Dear diary,

Today i electrocuted myself 3 times. Not the severe kind where my hair lights on fire and need immediate  medical help, just the light shock that makes you jump and suck on your finger till the zinging sensation eases away. Brian had warned me, in all fairness, that this one specific light socket was giving him some trouble. Yet all day zing here and zing there. Just another way in how my life has gone from pampered princess to electrocuted maid. But I am not complaining. Brian is away this week fulfilling his need for fresh powder with snowboarding in the mountains of Jackson, Wyoming. He visits his brother Justin and it makes me yearn for my own siblings. My adorable brother and sister in law in California, and fabulous sister in Boston. My life has turned into a constant balancing act of being homesick and waking up to a Bahamian sunrise and my love everyday. I tell myself that life is a blessing, especially when Boston seems to be in snow apocalypse and I am currently rocking a sunburn (ouch!). Life BC (before change) I would never have had to worry about such things as being electrocuted and becoming so obsessive with dust that i vacuum a vacuum,  but I would also not have the chance to end my work days with leaping off the deck of a 130 foot yacht into crystal clear blue waters. So be it to say that approximately 5 hours earlier a 9 foot nurse shark had cruised by, but dammit i did it. Yes I may have bounced off the water and right back on the boat keeping that nurse shark in mind (ya ya I know they are harmless, but its still a shark ok!) but I was proud of myself for taking the leap. You would think that a person who now resides and works on the water would be some kind of ocean freak, especially a girl who grew up living 5 seconds away from it, but every time I now see a sting ray leap out of the water to feed or 8 feet tarpin have their nightly feedings under our ship, i find myself inching back and back saying “no thats ok, you guys go for it, Ill watch the towels” (like they are going to run away). My new goal for AC (after change) is to push myself to do all the things i daydream about. The things you see the people do on Instagram or in the movies. Free diving, wake boarding, just all in all being fearless. I know i struggle with fear, in some cases I am the bravest person I know and i don’t give up, other times i let my anxiety eat away at me and find myself unable to move. I am thankful for Brian for he is the most fearless person I know. His ability to just go for it inches me out of my shell. I miss him dearly this week. For many reasons I miss him, but to be honest i feel a lot safer on the boat knowing that the engineer is on board. At night when I hear the normal creeks and sounds my mind usually goes to oh my god we are sinking. We never are and he usually can fix the problem (if there is a problem in the first place, guess what….boats makes a shit ton of noise) so not having him hear to subside my intense range of feelings has kept me on my toes. My favorite parts of my day have become the small glimpses I get to see of him as he scurries around the boat fixing the100 problems that are thrown his way. His hair always looks crazy and I am usually scrubbing something for the millionth time, but it always makes me smile and become centered. Life is good. This time apart feels like a small blessing, because a couple who works together, lives together, and spends pretty much all their free time together can start to get on each other’s nerves, and thats speaking gently. There have been tears and there have been bags packed and ready to go, but here I still am. Life is but a dream. Distance makes the heart grow fonder, and for me it makes the heart grow more appreciative. All the things he has done for me, all the ways he has never given up. Our boat could be docked in Alaska(or Boston at this point because of all the snow) I would still consider myself the luckiest girl. Us girls can be monsters sometimes. And I am queen monster, with my temper tantrums and mood swings. But I see the dream of a peaceful happiness with a wonderful life of excitement if I can just give in. Give in to all my inner instincts of fight and flight.  Its odd how one can get used to a constant battle. I attribute it to my life BC, where for 10 years I did the same thing, routine can be hard to break. Yet here I am now forming a new routine and trying to incorporate acts of self love and peace into my daily run. Along with cleaning. Did I mention the cleaning? Its my life now. Let me just mention that life BC there was minimum cleaning and cooking in my life. Minimum. I was blessed to have roommates who kept a pristine house, and just asked me to shut my door to my bedroom of chaos and clothes. My room consistently looked like a bomb went off, and for weeks on end not seeing my floor due to endless amounts of clothes (adorable clothes) was a normal thing. Anyone who knows me knows that this is true. Cleaning wasn’t my thing. Bless my mothers gentle heart, she always kept a white tight clean home, and my sister owns her own cleaning company, but I think of myself as a master of chaos. Yet here I am, basically a maid. Detailing has become my universe. What is detailing one might ask?  Well let me tell you, its when you go over every nook and cranny of a room with every type of cleaner one can imagine. Stainless steel cleaner, windex, polishing clothes, granite cleaner, marble cleaner, vinegar and water, all these things you must use on the appropriate nook. When I first started my idea of cleaning was doing a once over with one of those Lysol cleaning clothes and vacuuming then calling it a day. Now I find myself on my hands and knees dusting with qtips and murphy water. I fight with the dust like a crazy person, because on a yacht you can dust and dust, turn your head for 30 seconds and then find that spot dusty again. Most days I find myself screaming “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills”. I see spots like I have never seen them before and they taunt me. Clean me Meshel! Clean me! And I do. It keeps me busy throughout the day and thankfully I find enormous amounts of pleasure in small things, like taking care of our Beta fish. Billy beta and Frankie Fish are my new little loves and I make it my priority to greet them everyday and make them apart of our family. Our beautiful orchids have become my responsibility and i adore them. They are unique and luscious but I also secretly haver a great fear that I might kill them. They cant die.I can let them die.  I find myself spending hours on google researching what orchids like and how to tell if your Beta is happy. My new life. My newest project a little garden (by garden I mean two plotted plants with the only two seeds I could find on the island, Dill and Lobelia). Once again i find myself thoroughly enjoying taking care of these little babies with visions of them growing and healthy. People will say “wow that Meshel really has a green thumb” and I will just smile and wink. Its hard to grow new passions without forgetting the old. I try to keep up on my yoga and lord knows my hands are aching to shoot my bow, but  I must progress. Trying to inspire the inner chef in me has been a challenge because once again life BC was one where delicious dinners were made nightly and all I had to do was go home. I am a firm believer that certain genes must skip a generation because where my mother is the HBIC (head bitch in charge) when it comes to cooking and cleaning, I find myself just shrugging my shoulders and feeling content with the turkey hot dog i heated up for lunch. Thank god her remarkable looks didn’t skip my generation. I can see it in my dear Brians eyes his hope that I will one day wake up and say “I think I am going to sauté a duck and whip up some….(see i cant even think of what I would whip up). I have made it my goal to give it a try because, hey, I could like it right? I could develop at 30 a vivacious passion for the art of cooking. I have been taking baby steps on the boat, because I basically live with 3 professional chefs. I boiled chicken on sunday which was odd, I opened the meat freezer today which was scary, and i googled fruit torte, which was overwhelming. But diary I am going to do it. I am going to free dive. I am going to grow a garden. And dammit it diary, I am going to cook.