by Judy Handley | Sep 13, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 256: Field Trip Planning
Date: Monday, September 13, 2021
Weather: Sunny and Warm; High Temp 81, Low Temp 59 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Today was beautiful and warm, but tonight is a bit chilly . . . a reminder that summer is coming to an end. My only activity today was a Newcomers Field Trip Planning Meeting. I love this group. It was started by teachers who decided it was time for adults to enjoy field trips the same as school children. It was so popular that it has evolved to include everyone, not just retired teachers. We meet once a year to decide what field trips we will do during the next year. Different members volunteer to plan the trips, and away we go to experience new places. This coming year I will be co- planning a trip to the Boston Museum of African American History in March and a trip to the Plimoth-Patuxent Plantation in May or June.
Tomorrow my book club meets here in the late morning and tomorrow evening I am going on a Newcomers Sunset Cruise. Perfect weather for these activities. On Wednesday it gets windy and then rain is forecast for Thursday and Friday. I will busy on those days processing tomatoes, so the rain will not interfere with that.
Tonight I had a wonderful, long phone conversation with my friend Linda Stuart who is no longer biking around the world. She and Mike are living near Denver, Colorado, and providing part-time childcare for their only grandchild. Grant is nine months old and is one lucky little boy to have Linda and Mike as grandparents. He loves to play in the water in the pool at their apartment complex and they take him hiking with them.
by Judy Handley | Sep 12, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 255: Typical End of Summer Sunday
Date: Sunday, September 12, 2021
Weather: Sunny and Really Windy (25-30 mph); High Temp 75, Low Temp 68 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
A soccer game in the morning, food shopping in Hyannis, walk and playtime with Shadow, dinner at the Goldstones. That was today and it was fairly typical of a late summer Sunday once school has started. Jonah is playing soccer with two different leagues this fall, a Falmouth travel team and a Steel United team. He had a Falmouth travel team game yesterday in Swansea which is about an hour away on the border between Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Heather went with him to that game.
Then this morning he had a Steel United game at the Cape Cod Academy between here and Hyannis and I decided to go to that one. I needed to do some shopping at Whole Foods in Hyannis, so this worked out great for me. They played a team from Boston today. In just two weeks the team has improved so much, and they won this game. The field was protected from the strong winds blowing this morning and it was warm and beautiful.
When I walked into Whole Foods there was display of beautiful artichokes. I could not resist. I bought six of them and sent a text to Heather saying I would cook them and bring them over to their house for dinner. I know they are working hard on getting boys to bed earlier now that school has started, so it made more sense to eat at their house. I also made salmon cakes and a chocolate decadence cake for dessert.
I have a few activities scheduled for the next couple of weeks and am going to be spending a good deal of time processing tomatoes into marinara sauce to can. So getting back to writing is getting pushed back for now. But slowly I am getting back into ‘normal’ life mode after Camp Oma. Maybe by the end of September I’ll be back in the groove and ready to write. At least that is the goal.
by Judy Handley | Sep 11, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 254: Remembering
Date: Saturday, September 11, 2021
Weather: Beautiful Day and Evening; High Temp 74, Low Temp 64 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
I saw a sign today that said, “Never forget to remember.” It was in reference to 9/11, but it has haunted me all day. What does that mean? Of course, we always want to remember the loss of loved ones and celebrate their lives. We have fought wars for twenty years to make sure the world knows we won’t forget what happened on 9/11. But in the back of my mind, I wonder if that sign carried with it a bit of vindictiveness. I hope I’m just being cynical, and that it meant just what it said. But whatever, thinking about what happened in this country on 9/11, led me to thinking about what happened on January 6. On 9/11, the entire country united. A foreign adversary had attacked us. On January 6, citizens of our own country attacked our nation’s capital. What’s worse? Being attacked from outside or from within? For me it is the latter and in previous times, I would have assumed that everyone would feel the same way. But after January 6, an already divided nation became even more divided. I’m afraid I don’t see a way to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
I finally just had to clear my mind of all the thoughts of 9/11 and January 6 because, for me, September 11 has a more personal remembrance and I only wanted to be thinking happy thoughts. Mark died five years on this day and certainly never a day goes by that I don’t think of him. I could write a book about all the wonderful things that Mark meant to me. I guess, in fact, I am writing a book that includes those things.
But on this day each year, I invite Heather and family to go out to dinner with me in honor of Mark. Tonight, we went to The Chart Room at Kingman Marine. They have greatly expanded their outdoor seating during Covid, and we definitely wanted to eat outside, not inside. But so did what seemed like a couple of hundred other people. I got there around 5:20, but by the time I got a parking place it was a few minutes later. Then I had to walk from the end of the parking lot to the restaurant which took another bit of time. By the time I got our name on the list, the wait list was already long. I was told it would be an hour to an hour and a half wait. I then started walking back to my car to get my mask that I forgot to bring with me, and while doing that I sent a text to Heather explaining the situation. They were almost there and decided that we would go for it and wait. Lucky for us the wait was a lot shorter than we had been told and we got a great table under an outside tent. 
The service was very good and while waiting for our dinner to arrive, we got to watch a beautiful sunset. 
Everyone loved their choices for dinner from Sam’s prime rib to Jonah’s best ever grilled cheese to Ollie’s stuffed quahog and clam chowder. Then in honor of Mark, he who LOVED sweets, we just had to have dessert. Ollie was so taken with his mudslide that he looked like he was worshipping it.
As we walked to our cars after dinner, Sam decided we all needed to go to the beach on the way home to get our toes in the sand. I asked what beach and Heather said it had to be Falmouth Heights. Evidently the night after Mark died, they were driving home from my apartment on the harbor and stopped at Falmouth Heights Beach to look at the beautiful almost full moon. Heather shared that when they were looking up, four-year old Ollie said that he knew Granddad was still out there somewhere and that he would never forget us . . . and we would never forget him. So, yes, it did have to be Falmouth Heights Beach tonight. And just as we arrived, someone was shooting off fireworks. Tonight, it was a bright crescent moon that was up there. 
Not a full moon, but it was still beautiful. And it is always a good idea to end an evening by digging your toes in the sand.
by Judy Handley | Sep 10, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 253: Free and Easy Friday
Date: Friday, September 10, 2021
Weather: Sunny; High Temp 77, Low Temp 54 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
What a luxury. I gave myself another free and easy day to do nothing but read. I got up and spent my first hour leisurely reading The NYT The Morning on my phone. I check it every day but usually read it in between activities. This morning I sat on the loveseat by my front window, enjoying the morning sun, and reading the news, taking the weekly news quiz, and working the crossword puzzle. I fixed breakfast, took a shower, took Shadow for a long walk, and then got back on that loveseat and read and read and read. I think I will finish the book before bedtime tonight.
Earlier in the year my book club read another book by the same author, Ivan Doig, The Last Bus to Wisdom. Doig is from Washington state and writes about life out West. The current book I am reading is called The Whistling Season. Like the first one, it is a refreshing look at life in earlier times. Nothing earth shattering; just a study of ordinary people living their lives, but so engaging. Much of this book takes place in a one room schoolhouse in Montana at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. If you want an easy and joyous read, I highly recommend it. And who doesn’t need a joyous read these days?
Tomorrow is September 11 and marks five years since Mark’s death. As we have done most years, I will take the Goldstones to dinner somewhere on the water to celebrate Mark’s life. We are going to try The Chartroom outside, but if it is too crowded, our back-up plan is to order sushi and eat here down by the dock.
by Judy Handley | Sep 9, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 252: More Buckets of Rain
Date: Thursday, September 9, 2021
Weather: Rainy Day; High Temp 73, Low Temp 63 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Recently when it rains, it really does pour. It rained on and off all morning and then around 1 pm the skies opened. The soil in my yard is sandy and in my three years here I have never seen sanding water during a rain. But I did today. I basically had to wade to the shed to get a shovel for my neighbor who needed to quickly dig trenches to let water escape the area around his house. It is still raining tonight, but not as hard as earlier in the afternoon. I’m hoping for some sunshine tomorrow.
One thing rainy days are good for is reading. Since my book club is next Tuesday and I just started the book, I read most of the day. I have never been one to curl up with a book on a rainy day, but it was quite enjoyable.
by Judy Handley | Sep 8, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 251: First Day of School 2021-22
Date: Wednesday, September 8, 2021
Weather: Sunny; High Temp 76, Low Temp 63 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Today was the first day of the 2021-22 school year here in Falmouth. Sam off to 9th grade, Jonah in 7th, and Ollie in 4th. I baked after school treats and took them over at the end of the school day. Jonah got home first and reported that he had a good day. Then Ollie arrived and reported that he also had a good day. So far, so good. I then picked Sam up from soccer practice at 5 pm and he said the first day of high school was great, that he loved his geometry teacher, and the ankle he sprained last week has heeled and that he was able to play soccer without a wrap around his ankle. Three for three. Not bad. Hopefully their days were as good as they reported to me.
After I took Sam home from soccer practice, I went to Highfield Hall for a presentation on Creating a Climate for Change through Art and Science. Heather moderated the conversation between artist Joan Lederman and scientist Konrad Hughen from WHOI. It was so interesting to watch the connections being made in real time between Joan’s development as a potter using deep sea sediment and Konrad’s development as geochemist taking core samples from coral. Joan describes herself as an ‘earth citizen’ and after listening to their conversation, I think that describes both Joan and Konrad. And Heather did a fabulous job of helping us identify the art/science connections.
Tomorrow is supposed to be a rainy day. I hope to use the inside time to get some reading done for my book club meeting next week. I just got the book yesterday, so I need to do some fast reading.
