There is a very real and very intense battle going on in my family.   And no ones talking about it.  I'm here to break the silence. 

I am currently at my family's house on a cliff overlooking the ocean.  It is paradise and I am an enormously lucky person and all of this is for a different blog post.  The fact of the matter is that everyone in my family finds it enormously relaxing to just sit out and stare into the horizon.  The sun reflecting off the waves has a sort of 3D photograph effect where you think you might be about to see the hidden picture in its ripples.  And all of this is well and good.  But were not just staring out into the nothingness.  We are looking.  We are looking for a whale.  If we tell you any different, we are surely lying.

There is an intense family competition that revolves around spotting the first whale from our house.  It hasn't happened yet.  Just so your suspicion that we might be a bit kooky is affirmed, we have a similar competition revolving around finding octopi while snorkeling.   One of my father's least favorite things about my gf is that she is unbelievably good at spotting them.  I swear to god she doesn't even find them; they just swim up to her like she was the goddamn little mermaid (ok, maybe this is my least favorite thing about her too.)  It's strange, the only things my entire (the entire is key here) family is competitive at are Hannukah candle races and spotting sea life.  Kooky.

So we sit and we stare and we strain to make out the faintest traces of a whale exhaling its moisture like a geyser out of the ocean.  Oh, we've seen traces.  Oasis traces.  I get so bad that this morning when i woke up the gf said, "there are a lot of whales out there today."  I look out to see a myriad of white cap waves.  I laugh.  She knows that inside i suspect any ripple of white out there on the sea might be a whale.  And that the combination of my need to see a whale and my ADHD makes these days of white capped roughness devastating on my eyes and attention span.  "Yes dear, whales whales everywhere." 

**Locker Room Update**

Before i left i put two more knots in the strings.  I counted 7 knots total which means he has to have taken at least 2 knots out so far.  As a psychologist i really wonder what his thought process is right now.  Where does he think the knots are coming from.  And, most amusing to me, since i am away for 2 weeks, suddenly the problem will seem to go away . . . until it's back once again.  Viva la revolut . . . nah, not worth it.