by Judy Handley | Oct 31, 2018 | 2018 Life Logs |
2018 Life Logs, Day 304—Happy Halloween
Date: Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Weather: Sunny and a Little Warmer; High 58, Low 54 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Sometime between 1986 and 1988, Mark ‘inherited’ some costumes that the Salisbury State College (now University) Drama Department was giving away. One of those costumes was a wizard’s robe and Mark wore that every Halloween thereafter until we moved aboard Windbird in 2003. There was no room for costumes on a boat, so it was put in storage. Then at some point, Heather and Jed got it out of storage and for every Halloween since then, Jed has been a wizard. That wizard’s robe has certainly been well used, and Jed wore it again tonight. He looked great standing in front of the fog and light machine in the front yard.
Sam decided to be a 1920’s paperboy and put his costume together with a bit of advice from Heather. He even rolled up newspapers to carry in his bag and he gave out newspapers when he was given a treat. I don’t know where this idea came from, but it was easy to put together and he looked the role perfectly.
Jonah decided to be a soccer player, his very favorite thing, and was dressed in the uniform of Lionel Messi.
Ollie pulled an astronaut costume out of the costume drawer and added what he calls his flight jacket. Heather and I stayed home to pass out treats and keep that fog and light machine going in the front yard. All of the trick or treaters loved the foggy effect, but a couple of little guys were in total awe. Ollie was the first one home and he immediately started sorting his treats.
Fun evening!
I didn’t get to go to the East Falmouth Elementary Halloween Parade this afternoon as I had a physical therapy appointment for my knee. But Heather took pictures and sent me one of Ollie and one of Jonah.
The physical therapy appointment went well. I was given exercises that I need to do daily and had me make an appointment in two weeks to see how things are going. The therapist’s name is Tom and he spent a lot of time discussing the pros and cons of having knee replacement surgery. Like the surgeon, he understands my reluctance, but thinks the February appointment I have made is perfect timing. If I do decide against it, he thinks I might be able to make it another year to two, but I am going to have to have this surgery. And he did caution me that a fall or injury might speed up that process. Well, it happened tonight. When I got home from Heather and Jed’s, I realized that I didn’t have the book I am currently reading with me. I thought maybe I left it in the car, so I went back outside to check. It wasn’t in the car, so I must have left it at Heather and Jed’s. I’ll survive with that until tomorrow. But in hurrying back into the house, the toe of my shoe got caught on one of the front steps and I fell, twisting my knee in the process. I can only walk by holding on to pieces of furniture or by leaning on the wall and putting weight on the front of the foot on that leg. I literally can’t straighten my leg. I am hoping that icing it and doing some stretching exercises at bedtime might help things a bit. What a bummer! When Tom talked about a fall today, I just thought that won’t happen to me. Ha! I seem to be accident prone these days. My ear and jaw are fine today after yesterday’s hit with the soccer ball. Let’s hope this knee injury bounces back as quickly.
by Judy Handley | Oct 30, 2018 | 2018 Life Logs |
2018 Life Logs, Day 303—Work a Day
Date: Tuesday, October 30, 2018
Weather: Sunny and Cool; High 50, Low 35 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
It was just a work a day. I spent the morning battling with Google on the phone. In dealing with a computer issue, Justin discovered that I am not receiving email from one of my accounts because I don’t have storage space. I have been paying Google Play for a terabyte of storage for two years now, or so I thought. In researching this, I found that my subscription ended in June. I won’t bore you with details, but dealing with this online and on the phone took more than two hours of my day. And the problem is not yet solved. That story is to be continued. I moved on to working on the PowerPoint presentation for the Wayland Sailing Association. I thought I would finish that today, but time was cut short by the Google issue. Maybe tomorrow for completion on that. And then it was time to pick Jonah and Ollie up from school. In playing a game with them which is cross between soccer and baseball, I was the ‘pitcher’ and was hit in the ear and lower jaw by a fast flying soccer ball. I am still not sure that all is well. After the hit, I started having a pain in my throat/inner ear when I swallow. Not sure what that is about. But, whatever, it was fun to play with the boys. That’s about it for today. It was sunny. No surprise storms. But it felt particularly chilly. It should be warmer tomorrow and Thursday, so I look forward to that.
by Judy Handley | Oct 29, 2018 | 2018 Life Logs |
2018 Life Logs, Day 302—Wild Weather
Date: Monday, October 29, 2018
Weather: Surprise AM Storm, Then Sunshine; High 59, Low 40 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
I checked the weather last night and saw that today should be partly sunny with a slight chance of rain in the early afternoon. So, I headed to my pilates class at the gym this morning without my raincoat. As we were exercising, I looked out the windows and saw that it was literally pouring rain torrential style. We kept exercising and the rain subsided a bit. Whew! I might be able to get home without getting drenched. Then the gym manager came in to tell us that there was a tornado watch in effect. What? Where did that come from? She said Woods Hole had reported a water spout and winds of 65 miles per hour and that Falmouth was under the watch. But the radar showed that the cyclonic winds were further to the west following the Buzzards Bay coastline from Quissett Harbor to North Falmouth. She told us she would keep us posted. Nervously, we continued exercising, especially since the room we were in was all glass on one side. But the young woman returned, saying that downtown Falmouth had been cleared and was no longer in danger. We finished our class and afterwards I went into a different room to use the exercise bike while I watched the minute by minute weather coverage. When I was sure it was safe for me to head home, I did. And when I got to the car and checked my phone, I saw that Heather had texted to say she had been in her basement for the past hour. She was driving to Boston today, returning tomorrow evening, but she wasn’t going anywhere until the all clear was sounded. She had heard from the schools and found out that Ollie and Jonah and all of the East Falmouth students had been in the school basement for the past hour and Sam’s school, evidently not having a basement, had all been gathered in a lower floor hallway. Wild weather!
I spent the rest of my day doing a little house cleaning, working to clear dead plants from my raised garden beds, and mostly sitting at the dining room table catching up on correspondence, completing a template for a December field trip to the Rhode Island School of Design for the Newcomers Teacher Group, and completing the writing of my presentation for the Wayland Sailing Association. I will finish adding the photos to the Power Point presentation tomorrow and hopefully have that project completed. While sitting at the dining table today, I kept watching the aquarium for signs of the baby fish the Goldpebbles discovered last night. Ollie and I bought two Platys three weeks ago and evidently one them had babies. Platys have live babies and at least one baby has survived because we saw it last night. So tiny and so cute. I doubt that it will make it, but it has certainly given survival a run for its money to date. My friend Karen Baranowski was visiting two weeks ago and said she saw a baby fish. I didn’t see it then and I didn’t see it today, but I did see it last night. I’m hoping it is still there, just hiding until it gets big enough to fend for itself.
by Judy Handley | Oct 28, 2018 | 2018 Life Logs |
2018 Life Logs, Day 301—64 Days Left in 2018
Date: Sunday, October 28, 2018
Weather: Sunshine; High 57, Low 46 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
After I wrote yesterday’s log, I realized it was Day 300 of 2018. That means that we now have only 64 days left in this year. The days are growing shorter and next Sunday our clocks fall back an hour making the darkness come an hour earlier in the evenings. This is the time of year I like least, but in less than 64 days, the days will start getting longer again. That’s the good news. Thankfully we have Thanksgiving and Christmas activities to keep us busy during this dark time.
After yesterday’s stormy day, this was a sunny one. But I spent my day inside doing more computer work and then getting dinner ready for the Goldstones. I love having them over on Sunday evenings. I fixed cranberry quinoa stuffed acorn squash, salad, and pork tenderloin with a big Halloween decorated chocolate chip cookie cake for dessert. It was great to be together. Earlier in the afternoon, I had a Skype video call with Justin, Jo, Ziggy, and Coco. The kids are excited about Halloween. Coco is going to be a Vampire and Ziggy an Invisible Man. I think I am going to be myself. Now that’s a scary thought!
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.
