Day 171 - Sick Kia, Surf Sessions and a Rough Mother’s Day in Essaouira

Day 171 started pretty rough, especially for Mother’s Day. Kia had been sick all night and woke up feeling absolutely wiped out. She barely got out of bed all morning. The kids eventually wandered in to wish her a Happy Mother’s Day before quietly leaving her to rest while I made a coffee and tried to get stuck into some work.

I hadn’t really looked properly at the work yet and thought I might be able to knock it over in a few hours, but once I opened everything up, I realised it was a much bigger job than expected. It was one of those projects where work had already been completed and submitted previously, so the data I received still had all the old information mixed in with the new stuff. Before I could even start properly, I had to sift through everything, separate the old data, recode it all into the correct format and get it functioning again. It was one of those frustrating jobs where you spend hours just preparing the data before you can even begin the actual task.

While I was buried in that, I was bouncing between work and family duties. I cooked eggs for the kids while they also smashed some yoghurt and muesli. Kia briefly surfaced before heading straight back to bed again. The kids spent most of the morning crafting little outfits and accessories for their toys using old socks and bits of fabric. Emmett has started cutting the feet off socks that apparently don’t fit him anymore. At this rate, he’s going to run out of socks completely before we leave Morocco.

They’ve completely moved on from Lego for now and are deep into this creative phase of making clothes, houses and random little setups for their toys. It kept them entertained for hours and honestly it’s pretty cool seeing them create stuff out of absolutely nothing.

I kept my head down with work right through until lunchtime. We just grazed on snacks around the apartment rather than making anything proper. Around 1:30pm, while Kia was asleep, I asked Emmett and Maddie if they wanted to head out for a surf because the conditions were supposed to be really good again.

Emmett was immediately keen. Maddie wasn’t feeling it at all. She wanted a quiet afternoon watching a movie and relaxing back at the apartment, so Emmett and I headed off together down to the surf shop.

We grabbed wetsuits, rented him a board and walked down to the beach. The conditions were honestly epic. No wind, warm weather and solid clean sets rolling through around the two metre mark. It was one of those afternoons where everything just lined up perfectly.

At first Emmett struggled a bit. His wetsuit was too tight around his legs and he couldn’t properly pop up onto the board. We adjusted it a little and after that he started finding his rhythm. Once he got going, he absolutely started charging.

I spent most of the session pushing him into waves while filming him on the GoPro. He was catching proper waves alongside all the adults out there. A few surfers nearby were giving him fist bumps and high fives after rides because he was genuinely doing really well for his age. You could tell he was feeding off the encouragement too. His confidence just kept building the longer we stayed out there.

I had a crack on his board as well, but it definitely wasn’t built for me. Every time I popped up the thing would start sinking or I’d bog down and fall off the back of the wave. I managed to snag one decent ride but that was about it. The board was perfect for Emmett though and seeing him frothing out there made it way more enjoyable anyway.

We ended up staying out for about three hours before hunger finally got the better of us. We took the boards back, called Kia to check if she or Maddie wanted food, then grabbed some takeaway from a local place. Emmett and I got kebab-style wraps while Maddie wanted a burger and chips.

Back at the apartment, Maddie was still curled up watching a movie and Emmett was completely cooked after such a big session in the water. Kia was still feeling awful and mostly rested all day, so once everyone settled in again, I jumped back into work.

At some point I realised I’d made a coding mistake and followed the wrong code set entirely. Thankfully, because I’d already modified all the original data once, fixing it the second time was much quicker. I managed to get everything functioning properly again and now it’s mostly just entering attributes into the data sets. A lot of it links together automatically once you assign the first point, so I should be able to power through it tomorrow morning and get it sent back to the office for the client submission.

Eventually Kia got the kids sorted for bed while I wrapped up the work. It wasn’t a super late night, but definitely not an early one either.

Not exactly the Mother’s Day any of us imagined, but despite the sickness and work stress, the surf session with Emmett ended up being one of those travel moments I’ll probably remember for a long time.

Hopefully tomorrow Kia wakes up feeling a lot more human because the surf forecast is looking pretty epic again here in Essaouira.