by Judy Handley | Jul 3, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 184: Sad, Angry, but Determined
Date: Thursday, July 3, 2025
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Wind and Rain Late Evening; High Temp 76, Low 63 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
Well, that big, UGLY bill was voted in this afternoon. It makes me so sad and angry that the US Congress would pass such an egregious budget bill: sad for what the one trillion dollars taken from Medicaid is going mean for so many Americans and angry that the richest Americans are getting the benefit of that. It is Robin Hood in reverse. But being sad and angry is not going to do anyone any good. I am more determined than ever to do whatever I can to turn around the direction in which our country is headed.
Otherwise, my day was a typical day. I started with routine medical appointment and then went to the Farmers Market for the first time this summer and had lunch there with Heather and Ollie. Afterwards, Heather took me to pick up my car. The oil was changed and the windshield wipers replaced, but the check engine light was still on. They determined that car needs a new oxygen sensor and gasket, but the cost for that is almost $400 with labor. I was told that not fixing it right away is not going to damage anything, so I will wait and have that work done when I am feeling richer than I do today.
This afternoon, Ollie cut my neighbor’s grass, I took Jonah to the high school for an unofficial soccer practice, and when I headed to Bruce and Jane Woodin’s for an evening with my dining-in group, Heather and Ollie headed to the beach. Dinner at the Woodin’s was outside on their deck. We had bruschetta for the appetizer, an edamame salad over arugula and mixed greens salad, grilled chicken and veggies for the main course, and s’more squares for dessert. A perfect summer cookout on a perfect summer evening … until after dinner when we had quite the windstorm followed by rain. That moved us quickly indoors.
by Judy Handley | Jul 2, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 183: The Midpoint of 2025
Date: Wednesday, July 2, 2025
Weather: Mostly Cloudy, Rain Overnight; High Temp 75, Low 68 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
Today, July 2, is the midpoint of 2025. We are halfway through the year. We have survived the first 182 days and now have 182 to go. We are also now closer to the year 2050 than to the year 2000. So, happy midpoint!
The high point of my day was trying a new recipe I saw in the New York Times on Monday … S’mores Brownies. I just had to try them and used Ollie and Jonah as my excuse for making them. These bars have three layers: a graham cracker bottom, a gooey chocolate brownie center, and a toasted marshmallow top. S’mores are a summer favorite. These come in a close second.
This evening at sunset, I took time to “smell the roses.” Actually, I have no roses in my yard, but I have purple, raspberry pink, and blue hydrangea, rusty orange, bright orange, and pinkish orange lilies, white and yellow daisies, and numerous varieties of plants with lilac to purple blossoms. Bathed in the muted light at sunset, they were still as brilliant and beautiful as in the sunshine … which we did not see today.
by Judy Handley | Jul 1, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 182: A New Month
Date: Tuesday, July 1, 2025
Weather: Mostly Cloudy, Rain Overnight; High Temp 75, Low 68 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
For me, the new month of July began with a trip to see the friend who is a metal worker in Mattapoisett. I met Peter when I was looking for someone to weld a seam on one of Ardenna’s spreaders. Peter repaired the stay but was also a wealth of information when I was hunting for a boom. Today I took a stainless steel pin that needed to be cut shorter and have a new hole drilled near the bottom end. I knew Peter could do this in just a few minutes, so off I went. Peter, who is my age, and his wife Jodie live on the land Peter’s father bought before Peter was born. I don’t know how old the house is, but it has been there many years. There are also a few old, some dilapidated, out buildings on the property, one of which is Peter’s metal shop. When we stepped inside, it was freezing cold. Peter then started telling me the story of how all of the buildings on the property sit on top of or alongside of a massive piece of granite that extends for miles. When he was a kid, he played in the quarry in Achusnet which is a few miles from his place. He was told that the granite extended from Achusnet to his father’s property on Buzzards Bay and then reappeared on the Cape Cod side of the bay at Otis Air Force Base. All I know for sure is that it keeps his metal shop which is above ground around 55 degrees F this time of year. Peter said his father built the buildings on the granite so they would have natural air conditioning. And they certainly do. Our conversation went way beyond the 20 minutes it took to cut off the end of the pin and then drill a new hole. That in itself was a fascinating process to watch.
I didn’t get back to Falmouth until almost 1 pm. But because it was a mostly cloudy day and not all that warm, Ollie had declared this a day to do nothing. No beach today. So, we just hung out until Jonah headed to a soccer game late afternoon. Ollie mowed the grass in his yard and put the bike rack back on my car after being stored away for the winter. Sometime in the afternoon, I went home to check on Shadow and while there, I made the mistake of checking my email. I then had to deal with a Library Trustee issue and send some emails dealing with that. That was about it for the first day of July.
by Judy Handley | Jun 30, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 180: From Camp Oma to Summer Assistant
Date: Monday, June 30, 2025
Weather: Mostly Sunny; High Temp 76, Low 67 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
Camp Oma for teenagers is quite different from prior years. I don’t need to come up with activities for Jonah and Ollie. They are quite busy all on their own. I just need to assist. I took Jonah to soccer practice this morning and came back to their house to prep dinner for tonight. It is a Select Board Monday, and with Jed out of town and Heather in an all evening meeting, I did dinner for the boys. I also made some calls for appointments. Shadow has developed a strange growth on his eyelid over the past 3-4 weeks, and I was able to get an appointment for this afternoon. My car needs an oil change, and the check engine light came on last week, so I made an appointment for that as well. I did this while Ollie cut the neighbor’s grass and Jonah was at soccer practice. After I picked Jonah up from soccer, I got lunch for the boys and then took Shadow to the vet.
This visit was to the same veterinary practice that has seen Shadow when he was a puppy.
But today I saw a different doctor with a different take on Shadow’s gastrointestinal issues. She thinks he has severe allergies and wants me to put him on a prescription diet. He has an ear infection, and she thinks the strange little puffy bump on his eyelid is caused by the allergies. $350 later, we walked out of the vet’s office, and I am still not sure what I am going to do.
I went back to get Ollie to go to the beach, but none of his friends were going to the beach today, so he decided to go to my neighbor’s house to cut the front yard grass. Ollie is taking care of my neighbor’s lawn while he is out of town. It was a good decision not to go to the beach as it suddenly got cloudy. The high temp this week is in the 70’s, not the 80’s like last week. And when the sun goes behind the clouds, it doesn’t feel like beach weather to Ollie.
by Judy Handley | Jun 29, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 179: A Baby Shower and a Trip to Hyannis
Date: Sunday, June 29, 2025
Weather: Sunny; High Temp 79, Low 64 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
Today I attended the baby shower for Brian and Nadia’s baby girl, Sequoia. Brian and Nadia stayed here with Shadow a few times when I went to Puerto Rico and North Carolina to visit my sister. Sequoia came early, so the baby shower had to be postponed until today. And after the shower, I drove to Hyannis to pick up some food items that I cannot get here in Falmouth. That was about it for my day, but I read a post from a David Attenborough Fans Facebook page that I want to share here in case you were born in the 40s-50’s or 60’s and missed seeing it
“Many have passed away, and those who are still here are called “the elderly.””
We were born in the 40s-50s-60s.
We grew up in the 50’s-60’s-70’s
We studied in the 60s-70s-80s.
We were together in the 70s-80s-90s.
We got married or not and discovered the world in the 70s-80s-90s.
Adventuring into the 80s – 90s
We’re settling into the 2000s.
We became wiser in 2010s.
And we’re going strong into 2020 and beyond.
Turns out we went through EIGHT different decades…
TWO different centuries…
TWO different millennials…
We’ve gone from phone with operator for long distance calls, pay booths, video calls worldwide.
We’ve gone from slides to YouTube, vinyls to online music, handwritten letters to emails and What’s App.
Live games on the radio, black and white TV, color TV, then HD 3D TV.
We went to the video store and now watching Netflix.
We’ve known the first computers, punch cards, disks and now we have gigabytes and megabytes on our smartphones.
We wore shorts all through our childhood, then trousers, ep pants or mini-skirts, Oxfords, Clarks, Palestinian scarves, jumpsuits, and blue jeans.
We avoided childhood paralysis, meningitis, poliomyelitis, tuberculosis, swine flu and now COVID-19.
We’ve done roller skating, roller skating, tricycle, bicycle, moped, gasoline or diesel and now we drive hybrids or electric.
We played with the little ones
horses and checkers, ostrich and marbles, 1000 threshold and monopoly, now there’s candy crush on our smartphones
And we read… much
And our schoolmates’ religion was not a subject…
We used to drink tap water and lemonade in glass bottles, and the vegetables on our plate were always fresh, today we get meals delivered.
Yes, we have been through a lot but what a beautiful life we have had!
They might describe us as “ex-annuals”; people who were born in this 50s world, who had an analog childhood and digital adulthood.
We should add the Biological Revolution that we have witnessed. In 1960, biology was very descriptive. We have witnessed the event of Molecular Biology: the molecules of Life have been discovered: DNA, RNA etc. When you see everything that has come from it: gene therapy, gene fingerprints, and others the progress is considerable.
We kind of have “seen it all”!
Our generation has literally lived and witnessed more than any other in every dimension of life.
This is our generation that has literally adapted to “CHANGE”.
A big congratulations to all the members of a very special generation, which will be UNIQUE. ”
by Judy Handley | Jun 28, 2025 | 2025 Sailing Logs |
2025 Life Logs, Day 178: Switzerland, Czechia, England, PR, MA, and WV
Date: Saturday, June 28, 2025
Weather: Overcast, A Few Sprinkles; High Temp 71, Low 67 degrees
Location: At Home on Lakeview Avenue with My Shadow, Falmouth, MA
What do Bern, Switzerland … Prague, Czechia … Hazlemere, England … Rincon, Puerto Rico … Falmouth, Massachusetts … and St. Albans, West Virginia all have in common? The answer is that my immediate family members plus the nephew and his wife who were here this past week, are now distributed around the globe in those various locations. It’s like some magician said, “Poof!”, and they all scattered. Jo, Ziggy, and Coco arrived in England on Wednesday for a two-week visit with Jo’s family. Sam left here on Wednesday with two of his friends for their graduation trip to Europe. They arrived in Prague, Czechia, on Thursday and will continue from there to Germany, the Netherlands, France, and Italy. Jed’s annual trip to a science conference that is in a different part of the world each year had been cancelled due to DOGE cuts to science grants, but a couple of weeks ago, it was back on the agenda. He is actually in flight tonight to Amsterdam, then on to Zurich, and will arrive in Bern sometime tomorrow. On Thursday, my nephew Rex and his wife Diana, left here for Niagara Falls and arrived home in St. Albans, West Virgina last night. In the month of May they traveled out West, visiting or driving through 15 states and during their June trip to New England they hit another 8 states. This leaves Justin at home in Rincon, Puerto Rico, and Heather, Jonah, Ollie, and me at home here in Falmouth. I find it more than ironic that the Maga world wants to cut ties with the rest of the world and isolate ourselves here in the United States. No doubt, the USA is/was a wonderful country to live in, but in this 21st century, travel from place to place in the world is almost as common place for many as traveling from one town to another was when I was growing up in the 1950’s. I saw a t-shirt on Facebook this morning that said:
“Dear Racists in America,
Y Car is Japanese, beer is German,
O electronics are Taiwanese,
U fashion is French,
R vodka is Russian.
And never forget the land
YOU LIVE ON IS
Native American.”
With modern travel and technology, this great big world has become a small world. It is world where the people in other countries have become our neighbors. We need to be kind to our neighbors, not bullying them. “Love thy neighbors as thyself.”
