A Boat Birthday

I made a birthday cake (the ship's real name has been photo-

shopped out) - clearly showing that my skills do not lie 

in applying icing through a hole in a plastic baggie.

Last night, we waited for hours as the two Manitou islands of Sleeping Bear got very very slowly closer. I was so excited. I've camped at Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore many a time, but had never gotten this close to the islands off the coast.  As the legend goes, the Momma bear and her two cubs tried to swim across the lake, but the cubs didn't make it. So the Momma Bear waits on land, immortalized as the park's highest dune, and the cubs are still stranded out in the water, as islands.

I went to bed before we got to the islands and awoke this morning to thick fog. We may have been close to the islands, but who could tell?

Uneasy
Something about the whole day felt off. In my nap time between breakfast and lunch, I dreamt

Harrison pours the bubbly for the toast.

I was on a bigger boat and was super stressed about getting lunch out. The galley was in this strange configuration so that people were always walking through and I was stressed and couldn't find anything. Our current first mate, Seth #2, was in the dream. He sent a crew member to make him his own meal and she kept getting in my way and finally I went to Seth #2 and asked him what was wrong and he said something like, "All you ever make is chicken and I want some real meat. And you never make dessert." I was flabbergasted. (In real life, he says how great my food is after every meal.) I replied that he didn't have to worry because I was anyway out of chicken and that I did try to make dessert every night we were in transit.

We arrived in Frankfort to a sizable crowd, especially given the fact that we had no established contact in the town - and the fact that it's a pretty small place.

Not long after we arrived in Frankfort, we got a visit from the Coast Guard. This is not unusual. What is unusual is that they made us run through a man overboard drill... just as we'd sat down to lunch!

Oven-roasted vegetables: turnips, onions, green bell 

peppers, tomatoes, carrots, and potatoes.

Happy Birthday, Marlin!
Before dinner, we had a birthday toast to the Marlin and Seth #2 poured some champagne over the side in an offering to Neptune, as is customary.

Then we ate steaks, with chuck steak  that I'd marinated for days. In my mind, even that didn't make those steaks rewarding. Just not a good cut. Though a grill may have helped.

Captain Flash bought ice cream and I put out the cake.

Eggplant with mozzerella, basil and sauteed garlic.

Homesick
As we sat around the table talking, I shared this email I'd received from my sister this morning with the crew. Apparently, my little nephew, E., has been missing me.

My sister, L., writes:
Our conversations have been going something like this.
"I wanna go see C.C.'s boat."
"I'm sorry, E., but C.C. and her boat are far away"
"Can we drive there?"
"Not today"
"Tomorrow?"
"Sorry, but no."
We have had this conversation many times.

Then today we were reading Where the Wild Things Are, and Max got into his boat.
"Like CC's boat?"
"Yes, it's a sail boat, just like C.C.'s boat."
"Is he going to see her?"
"Max is using his imagination, he's pretending to go see the Wild Things, would you like to use our imagination and go see C.C.?"
"Yes!"
So we took a sailboat through the jungle and the ocean in his bedroom to see you on your boat:)

Then on the page where Max gets back in his boat and goes back home, Max is in the boat with the moon and the stars overhead.
E. said "C.C. goes night-night in her boat?"
"Yes, do you remember sitting in her bed on the boat?"

Birthday steak.

"Yeah, and she sleeps there, and the moon and the stars are UP IN THE SKY." The last words were spoken with some excitement. :)

Thursday's Menu
Breakfast
I can't remember
Lunch
I can't remember
Dinner
Steak, marinated overnight in this recipe. It didn't blow me away.
Eggplant, mozzerella cheese, basil, red wine vinegar and sauteed garlic
Oven-roasted vegetables
Dessert
Birthday cake: chocolate mayonnaise cake with brown sugar frosting (and store-bought vanilla on top; plus chocolate made by mixing cocoa powder into the vanilla)