2026 Life Logs, Day 83: A Dog in a Sinkhole
Date: Tuesday, March 24, 2026
Weather: Partly Sunny; High Temp 41, Low 30 degrees F
Location: At Home with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
Today was a mix of work, doing some cooking and cleaning, and spending time with Olli.. Heather has been in Boston at a work-related retreat since Sunday afternoon and won’t be home until Wednesday evening. Tuesdays are always challenging, even when there are two parents, but with one, it is tricky. I take Ollie to his saxophone lesson after school, and now that it is soccer season again, while he is at his lesson, I go pick up dinner for him to eat on the way soccer practice. This should have been easy, but today it became a bit of problem. Driving the half mile from my house to pick Ollie up, I saw that the police had Jones Road blocked off. There is a little side street that leads to Jones Road, so I took that. I figured there must have been a wreck at the intersection. Then when I picked Ollie up and we continued on down Jones Road, we found it was blocked in that direction as well. There were 3 fire trucks, including the big ladder truck, emergency vehicles, and more police cars. But we saw no evidence of fire or a wreck or anything else. The police let us through, but it was very strange. When I dropped Ollie off for his lesson, I sat in the car for a bit and tried to find out why Jones Road was closed. The only thing I could find was on Facebook and it said a dog had fallen into a 10-foot deep sinkhole. Then I received an email from Ollie’s soccer coach saying their soccer practice which was off Jones Road was being moved to East Falmouth because the soccer practice field had fallen into a sinkhole. That was obviously meant to be a joke, but it confirmed the Facebook message about a sinkhole. On our way home, when we got close to Jones Road there were two police helicopters overhead and the road was totally blocked. We had to the long way home for Ollie to get dressed for soccer practice and then drive all the way back to East Falmouth where we had just been for his saxophone lesson. It made for a crazy afternoon, and yes, a dog did fall into a 10-foot deep sinkhole. But it still seems strange to me that a major road was closed and that every emergency vehicle and police car in town, plus three fire trucks and two helicopters were all in play for one dog, stuck in a deep but narrow sinkhole that was not even in the road. It was in someone’s yard. If I find out there is more to the story, I’ll let you know.
With that drama over, I went home to feed Shadow and gulp down some dinner before heading back over to be with Ollie. A friend was bringing him home from practice and I got to his house just before he arrived. Jed had to take Jonah and two friends to Hyannis to soccer practice tonight, so they were gone when Ollie got home and I stayed for the evening so he would not be home alone. That is more for me than for him. He was in his room most of the evening and I was working on my computer in the dining room, but I felt better being there than leaving the youngest Goldpebble alone.
And while I am on the topic of a Goldpebble, I will answer a question that four different people have written to ask me about this week. Where in the world is Sam Goldstone, the oldest Goldpebble? In late January, at the end of his first semester at Groningen University in the Netherlands, Sam decided that continuing in the International Relations program there was not the right choice for him. So, he withdrew and was planning to come home at the end of February. But then when he found out that he could not get out of his housing contract, he decided to stay another month since he was paying for the housing anyway. And that turned into one more month. He is using this time to figure out what he is going to do next. One option is AmeriCorp, specifically Forest Corp, for the fall, and those applications are due at the end of this week. Whatever he decides, his current plan is to return home in May.
