Day 198, Year 10: Day of Rest

Day 198, Year 10: Day of Rest
Date: Sunday, April 26, 2015
Weather: Mostly Cloudy, Rain Late Evening, Cool Tonight (50’s F)
Location: Lightkeepers Marina, Little River, SC

Today was a day of rest, or at least at much rest as the two of us can take. We slept in late and while I started backing up the photos from the past four months on other hard drives Mark snuck out and started cleaning the stainless. There was actually a bit of sun at that time and it didn’t take him long to realize that he was overdoing it. He is supposed to keep his right shoulder still and cleaning stainless just doesn’t allow that. I finished the polishing and suggested he take a nap. But he is just not good at sitting still, so we decided to leave the boat and go to Patsy and Joe’s. They have a couple of recliners that he actually loves to sit in and read and nap, so that was the plan. I took my computer and completed the back-up of photos on various hard drives and helped Patsy cook dinner.

While at Patsy and Joe’s we got a phone call from our daughter Heather. The Goldstones spent the spring school vacation week in Washington, DC, and she just wanted to let us know they got home safely. She said that Jonah had asked if Oma was coming home to do Camp Oma this summer. She assured him that I was and then Ollie asked if Granddad was coming, too, because he would like to give us both a big hug. Ollie sure knows how to melt Granddad’s heart . . . and Oma’s as well. It won’t be long now until we will be home and can receive those hugs. Right now it looks like we might depart here on Saturday and do an overnight to Beaufort, NC. At that point, we’ll probably go inside and travel the Intracoastal to Norfolk. We will visit with our friends Chris and Geoff of Shambala in Beaufort on Sunday, leave there on Monday morning, and hope to arrive in Norfolk by Thursday evening, May 7. At that point a decision will have to be made as to whether we travel up the Chesapeake Bay to the Delaware Bay and then outside to Cape Cod or whether the weather will allow us to hop out at Norfolk. It’s all about the weather, so we’ll just have to wait and see what Mother Nature sends our way.

Day 197, Year 10: Another Work Day Like Yesterday

Day 197, Year 10: Another Work Day Like Yesterday
Date: Saturday, April 25, 2015
Weather: Overcast with Intermittent Rain, Temp Upper 60’s F
Location: Lightkeepers Marina, Little River, SC

Today was another work day like yesterday. We worked on Windbird in the morning and then went to Patsy and Joe’s and helped to do more organizing and cleaning in preparation of their move in June. I finished work I had been doing in the attic, so that is ready for movers. Patsy went through enough things today to end up with one heavy bag of trash and a few more things for the Salvation Army. We’ll probably do the same tomorrow. It is almost midnight and we just got home because we stayed for dinner and to watch the White House Correspondents Dinner. A little humor is a great way to end the day.

Day 196, Year 10: Allergies Win

Day 196, Year 10: Allergies Win
Date: Friday, April 24, 2015
Weather: Sunny, but Cooler; Winds from the North
Location: Lightkeepers Marina, Little River, SC

Allergies win. I woke up this morning with no sign of a cold, so I’m assuming my instant cold was really an allergic reaction—maybe I’m allergic to work! So today we took the day off and didn’t do much of anything. When Mark installed the new gear-shift cable, he pulled something in this shoulder that has been excruciatingly painful. At my insistence, he went to a chiropractor this morning to see if the pain might be coming from a pinched nerve in his neck, but the chiropractor thinks he probably tried to dislocate his shoulder and was just not quite successful. So it’s probably not a dislocated shoulder, but ‘almost’. The chiropractor did some massage therapy and suggested icing it for 10 minutes every hour or so. There was less pain today than yesterday, so hopefully it will slowly heal. In the meantime, Mark is basically out of the work force. It is almost impossible to make him do nothing, but I’ll keep trying.

Late this afternoon we went to Patsy and Joe’s. I worked with Patsy to start going through cabinets and closets to find things that need to be gotten rid of in anticipation of their move in June. Patsy and Joe fixed a pork roast for dinner. Joe found the recipe on the internet and Patsy executed. The result was a super tender roast. Tomorrow will be a bit of a repeat of today. I need to catch up on correspondence in the morning and in the afternoon we’ll go to Patsy and Joe’s to do a little more to help them get ready for the big move.

Day 195, Year 10: Cold or Allergies—Please Be Allergies

Day 195, Year 10: Cold or Allergies—Please Be Allergies
Date: Thursday, April 23, 2015
Weather: Another Sunny Day, Temp in the 70’s
Location: Lightkeepers Marina, Little River, SC

I woke up this morning with either a cold or allergies. Since I don’t want to pass this on to anyone else, I’m hoping its allergies. I’ll know by morning. This has happened to me a few times in the past few years. I call them instant colds and they go away as quickly as they come. Strange.

Mark had a cancer treatment today and afterwards we went to Patsy and Joe’s. The people that are buying their house wanted to come back this afternoon, so Patsy and Joe had to get out of the house. Mark and I picked them up and we filled the late afternoon by doing a little shopping for essentials. When we got home, Patsy made delicious enchiladas for dinner. Other than a great dinner, it was one of those days when there is not a lot to write about. But before signing off, I do want to wish my sister-in-law Sue a ‘Happy Birthday’!

Day 194, Year 10: Earth Day Contributions

Day 194, Year 10: Earth Day Contributions
Date: Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Weather: Another Sunny Day with No Rain
Location: Lightkeepers Marina, Little River, SC

Happy Earth Day! This was a day to make a positive contribution to our earth. My niece Candi’s daughter Katie had a baby today. Welcome, Hailey Thomas. There’s no greater contribution than that of a new life. Today my contribution wasn’t quite so spectacular, but I spent the day doing something I’m good at . . . cleaning. This cleaning day, I continued my attack on Patsy and Joe’s attic, getting it ready for the move in June. Mark and I also cleaned out a tumbler-type compost bin that we will take back to Cape Cod to add to the Goldstone ‘homestead’. Composting is a continuous process for the Heather and Jed’s garden and a tumbler will greatly aid the process. Joe bought this a couple of years ago but found turning the bin just a bit too much for his back. So he decided to give it to Heather and Jed, assuming we will be able to get it to fit somewhere on Windbird for the trip home. I figure three little boys can keep the thing tumbling on a daily basis and quickly turn all their food garbage back into rich compost for the garden. So although all I did was clean today, I think I can claim a little fame for trying to make this earth a better place.

Today was Lee Kaufman’s birthday so we invited Lee and Lynda out to dinner. We went to our favorite Asian restaurant and enjoyed the food and catching up on happenings since we returned from our winter sailing adventure. Lee got his ear pierced as a birthday present, but if the aim was to make him look like a pirate, it didn’t work. He still looks just like Lee. Lee and Lynda are already talking about their plans for cruising next winter. We, of course, are still trying to get home from this winter’s adventure. We made the decision today to stay here for another week to wait out adverse weather. And if the weather is still not cooperating, we’ll wait one more week. At that point, we’ll head north no matter what. We plan to be back on Cape Cod no later than May 21, so we’ll just watch the weather carefully and pick what looks like the best opportunity.

Heather, Jed, and boys are in Washington, DC, this week visiting with Jed’s mom, Marti. Jed and Marti took the boys to the Aerospace Museum, giving Heather the day off. She spent her morning in Georgetown and posted the most beautiful photo of tulips on her Facebook page. I’m ‘borrowing’ her photo and posting it here in celebration of the earth.

150422 Day 194 Little River, USA–Happy Earth Day

Day 193, Year 10: Hurray—P & J’s House Sold Today

Day 193, Year 10: Hurray—P & J’s House Sold Today
Date: Tuesday, April 21, 2015
Weather: Sunny Day with No Rain!!!
Location: Lightkeepers Marina, Little River, SC

Patsy’s and Joe’s house sold today and the closing date on this house will be just a couple of days before the closing on the new house in Mt. Juliet near Nashville. They couldn’t ask for better timing, so hopefully everything will go through as planned and Patsy and Joe will be relocated by mid-June. Patsy can now put her energy into getting rid of the things they don’t want to take with them and packing those special things that you don’t want the movers to touch. We’ll do what we can to help as long as we are here. But that is a real question. We were gearing up to leave on Friday, but the weather is looking just awful for the next week—enough rain to make things miserable and wind against us every day. We still might go for it, but tonight we are leaning towards waiting for another week or maybe two hoping for better weather. Waiting would mean rearranging Mark’s treatment schedule and each week’s delay gets us back to Cape Cod later and later. West Marine could use Mark early in May if possible, so we will spend one more day contemplating and then make a final decision.

The early part of our day was spent checking more jobs off the boat ‘To Do’ list—putting fabric guard on the cockpit canvas, climbing the mast to install a new LED light bulb, wading through weather forecasts for next week in all of the places where we would stop from here to Norfolk, packing up the inflatable kayak and storing it inside the boat (after unpacking and drying it out after its storage time on deck). Then we went to Patsy and Joe’s and Mark jacked up the house in one place to correct a sagging beam and Patsy and I got out the photos of the new house and we thought about where some of her pieces of furniture might fit. We topped off the day by going out to dinner to celebrate. Hurray, hurray!!!

150421 Day 193 Little River, USA–Up the Mast and Packing Kayak