The abuelos depart today!  They are off to Guatemala City to a hotel for the half-night before they depart in the early morning.  They have to catch a 7:00 am flight and with all the madness associated with airports, they are leaving on the hotel shuttle just before 5:00 am.

This seems to be the norm for flights from Central America to Nortamericano, they all arrive or leave at dawn.

Abuelos are fun.  Of course, at a combined age of 172 they are not a constant laugh-riot but I, for one, get a smidge too much pleasure from teasing Sal’s mom.  Sal’s normal deportment is that of a right-proper  lady.  But R’s normal demeanor is that of royalty.  The queen, of course, does the best queen.  Helen Mirren does the second best head-of-the-house-of-Windsor but Sal’s mom could definitely be a contender for the crown.  She’s #3.  She has a very regal bearing.  And I like to ‘play off’  that now and then.

“So, R, feel like burger and a beer at the neighbourhood tavern?  I hear they are showing the ultimate fighting competition on TV.  I can get you entered in the local amateur over-80 class. You’d do good against the old Mayan ladies.  Interested?”

“What!  Dear me!  What are you saying, you silly boy?  I have no idea what all that meant.  Are you being rude?”  And she looks at me crossly maybe shaking an accusatory finger at me. If there was a footman to be had, he’d be fetched and I would be removed from the court.

We’ve been close like that for 40 years.  At least the ‘cross’ look and the accusatory finger part.  Call me crazy.  I think it is fun.

Our son B&K are in Shanghai.  Our daughter E&B are in Hong Kong.  Sal and I will soon be in El Salvador.  The abuelos will be winging it home in a few hours.  And, somehow, this all feels right and normal to me.  Nothing like a little separation to be fully appreciative of the people you are close to.

Which reminds me: both Sally and I have been missing our remote community members a bit lately.  The Discovery Doofuses.  What a motley crew of marginally or full-blown crazies we have become attached to, eh?  We traded an urban bunch o’ coconuts for a disparate group of rural whackos and kooks and miss ’em all as a result.

Honestly, there is no accounting for taste.

Even tho we are only half way through the winter sojourn, it is already feeling a bit like it will be nice to get home.  I’m a bit homesick, I guess.  Which is odd for me.  I rarely ever wanted to go back home once I was on the road but I feel differently now.  I like home now.  We’ll just let the freezing temperatures pass first.

Just a brief side note – we have been here almost a month and the weather has not changed a bit.  Warm and shirt-sleeves in the afternoon.  Ten degrees (F) cooler in the evening.   Biggest variance?  A cloud or two.  Maybe a gentle breeze now and then. No bugs either!  And the countryside is fertile like the Garden of Eden.  If one could be contented with an idylic same ‘ol, same ‘ol, then this is clearly the climate.

Me?  I’d go mad.