by Judy Handley | Feb 10, 2022 | 2022 Life Logs |
2022 Life Logs, Day 41: Writing, Writing, Writing
Date: Friday, February 11, 2022
Weather: Mix of Sun and Clouds, Windy in the PM; High Temp 49, Low Temp 33 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Physically I spent my day here in East Falmouth, but mentally I was in the Northland of the North Island (Te Ika a M?ui) of New Zealand. Te Ika a M?ui, the M?ori name for the North Island, translates as the fish of M?ui, a superhero demigod in Polynesian and M?ori mythology. The M?ori came to New Zealand from further east in Polynesia in huge canoes called wakas. An unbelievable feat in human history. Windbird sailed more than 13,000 miles from Boston to get there. Not as amazing as crossing the Pacific in a waka, but today as I wrote about our arrival in New Zealand it seemed almost surreal to me. Did we really do that? Yes. Mark and I did it and enjoyed every minute of it. When we left Boston, I don’t think we had any idea what to expect. We had some really challenging weather and boat issues in the beginning plaguing us all the way to the Caribbean. But once we arrived in St. Martin, things started turning in our direction. I was loving doing the research on where we were going and what we were going to do when we got there, and Mark really loved the technical challenge of figuring out how we were going to get there. We joked that I told him where to go and he got us there. He was the Captain and I was the Admiral. It took us 393 days to get to New Zealand, but most of that time was spent at anchor enjoying the beauty of the South Pacific. My good friend Alan Kanegsberg keeps asking me to add up the days spent traveling versus the days at anchor. When I finish writing the final chapter of the first year of the Voyage of Windbird, I am going to do that. And I have high hopes that tomorrow is the day that I will complete that final chapter. So, stay tuned, Alan. And hopefully Alan is recovering quickly from the hip replacement he had this Tuesday. It’s only been two days, so I doubt he is out jogging, but hopefully not in too much pain.
Today I truly enjoyed writing about our explorations of the very northern most part of the North Island after we arrived. New Zealand is a beautiful country from top to bottom and I am so jealous that my friend Lynne Kirwin is living there now. Lynne sailed to New Zealand with her first husband, gained citizenship, divorced, and lived in New Zealand for about 15 years before she met Ed. Then she spent 17 years sailing around the world with him. The year after Ed died, she split her time between the US and NZ, but when she went back in the fall of 2019 she didn’t get to come home in the spring of 2020 due to Covid. She will have been living there for more than two years when she comes home this summer to visit family and friends, which will hopefully include a trip to Cape Cod.
On the Olympics scene, last night I stayed up late to see Nathan Chen’s free skate performance. I loved watching him skate to Elton John’s Rocket Man. It was definitely a Gold Metal performance. I watched the men’s half-pike snowboard competition tonight and was terrified watching the young snowboarders try to fly. They go so high. I was disappointed that Shaun White didn’t metal, but he did come in 4th. I loved hearing that the teenager from Japan who won the Gold was a baby when Shaun won his first Gold. It was time to pass the torch.
by Judy Handley | Feb 9, 2022 | 2022 Life Logs |
2022 Life Logs, Day 40: Because I Can
Date: Thursday, February 10, 2022
Weather: Sunny and Cooler; High Temp 38, Low Temp 33 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
I stay up late and get up late on many days, more so since the Winter Olympics began. And every time I sleep-in, I hear my father’s voice telling me that only lazy people do that. I know I am not lazy, but the guilt sticks with me. I get up every morning between 6:30 and 7:00 and take Shadow out for his first pee break of the day. Sometimes we go for a walk down the street, but on most days we just walk in the woods around the cottage. We are out there about 15 to 20 minutes and then we come back and go back to bed. Why? Because I can. That’s the only answer I can come up with.
I got a late start to my day but it was a productive one. I worked on my current puzzle (because I can), took Shadow for a long walk (because we both need that to stay healthy), and then started writing (because it is my current passion). I have now completed the passage to New Zealand and have started exploring the North Island. I have two more weeks before Mark and I fly back home for six weeks. I’m still not sure where I am going to end book one. I think it will be when we get on the plane to fly home. At that point it will be 421 days since we left Boston. We will have sailed 13,011.1 miles, crossed the equator for the first time, sailed from the Northern Hemisphere into the Southern Hemisphere, from the Western Hemisphere into the Eastern Hemisphere, crossed the international dateline, and visited 13 island countries, many more island, plus transiting the Panama Canal and visiting the land-based country of Panama . For me personally, I had grown from being a reluctant sailor to loving the sails from island to island and finding long passages to be one of my favorite things. What a 421 day year it had been!
Tonight I was invited to dinner at the home of one of my book club members. Dena and her husband Ed recently bought a second home here in East Falmouth. After graduating from Harvard, Ed stayed in Boston and Dena graduated from the University of Pittsburgh and moved to Boston for her first job. She bought a condo close to Harvard Square that she still owns, met Ed, and they began their life together. The condo she bought in the 1970’s is still their ‘first’ home. They travel back and forth at will. Dena joined our book club just before Covid, so many of our meetings have been on Zoom. It was wonderful to spend the evening together in person getting to know more about each other’s lives. Dena and Ed’s first grandchild, only six months old, is in Cambridge, and they find they are spending more time there than they expected when they bought the home in Falmouth. Grandkids have that magical ability to draw you into their lives. Nothing more wonderful.
As soon as I got home, I turned on the TV to watch more Olympics. The Women’s Half-Pipe Snowboarding finals were on and I enjoyed watching seventeen year old Chloe Kim win the Gold for the USA. I am now getting ready to watch the Men’s Figure Skating Free Skate Program finals. Go Nathan Chen. I love the two Japanese skaters that keep him on this toes, but I am still routing for him to win the Gold. He does such a beautiful job of balancing the technical with the artistic. Yes, I really am an Olympics fanatic!
by Judy Handley | Feb 8, 2022 | 2022 Life Logs |
2022 Life Logs, Day 39: Busy Tuesday
Date: Tuesday, February 8, 2022
Weather: Mostly Cloudy; High Temp 43, Low Temp 26 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
It was a busy Tuesday. When I got up with Shadow at 7 am today, I didn’t go back to bed after our little outdoor foray as I do most days. I had a gazillion things I wanted to do before my 9 am tech tutoring session at the Falmouth Senior Center. The computer tutoring session is free and I always learn so much. It is so popular that it is hard to get an appointment more often than once a month, but I continue to go whenever I can get an appointment.
After the hour-long tutoring session, I headed to Heather’s to put in my bi-weekly laundry load. I rushed home to take Shadow for a short walk and get online for my 11 am Zoom book club meeting. This month’s book was This Tender Land by William Kent Krueger. It was not my favorite book, but the character development was really well done. We ended a little late, so I had once again rush to get downtown as quickly as possible to pick Ollie up at 12:30. On this early release day, Sam went to the sports center with friends for the afternoon, so I had only Ollie and Jonah. Jonah met us at Ollie’s school, and after a quick stop by their house so I could put my laundry load in the dryer, we went to my house for the afternoon. We watched the Olympics, I took Shadow for his walk while the boys had some screen time, and then we watched part of a Marvel movie. We only watched part of the movie as I got a call from Heather reminding me that Jonah that had soccer practice at 5 pm. Oops. We had to take off quickly to get Jonah home to get dressed for practice. While he was getting dressed, I quickly got my laundry out of the dryer. Since Jonah’s practice was at the sports center where Sam spent the afternoon with his friends, I took Jonah and picked up Sam and his friend Sebastian and got them home. Whew!
It was a fast-paced day, but a much slower-paced evening. Being an Olympics junkie, I have spent most of the evening glued to the television. Tomorrow my focus is back to writing. I have promised myself that I will finish the last chapter of book one by Friday. That’s my Olympic goal.
by Judy Handley | Feb 7, 2022 | Cape Cod, USA |
2022 Life Logs, Day 38: Tires
Date: Monday, February 7, 2022
Weather: Mostly Cloudy, Intermittent Rain; High Temp 45, Low Temp 38 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Yep. Its warming up and that means rain for a couple of days. Then it looks like a string of warmer days until Valentine’s Day when the daytime high will be below freezing. I guess we’ll have to get our warmth on that special day by thinking of all the people we love. But, then, who cares about the weather? Obviously, I do.
Yesterday I managed to totally do in the tire that picked up a nail last week. Yesterday when I turned into the parking area for the local barbeque place, Wicked and Wood, I turned too soon and hit the curb rather hard. I didn’t think anything about it until I was almost home and realized the car was definitely listing to the right front. By the time I got into my driveway to check the problem, my front passenger side tire was once again totally flat. I figured the jolt of going over the curb must have jogged loose the fix for last week’s flat. I found out this morning, however, that the tire actually had a cut in the sidewall. A new one has been ordered and will be here Wednesday or Thursday. For some reason, I bought tire insurance when I bought the four new tires in September. I had never done that before, but I sure am glad I did. The new tire will only cost me $18. Good deal.
I spent most of my morning at Sullivan Tire waiting for a diagnosis on the tire and my afternoon walking with Shadow, finishing my fourth jigsaw puzzle of 2022, and enjoying an impromptu afternoon visit by friend Christina Brodie. Christina has been my first reader and technical editor for the Voyage of Windbird, but I had not let her know that I was writing again. Her husband Warren had a cross country skiing fall early in January and has been in a full leg cast since. Plus, they had pipes freeze in a room over their garage that resulted in water damage on the three floors of their house a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t think she needed to be bothered with editing. But when she found out I was writing again, she was anxious to read once again. Warren has another month of immobility except when with a physical therapist and repairs on the house can’t begin quite yet. So, she has time. I so appreciate her invaluable input and am so glad to have her back on board.
My fourth Dowdle puzzle of 2022 was The Statue of Liberty. The puzzles I have been working on are fairly easy, 500-piece puzzles. They are not as challenging as the 1,000 piece puzzles my daughter Heather works on, but they are fun to work and I learn new things with each puzzle. I have done two focused on Italy, Cinque Terre and Florence, one focused on Norway’s Olstinden Peak, and now one focused on a historical rendition of the Statue of Liberty as seen from Battery Park. The puzzle information sheet informed me that Lady Liberty weighs 225 tons or 450,000 pounds and wears a shoe size 879. Liberty Island was originally named Bedloe’s Island and Frederic-Auguste Bartoldi was the artist who designed her. He is included in the scene, as well as other important New Yorkers like William Maxwell Evarts, chairman for the American Committee for the statue, and Joseph Pulitzer, the newspaper magnet who raised crucial funds for the pedestal’s construction. Today I started on another Dowdle that I bought at Costco when I was there last. It is a scene from Prague. I really enjoy taking breaks from my writing to work on the puzzles for a bit.
On Monday afternoons, I take Ollie and Jonah to their music lessons and then drop Ollie off at his Cub Scout meeting place. Tomorrow is a school Early Release Day, so I will pick Ollie up at 12:30. Jonah and Sam get out of school earlier, so Ollie and I will stop to pick them up at home and then come to my house for an afternoon of Olympic Games watching. Tomorrow morning I have a one-on-one computer tutoring session at the Senior Center and then an online book club meeting before picking up the boys. Looks like it will be another day when I don’t get any writing done. Hopefully Wednesday.
by Judy Handley | Feb 6, 2022 | 2022 Life Logs |
2022 Life Logs, Day 37: Family April Vacation in Puerto Rico
Date: Sunday, February 6, 2022
Weather: Partly Sunny; High Temp 30, Low Temp 25 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
It took Heather’s entire weekend for her to search for the most affordable air fares and the best place to stay when we have our family week in Puerto Rico in April . . . but she did it. I invited Heather and gang to dinner tonight. After dinner, while the boys were watching the Olympics, Heather sat at her computer and made the final bookings. It will be great to have the whole family together again. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving week together here and we’ll have a spring fling in Puerto Rico during the school vacation week for the Goldpebbles. Can’t wait.
I’m not sure what I did today other than walk with Shadow, work on my latest puzzle, watch the Olympics, and fix dinner. Not a tremendously productive day, but a lovely Sunday. Back to writing tomorrow.
by Judy Handley | Feb 5, 2022 | 2022 Life Logs |
2022 Life Logs, Day 36: Windows with a New View
Date: Saturday, February 5, 2022
Weather: Sunny, Cold, Windy; High Temp 29, Low Temp 11 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Every morning, I start my day by reading The Morning, an online New York Times weekday and Sunday newsletter. This morning I was surprised to see a new Saturday edition hosted by a woman from the Times department of Culture and Lifestyle. The Saturday focus will not be hard news, but travel, lifestyle, and culture. She wrote today about traveling for the first time in two years. “I was focused on my destination: waking up someplace else, a window with a new view, vacation and its promise of rest and renewal.” This hit the spot because I planned to spend my day focusing on traveling. In the past two years I have traveled to New Hampshire to visit with friends Detta and Leslie and have visited with Alan and Helaine Kanegsberg when I go off Cape to Costco. But that has been it. The big vacation is coming up in April when Heather and family and I will spend a week in Puerto Rico visiting with Justin and family. It will be fun to have “a window with a new view” for a week in Rincon and will be wonderful to visit with Justin, Jo, Ziggy, and Coco at their beautiful little homestead, Finca Maravilla. The last time I was there was in the spring of 2018. I had my knee replaced the following winter and didn’t travel and in 2020 Covid happened. Can’t believe it has been so long since I was there.
This morning I delivered a home baked Swedish tea ring to the Goldstones.
The boys loved it and asked where I bought it. When I told them I made it, they decided we needed to start a Swedish tea ring business. I think not, but I will teach them how to make one for themselves. They gobbled down the tea ring and then headed out with Jed to go to Waltham, north of Boston. For Christmas, Santa’s gift to the boys was a private blacksmithing class. They are fascinated with blacksmithing, so it was a perfect gift. I stayed on after they left, and Heather and I looked at housing possibilities for our week in Rincon. There are just too many of us to stay with Justin and Jo, so they have been sending us some ideas of places to stay. Heather found a one this afternoon that she thinks will work for us. She will share with Jed tonight and hopefully we can make a decision tomorrow. We started looking at flights, but I left to go walking with Shadow while she continued working on that. I just got an email from her. I think she spent the entire afternoon and evening continuing to work on this. I have offered to look into booking a dive/snorkel trip to Desacheo Island. You can see it in the distance from Rincon, but I think it is an hour trip by boat. I have wanted to go there since Justin moved to Puerto Rico and I think all of the grandchildren are now old enough to enjoy it. The weather has to be settled in order to make the trip, however. Hopefully this will work out for us.
I am spending my evening watching the Olympics and will get back to trip planning tomorrow.
