Holding pattern

I alluded to a particular pending diplomatic clearance in my last post. It seems that the time has come and gone for a guaranteed Monday departure, so the decision has been made to delay our leave taking until Tuesday or later, depending on whether or not the research permit trickles down through the proper channels (Kiribati government in Tarawa to the Kiribati embassy in the U.S.; to the Department of State to NSF to us) by Monday at 3pm. Think it'll happen?

In the meantime, I'm keeping busy thinking about packing, making a pasta salad for dinner at our friends' place tonight, purchasing random snacks and supplies for the trip, sorry-I'm-abandoning-you-for-so-long beer for Keith, and flip-flops to give away on the island.

{beat}

As I was writing the above, the doorbell rang. It was our mailman dropping off Kai's new watch.

Wanna hear a funny story?

Do you remember way back on Kai's birthday... actually, I guess it was before his birthday, but whatever. FOR his birthday, Kai got a watch from two of his grandparents. He loved his watch. He wore it all the time. The next three months worth of pictures of him have it on his wrist in almost every one, including his 4-year-old portrait:

He would have worn it 24-7, but we insisted that he let his wrist "breathe" at night. The last thing he did every night was hang the watch on the corner of the MegaBlocks box that lives next to his bed. The first thing he did every morning was put it back on.

He loved his watch.

And then one day, it was missing.

"Huh? That's odd. Where's the watch?"

And I slowly remembered what had happened.

The day of our Canada Day BBQ, while he was playing in his little kiddie pool, Kai decided that he needed to take off his watch. This was odd because he was ever-so-proud of the watch's waterproofness. Nevertheless, he wanted it off, so I recommended that he put it on a chair beside the little pool, rather than just leaving it in the grass. I should have just taken it and put it away inside. Once I remembered that this was the last known location, we searched all over the yard, and in other toy bins, thinking that perhaps one of the other kids at the BBQ had picked it up and moved it, but to no avail.

Well, after three weeks, Kai was still watchless, and becoming very sad about it. Keith and I searched online, and it turns out that you can buy these watches on Amazon for a fairly reasonable fee. The order was placed last week, and a couple days later, I received notification that it had been sent.

Then yesterday Kai found his watch inside one of our flower containers in the front yard.

And today the new watch arrived.

Figures, eh?

Worst case scenario - we have a watch for the next time this one gets lost. Best case? We have a great gift to give one of Kai's friends later.

Oh, and we also have our very first Tragically Hip CD(s) "Yer Favourites" (with a "u"), added to the purchase to bring the total up to over $25, because really, who wants to pay for shipping?

Love Bobcaygeon. And Fireworks. That song makes me think of Christian every time I hear it because he was convinced that you could simply replace all the lyrics in the song with the word "hockey", and it is still a good song.

I'd better go finish that pasta salad. And maybe I'll think some more about packing.