My dear friend and next door neighbor, Sonia, came to warn me last week that Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease is making its way around Okinawa. Having dealt with this fun little virus during our previous tour here, when DJ was an infant, I took the news in stride with no serious concern about contracting it; after all, I am a Hand, Foot and Mouth veteran and my boys and I have been at home for the most part during the past couple of weeks anyway… Easy, peasy, rice and cheesy, right?!
I'm sure it comes as no surprise to those who know us best that "Mulder's Law" struck and both Drake and DJ wound up contracting the virus from… who knows where. Subsequently, I have contracted the much more nefarious and even more dreaded and difficult to treat disease, Cabin Fever.
Contrary to what my darling husband would have you believe, Cabin Fever is not an almost uncontrollable desire to go camping. Nay, it is a much more insidious disease, for which there is no medical cure and wherein the victim is subjected to a ghastly quarantine of sorts... in this case that quarantine included two hyperactive toddlers bound and determined to release their over abundance of energy at the cost of my sanity.
Needless to say, I have been wracking my brain as to what I can do to relieve our boredom and allow the two of them to release some of their pent up energy without mommy resorting to searching for solutions at the bottom of a liquor bottle or being tempted to put a roll of duct tape to use... Not an easy task when living in the 1400 square ft crackerjack box that the Marine Corps so graciously issued us.
Thankfully, I do have my little shaded retreat area that Dave built for me in the back yard and, being the genius that I am, I had previously ordered a couple of swings off of Amazon to incorporate a little play ground of sorts. That alone has proven invaluable to me in retaining some semblance of sanity.
Unfortunately, little boys can only swing, slide, build blocks, race matchbox cars and pound on things for so long before their attention span wanes and they turn to fighting with each other or destroying the house to entertain themselves. Today I could take it no more and piled the three of us into my van to take a “ride” (a term that has been passed down from my parents. It consists of getting into a vehicle and driving around for an undetermined amount of time with no set destination in mind, with hopes of easing the burden of boredom with little expense.)
I decided that this would be a good opportunity for me to break out my new, very expensive and, so far, very little used camera, a Nikon D7000, to see if I could begin to learn a few of the overwhelming number of functions that it offers. I was quite excited about the prospect until I arrived at our first stopping point and realized that I had neglected to replace the user’s manual in my high tech backpack camera carrying case after having removed it.
As it turns out, last weekend I had decided to take a walk to American Village with Dave and the boys to eat dinner and go to a movie. I thought that it might make for some good cultural photo opportunities so I readied my new camera for the trek. Naturally, I was too lazy to carry the additional 4 oz. that the user’s manual probably weighed so I removed it from the pack to lighten my load. (I am quite certain that Chesty Puller is rolling in his grave to know that one of the Few and the Proud was reluctant to carry a pack containing both a camera and a small book on a one mile long hump that ended with a starchy dinner and popcorn. Once a Marine, Always a Marine… but some of the tradition and motivation may have gotten lost somewhere in my transition from full time Teufel Hunden to full time mom. Sorry, Chesty!!)
Needless to say I had no idea what I was doing so I decided to just set the camera to automatic and take a few pictures anyway. We stopped under a little bridge in the Yomitan area and I let the boys get out of the vehicle to stretch their legs and search for some of the nasty little critters that they are so fond of while I tried to remember how to turn the camera on and finally fired off a few shots. All in all, I think they turned out decent if not artistic and I’m not sorry that I decided to give it a try.
As soon as I got the boys back into the air conditioned van they nodded off so I spent the next hour just driving around the island, taking less traveled roads and paths just to see where they took me. It was a nice, quiet hour and it revitalized me enough to be able to go back home and survive for a few more hours until daddy got home to relieve me for a breath of fresh air sans sick and cranky kids for a while; which, of course, turns out to be your good fortune because it gave me the time that I needed to update my blog and bore you all with my latest non-adventures!
So here’s to keeping my foot as far away from my mouth as possible while I not-so-quietly endure this ongoing scourge of Hand, Foot and Mouth disease that has afflicted my household!
Cheers from Okinawa!
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