How did the time slip by?

Can't believe it's been two weeks since we made an entry. We do have an excuse, though. Our friend, Rita, who runs a fishing and diving charter company took a very well deserved vacation to South Africa for almost two weeks. She honored and also scared the heck out of us by entrusting her company, her dogs and her house to us. When Rita first thought about taking a vacation, her business had about 4 trips total booked for the 12 days. By the time she returned, the number had ballooned to over 20. Yikes! We always thought we knew that Rita worked hard and kept ridiculous hours but we really had no clue. Our days normally began between 5 and 5:30 AM and pretty consistently went to 6 or 7 PM. Her employees, especially her Radar O'Reilly of MASH (Henry) and her divemaster/boat captain/mate/communicator (Edwin) were great. They had a lot of patience for our clumsiness with the business and the language. There were only a few times that Henry and I just looked at each other and pulled at our hair in frustration because we couldn't get our point across. The end result was good - no boats sunk, no customers drowned, no boat captains in jail and Rita came home to some money. And we came home to our sweet, uncomplicated life and felt new appreciation for it.