2024 Life Logs, Day 83: Ollie the Farmer

2024 Life Logs, Day 83: Ollie the Farmer
Date: Saturday, March 23, 2024
Weather: Overcast and Rainy, Gale Warning Tonight; High Temp 50, Low 30 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth MA

By the time Ollie was two, he started putting a tractor on his Christmas lists for Santa. When he was three, I was his chaperone for a trip to the Coonemessett Farm and while all the other kids were admiring the animals, Ollie would lead me over to show me the tractor of his dreams.

09 Ollie Loved the Tractor

For his 4th birthday, Ollie got his first tractor. It was a John Deere pedal tractor with a trailer. We learned over time that it was very hard to pedal. But Ollie persisted and continued to ask for a motorized tractor. Fast forward to 2022, and Ollie was sitting proudly on a kid-sized motorized tractor. Then his Christmas list changed. He decided he wanted a real tractor. Since he doesn’t live on a farm, a real tractor seemed like a bit of a stretch, so this past Christmas Santa gave him the promise of a small lawn tractor as a combined Christmas/birthday present. It arrived today and he was thrilled. He is good driver, so I guess all the practice on his little motorized tractor paid off. I watched as he backed it up, headed out of the driveway, turned it around, and then headed back down the driveway to park it. I was certainly impressed.

Sam participated in a statewide Model UN today somewhere near Boston. He had to be on the bus by 6:30 am and didn’t get home until early evening. “Model UN is a world-renowned program in which students role-play delegates representing member states of the United Nations.” The Falmouth High School group have had preparation sessions after school since the beginning of the school year. I look forward to hearing about his experience.

I spent my day walking with Shadow in between spurts of heavy rain, did the set of exercises I am to do once a day between PT sessions, made a spinach mushroom soup, set up the grow lights for the things Ollie and planted last weekend, and somehow this filled my day. It was certainly not a day for outside activities. Tonight, it is roaring out there and raining harder than it did for most of the day. The rain is supposed to end by midnight, but the strong north wind will continue into tomorrow. It looks to be a rainy week, but the forecast for next week is promising with warmer temps and sunshine. I’ll be ready.

2024 Life Logs, Day 82: Physical Therapy Evaluation … Finally

2024 Life Logs, Day 82: Physical Therapy Evaluation … Finally
Date: Friday, March 22, 2024
Weather: Sunny and Chilly; High Temp 37, Low 35 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth MA

Nine weeks after my back surgery, today I finally had my physical therapy evaluation. I had to wait three extra weeks to get the physical therapist I wanted , but I think it was worth the wait. I was very pleased with this first session. I will have two sessions a week for six weeks, have one week off, then knee surgery, and the physical therapy will start again. From now until the end of June, my goal is to focus on getting my body back into shape. It has been months since I could really walk long distances or do exercises other than stretching. I am truly looking forward to the challenge, and a challenge it will be. Actually, more like a miracle!

2024 Life Logs, Day 81: Happy 12th Birthday to Ollie

2024 Life Logs, Day 81: Happy 12th Birthday to Ollie
Date: Thursday, March 21, 2024
Weather: Sunny and Windy; High Temp 40, Low 27 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth MA

Happy Birthday to Oliver Preston Goldstone! Ollie and Simon Ackerman were born on the same day twelve years ago in adjacent rooms at Falmouth Hospital. And now they live in the same neighborhood and can walk to school together. This morning, Simon’s mom, Kate, took a great photo of the boys carrying their saxophones to school and this evening we had a family dinner at the Goldstones to celebrate. I went over to take Simon and Ollie to soccer practice at 5 pm, but they had both decided to skip practice. So, I took Ollie to Falmouth Pet Center to talk with Doug, the owner, about adding more fish to Ollie’s aquarium. Doug is always willing to share information and answer Ollie’s many questions. At Doug’s suggestion, Ollie is going to add the new fish after he has given the aquarium a good maintenance cleaning this weekend.

The Goldstone boys always get to dictate what we have for dinner on their birthdays. Tonight, it was homemade sushi and chocolate cake. When I arrived for dinner, Heather and Jed were both busy making rolls. Very impressive! There was sushi grade tuna and salmon, calamari, scallions, avocado, and cucumber. The rolls were beautiful, delicious, and cost about half what it would have cost as take-out.

Sam had to leave by 7 pm to go to soccer practice. He got to eat, but he missed the opening of presents and cake. I gave Ollie a subscription to Mark Rober’s Crunch Labs which are build-it-yourself engineering kits you receive each month. Mark Rober was a NASA engineer who is now a YouTuber and just so much fun. He started Crunch Labs to get kids to think, play, and build like an engineer. Heather recommended this purchase and Ollie was delighted. Evidently both of Ollie’s grandmothers think alike as Grammy Marti sent him a similar kit from a different company. Jed gave Ollie a huge box of gray Legos. I asked why just gray, and Heather explained that she is forever being recruited to sort through the hundreds of Legos for gray bricks to build ships. But the biggest present of all was that a decision was finally made tonight on the lawn tractor to purchase. This is something he has wanted since he was two and it was his combined Christmas and birthday gift from Santa and mom and dad.

Lighting the birthday candles on the cake was quite the affair tonight. Ollie started lighting the candles with a grill lighter, but every time he lit a candle, Jonah would run through the dining room and blow it out. Jonah finally grabbed the lighter and hid it, so Ollie went to get a grill lighter that looked more like a mini blow torch. That did the trick and we finally got to sing Happy Birthday. And before I left, I shared the Welcome to Crunch Labs video that I received after subscribing where you learn how to make the best paper airplane ever. When I left, Ollie was adjusting the wings and the trim to make the plane do loops. He was one happy 12 year old tonight.

The rest of my day was spent in Hyannis getting an eye exam and ordering new glasses and then heading on to Costco to get a few items I needed. Tomorrow the only thing I have on my to do list is to go to my PT evaluation. Finally, I get to start PT post back surgery.

2024 Life Logs, Day 80: Happy Spring!

2024 Life Logs, Day 80: Happy Spring!
Date: Wednesday, March 20, 2024
Weather: Mostly Sunny Turning Cloudy PM; High Temp 49, Low 29 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth MA

Spring arrived last night at 11:06 pm, the earliest spring equinox in the Northern Hemisphere in 128 years. It continues to be windy making it feel colder than the thermometer says, but when the sun was shining earlier in the day, at least it was a down vest, not a winter coat day. I spent this first full day of spring at morning long Encore general meeting and then spent my afternoon indoors catching up on things I had put aside to get ready for the meeting. But I did spend a big chunk of time outside enjoying the sunshine while playing ball with Shadow. I was enjoying being outside so much that I wore him out. He finally ignored the tennis ball and just plopped down on the ground. I took that as my cue to bring him back inside!

2024 Life Logs, Day 79: Tuesday Work-a-Day

2024 Life Logs, Day 79: Tuesday Work-a-Day
Date: Tuesday, March 19, 2024
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Easterly Wind; High Temp 45, Low 38 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth MA

Today was just a repeat of yesterday with the exception of taking Ollie to his saxophone lesson this afternoon. He was very sad because yesterday their male kitty, Mel, somehow got out the front door and ran away. When I talked to Ollie about his birthday coming up on Thursday, today he said all he wants is Mel to come home. They put food in the garage and left one of the doors open part way so he could come in if he wanted. And Heather and Ollie were going to put up posters around the neighborhood. When I got a text from Heather later this evening saying they found Mel in the garage under Sam’s car, I immediately broke out in tears of joy. He is very scared and smells funny, but he is all in one piece. Now Ollie can get on with the birthday planning.