by Judy Handley | Mar 31, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 90: Oops
Date: Wednesday, March 31, 2021
Weather: Sunny and Warm; High 62, Low, 50 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Oops! I got a bit ahead of myself. As you well know, today was the last day of March. Not yesterday as I wrote in last night’s log. Still, it went out like a lamb. Today was the warmest day yet, sunny with blue skies, just perfect. So perfect that I just could not stay inside and write this morning. After Shadow and I did our Morning Mile, I did a little garden clean up of one of my raised beds, put a bean tower in one end of the bed, and then planted snap peas around the base of the circular tower. I then moved to a square bean tower that supports a climbing clematis in front of my bedroom window. I cleaned around the base of that tower and planted snap peas there as well. Hopefully in June the Goldpebbles can enjoy snap peas here and at home. They love to pick and eat the peas right in the garden.
Just as I got inside, a friend called that I have not talked to for months. We made up for it today by talking for more than an hour. The friend lost her husband this winter and is making her slow way back to living a good life a new way. After that conversation, I had lunch and just as I sat down to write, friend Karen Baranowski stopped by. We walked down to the dock and sat and talked, again for more than an hour. But it was so beautiful to sit in the sunshine with a cherished friend and talk while Shadow kept us entertained with his antics. I have not been spending much time sitting down by the dock recently, so seeing that the osprey had returned to her nest on what my grandkids have named Osprey Island and watching purple finches flitting around in the tops of the trees in the yard was just delightful. The dock is in Shirley’s yard, my landlord and Karen’s aunt. She is currently in the hospital for the third time in the past few months due to chronic heart failure. I so hope Shirley recovers and can come home to enjoy the beautiful sights from her deck overlooking the water. She and her 102 year-old sister Doris have been at Doris’ home since last August. Hopefully, they can return here soon.
When I picked Ollie up after school, I spent some special time with him to further support his interest in birds. I got a text from Heather at Ollie’s bedtime last night asking if I could take him bird feeder shopping after school today. He desperately wants to attract more chickadees to come closer to their house. Knowing this, I picked my friend Karen’s ‘bird’ brain while we were together today to find out what kind of bird feed and bird feeder we should purchase. Karen and Peter’s side yard is a bird paradise, so I knew she had the information I needed. And I want to make clear that it was the bird knowledge part of Karen’s brain I was probing. Karen is certainly no ‘bird’ brain.
Using Karen’s very helpful guidance, Ollie and I bought two bird feeders, bird food, a huge suet and bird feed cake and hanger for that, plus a container for the bird seed. We then headed to 43 Grasmere and found places to hang everything. Ollie and I then went to the hardware store to get some grass seed to fill in some grassless areas in the front yard. Ollie spread the seed and raked it in without any help. He knew exactly how to do it. Ollie is such a good little worker.
So, I talked part of my day away, but it was so wonderful to connect with friends. I enjoyed the beautiful warm day and got some gardening done. And Ollie and I had a great time setting up bird feeders and planting grass. Ollie told me he wants to start keeping a journal to keep track of when the feeders need to be refilled and what kinds of birds are coming to feed. Since he is temporarily on restricted activity due to the Lyme disease infection in his knee, bird watching seems like a perfect activity, so I hope to find other ways to encourage his interest.
I did get a little writing done in the early evening and will resume in the morning. What I did not get to do today was write about breaking my leg in Moorea. But since April Fool’s Day is tomorrow, not today as I thought last night, tomorrow will be the perfect day for writing about that debacle!
by Judy Handley | Mar 30, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 89: Out Like a Lamb
Date: Tuesday, March 30, 2021
Weather: Sunny; High 52, Low, 43 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
March came in like a lion. On the first day of March it was overcast with pouring rain. I wrote in my log that evening that it was raining so hard in the morning that Shadow and I had to abort our Morning Mile walk. I think that was the first time all winter we had to totally abort. There were a couple of days that we only walked half a mile, but one of these was the second day of March! The second day of March was just COLD. Here was my weather summary in my log that day:
March 2: Overcast with Rain; High 31, Low, 24 degrees F (as low as 2 F with wind chill)
And it went on. March 3 was a little better in that it was mostly sunny and a little warmer, but the wind was coming from the north and it still felt icy. So, based on those weather reports, I say that March definitely came in like a lion on Cape Cod.
Today, being the last day of March, was a great improvement over the beginning of the month, Therefore, I declare that March went out like a lamb. It was sunny and 52 degrees today, a little windy, but not too bad. The high temperature tomorrow is supposed to be in the low 60’s, so I might abandon my writing for a couple of hours and do some gardening. Then we get rain, but I must remember that we need those April rains to bring the flowers (and peas that I will plant tomorrow) in May and June.
I got stuck in Tahiti today in my writing. Maybe it was because Tahiti was not one of my favorite places to visit on the voyage of Windbird or maybe it was because during the time we were there Mark’s sister Mary Ellen and brother-in-law Lee flew in to visit. We were so busy that I struggled to write logs during that time that accurately reflected what we were doing. So today I had to ‘fill in the blanks’ by going back and looking at photos and researching the names of places we visited to make sure my memory was correct. But I persisted and got us back to Moorea, the island ‘next door’ to Tahiti, where we had been for a few days before sailing to Tahiti to pick up Mary Ellen and Lee. Both Mark and I loved Moorea, but I tomorrow I will be writing about one dark memory from there—the evening I broke my leg. I rarely have looked back to that time. Once it happened, I decided that I just had to deal with it and move on. And I did. It was not a terrible break, just the fibula which is the smaller of the two bones in your lower leg. Hobbling on one leg with crutches was not fun, but other than snorkeling, I did most everything I would have without a broken leg—just a little slower. And I did manage to do a version of snorkeling in Bora Bora by wrapping my cast in a huge Zip-Lock baggie intended for storing bedding to keep the cast from getting wet and then leaning over the side of the dinghy with my face mask in the water. It was a bit awkward, but it worked!
This afternoon, instead of picking up Ollie after school, I picked Sam up after school and took him to his drum lesson. Jed was at work this afternoon and Heather had a meeting at Ollie’s school, so she picked him up. Tomorrow Ollie and I have a ‘date’ after school. He wants a bird feeder and seed specifically for chickadees, so we will go shopping. He is still under doctor’s orders to limit physical activity as the swelling in left knee due to Lyme disease persists. He is in his fourth week of taking doxycycline, but because the swelling has not gone down they will extend the time he is on the antibiotic. The doctor has removed the fluid two times, but in both cases, it just came right back. He has another doctor appointment this Friday, so we will just have to wait and see where things go from here. It pains me to watch him fighting this. How can a little tick cause so much trouble?!
by Judy Handley | Mar 29, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 88: New On-Demand Water Heater
Date: Monday, March 29, 2021
Weather: Sunny and Windy; High 51, Low, 31 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Today was new hot water heater day at the cottage. National Grid is my natural gas provider. In order to take advantage of their very generous offer to insulate and tighten up the cottage so that I am not wasting precious natural gas, they required a new hot water heater. My old did not have a built-in fan which caused it to leak fumes. The new one did not have to be an on-demand tankless one, but that’s what I wanted, and my gracious landlord said okay. Today was installation day. It took all morning, but things went smoothly. National Grid is busy these days and they cannot come recheck things until May 21, but hopefully they can start the work soon after.
After lunch I drove to Falmouth Heights Beach to meet friend Jane Wooden to walk and visit. It was too windy to walk along the beach, but we headed inland and that worked. When I got home, I had a surprise visit from another good friend, Olivia White. Olivia had been shopping at Mahoney’s Garden Center which is about a mile from here, so she decided she should stop by to say hello. I was delighted to see her and was sorry that my outside chairs are still in the basement. I must get them out so I can sit outside with friends. But we stood in the driveway and that worked. This weekend I get my second vaccine, but I am wondering if I am ever going to feel comfortable inviting people into my house or going into theirs. I am just not ready for that quite yet. After Olivia left, I had time to wind up the writing I had done during the morning and then it was time to pick Ollie up from school, take Jonah to the skatepark, come home and play ball with Shadow, and cook dinner. So goes a day in the life.
by Judy Handley | Mar 28, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 87: Passover Seder with the Goldstones
Date: Sunday, March 28, 2021
Weather: Overcast and Rainy; High 56, Low, 42 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
This evening I went to Heather and Jed’s for their Passover Seder which is a dinner following a ritual reading from some version of the Haggadah. The Haggadah is simply the text that sets forth the order of the evening by retelling the story of the Israelites being led out of Egypt. Heather put a lot of effort into tonight’s Seder modernizing it a bit for the boys.
And this year, the boys took a passage from the Haggadah literally. It says that we “recline at the Seder table because in ancient times, a person who reclined at a meal was a free person, while the slaves stood.” The boys each brought a comfortable chair to the table tonight allowed them to ‘relax’. Part of the Seder deals with the plagues that were inflected on Egypt. In addition to the text about the ancient plagues, each of us brought an item representing something we see as a plague on people today and explained that. That led to some interesting discussions. We were joined by Marti, Jed’s mother, via Zoom. Marti lives in Washington, DC. It was 82 degrees there and she was able to ‘take’ us outside to see the cherry trees in full bloom on her street. What a beautiful sight that was!
Otherwise, I spent my day writing and working on my current jigsaw puzzle. Having a puzzle on the dining table beside my computer makes it easy to take a short break from writing to find homes for a few more pieces each day.
by Judy Handley | Mar 27, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 86: Just a Saturday
Date: Saturday, March 27, 2021
Weather: Sunny; High 57, Low, 39 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
While I was finishing up writing about the four-day passage from the Marquesas Islands to the Society Islands in French Polynesia, I read in one of my logs from those days that Mark was reading a really fascinating little book. It was “The Year 1000: What Life Was Like At The Turn of the First Millennium” by Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger. The book gives the background for many of our English words. As that point in our trip, we were struggling with French and the various Polynesian languages. Reading that book made Mark reflect on the fact that most of us know so little about our own language. The chapter he was reading on the passage was dealing with how the names of the week originated. The Babylonians named the days of the week after the five planets they recognized, plus Sun-day for the sun and Moon-day for the moon. But what about Saturday? It comes from Saturn, the ancient Roman god of fun and feasting. I suppose it should be Saturn-day. Whatever, I did not engage in any fun or feasting today. I guess I can count writing as fun since I am enjoying it so much, but I believe the ancient Romans were thinking of a different kind of fun.
There was one special highlight today. The daffodils just outside my front door bloomed. I love those yellow blossoms.
I alternated writing with doing some outside work. I borrowed Jed’s loppers that will cut through a branch that is almost 2-inches in diameter. I was trying to clear the paths that Shadow and I walk in the woods surrounding the cottage and somehow pulled a muscle in my right thigh. I honestly can’t figure out how I managed to do this, it really hurts when I walk. I am hoping a good night’s rest will take care of the problem. I knew I should have just stayed inside and kept writing!
Passover began at sundown today. Heather and Jed were planning to have a Seder at nightfall, but they were so busy today that it was just going to be too stressful to get it together. So, we will just have a first Seder on the second night of Passover.
by Judy Handley | Mar 26, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 85: Zoom Presentation, Editing, Writing
Date: Friday, March 26, 2021
Weather: Misty, then Windy and Foggy; High 58, Low, 42 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
By the time I got up, got dressed, made a breakfast smoothie, and took Shadow for his Morning Mile walk, it was time for my 10:30 Zoom presentation on The Voyage of Windbird. People signed up for this through the Lifelong Learning Program sponsored by the Friends of Snow Library in Orleans. The PowerPoint presentation was an hour long and the Q & A was another half hour. A couple of people from my book club signed up as well as friend Olga Mitchell. Since I didn’t know any of the other people, it was great to see faces I knew. The presentation got a very positive reception, but if I am ever going to get this book written, I think I’ll have to shy away from presentation for a while. It just takes too much preparation time. But I did get a question today that gave me another job to do. One woman asked if I had other videos from the voyage. I answered that I have many, but that they have not been edited. Mark was always my editor, and I just don’t have the time. She suggested I give that job to a grandchild. I thought that was a great idea! And I also got to reconnect with Barbara Semple from Chatham. I didn’t know she was going to be attending, so it was a fun surprise. Barbara saw the presentation a couple of years ago and then I went to see her make her presentation featuring the history of her sailing family. She has the original diaries of a great aunt who traveled with her husband who was a sea captain. It was a fun morning for me.
After lunch, I finished editing Chapter 12 on the Marquesas Islands and am now writing Chapter 13 on the Society Islands—Tahiti, Moorea, Raiatea, and Bora Bora. In doing so, I went back to read my logs from that time. When we left the Marquesas, there was a four-day passage to the Tuamotus. We had some unusually rough weather on that passage that I wrote about in my log. Heather wrote back to us with a rant about Cape Cod weather that June. This was on June 9th in 2006. Today I found it a little depressing to be reminded that summer is not just around the corner. We have a long, unpredictable Cape Cod spring to survive first. Here are some excerpts from the 2006 log.
Day 235, Year 1: Lumpy, Bumpy Ride
Date: Friday, June 9, 2006
Location: Marquesas to Tuamotus Transit, Day 4
We are having a lumpy, bumpy ride out here, but we are both fine. I remember reading “Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day” over and over to our children and I think Pooh would agree that this passage has been blustery. We have periods of sunshine with puffy white clouds and then all of a sudden one of those clouds starts to darken, the winds increase, and we get a mix of high winds and rain. Things just begin to settle down, and it happens again—squall after squall after squall.
Our daughter Heather wrote her version of a “Captain’s Rambling” to us yesterday, but she admitted it was more “ranting” than “rambling” about the weather back home. Here’s part of what she had to say: “I’ve decided that Cape Cod is on its own very special tectonic plate that moves around the globe randomly. For a couple of winters, when Buzzards Bay froze shore to shore, I was convinced we were in the Artic Circle. Now I believe we’re in Bangladesh during monsoon season. It has been raining for weeks, with the exception of Memorial Day weekend. I actually had to wade to and from my car today as the entrance to the parking lot was flooded 4+ inches deep and the ‘puddle’ had no edges. It just connected a marsh to a stream. Rivers around New England are at or above flood stage, and we’re due to get 4 inches of rain tomorrow … 4 inches in one day! Not to mention gusts to 40 knots and thunderstorms.”
Well, I hope we don’t get 4 inches out here today, but we will probably have 40 knots. And I feel more like I am in the North Atlantic than the South Pacific. We have the warm weather, but not the steady trades. Today we were getting winds north of east again. But I don’t think I’ll get any sympathy from anyone from the Northeast. Hopefully we will be safely tucked into the atoll of Ahe by mid-morning tomorrow and snorkeling in the clear, warm waters by tomorrow afternoon. Sorry, Heather!
Note: The next day in my log, I had to write an apology to Heather for rubbing it in a bit. The weather got even worse and we had to abandon our stop in the Tuamotus and sail on.
