Pneity

I would have been a cool dad. I'll never know, but I imagine I could have been.

I should have wrote this way, way sooner. I visited my sister on St. Croix last month. The whole family went. What a surreal time. All my vacations have been Japan for the last seven years so I went to somewhere that's like the polar opposite of Tokyo. Everything was rural or small town, laid back, and cute as hell. There's no haste there, there's no heavy stakes there. It's incredible.

Day one, I passed out on my sister's couch as she tried to hang out with me. Travel is exhausting and I hadn't slept the night before. Even sleeping on the plane didn't help! But the next day was our chance to hit the ground running. We drank at a beachside bar and resort. Visited a second bar down the shore on the other end of Frederiksted where a local music legend was doing a performance. I met a friend of my sister's and we all went to a third bar in town.

At the third bar, my sister's friend mentioned having met my dad and having some of his homemade pepper butter and wanting more ever since. I called my dad on the spot and asked him to bring a jar with him when they got there the next day. I started the call as I always would, "hey, Pa." This guy, an island local, thought that was incredible and authentic in a way he was not ready for. "He called him 'Pa' so you know he's gonna bring it! It's real!" I'll always laugh remembering that.

We finished the night at a very chill bar in the other town on the island. It was Sunday so there was a football game on with some diehard fans watching along for their favorite team. I ended up talking to them a lot about football, a sport I only pay enough attention to to understand how it works.

The rest of the trip was fine. The extended family made things hard. My sister's clan travels very differently than me and they are all so sensitive. Everything becomes a stressful event. I did my best to still have fun. Driving my rental car around in a place where they drive on the opposite side of the road than I'm used to was cool as hell, actually.

Other highlights were returning to the beach bar with family and having the best margarita of my life, made with a spicy tequila. Which I had to take to go because I ordered it as we were leaving. They don't have open container laws; it's fine.

The last day was cool, too, in that sort of "figuring out how the locals live" thing I love doing when I travel to strange places. We went to a few stores so my dad could make spaghetti sauce for a big meal after I was leaving. The stores are aggressively normal for an American market but with some unusual products thrown in the mix. I even made the checkout lady mad when I went through the 15 items or less line with 15 items.

Made it home easy and safe. I even finished watching Nanoha, which I had nearly finished earlier in the year coming home from Japan.

November sucked nuts, though. I guess November just does that now. I was on call for work two weekends and am feeling very listless. Nothing is "good" right now so I'm just scraping by. I haven't set a date or anything, please do not worry yet.