Author: Robin Chartier

I’ve been feeling cruddy this week with a nasty cold and headache, but I’ve been powering through on the strength of Motrin and caffeine (for the headache, not for the energy).

Last I blogged about my car was after it blew up (due to a combination of user error and the perfect storm of life circumstances). I got the little car fixed, sort of. The brake lights now work, but you have to force the brake pedal all the way to the floor before the lights come on, so in practice, they don’t work. I figured this out once Josh got home and I followed him for 20 minutes and never once saw the brake lights come on. Thank God no one rear-ended me and praying no one rear ends him before we have time to get the car fixed for real this time.

So for the past month we’ve been squeezing 6 people into 5 seats in a car with no brake lights. And I wonder why we’ve all been a little bit stressed and crabby. In all of our free time we were looking for used cars that could seat 7. We looked online, on the base For Sale board, wrote down phone numbers as we were driving around, and would swing past the dirt lots where people parked used cars for sale to see if anything was in our budget and met our size requirements.

We found one car that looked to be an OK price, but when our mechanic checked it out he said it was overpriced because it had several major issues that needed to be fixed. The seller wasn’t interested in coming down in price, so we left that one behind. Meanwhile our mechanic found a car for us that one of his clients was selling, it was a great price and Josh and Calvin both said it looked good and ran well. (the Anyong car.) We were SO HAPPY to be finished with the process of calling strangers, meeting them in dirt lots, and test driving overpriced gross cars.

Josh and Calvin went to pick up the car from our mechanic, drove it home and the temperature gauge started registering hot. Then Calvin rolled down the window and it wouldn’t roll back up. Meanwhile the other windows wouldn’t roll down. Then it sounded really loud and rough while idling. This was all within an hour or so of picking it up. When I heard the car start and it took about 10 seconds of turning over and sounded like it was being strangled I told Josh that I was not going to drive that car and risk being stranded. He called the mechanic immediately and had him pick it up and bring it back to the shop. Anyong went Anyong. (Funny enough, it’s actually a casual way of saying both hello and goodbye in Korean.)

 I immediately started looking on Bahrain’s version of Craig’s List and saw a beauty that had just been posted. A 10 year old Pajero (so the same car as my dead set of wheels), price was in the ballpark and did I mention it was pretty?

I thought it would be easy enough to slide our Italy vacation from July to October. After all, our travel days would stay the same, the length of the trip would be identical and it should be an even nicer time to go because October weather will be more favorable than July. I’d already done the research of the best areas to stay in each city, studied the train tables, determined connections and times between cities, and memorized the closed/open rotation of the major sites (Vaitcan closed on Sundays, state museums closed Mondays, Colosseum open every day, etc). Easy — gather it all up, flip the calendar a few months and plant ourselves down in the first 2 weeks of October, just as if the deployment had never happened.

Until I went to check our dates for lodging. It turns out that everyone loves October in Italy. The hotels and apartments that I had reserved for our first trip not only were booked for the particular days that I had planned to spend in those cities, but they were each booked for the entire two week trip. In addition, our friends who live in Italy, who we were hoping to see, have family coming for . . . you guessed it, the exact 2 weeks of our trip. Add in that all the hotel/apartment rates are more expensive in what is now the “high season,” and finding both affordable and available accommodations with short notice started to look like an impossibility.

So scratch Italy for now. I’ll keep that trip tucked in my back pocket until a better time presents itself. It’s not like Venice is going anywhere (except for the sinking into the sea part!) But we ARE going on vacation. The kids have Eid vacation the first week of October and we are taking them out of school for the second week. The plan has become Crete. Does that sound random to you? The military (space-Available, FREE) flight that we’re planning on taking makes stops at Crete and Naples before heading on to Virginia. The choice was made for us, but after seeing sights like these, our new destination hardly seems like a sacrifice.

Incredible Crete Spot (5min) from Incredible Crete on Vimeo.

I’m changing things up and have reserved a rental car in advance (because we need one that will fit all 6 of us and Crete is known for its loads of micro-compact European cars), but nothing else. No hotels, no reservations, no plan. We’re going to pack swimsuits, hiking shoes, sunscreen, and sweatshirts and see what happens.

Camille has never been an easy kid. I joke that it was a good thing she was number 4 by such a wide margin because I needed 5 sets of hands to help care for her. But, the older she gets, the easier she gets. Since turning four, it’s been a dream. Camille is still not a fabulous sleeper, but she has taken to snuggling with her brothers so at least she’s staying in bed with them instead of screaming in the doorway or coming downstairs repeatedly. Since this summer the 4 of them have all been sleeping in the same room (in 2 king sized beds) and it makes me happy that they have a slumber party every night. It’s like the old days when 3 little boys would pile on the full size bottom bunk like puppies to sleep.

Also since turning four, Camille’s imagination has taken off. She will sit for an hour and play with her ponies, Disney princess figurines, and/or stuffed animals and move them around and make them “talk” to each other — I’m not sure what she is playing, since I don’t want to interfere with whatever magic is happening that makes her happy and quiet at the same time. She gets very self conscious and stops all singing and talking if she notices anyone watching her play.

She is fascinated and in awe of the older girls in her life and looks up to them, but she’s also slow to warm up so when we are out in public she’s really quiet and well behaved. You’d never know there’s a stick of dynamite lying right beneath the surface!