by Judy Handley | Sep 21, 2023 | 2023 Life Logs |
2023 Life Logs, Day 265: Happy First Birthday to Shadow
Date: Thursday, September 21, 2023
Weather: Yet Another Beautiful Day; High 72, Low 55 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth, MA
Yeah! Today was a one meeting day, but I did have one more appointment, a visit to my chiropractor. I called his office early this morning begging for an appointment today. My back is giving me fits making it difficult to sleep or do anything else. The chiropractor tried to help but said there was very little he can do at this point. He suggests I go back to the pain management doctor and see if there is anything else he can do to help control the muscle spasms. He also recommended that I see my neurosurgeon again. All the neurosurgeon can do is recommend surgery, so I am hoping for some other miracle.
I spent the time between the chiropractor visit and the Newcomers-Encore Field Trip group meeting preparing for the meeting. Christina Brodie and I are the co-chairs, so I had to lead part of the meeting. We had a number of new people attending and came up with great list of field trips for this year.
Today was Shadow’s 4th birthday.
Actually, yesterday was his birthday, but as I explained in last night’s log, Ollie wants to celebrate it on the 21st and Shadow has no complaint with that. Ollie rode his bike over after school
and we then went shopping for birthday presents. We came home and gave Shadow a new stuffed animal to destroy
and a very expensive Yak bone. Ollie presented him with his gifts and Shadow definitely prefers the bone. While Ollie was here, he cleaned up all the branches in the backyard left behind after the limb fell on Sunday morning.
He is a great little worker.
The weather is slowing cooling down. The days have been warm, but the nighttime temps are now down in the 50’s. We have one more nice day and then the temperature drops and the rains come down. Not a great weekend for my friends to visit the Cape, but no complaints. This week has been spectacular.
by Judy Handley | Sep 20, 2023 | 2023 Life Logs |
2023 Life Logs, Day 264: First Meeting, Second Meeting, Then Ollie to Sax Lesson
Date: Wednesday, September 20, 2023
Weather: Another Drop Dead Beautiful Day; High 69, Low 54 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth, MA
The first General Meeting of Encore was today and it was my turn to run the business meeting. I spent my morning preparing for that and then went to The Flying Bridge for the luncheon meeting. It was a beautiful day, and The Flying Bridge was a perfect place for lunch. It is located on Falmouth Harbor, so we all enjoyed the water view as we conducted business and then had a wonderful lunch. It was after 2:30 pm when I got home, so I took Shadow out, changed clothes into something a little more comfortable, and headed to the first Public Policy meeting of the year. The question we addressed was: What is the state of childcare in Massachusetts and in Falmouth in particular? This also included a discussion of foster care. I left the meeting early to go pick up Ollie and take him to saxophone lesson. When I got home around 6 pm, I took Shadow out to play fetch and then I came in and crashed. It was a good day, but a long one.
As I have written before, Christina Brodie and I share the role of co-presidents of Encore. Olivia White took a photo of us today that really captures the essence of how we work together. I am sharing that photo here.
PS … Shadow’s fourth birthday was today, but Ollie has talked me into celebrating his birthday on the 21st instead of the 20th because both Sam and Ollie were born on the 21st day of the month, one in January, the other in March. Ollie comes over after school tomorrow and we will celebrate then.
by Judy Handley | Sep 19, 2023 | 2023 Life Logs |
2023 Life Logs, Day 263: Monomoy Seal Cruise and FHS Soccer
Date: Tuesday, September 19, 2023
Weather: Drop Dead Beautiful Day; High 70, Low 56 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth, MA
What a beautiful day! The temperature was 70 degrees F, the wind was blowing in warm air from the west, the sun was shining brightly in a Cape Cod blue sky with just a few puffy white clouds to punctuate the beauty. And I went on a seal cruise on the Lower Cape, getting on the boat in Harwich Port and traveling by water out to Chatham to see the seals on Monomoy Island.
Monomoy Island is an 8-mile-long spit of sand that is truly beautiful. And those seals punctuated the beauty of the island
just as the clouds punctuated the beauty in the blue sky. This was a Newcomers-Encore Field Trip group excursion,
and it was a wonderful way to celebrate the end of summer. Summer officially ends at 2:50 am on this coming Saturday morning. I am hoping for a long second Cape Cod summer, but that doesn’t keep me from celebrating the calendar summer. Then I can celebrate again at the end of our second summer.
We had lunch at Clancy’s in Dennis on a little inlet from sea. The food matched the day. It was beautifully presented and tasted great. I got home around 3 pm, took Shadow out for a bathroom break, and then headed to the sports fields at Falmouth High School. Sam was playing a Varsity soccer game
on the main turf field and Jonah was playing a Junior Varsity game
on an adjacent field. I moved from one to the other and loved watching both grandsons playing the game they love for Falmouth High School. They have both been playing league soccer for the past couple of years. That was great but watching them on the fields today brought back memories of my high school days going to football games. There is something very special about participating in sports for your school and I am glad they made that choice this year.
by Judy Handley | Sep 18, 2023 | 2023 Life Logs |
2023 Life Logs, Day 262: Rainy Day
Date: Monday, September 18, 2023
Weather: Rain, Rain, and More Rain; High 68, Low 61 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth, MA
The last time I named a log “Rainy Day” was on July 14. That was an all-day rain. We had plenty of other rainy in June and July, but much of it was heavy rain overnight or for just a period of the day, not the whole day. July 4th was one of those days. We had rain overnight and in the early morning, but then the rain held off. We thought we were going to have fireworks that night, but then the fog came in. During June and July had lots of thunderstorms and heavy rain in the late evening or overnight, lots of cloudy or partly cloudy days, but there were not that many days when I needed an umbrella to go out. But today. I could have used an umbrella. The heaviest rain was in the afternoon, but it was raining when I took Shadow out this morning and still raining when I took him out this afternoon. I don’t think I have put his rain jacket on him since I moved here, but he had to wear it today. The rain did stop for a bit around 6 pm, but then it started raining again and thunderstorms are predicted for tonight. Sometime this week, I am going to buy an umbrella.
The whole summer weather reflection happened after I called Heather this evening. She leaves tomorrow, not for Boston as I thought, but for New York City for Climate Week. That is timed to occur when the UN is in session and that is this week. When I mentioned to her that I needed to buy an umbrella if it is going to continue to rain like this, she reminded me that it had been raining all summer. True, but I have always been able to find a break in the rain to take Shadow out. Not today.
I went to Olga’s house for lunch today and to pick up some clematis that she offered me. It is cuttings, not rooted, but I have read that if you plant the cuttings in soil, some of them might survive. We shall see. And despite the rain, we had a lovely lunch on her beautiful side porch.
I then spent the rest of my afternoon trying to get out from under a ton of emails and paperwork that needed to be filed. I had to go through my emails and delete many of them as my Outlook mailbox was full once again. That has happened to me three times this summer. Becoming co-president of Encore means lots of emails with attachments, so I either have to file the attachments on my computer and delete them from my email or print them out and file them in a notebook. One way or the other, I have to delete them Outlook. Figuring out an email strategy was my afternoon.
by Judy Handley | Sep 17, 2023 | 2023 Life Logs |
2023 Life Logs, Day 261: Dining-In at the Brodies
Date: Sunday, September 17, 2023
Weather: Sunny; High 71, Low 65 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth, MA
It was a much needed lazy day for me. My back is giving me fits, so I did stretches, laid on the deck flat on my back and then flat on my stomach which seems to help, iced my back while watching Sunday morning television news programs, and then made cucumber soup to take to my dining-in group dinner tonight. That was my day.
This evening I went to Christina and Warren Brodies for our group dinner. We started with a shrimp cocktail brought by Peter and Karen Baranowski. It was the biggest and best shrimp I think I have ever eaten. My cucumber and basil soup (both from my garden) soup was the first course, a fabulous salad with blue cheese and fresh figs from a friend of Midge’s who has this fig tree in her yard in Queens in New York City, a fabulous entrée presented by Christina with chicken, fennel, and clementines (so delicious),
and a plum torte dessert brought by Jane Woodin.
The entire dinner was a gastronomic delight.
by Judy Handley | Sep 16, 2023 | 2023 Life Logs |
2023 Life Logs, Day 260: Tropical Storm Weather
Date: Saturday, September 16, 2023
Weather: Cloudy, Windy; High 71, Low 57 degrees F
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue, Falmouth, MA
The wind from Hurricane Lee continued all night and most of today, but the wind was not as strong as predicted. We did get some rain overnight, but not as much as expected. That was all good news. But at 8:45 am Shadow and I were jolted by a very strange sound. I immediately looked out all of the windows and saw that a large limb, the size of a small tree, had fallen inches in front of one of the storage sheds in the back yard.
It was too windy to go down to inspect the damage as I feared other limbs might fall, but I got close enough to take photos. Jed came over this afternoon to get the tree down on the ground and cut it up for firewood. Thank you, Jed. While he was doing that, Lynda came over to inspect the damage.
We were just lucky it fell inches away from the shed. Otherwise, this in the shed, including my bicycle could have been crushed. We lucked out with this storm, as it moved far enough to the east to not do too much damage here on the Cape.
Actually, yesterday was his birthday, but as I explained in last night’s log, Ollie wants to celebrate it on the 21st and Shadow has no complaint with that. Ollie rode his bike over after school
and we then went shopping for birthday presents. We came home and gave Shadow a new stuffed animal to destroy
and a very expensive Yak bone. Ollie presented him with his gifts and Shadow definitely prefers the bone. While Ollie was here, he cleaned up all the branches in the backyard left behind after the limb fell on Sunday morning.
He is a great little worker.
