broken-off staples out of the crumbling fabric, I thought about a lot of things. Ancient diaper leaks, spilled chicken juice, bedbugs; and I ask you: what sort of person picked out the striped yellow fabric and said, “Yes. This is the one.” It gave me the shivers.

Of course then I had to sand it. Because I didn’t have a vibrating sander (left it in Texas), we had to go out to the hardware store and buy one. Then I made Joshua bring home paper because I guess I used all the paper I thought I had at home, or else I lost it. Then I sanded and sanded and sanded out all those nicks and scratches and asked my dad for refinishing advice and discovered that I should sand at a finer grit so I resanded and resanded and with a tear in my eye had to ditch the sander and use my fingers and bent-up bits of paper and I sanded and sanded and bitched and griped about how easy it is to forget how much one hates sanding all those weird little nooks and crannies and that dry scritchy flimsy bits of paper. But then it was finished and I got to apply the finishing oil (I had to go to two different stores before I found the right stuff, naturally). Putting oil on wood is so satisfying, like creating jewels out of dust. I painted on the oil, painted on more and sanded it wet with really fine grit black paper, then wiped it off and painted a final coat the next day.

Et voila! I thought Ronin would dig the fish.

Soooo pretty. Totally worth all that sanding.

This is a garden in an alley near some chickens Ronin likes to visit. The first time I saw it, I called it Lead Garden because it’s planted in some funky paint-and-concrete-dust-crusted dirt in an alley adjacent a flaking garage and mouldering compost pile. At first it was just a long line of puny seedlings but as it grew, sticks and string were added to bind in the garden and allow a scaffold for the climbing plants. Of course, now it is full and luscious looking and there are volunteer tomatoes growing out of the compost pile (Trader Joe’s “grape tomatoes” I think they are) I finally met the guy who tended it and I’m fairly positive he is not one of the land owners. Just a mellow street dude with a serious green thumb.

Leaving the alley we pass the corner house, which is a tiny thing with a big backyard. The people who live here have two 100-gallon plastic containers full of cut-up pieces of stump that have been, um, brewing for nearly a year (at the very least). We wonder what they are making. They also have a nice garden with corn poking up over their six-foot fence.

Continuing down the street is a small front-yard garden. This one got started late but it’s looking pretty good. Sadly though, there are about ten little four-inch containers of root-bound strawberry plants beyond the garden patch near the front steps. I feel like I can’t understand (and yet I CAN understand only too well) why then never managed to get them planted in the real dirt so that they would have some semblance of a decent strawberry existence. Ah well. Moving on.

I don’t know what that little stripe of lawn between sidewalk and street is called but a lot of people around here plant gardens or fruit trees in it. I think it’s awesome but I’d personally be paranoid that dogs would pee on my tomatoes. And WHO is that hot guy with the adorable baby?

This guy must have used homemade compost to mulch his yard because there are tomato plants coming up ALL OVER his flower beds. These ones escaped his fence and are taking over the sidewalk (also Trader Joe grape tomatoes, it looks like). Ronin has a special affinity for this house because they chose to landscape the [weird patch between sidewalk and street] with pea gravel. Ronin LOVES pea gravel. It’s maybe her favorite thing on earth these days.

After 20 minutes and some hysterics, we managed to cross the street to a house owned by an elderly Chinese lady and her large chow mix dog. We see her begrudgingly walking the dog periodically with the surliest expression and the shortest leash. Pesky dogs!

She planted these beans from seed and I watched in amazement as the tiniest, most pathetic little sprouts grew up so huge they ate up the chain link fence and took over the string she laced all through the tops of the re-bar posts.

BEANS! I tell ya.

Another lovely garden planted in the [whateveryoucallit]. They have a serious pumpkin crop too.

Nobody waters lawns here. Only the dandelions are still green.

This guy has a cornfield in his front yard and has also taken up the parkway (I looked it up) with tomatoes and squash.

Alley garden. This is just around the corner from the New Seasons, where we buy groceries and where Ronin feasts upon the myriad of samples they lay out on a daily basis. I love New Seasons.

This house has raised beds that spill over his property lines into the vacant lot next door. Also, he’s planted a tomato field smack in the middle of the lot.

Since we rented a real house with a real yard, we planted a garden as well. We have cucumbers, lemon cucumbers, sunburst squash, chard, carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, basil, oregano, sage, chives, thyme, strawberries and raspberries that were already here and established, and a volunteer artichoke. The carrots unfortunately didn’t do well at all; maybe it is the thick clayey quality of our soil. Also, powdery mildew totally attacked the squash and lemon cucumber. I mixed some baking soda in water w/a little dishsoap and oil and killed it and now the squash is doing well. The lemon cucumber was pretty severely disabled and though it is producing cucumbers, they are small and sparse.

The strawberries, tomatoes, and raspberries. The tomatoes are just now ripening and we’re going to have a second crop of raspberries in a few weeks. Ronin loves raspberries provided they come directly off the bush; if you try to feed her fruits (blueberries, plums, whatever) in the house, she shuns them. Therefore, we have to go back out and pretend to pull them off the bush if we want her to eat them.