Singing in Portomao

Portomao, March 2016

We visited Portugal in late March. We splashed in the sea and noticed yuccas. I sang many songs to the children when putting them to bed at night, where they slept easily, deeply and long, before getting up to eat sunnyside up eggs and fruit for slightly-high prices in the hotel dining room. Ada got the hang of eating with a knife and fork via a combination of sweet motherly persuasion and total war.

I made a list of all the songs I sing them (see at bottom), and it was portentous that I did so, because now they want to listen to audiobooks while they drift off instead of me. My glory has faded! Although, I still get requests from James for Baby Beluga, because singing it at least a thousand times already (I'm low-balling) isn't enough. I'm not actually sick of the song, despite my tone, which is alarming.

Jeff and I hiked in the foothills twice. Both times we heard a low humming akin to that of electrical wires, obviously easier to identify the second time around. We came up a rise and the noise was substantial. Bees. We worried about continuing on. Passing in front of us from right to left, from valley to summit, were thousands of bees. What the hell, we opted to keep going, slowly creeping through the bee-way. No stings. Around the side of an abandoned stone house, we saw a couple of dozen hives. 

Sitting a little ways away, we watched an ant slowly pull an inch-wide fuschia flower petal across the rocky path. Expecting a trudging odyssey, I was surprised it only took him a few minutes to go three feet. It's strange how much you can care about something so quickly, and for no reason. Jeff wanted to help, so he dropped a second petal for the ant. It was the wrong thing to do. Paralyzed by the choice, the ant scurried back and forth between his now-wilting treasure and the alien example of flowery perfection now lying close by. 

I at a lot of delicious fish in Portugal and bought a pair of deranged plastic sunglasses since I'd forgotten my own. If none of these items and experiences make much sense as a whole, it's deliberate. I don't know what the ant chose.