Saturday, May 21, 2016
It has been a better day for me. We all just hung out at our hotel and relaxed today. I didn’t get up until 7 am. It felt good to sleep in.
This place is perfect for relaxing, a tranquil property with only 4 guest casitas. We have two of them, and Debra, a guest here, has another, one is empty, and then the owners have their own place on the property. It is a hidden tropical oasis.
Heidi used her pool workout program she has on her ipad today. She showed Dodie, the hotel owner, and Deborah the routine is set up, and the three of them got in the pool and did the workout. I’m happy she was able to do her pool routine. It’s the first time she has been able to since the earthquake.
Easton has found a favorite hammock hanging under the large porch and uses it often. 
It’s a nice place to to “just be”. He is central to everything that is going on, but enough out of the way he can enjoy his own space.
I spent the majority of my day catching up on publishing blog posts from the period while living post earthquake on the farm without internet. I still have about eight days to get online. It has been a slow process but I will get it done.
The days I wasn’t able to publish online I still wrote thoughts and activities of each day to create my daily posts. When we arrived in Cuenca and I could get internet at a restaurant or coffee shop, I picked up posting each current day’s events, and then worked on catching up on the previous post-quake days.
It is weird for me going back in time. I look at my writing from one of those previous days, review my pictures and video, and write my blog post. There is something about “re-living” the past that doesn’t set well with me.
It isn’t that I don’t think those days are important or had meaning, because they very much did. It feels weird because their intensity is less. I know how I felt during that time. I can remember in my brain how hot it was; how difficult it was climbing up and down several flights of stairs moving things out of buildings; how I had a constant level of stress being in a building for fear of another aftershock happening. I was very much present and in the moment.
Today they are memories accompanied with a muted emotional response, and even a muted sense of importance. I guess it is this feeling of things becoming muted…the depth of colors, sounds, sights, emotions and importance of events that hit me with a reality.
What I have is right now. In any present moment is my opportunity to fully experience the deepest intensity of color, sound, sight…love, kindness, compassion…even pain and fear. In this present moment is when I am truly alive in the universe.
The past holds memories; good ones that can provide a soft comfort, and bad ones that, thankfully, lose their intense sting. The future holds our hopes and dreams before us. Only this present moment offers an intensity of living that neither the past nor the future can provide. And for me, when I experience the intensity of the present, I am living at my fullest and best.
…just my thought.
Heidi and Dodie cooked fresh fish from the market for dinner tonight. It was Trumpet fish, and Dodie taught Heidi a new way to cook fish.
This fish is long and eel-like, but it is a white fish, very meaty and tasted great. I have been told that this is the fish the locals use to make “fish and chips”. The best part is that there aren’t any bones in it when you buy it from the market. Deborah made a green salad with a delicious dressing on it for all of us to enjoy.
Randy (Dodie’s husband), Easton and I showed up when the it was all ready to eat…the least we could do right? We all had nice conversation over dinner, eating at the large 10 person table that sits under the covering of a green leafed vine blooming with big yellow flowers.
Chau.
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