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Whoa! Lookie-here who popped back into the world-o-blogging for a moment! Moi!

I am embarrassed to say that my last blog post was over a year ago. Where did that year go?!? Much has happened which led to the sad detriment (maybe demise is a better word) of this humble blog, as well as any writing whatsoever on my part.

The short story is . . . My folks passed away at the end of last year a mere six weeks apart and I am the trustee of their estate, our daughter in the Army deployed to Afghanistan in September (she comes stateside in 10 days!), my husband was the president of his business association last year and we logged over 16,000 miles of travel up and down California. We invested in a craft brewery. We purchased a home in Boise. We tried to keep our heads screwed on. All of that made for zippo writing time. Oh, not to mention the paralyzing avoidance of writing a query letter for my (finished!) manuscript.

For those of you who followed this blog 2+ years ago, you may remember that my husband and I vacationed in Belize, which I chronicled HERE, HERE, and HERE. It was wonderful those 2+ years ago, so what the hell, so we went again last week.

We stayed on an atoll 25 miles off the coast of Belize and the only thing on the island besides the resort is a dirt airstrip and a marine research institute. That, and crocodiles in the lagoon. Gilligan might have been in a coconut tree, but I never spotted him. No Internet, phones, or television means you can read, drink margaritas poolside, and snorkel/scuba dive your heart out . . . which we did with great abandon.

Oh, Belize

Cocktail, anyone?

However, the strangest thing happened . . .

During my 4th or 5th excursion snorkeling, I started composing a blog post in my head. Yes, in the middle of my snorkel! Never mind the nurse shark near my knee or the puffer fish portside, I was writing in my head!

While not brilliant, it went something like this:

If Dr. Seuss had gone scuba diving or snorkeling in Belize before writing One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, the title might have been:

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, Half Orange and Half Purple Fish, Silver Fish with a Yellow Tail and Racing Stripe, Black Fish with Neon Blue Polka-dots, Fish Dressed a Referee . . .

Dr. Seuss would have said, “Oh heck. Let’s just call the darn book One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish and be done with it.

Mother Nature had way too many rum punches before she designed the fish and coral of Belize. She must have whipped out her box of 64 Crayola crayons (remember those?) and went crazy. There is every size, shape, and color of fish you can imagine and I am sure Mother Nature woke up with one heck of a hangover the next day. But the result of her drinking binge is magnificent.

Writing a blog post whilst (how British of me) snorkeling is probably inadvisable given that fire coral, stingrays, sharks, lionfish and any number of other poisonous critters are close at hand.

But . . . a lovely thing happened to me while putting my life and several limbs at risk and inadvertently drinking gallons of the pristine waters of Belize . . . I started writing again.

Ahhh . . . thank you Belize.