Mi Primer Huesped

Ahhh, Puerto Rico.  It’s the end of October but you’d never know it.  The weather hardly has changed at all since I first got here in June.  Today I spent the early afternoon on the beach, watching the teenaged surfers and feeling a little (OK, a lot) like Mrs. Robinson.  The guys playing paddle board in the surf were slightly more age appropriate, but they were wearing wedding rings.  Though the jury’s still out on exactly what that means to the average Puerto Rican male.  Ahhh, Puerto Rico.  Anyhoo….

I had my first guest last week.  I just sent my Dad back to rainy Washington yesterday morning.  It was good to see him and good to have some company.  It’ll also be nice that he has a frame of reference from now on during our weekly chats.  Of course I had to put him to work for a few days – what are dads for?  After borrowing a coworker’s drill to put some screws in the concrete, the place is really looking like home now that there are things on the walls.  The footboard of my bed set hasn’t been attached to the frame in the six years I’ve had it.  This wasn’t a big deal when my bedroom had carpet, but on the marble floors it was sliding all over the place.  After finally finding the Home Depot (third time’s a charm) we were able to find something he could use to screw it all together.  Yeah! 

We had some fun, too.  The first Friday he was here we took a brief tour through Old San Juan before heading back to my ‘hood for a light dinner and a night at the casino.  Second weekend in a row I’ve introduced Three Card Poker to someone, and “someone” came out a couple hundred ahead.  I’ve apparently paid my luck forward because I can’t seem to win for losing.  Saturday we did the Home Depot run and opted for a night in since the plan was to get up early and drive out to Toro Verde Adventure Park for a canopy tour.

On the phone with Dad a couple of weeks before his trip, I’d joked, “It’s not like we’ll be doing any canopy tours or anything.” To which he responded, “Why not?”  So I went to work researching canopy tour options.  I’d done one before, in Costa Rica, and it scared the crap out of me.  However, I’d always thought it wasn’t a “real” canopy tour because we never got more than about 50 feet off the ground and the lines weren’t more than a couple hundred feet long.  And it still scared me.  But I figured if Dad was going to do it, we were going to do it right and Toro Verde came recommended by the drill-lending coworker. 

The tour consists of eight lines that crisscross a valley.  I was nervous, but the good thing about this tour is that you sort of gradually find yourself hundreds of feet of the ground; there’s no stomach-dropping start like a bungee jump or that giant swing thing I’ve done a couple of times.  So I warmed up to the experience and stopped myself from dwelling on the fact that I was basically being held above the ground by two carabineers and some nylon.  There was more hiking involved than I know Dad wanted, but this was the real meal deal.  The last line was a half a mile long and over 600 feet off the ground.  I almost had to bail on that one, but couldn’t chicken out at the very end.  I got up so much speed that I had to let go all together and when my hard hat touched the line I could smell it melting.  Awesome.  Now that I’ve done it I don’t know if I’ll feel better or worse about doing it when the next guests want to!

Half the adventure was the drive out there.  About a half hour out of San Juan we turned up a narrow, winding road full of hairpin turns.  It was very pretty and lush and you felt like you were heading out to the middle of nowhere.  But people must live out there as every few turns there’d be a local little bar tucked into a wide spot in the road.  If not for the bottle of wine and half a bottle of whiskey on my patio the night before, I would have been tempted to stop and see if I could chat up any of the locals. 

Dad had to keep himself busy the next three days while I was at work.  On Thursday, we went out to El Yunque, the only tropical rainforest in the US National Parks system.  We spent a couple of hours there; stopped at the visitor’s center and then hit a few of the sites along the main road through the park.  We then decided to keep heading east and find a nice place near the water for lunch and a cerveza.  Well, for an island with over 300 miles of coast line, it’s surprisingly difficult to find a waterfront restaurant in this place.  We drove for hours through parts of towns I’m sure very few non-natives have ever seen before we finally threw in the towel and headed back to Condado. 

Friday we did a few more projects.   We needed a different size screw and when Walgreens had nothing for us I asked the cashier if there was a hardware store nearby.  My Rosetta Stone is paying off, because when she obviously didn’t know “hardware store” I was able to pull “ferreteria” out of thin air.  (If I had more confidence I could have led with “Hay una ferreteria cerca de aqui?” but alas, not there yet.)  That night we had dinner at the Italian place on the corner for the second time (Dad loves the Italian sausage appetizer for his meal – is anyone surprised?) and then went back to the casino, which was a bust for all.

Again, I know I’m adjusting because of Dad’s reaction to the traffic and the drivers.  What is now just a normal day on the roads for me is still worthy of comment from the newcomers.  He made a great observation, “It’s like they all just got cars about six months ago and are trying to see what they can do.”  (I do fit in a lot better now that my Explorer has a nice gash along the driver’s side – came too close to a concrete wall and the wall won.)

Three weeks until the next guests arrive.  Unfortunately, that also means half marathon time.  I’ve made up my mind to walk it.  Not only have I not been training for this run, I haven’t been working out at all.  The gym finally opened three weeks ago and I’ve been exactly three times.  This is the week, though, that I get back on track, start eating right, and get in shape again!

“We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”

A good friend (love you BH2) put this on her Facebook page the other day, and you may have seen it shared on mine.  Never were truer words spoken.  I had a plan.  But once the Australian dumped me and I realized I wasn’t going to marry my college sweetheart, another plan went into motion.  I was going to go to grad school and have a CAREER, by God.   I often joke about the fact that I went through my midlife crisis at 26, when off to Texas I went.  But what you might not have known is that deep in my heart and mind, I still had a back up:  I’d get married in time to have two kids, one at 36 and one at 38.  With my 39^th birthday not too many months off, it looks like this plan is shot to hell, as well.

Which I’m surprisingly OK with.  Many of you know that 2010 was a shit year for the Muehlenbruch clan.  I don’t want to bring any of you to tears, but losing a parent kind of makes you take stock of things.  I made some changes on the personal front, and others fell into place.  My sister and I vowed that 2011 was going to be our year.  She got a big promotion with her company in March, and shortly after, I got this move.  And as I said in my last post, I know it’s exactly where I’m supposed to be.

A couple of weeks ago, I went back to Puyallup for my 20 Year High School Reunion.   I’m still at a loss as to how that happened.  I remember when my parents went to my mom’s 20 Year – I was 14, for heaven’s sake.  She seemed so old to me then, how could I possibly be that age?  I remember her telling me that the 10 Year was nothing but an extension of high school – everyone is still in their cliques and trying to show off all they’ve done, which it was. But she told me by the 20 Year people were over it.  And so I was really excited for the reunion.  A woman whom I was really good friends with in junior high, before we drifted apart in high school, had put on her Facebook page something to the effect of, “I look forward to seeing everyone and watching the cliques crumble like the Berlin Wall.” (Appropriate, since we were in high school when that happened.) 

I tell you all this because I’m not sure there’s a better judge of how comfortable you are with where you are in life than having to attend your 20 Year Reunion.  And I can say with total confidence, I honestly didn’t give a SHIT what anyone thought.  The best part of the night?   Seeing the people who obviously felt the exact same way.

Granted, I think I’ve done well for myself.  I have a great career with a company I’m proud to say that I work for.  I’m spending the next three years in an arrangement some people will only ever dream of; but we all judge success differently.  I am 100 percent certain that there were people at my reunion who measure success by marriage and family, and in their eyes I’ve failed miserably.  And that's OK – to each their own.

Because I'm pretty excited about the next three years.  It finally feels like I am settling in for the duration.  Going back and forth from a hotel never feels like home, and even once I moved into my place, I had a trip planned every few weeks, between Vegas the end of August and Puyallup the end of September.  Now that all that is behind me this has finally started to feel permanent.  Over the last week, I've randomly run into people I know around my neighborhood.  I see tourists on the street wandering aimlessly, probably looking for somewhere to eat (my 'hood is surprisingly 'chain' free) and I no longer feel like one of them.  I'm ever so slightly more comfortable attempting to speak Spanish.  All of these things - combined with the fact that my insta-friend is finally here permanently – have me excited about seeing all that Puerto Rico, and the Caribbean, for that matter, have to offer.  Stay tuned!