by Judy Handley | Oct 27, 2018 | 2018 Life Logs |
2018 Life Logs, Day 300—Nor’easter
Date: Saturday, October 27, 2018
Weather: Rain and Wind, Lots of Both; High 60, Low 52 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
It was a stormy day on Cape Cod where a nor’easter brought us lots of wind and rain. It was a day in which I didn’t venture outside the cottage, not even once. I did open the front door to check the temperature, but that was the extent of my outdoor explorations. I sat at the dining table working on my computer and watching the storm through the windows. Whether I looked west out of the dining room windows or south out of the living room window, all I saw was rain and leaves swirling in the wind. Once in a while there would be a gust of wind that bent the tree limbs, but for the most part it was just steady . . . rain and wind all day.
What I learned by sitting at the dining room table working on my computer all day is that I need to do this day after day for many, many days in order to get my photo files in order. But that isn’t going to happen, so I have to find a way to stop being so particular about the way I organize my photographs and shortcut the process. Today I was working on the presentation I will make in two weeks for the Wayland Sailing Association. I needed to access photos from my trip to the Bahamas on Windbird with Sam and Dawn in April of 2017 and photos from my sailing trip this past March from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico. The photos of neither of those trips has been named and filed properly, so it took a little hunting to find them. That was the red light reminder that I REALLY need to do something about this. The problem is that life gets in the way. I keep doing more things and taking more photos that need to be organized. So, I will just keep chip, chip, chipping away at this job until it is done.
If Mark were still alive we would have been celebrating our 44th wedding anniversary today. All day long I kept thinking back to that warm, beautiful fall day when we were married under a palm tree in south Florida. Then I would look out the window and was brought back into the here and now. The drastic difference in the weather in these two scenes made me chuckle more than once, but the memories left me feeling a bit sad. When it was time to eat dinner, I turned on the TV to see what was happening in the world and learned of the horrible shooting in the synagogue in Pittsburgh. That jolted me out of my sadness and into madness. My solution to gun violence is to take away the guns. But those in power don’t agree with me. Where do we go from here?
by Judy Handley | Oct 26, 2018 | 2018 Life Logs |
2018 Life Logs, Day 299—Early Voting
Date: Friday, October 26, 2018
Weather: Sunny and Chilly; High 46, Low 35 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Maybe it was just me, but today felt downright cold. The high was 46 with sunshine, but I was freezing. I’d better toughen up quickly as one thing is for certain. It is only going to get colder! As I sat at my computer and looked out the window, I could still see the colors of fall, but there are also lots of fallen leaves.
Fall is in full swing.
I spent three hours in town today running errands and going to an annual doctor’s appointment. One of my errands was to vote early. I could not believe the number of people doing the same thing. Early voting is at the Town Hall and there were people constantly streaming in and out while I was there. At this rate, I don’t think there will be anyone left to vote on election day. I took a water sample from the aquarium to the pet center in hopes that all is well and that we could add more fish this weekend. But not so. The pH of the water is too high as is the level of ammonia. The high ammonia level is expected in a newly established aquarium, but the not the high pH. The pH should be 7 to 7.5. I filled the aquarium with water from my Berkey water filter and thought it would be fine, but obviously not. The guy at the pet center said to go home and test the tap water and the water from the filter. The tap water has a pH of 10 and it should be between 6.5 and 9.5. The water from the Berkey filter tests at 8.7 as does the water from the aquarium. I added some driftwood to the aquarium tonight which is supposed to help and did a 50 per cent water change. But since the water from the Berkey filter is too high, I think I am going to have to buy something to lower the pH and wait another week to add more fish. Bummer!
At home, I spent some time working on that presentation for the Wayland Sailing Association and I dug up Lemon Grass from the garden and brought it inside so I can harvest it when I have time.
Harvesting means taking about three blades of the grass at a time and twisting it to form a little wreath.
You then let the wreaths dry in a dark area and use them to make Lemon Grass tea. I’ve never done this before, so I’ll let you know how it turns out. Most everything else in the garden was killed by a frost on Sunday night, but there is still kale and arugula.
Tomorrow we are going to have a full blown nor’easter with heavy wind and rain. Sounds like a good day to hide.
by Judy Handley | Oct 25, 2018 | 2018 Life Logs |
2018 Life Logs, Day 298—Field Trip to Fuller Craft Museum
Date: Thursday, October 25, 2018
Weather: Sunny; High 52, Low 31 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
It was a beautiful fall day, a perfect day for the trip north to the Fuller Craft Museum—north of here and south of Boston. The Fuller is a small museum but the one thing that immediately struck me were the beautiful views of the outside from inside.
The huge windows framed lovely outdoor scenes of fall. The exhibits inside were diverse and well done. I went with the Newcomers Teachers group and we had a one-hour tour with docents before we explored on our own. The first exhibit we visited displayed everyday Japanese kitchen tools. I loved what looked like little cookie cutters which are used to cut vegetables into creative shapes and a gorgeous bamboo water pitcher.
There was an exhibit called ‘Tricks of the Trade’. One ceramic piece looked like a woven piece,
another looked like cascading folds of material.
There was a little house made of pencils
and a circular saw made of pennies.
In the permanent collection, there was a wooden ‘quilt’ called corners made of pieces of wood scavenged after Hurricane Sandy
and a beautiful piece displaying animals created from fabric coated wire.
My very favorite, however, was a fabric piece called ‘Melted.’ It depicts the melting Arctic and elicited an emotional reaction to what is happening to our world due to global warming.
After exploring the museum, we went to lunch and had wonderful conversations with friends old and new. Afterwards, a subset of us headed to nearby Costco to do a little shopping before heading back to the Cape. Great day.
by Judy Handley | Oct 24, 2018 | 2018 Life Logs |
2018 Life Logs, Day 297—A Chill in the Air
Date: Wednesday, October 24, 2018
Weather: Mixed Weather with Some Rain; High 50, Low 36 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
The high today was 50 degrees F, but there was a chill in the air that just went right through you. Hopefully I’ll toughen up to the chill as I know it is only going to get colder. That doesn’t make me want to embrace it, but I’ll try.
Not a lot to report today—visit to the physical therapist for my knee, grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods in Hyannis, a stop at Home Depot to get an indoor and an outdoor thermometer, and then home via Heather’s to drop off some purchases I made for her. Tonight I chopped red cabbage to ferment. That’s about it. Tomorrow I go on a field trip with the Newcomers Teacher Group and make a stop at Costco on the way home from that affair. It is supposed to be just a tad cooler tomorrow, but with sunshine and no rain. Hopefully that will make it feel a little warmer.
by Judy Handley | Oct 23, 2018 | 2018 Life Logs |
2018 Life Logs, Day 296—Happy Birthday to Ed and Lynne Kirwin
Date: Tuesday, October 23, 2018
Weather: Sunny and Warmer; High 60, Low 42 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
I tried yesterday and today to make phone contact with my friends Ed and Lynne Kirwin just to see how things are going for them. When I finally got through to them this evening, I was gently reminded that yesterday was Lynne’s birthday and today was Ed’s. I had totally spaced on that, but evidently my inner self remembered. At least I will go with that since I really had been trying to reach them—I just didn’t know why. Ed and Lynne are true, dear friends, and I was so happy to hear that both of them had happy birthdays. Ed has two sons. One manages the apartment complex on the Hudson River where Ed and Lynne live and the other owns the complex but lives in Florida. He and his family flew up for the birthdays, so it has been a festive few days for them. Happy birthday to Ed and Lynne. And I know what my New Years’ resolution will be for 2019. It will be to be more thoughtful and remember my friends’ birthdays!
I heard the ding on my phone at 8:30 am this morning. It was a message from Heather telling me that Sam was still sick and would not going to school today. I volunteered to head over ASAP and stay with him for the morning. Then at 12:40 I picked up Jonah and Ollie from school since it was an Early Release day. Whatever I was going to do today will be continued tomorrow. Sam and I had a very nice morning together. We had a discussion about what we need to eat to keep ourselves healthy and somehow that morphed into making beef bone broth. Sam loves beef and I was trying to find a way to get him to eat vegetables. I explained that when you make bone broth, you put in lots of vegetables with the bones and cook it all day so that the vitamins and minerals from the vegetables end up in the broth. Then you remove the bones and veggies and make soup out of the broth. That appealed to Sam, so I went to the store to get the ingredients. He then did all of the work to get those veggies into the pot. He washed and chopped the veggies and put them in the pot to burble.
Then he cut the stew meat and sautéed it to add to the broth later in the day to make beef stew for dinner. He knows his way around the kitchen and enjoys adding just the right amount of this spice and that to get the taste just right. By the end of the day, Sam was feeling much better. The hope is that no one else gets sick so that tomorrow all three boys will be going to school and I can take time to remember what it was I had planned to do today and yesterday. Must not have been very important since I can’t seem to remember!
