by Judy Handley | Jul 28, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 209: Oma Watch
Date: Monday, July 28, 2025
Weather: Mostly Cloudy, Sunny; High Temp 85, Low 68 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
Shadow went in for his pre-op blood work this morning and then I went to Heather and Jed’s to be on Oma ‘watch’. Heather and Jonah left early to go to a college campus near Boston for a day of informal soccer recruitment. A number of Massachusetts colleges and universities had their soccer coaches there to watch the boys play soccer for 4 hours. Jonah loves to play soccer but was a little reluctant to go when Heather first mentioned it to him. But he came feeling good about the day.
Sam and Ollie were home today. Sam cleaned his room today and made some progress on putting his ‘project’ car back together. He bought it thinking he would get the needed work done quickly so he could drive it. But it has been sitting in the garage for two winters now. The goal today was to get the front driver’s side door back on and he did get that done. Progress. I think the plan is for him to get it reassembled before he leaves for college on the 20th of August and pass it on to Jonah. Ollie went biking with his friend Simon this afternoon, and he cut the backyard grass. I folded laundry baskets of clothes. Nothing exciting, but a good day.
by Judy Handley | Jul 27, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 208: More Catching Up
Date: Sunday, July 27, 2025
Weather: Mostly Cloudy, Threat of Rain; High Temp 73, Low 69 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
My dining room table looks like a cyclone hit it. I have my Library Treasurer’s notebook on the table, plus a file folder filled with information that needs to be filed in an Encore Program VP notebook that doesn’t yet exist, my Exploring Public Policy notebook, and my two notebooks filled with Indivisible and Resistance Lab materials. I worked on all of these projects today and am nowhere finished with any of them. I am hosting a One Million Rising (Indivisible sponsored) information meeting next week. Updates are due at the end of this month on any Newcomers or Encore activities, so the Public Policy notebook was on the table. We are switching the day of the week when we meet and that has required a number of back and forth communications. The end of the fiscal year reports are due next week to the Board of Library Trustees Resource Committee for approval. I made progress on these reports today, but I am far from done. And then there is my new position with Encore as the Vice President of Programs. I meet with the Assistant VP next Tuesday so we can divvy up the responsibilities for the year, so I am preparing for that meeting. We can’t divide the duties until we identify what they are. By afternoon’s end, my head was spinning and I needed a break.
Just as I was thinking about closing down for the day and turning my attention to dinner, Heather sent a text saying dinner was going to be late. I texted back saying that I didn’t know I was invited, but I jumped at the invitation. At least I wouldn’t have to think about that. So, thank you, Heather and Jed, for dinner, and for all of the technology help. Heather was able to give me a little tutorial on using Excel and Jed helped me try and figure out why I can hardly hear people when they call on my new phone. All of the volume settings are at max, so that’s not the problem. He found a setting for treble and bass and changed that. It seemed a little better, but I will have to experiment more with that tomorrow. But now, I am going to take my spinning head to bed.
by Judy Handley | Jul 26, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 207: Stand Out for Democracy on the Falmouth Green
Date: Saturday, July 26, 2025
Weather: Sunny, Late Afternoon Thunderstorm; High Temp 77, Low 68 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
I’ve said it before … if it’s Saturday, it’s time for Stand Out for Democracy on the Falmouth Green. None of my close friends are ‘regulars’ at the Saturday stand out, so I stand alone. There are other loners like me, but most people come with a small group. I meet new people every week and sometimes I get into engaging conversations. If you are reading this and you are from Falmouth, come join us. And if you are not from Falmouth, find a stand out to attend near you.
There are things that have become a part of every Saturday stand out. The group singing patriotic songs. And when they are not singing, the speaker amplifying a playlist of American-themed or just feel good music, everything from Jimmy Hendrick’s “Star Spangled Banner” to John Lennon’s “Imagine.” I loved the sign attached to the speaker today saying, “Radio Free Falmouth—Live from the Village Green, Saturday Noon – 1:30—WOKE—Your Anti-Fascist Groove Machine, Rockin’ Falmouth’s Village Green!—Text Requests.
And today there was a young woman with her baby in a stroller with a sign saying, “Children are starving in Palestine!” The woman said her baby attended her first rally at 11 days old. Someone asked her why she is doing this, and she replied by asking the person why more people aren’t focusing attention on the fact that babies are dying senselessly from starvation while the world stands by quietly watching. Why?
Heather and Jed were on Ardenna today finally getting the boom attached and the sail on. It was too windy to try and roll the sail out this afternoon, but they will return tomorrow to see if the system they have put together is actually going to work. I hope, hope, hope, it works.
by Judy Handley | Jul 25, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 206: Catch Up Day
Date: Friday, July 25, 2025
Weather: Sunny, Late Afternoon Thunderstorm; High Temp 77, Low 68 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
It was a much needed ‘catch up’ day. Ollie went to play golf with his friend Seton and his dad and then they went to the beach. So, I started early working on the list of things that needed to be done. First was making the decision to have the surgery done to remove the cyst from above Shadow’s eye. It is very expensive, but I really have no choice but to have it done. I made the appointment to get the pre-op blood work done on Monday and the surgery will be the following Monday. Then I was off to the post office to get Coco’s birthday presents in the mail as early in the day as possible. Hopefully the package will arrive by July 30, the magical day.
The rest of the day was spent alternating between things that had to be done and things I wanted to do. I spent time outside with Shadow playing ball and then Shadow helped me as I took the snippers to some unwanted weeds throughout the yard that had grown to be very tall. We had a late afternoon thunderstorm that was mostly thunder with very little rain. Then I spent almost two hours on the phone with Xfinity. My television reception has gotten worse and worse over the past few months. I have ignored it because I knew it would take a very long time on the phone. But this evening when I turned on the television to watch last night’s Colbert show while eating an early dinner, the pixelization was so bad I could hardly watch. After a long but productive online back and forth with a robot, I was told a live technician would call me shortly. He did, and then the fun started. While talking on the phone with him, I had to move the shelving unit the television sits on out from the wall, unplug this and then that, and then wait for the technician to run tests. And we did this about three times. Finally, he said he would set an appointment for a house call with a live technician. We did that, but then I asked him to tell me what all of the diagnostics he had run told him. He mentioned that the HDMI cable that goes from the cable box to the television might be faulty. So, I told him I have extras and would replace it while he was still on the phone to see if it helped. And it did. I still have some pixelization, but it is much better. It will do until the technician can come next Thursday morning. But between now and then, the technician told me to take notes on when the pixelization is better or worse. Why was it so much worse in the recorded program than when watching live? I guess I’ll have to watch more television this weekend to figure this out!
by Judy Handley | Jul 24, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 205: Barnstable County Fair Time
Date: Thursday, July 24, 2025
Weather: Sunny; High Temp 76, Low 69 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
Last night Ollie and Jed went to the Demolition Derby at the Barnstable County Fair and tonight Ollie is back at the fair with Seton and his family for wristband night. You pay $40 for a wristband and can ride all night.
One of the main reasons I have always done Camp Oma in the summers was so that Sam, Jonah, and Ollie wouldn’t have to go to camps full-time during the summers. I wanted them to have time to just be boys and not be scheduled. Now that they are all teenagers, I see that they value their summer days and certainly don’t want to be scheduled every minute, maybe to a fault. If there are not plans, Ollie would just sit on his bed and pet the kitties all day long. So, I try to encourage a balance. But getting him to plan ahead is not easy. He wants to make plans at the last minute. This morning, I could not get him to decide if he wanted to invite a friend over for the afternoon. He spent his morning installing a new rear differential in his remote-control car while I worked on my computer. And then, finally, when he was eating brunch, since he had opted out of breakfast, he decided to invite Seton over to ride bikes and do some sort of water play. I sent a text to Seton’s dad and luckily, it all worked out. We picked up Seton and his bicycle and the boys biked and then ran a hose down to the trampoline to get the trampoline sprinkler going. They had a ball slipping and sliding and doing flips on a wet trampoline. Then I delivered them back to Seton’s house and they were off to the Barnstable County Fair. All in a summer’s day.
by Judy Handley | Jul 23, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 204: A Visit to Woods Hole
Date: Wednesday, July 23, 2025
Weather: Sunny; High Temp 74, Low 53 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
Ollie and I did one of my favorite things today. We spent part of our day in Woods Hole. Ollie is interested in building boats, so we went to visit the Woods Hole Historical Museum which has a boat shop. When went to the marine sale at the museum in the spring, a woman overheard Ollie talking to Jed about converting a kayak to a sailing kayak and she invited Ollie to come to the shop during the summer to watch people working on boats. But we really had no idea what that meant. Now we do. A very helpful young woman in the museum took us out to the boat shop for a tour and explained that a group of people meet on Saturday mornings and on Tuesday evenings to work on boat projects. And anyone is invited to come watch and participate. I don’t know if Ollie can go on Saturday of this week, but hopefully I can get him there on Tuesday evenings. It sounds like a wonderful opportunity.
While in Woods Hole, we both decided we just had to visit the aquarium. From 2012 to 2017, I visited the aquarium often with the boys to watch Bumper and LuSeal at feeding time. Those two seals lived at the aquarium for years, but then both died just weeks apart in 2017. I cannot believe that I haven’t been back to the aquarium since they got two new seals in 2022. One of them, Kitt, died. But Bubba is still there, and Ollie and I enjoyed seeing him.
After watching him frolic, we went into the aquarium. The displays have changed since I was last there. I love that they now have a couple of tanks dedicated to octopuses.
After touring the aquarium, Ollie and I walked out on the dock to look at the boats in the harbor. It was a wonderful Woods Hole visit.
At the end of the day, I headed to Hyannis to buy something Coco requested for her birthday. And when I returned home, my new (renewed) Google Pixel 6 phone was sitting at my door. My old phone was not charging and when I took it into the phone repair shop, I was told I needed a new charging port for $75. The port costs $7, but the additional $68 is for installation. But then Sam noticed that my battery was swollen and said I had to buy a new phone as a swollen battery is a fire hazard. He found the renewed Google Pixel for a good price and ordered it for me. Tonight, he and Heather got me up and running on the new phone. Thank you, Heather and Sam.
