I’ve been so remiss about posting. I promise to get better about that. Cross my heart.

Meanwhile, here’s a small window in my diving life tonight.

I did a night dive tonight – sigh. I hate night dives. I know… I know… there’s cool stuff! It only comes out at night! It’s dark! It’s fun! Whatever!

Here’s my two cents: PEOPLE PLEASE STOP REQUESTING NIGHT DIVES BECAUSE I HATE THEM. I HAVE TO GO BECAUSE I’M A DMT BUT I’M ALWAYS COLD AND HUNGRY. OK? THANK YOU.

I went out with Da Bull and a family that’s been diving with us for a week. Between you and me, I just… wish they would leave. I don’t care for them, on the surface or under it. I don’t like how they talk to each other, I don’t enjoy the way they can’t listen or follow directions and diving with them is like corralling chickens.

At any rate, we got them off the boat, finally, and then I turned into the biggest freaking hot mess getting in the water. I tossed in my gear  so I could gear up in the water, leaned over the side of the boat and dropped one of my fins. Then I had to jump in with one fin in my hand, grab my other fin, stick them under my arm and chase down my gear  with my small ineffectual feet as it floated away in the current.

Once I caught it, I had to figure out how to proceed. Put on my gear or put on my fins? I was wearing 2 wetsuits and 10 pounds of lead and had no fins so every three seconds, my head went under water, which would seem to argue for the fins.

I tried holding onto my gear to keep me afloat and putting on my fins, but didn’t have enough hands for that. Then I tried sitting on my gear and putting on my fins and couldn’t quite manage that balancing act either because as soon as I leaned down to reach my foot I fell off my gear. Then I had to get into my gear, in current while holding onto my fins, switching them from hand to hand and eventually that worked, by which point I had to get my fins on in a hurry so I could kick back to the group by which point I was out of breath from all the struggle and was sure I looked like a total idiot.

Got myself mostly under control, worked my flashlight out from my BCD pocket, turned it on and got 10 feet under and it died and wouldn’t turn on again. Had to chase down Da Bull to get his spare light at which point I felt something weird happening at my left elbow and realized that my safety sausage had decided to unroll itself and trail behind me. Had to juggle my flashlight while I rolled it up in the dark, feeling for the Velcro and trying not to drop the reel at the same time, keeping one eye on all the rest of the flashlights that were taking off away from me and about the point that I finally attached it to my BCD, I realized why I was having so much trouble seeing. I’d lost my hair tie realized I’d lost my hair tie and my hair was going everywhere so I tried to tuck it under my mask strap and checked my air and realized this whole struggle had cost me 200 PSI in about 10 minutes.

This is also the dive that Da Bull informed me he thinks I’m overweighted by like a billion pounds. He says I dive kicking upright and it’s inappropriate for a DMT. He’s not wrong. He softened it slightly by saying that I have low body fat and dense muscle so I need less lead than your average woman my height. I think in the history of my life I’ve never had anyone tell me I have low body fat so I should probably marry him immediately. Regardless, he came up behind me at a certain point and inflated my BCD for me.

Ridiculous.

We saw a bunch of octopus and bioluminescence for days,  but who cares after all that, right?