Day 290, Year 7: Fleeting Days of Summer
Date: Friday, August 24, 2012
Weather: Yet Another Beautiful Day
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
I’m having a hard time dealing with the fact that the closing days of summer
are upon us. I feel like summer just started, but I think that is because
Mark and I were both so immersed into the routine of the bi-weekly chemo
treatments that we missed a huge chunk of summer. It was not until the
chemo treatments ended on the 24rd of July that we started thinking about
sailing. And although there is still a lot of sailing weather left here in
New England, the busy fall calendar interferes with sailing plans. Mark has
worked a couple of days at West Marine recently, but tomorrow he starts back
to work in earnest. He works tomorrow, and then he works next Wednesday,
Friday, and Saturday with trips to doctors in Boston on Monday and Thursday.
We think his Sunday is free, but then he works Wednesday through Saturday of
the following week. And so it goes. It is time for the year-round staff at
West Marine to take vacation time and they need Mark to fill-in. They were
so wonderful about all of the time he had to take off in the latter stages
of the chemo treatment that he feels a bit of a commitment to work whenever
they need him now. So we will just have to eek out sailing times here and
there.
This morning Mark and I had Oliver onboard while Heather had a couple of
meetings and then we went home with Heather to help with kids while Heather
completed another list of chores. And I worked on starting to process the
twenty pounds of tomatoes we bought yesterday. I got about half of them
blanched and will complete the job tomorrow while Mark is at work. Sam and
Jonah had their last day of summer camp today and will be home next week
before starting school after the Labor Day weekend. Sam has a Kindergarten
visiting day on Monday and then has his first official day of school on
Tuesday, September 4. Jonah will return to the Wds Hole Cooperative Daycare
school on Wednesday, September 5. He will go three full days a week which
will be a change for him. He and Sam have only gone to school half-days
this past year. But since we will be leaving in November for the winter,
Heather has to get the boys into a schedule that allows her to work
part-time. I’m already having serious withdrawal symptoms just thinking
about leaving, but we will be back in the spring and have a FULL summer of
fun next year.
I’ll end with a story about Sam and Jonah. Since Heather has had to return
to work, albeit part-time, she is seeing the results of that in Sam and
Jonah’s play. Yesterday she took photos of Jonah cooking in his play
kitchen while holding his baby Joey. When the pot on his stove got too hot,
he threw it to the floor to make sure it didn’t burn the baby. And when Sam
was working at the tool bench, he was holding the phone from the play
kitchen to his ear talking to his work mates. These two little ones have
obviously been watching mommy at work. Heather has to hold Oliver while
doing all sorts of chores, cooking included, and often is on the phone or on
the computer at the same time. Sam and Jonah are learning to multi-task
from the master.
