In Which Penn Gets Clonked on the Head and Dawn Goes Shopping
I nearly fell off of the ladder
I now know that I must have been very bad in my previous lives because I never did anything bad enough in this life to deserve this.
Saturday January 19th 2013 through Wednesday January 23rd 2013– Ensenada
My cold is back with a vengeance. This thing has held on for over three weeks. I thought I was just about over it when we struck out for Cabo, but the long hours driving weakened my resistance.
At any rate, I’m miserable again. Saturday I was so tired from the trip and felt so lousy from the cold that I didn’t even go down to the boat. On Sunday, we went to the boat, but I just didn’t feel like working. I assessed the situation on what I’d need to do with the 110-volt system and went grocery shopping, then home where I climbed in the big leather chair and zoned out.
I know I slept for most of the days on Saturday and Sunday. I don’t remember what Dawn did. Maybe she took Odin for a walk on the beach, or maybe she worked on the boat. I was so out of it, I honestly don’t remember.
Monday was much better. I had some energy back. We got up and headed down to the boat.
The concrete is getting drier. It won’t be much longer before we can begin repairing the hole.
I worked on the 12-volt electrical system. It was slow, meticulous, mind-numbing work. I took apart virtually every 12-volt connection that was under water, cleaned off the corrosion and put them back together. The wire looked fine, but the connections on the end were all green with salt water corrosion.
At any rate, I crawled around in small spaces on the boat all day. This kills my back and knees, but by the end of the day, I flipped the switch on the batteries and the power came on. All of the 12-volt systems except the pump under the galley sink and the freezer compressor came back on line. What a glorious feeling.
Oops! I forgot to mention the mast-head light and the steaming light on the mast. I think I’m going to have to climb the mast to fix those.
At the end of the day, I walked up to the yard office to talk to Guillermo. After our conversation, Dawn and I were walking back to the car. I was wearing a baseball cap.
I didn’t see it coming. The bill of my cap hid the danger. A steel spiral staircase jumped from out of nowhere and smashed into my head. I went down like a sack of taters.
The pain exploded in my skull. Tiny lights danced around my field of vision. Actually, I didn’t have a field of vision. My eyes were closed. The tiny lights were like flash bulbs going off inside my skull.
I don’t know if I lost consciousness or not, but when I opened my eyes, I was surrounded by a dozen or more feet. I grabbed my head and was unable to speak.
Dawn kept talking to me, I could isolate her voice, but I couldn’t really understand what she was saying. I tried to get up, but swayed on my knees and went back down.
I think I remember someone saying “Ees he dead?” while I lay on the ground.
I don’t know how long it took me to recover my senses, but my head felt like it was going to explode. I couldn’t think at all. Dawn probably asked me if I needed to go to the hospital, but all I could think about was getting home and collapsing in my big leather chair.
I probably should have gone to the emergency room. Instead, Dawn somehow managed to get me to my feet and in the car. She brought me home where I have a bottle of Narco left over from my back injury last September. I swallowed a pill and died on the couch.
I don’t remember much else of that night. I know Dawn spent some time on the Internet researching concussions. She discovered that there is such a thing as Post Concussion Syndrome. If I wasn’t crazy enough to begin with, now I had a reason to be zany and out of control.
We’re flying to Seattle on Thursday for my mother’s wedding. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to fly with the concussion. Dawn researched it and pronounced it OK.
Tuesday morning came and my head was swimming. It felt like it was stuffed with cotton candy and I was out of sync with the world. I heard things, but they didn’t make any sense. When I reached out to pick something up, it wasn’t quite where I expected it to be.
I had the killer headache of all time and my neck, shoulders, back and shins ached. More drugs.
I couldn’t get up and move around. Dawn took off and went shopping. I stayed on the couch all day.
My mother is getting married on Saturday and most of our clothes were destroyed in the accident. I still have some slacks and dress shirts, but Dawn lost virtually all of her shore-going clothes. So, she went shopping for a dress to wear to the wedding.
Neither of us has shoes. I saved the one pair I was wearing during the accident. Dawn has the tennis shoes she was wearing and a pair of flip-flops we later found behind the after deck box.
The day was a blur and went quickly. Before I knew it Dawn and Odin were home and she was cooking dinner. I went to bed still out of it.
Wednesday morning I felt a little better. We got up and dressed and headed out. I wore my slacks and a Hawaiian shirt so that I could try on shoes.
We went to several dress shops and shoe stores. I don’t like the Mexican styles for men’s shoes. Either the shoes have long pointy toes that look like you have elf feet, or they look like a tool box. Since Mexico is a major producer of shoes, the prices were low. I finally bought a pair that I wouldn’t even have considered in the US for about $20.
We got our shopping done and headed down to the boat. I wasn’t feeling well, but I had to get some work done.
As I climbed the ladder to the deck I nearly fell off. My head was spinning and I could hardly stand up. I was exhausted. We gave up and Dawn took me home.
Woe is me. Two days of work lost.
Saturday January 19th 2013 through Wednesday January 23rd 2013– Ensenada
My cold is back with a vengeance. This thing has held on for over three weeks. I thought I was just about over it when we struck out for Cabo, but the long hours driving weakened my resistance.
At any rate, I’m miserable again. Saturday I was so tired from the trip and felt so lousy from the cold that I didn’t even go down to the boat. On Sunday, we went to the boat, but I just didn’t feel like working. I assessed the situation on what I’d need to do with the 110-volt system and went grocery shopping, then home where I climbed in the big leather chair and zoned out.
I know I slept for most of the days on Saturday and Sunday. I don’t remember what Dawn did. Maybe she took Odin for a walk on the beach, or maybe she worked on the boat. I was so out of it, I honestly don’t remember.
Monday was much better. I had some energy back. We got up and headed down to the boat.
The concrete is getting drier. It won’t be much longer before we can begin repairing the hole.
I worked on the 12-volt electrical system. It was slow, meticulous, mind-numbing work. I took apart virtually every 12-volt connection that was under water, cleaned off the corrosion and put them back together. The wire looked fine, but the connections on the end were all green with salt water corrosion.
At any rate, I crawled around in small spaces on the boat all day. This kills my back and knees, but by the end of the day, I flipped the switch on the batteries and the power came on. All of the 12-volt systems except the pump under the galley sink and the freezer compressor came back on line. What a glorious feeling.
Oops! I forgot to mention the mast-head light and the steaming light on the mast. I think I’m going to have to climb the mast to fix those.
At the end of the day, I walked up to the yard office to talk to Guillermo. After our conversation, Dawn and I were walking back to the car. I was wearing a baseball cap.
I didn’t see it coming. The bill of my cap hid the danger. A steel spiral staircase jumped from out of nowhere and smashed into my head. I went down like a sack of taters.
The pain exploded in my skull. Tiny lights danced around my field of vision. Actually, I didn’t have a field of vision. My eyes were closed. The tiny lights were like flash bulbs going off inside my skull.
I don’t know if I lost consciousness or not, but when I opened my eyes, I was surrounded by a dozen or more feet. I grabbed my head and was unable to speak.
Dawn kept talking to me, I could isolate her voice, but I couldn’t really understand what she was saying. I tried to get up, but swayed on my knees and went back down.
I think I remember someone saying “Ees he dead?” while I lay on the ground.
I don’t know how long it took me to recover my senses, but my head felt like it was going to explode. I couldn’t think at all. Dawn probably asked me if I needed to go to the hospital, but all I could think about was getting home and collapsing in my big leather chair.
I probably should have gone to the emergency room. Instead, Dawn somehow managed to get me to my feet and in the car. She brought me home where I have a bottle of Narco left over from my back injury last September. I swallowed a pill and died on the couch.
I don’t remember much else of that night. I know Dawn spent some time on the Internet researching concussions. She discovered that there is such a thing as Post Concussion Syndrome. If I wasn’t crazy enough to begin with, now I had a reason to be zany and out of control.
We’re flying to Seattle on Thursday for my mother’s wedding. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to fly with the concussion. Dawn researched it and pronounced it OK.
Tuesday morning came and my head was swimming. It felt like it was stuffed with cotton candy and I was out of sync with the world. I heard things, but they didn’t make any sense. When I reached out to pick something up, it wasn’t quite where I expected it to be.
I had the killer headache of all time and my neck, shoulders, back and shins ached. More drugs.
I couldn’t get up and move around. Dawn took off and went shopping. I stayed on the couch all day.
My mother is getting married on Saturday and most of our clothes were destroyed in the accident. I still have some slacks and dress shirts, but Dawn lost virtually all of her shore-going clothes. So, she went shopping for a dress to wear to the wedding.
Neither of us has shoes. I saved the one pair I was wearing during the accident. Dawn has the tennis shoes she was wearing and a pair of flip-flops we later found behind the after deck box.
The day was a blur and went quickly. Before I knew it Dawn and Odin were home and she was cooking dinner. I went to bed still out of it.
Wednesday morning I felt a little better. We got up and dressed and headed out. I wore my slacks and a Hawaiian shirt so that I could try on shoes.
We went to several dress shops and shoe stores. I don’t like the Mexican styles for men’s shoes. Either the shoes have long pointy toes that look like you have elf feet, or they look like a tool box. Since Mexico is a major producer of shoes, the prices were low. I finally bought a pair that I wouldn’t even have considered in the US for about $20.
We got our shopping done and headed down to the boat. I wasn’t feeling well, but I had to get some work done.
As I climbed the ladder to the deck I nearly fell off. My head was spinning and I could hardly stand up. I was exhausted. We gave up and Dawn took me home.
Woe is me. Two days of work lost.
Miss
Dawn
Dawn’s Perspective - Penn’s “Concussion and my Torture”
Most men I know are pretty big babies when it comes to being sick. But not many could endure running a 60,000 pound concrete boat on the rocks, the struggle to get her back to Ensenada where we could haul her out of the water, a three-day weekend with my dear friend Heidi and her extreme personality traits, to come home and face cleaning every little connection on a 60-foot yacht’s electrical system.
If all of that isn’t enough to make most men jump off a cliff, instead Penn decided to whack his head with a two inch steel spiral staircase rail and knock himself silly.
I can’t say I blame him. After all, life has a funny way of taking its revenge. Instead of carting tourists around on the deck of his well-polished boat through the sunny blue waters of the Sea of Cortez, Penn has spent the last few weeks tackling chores of major proportions.
I don’t think Penn is consciously aware of his self-destructive walk into the staircase that day, but I find it strange how hundreds of people walk through that entrance way every day and no one ever hits their heads.
Regardless, Penn now has concrete (no pun intended) evidence to support his absent minded behavior.
We were walking out of the office after discussing finances and the amount of time it was going to take to fix the boat. Penn wasn’t happy. We were heading home after a day of working very hard at what feels like we’re going backwards.
All of a sudden I heard a loud bang, like a baseball bat hitting a hollow pipe. I looked over at Penn and he wasn’t there. I looked down and he was rolling around on the ground in a fetal position, holding on to his red baseball cap.
I had no idea what happened until I looked up and realized that the only thing he could have run into was the staircase. Because of the red hat, I couldn’t tell if there was blood coming out or not. But once, he removed the cap, I could see that he wasn’t bleeding and was probably OK.
What surprised me was unlike his usual behavior when he’s in pain, (He doesn’t show it. He waits until he thinks no one else is looking before he hobbles across the room.) this time he laid on the ground for what felt like half an hour moaning and crying, making no sense at all.
In my mind I thought “oh well, just another thing to deal with.” I knew that with concussions really all you can do is to sit and watch the person to make sure they don’t pass out or walk into a wall. This was a perfect excuse for me to plop him in his cushy chair with the remote control in one hand and a glass of wine in the other to buy me free time with my dog.
As a woman who grew up surrounded by her father and brother, was married and divorced, I know how to play this game all too well. For the next three days, I milked it to the hilt. No more boat, no more electrical systems, no more talk of financial woes. All Penn could say was “you’d better go shopping.”
Enough about that. Let’s talk about the shopping. Not my favorite indoor sport.
I started to wonder what I had done so wrong in my life to deserve what I was about to face. I could kind of understand the boat wreck and most of my poor experiences, but to subject me to finding a dress in Mexico to wear to my boyfriend’s mother’s cold Oregon wedding, now that’s just cruel. To make matters worse, none of the sales clerks spoke English.
I’m a far cry from a model type figure, but I never realized how much larger I am than most Mexican women until I started trying to shop for shoes. Everyone asked me my shoe size and when I told them 9 ½ they looked at me like I was an alien. No women’s shoes came in 9 ½.
Finally I started to defend myself using my not-so-excellent Spanish skills. I said “Look at me. I’m not an ogre. I’m two feet taller than the rest of you. I need the extra long feet to keep me from tipping over.” I guess that’s why every style of shoe from bed room slipper to ball room on down to cowboy boots all had two inch thick soles and at least six inch heels. I moved on to clothes.
Shopping in Mexico isn’t like going to the mall at home. The clothing stores are situated about a city block away from each other amongst tire stores, pharmacies, grocery stores and taquerias. Unlike the water front where for the first two blocks is consistent with tourist shops offering sombreros, ceramics and hand crafted jewelry, the local stores were spread out over what felt like ten miles of cracked and unlevel sidewalks. And did I mention that none of the clerks spoke English?
Much like the shoes, most of the clothes came in three sizes: small, extra small and smaller. Cotton and spandex were the main ingredients. There were two basic types of stores: old women’s clothes and body hugging short cocktail dresses, neither of them appropriate for the occasion.
Penn made fun of me and my wardrobe and told me that I can’t wear a potato sack to his mother’s wedding. Now I’m beginning to think that might come true.
How am I ever going to put together an outfit to wear to a Saturday morning church wedding filled with fifty of Penn’s family members that I’ve never met before? You know what they say about first impressions.
Penn says “just go in and buy a dress. Would you like me to go with you?” Can he think of any worse torture?
I finally gave up on traditional clothing and headed for the tourist areas. I figured if I’m going to stand out in the crowd I might as well have a good excuse. Wearing a traditional Mexican dress made of off-white cotton, lace trim around the bottom and a shoulderless golden top, at least I would have a real story to go with the outfit.
After that day’s shopping I felt like slamming my head into a steel staircase. Men have it so easy.
Most men I know are pretty big babies when it comes to being sick. But not many could endure running a 60,000 pound concrete boat on the rocks, the struggle to get her back to Ensenada where we could haul her out of the water, a three-day weekend with my dear friend Heidi and her extreme personality traits, to come home and face cleaning every little connection on a 60-foot yacht’s electrical system.
If all of that isn’t enough to make most men jump off a cliff, instead Penn decided to whack his head with a two inch steel spiral staircase rail and knock himself silly.
I can’t say I blame him. After all, life has a funny way of taking its revenge. Instead of carting tourists around on the deck of his well-polished boat through the sunny blue waters of the Sea of Cortez, Penn has spent the last few weeks tackling chores of major proportions.
I don’t think Penn is consciously aware of his self-destructive walk into the staircase that day, but I find it strange how hundreds of people walk through that entrance way every day and no one ever hits their heads.
Regardless, Penn now has concrete (no pun intended) evidence to support his absent minded behavior.
We were walking out of the office after discussing finances and the amount of time it was going to take to fix the boat. Penn wasn’t happy. We were heading home after a day of working very hard at what feels like we’re going backwards.
All of a sudden I heard a loud bang, like a baseball bat hitting a hollow pipe. I looked over at Penn and he wasn’t there. I looked down and he was rolling around on the ground in a fetal position, holding on to his red baseball cap.
I had no idea what happened until I looked up and realized that the only thing he could have run into was the staircase. Because of the red hat, I couldn’t tell if there was blood coming out or not. But once, he removed the cap, I could see that he wasn’t bleeding and was probably OK.
What surprised me was unlike his usual behavior when he’s in pain, (He doesn’t show it. He waits until he thinks no one else is looking before he hobbles across the room.) this time he laid on the ground for what felt like half an hour moaning and crying, making no sense at all.
In my mind I thought “oh well, just another thing to deal with.” I knew that with concussions really all you can do is to sit and watch the person to make sure they don’t pass out or walk into a wall. This was a perfect excuse for me to plop him in his cushy chair with the remote control in one hand and a glass of wine in the other to buy me free time with my dog.
As a woman who grew up surrounded by her father and brother, was married and divorced, I know how to play this game all too well. For the next three days, I milked it to the hilt. No more boat, no more electrical systems, no more talk of financial woes. All Penn could say was “you’d better go shopping.”
Enough about that. Let’s talk about the shopping. Not my favorite indoor sport.
I started to wonder what I had done so wrong in my life to deserve what I was about to face. I could kind of understand the boat wreck and most of my poor experiences, but to subject me to finding a dress in Mexico to wear to my boyfriend’s mother’s cold Oregon wedding, now that’s just cruel. To make matters worse, none of the sales clerks spoke English.
I’m a far cry from a model type figure, but I never realized how much larger I am than most Mexican women until I started trying to shop for shoes. Everyone asked me my shoe size and when I told them 9 ½ they looked at me like I was an alien. No women’s shoes came in 9 ½.
Finally I started to defend myself using my not-so-excellent Spanish skills. I said “Look at me. I’m not an ogre. I’m two feet taller than the rest of you. I need the extra long feet to keep me from tipping over.” I guess that’s why every style of shoe from bed room slipper to ball room on down to cowboy boots all had two inch thick soles and at least six inch heels. I moved on to clothes.
Shopping in Mexico isn’t like going to the mall at home. The clothing stores are situated about a city block away from each other amongst tire stores, pharmacies, grocery stores and taquerias. Unlike the water front where for the first two blocks is consistent with tourist shops offering sombreros, ceramics and hand crafted jewelry, the local stores were spread out over what felt like ten miles of cracked and unlevel sidewalks. And did I mention that none of the clerks spoke English?
Much like the shoes, most of the clothes came in three sizes: small, extra small and smaller. Cotton and spandex were the main ingredients. There were two basic types of stores: old women’s clothes and body hugging short cocktail dresses, neither of them appropriate for the occasion.
Penn made fun of me and my wardrobe and told me that I can’t wear a potato sack to his mother’s wedding. Now I’m beginning to think that might come true.
How am I ever going to put together an outfit to wear to a Saturday morning church wedding filled with fifty of Penn’s family members that I’ve never met before? You know what they say about first impressions.
Penn says “just go in and buy a dress. Would you like me to go with you?” Can he think of any worse torture?
I finally gave up on traditional clothing and headed for the tourist areas. I figured if I’m going to stand out in the crowd I might as well have a good excuse. Wearing a traditional Mexican dress made of off-white cotton, lace trim around the bottom and a shoulderless golden top, at least I would have a real story to go with the outfit.
After that day’s shopping I felt like slamming my head into a steel staircase. Men have it so easy.