by Judy Handley | Dec 19, 2013 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 60, Year 9: More Cookies, More Bread Wreaths
Date: Thursday, December 19, 2013
Weather: Mostly Cloudy and Warming Up, High in the Low 40’s F
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, Massachusetts
In addition to making more Christmas cookies and more bread wreaths, Ollie and I spent most of our morning cleaning house. I was using the vacuum to sweep the upstairs with Ollie’s help. He disappeared for a minute and the vacuum stopped running. He then came back to me and said, “All done.” I followed the electric cord and found that he had unplugged it. Then he brought me a book to read to him. After we read the book he said, “More.” He indicated that I needed to plug the sweeper back in and continue. What a helper!
Tomorrow is a busy, busy day. That differentiates it from just busy. Ollie and I will continue doing house cleaning to get ready for Saturday night’s solstice party. Mark will take Heather and Jed’s van in for regular maintenance, go get a hair-cut, deliver bread wreaths and cookies to friends, and then come back so we can get ready to travel to Boston. Mid-afternoon we take off with Heather, Jed, and boys. We will have dinner in Harvard Square and then attend a nighttime performance of Revels at the Sanders Theatre on the Harvard campus. Revels is a celebration of solstice performed through music and dance. “The 2013 Christmas Revels takes us to Galicia in Northern Spain, where, since the Middle Ages, pilgrims have walked the Camino de Santiago (The Way of Saint James), the name given to the interconnecting trails which run from Spain, France and other starting points in Europe.” We have attended Revels with Heather and Jed a number of times in the past few years and have always found it to be a most wonderful way to welcome the holiday season.
by Judy Handley | Dec 18, 2013 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 59, Year 9: Getting Ready for Solstice and Christmas
Date: Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Weather: Sunny and Cold, Low 20’s F Overnight, Low 30’s F Today
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, Massachusetts
It was another busy day. Wednesday is Heather’s day off, so Mark and I went over to help with Ollie so she could do some things to get ready for their solstice party on Saturday night and to get things ready for Christmas. All of us took a little time to wrap presents and Mark played with Ollie while I made chicken mineral broth from the bones of the chicken I roasted yesterday. Mark’s blood count is still perfect, so I keep making this broth to use in almost everything we eat these days. It seems to be one of the things that keeps him on track. And I spent a good deal of time rolling out sugar cookie dough and cutting out favorite holiday shapes for the boys to decorate after school. They used lots of red, green, gold, silver, and multi-colored sprinkles and we ended up with more than 4 dozen stars, candy canes, Christmas trees, snowmen, and honey bees. The little bees were thrown in as I could fit those in between the other shapes. Tomorrow we will continue the cookie frenzy, and if I have time, I hope to bake a few more bread wreaths. We are most definitely baking our way to the holidays.
PS I hope everyone else out there is enjoying the cold full moon. The moon was actually full sometime between Monday and Tuesday, but it still looked full tonight. Beautiful.
by Judy Handley | Dec 17, 2013 | Cape Cod USA, Cape Cod, USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 58, Year 9: Snowy Day
Date: Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Weather: Snow, Temps in the 30’s F
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, Massachusetts
We didn’t get a lot of snow today, but it was enough to cover everything with a blanket of white. It was supposed to warm up and rain tonight, but that isn’t going to happen. We might get a bit more snow overnight and then it looks like we have a break until New Year’s Eve. That could change, will change, but that’s the current forecast.
We had a fun day with Ollie and when Sam came home from school, we launched into Christmas cookie mode. Today we made Coco Thumbprint Cookies. Sam and Jonah rolled dough into balls (Ollie with a little help from Oma). Then Sam rolled them in granulated sugar and Ollie and I rolled them in confectionery sugar. Once we put them on the trays for baking, Sam made a big thumbprint in each one and put goodies in the center of each one. He used M&M’s from his left-over Halloween candy and various kinds of decorative sprinkles. He was so good at coming up with ideas and doing it on his own. I didn’t get a photo of the end result, but they looked great and tasted even better. We will try to make a different cookie each day after school and keep them for Heather and Jed’s solstice party on Saturday night.
by Judy Handley | Dec 16, 2013 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 57, Year 9: Undercover with a Christmas Tree
Date: Monday, December 16, 2013
Weather: Clear, Cold, Windy Day; Calmer Evening
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, Massachusetts
No, I haven’t gone undercover, but Windbird has. Finally she is getting covered, right now as I write this log at 10 pm. It is COLD outside–25 degrees F here on the water and almost 10 degrees colder inland—but BoatWorks, the guys putting the plastic bubble over Windbird, decided to come tonight to the job. It has been too windy or has been raining or snowing almost every day, so they have started working at night once the winds die down. I know they are freezing out there, but I sure am glad to get the cover on before tomorrow’s snow. Yes, it is going to snow again, but by tomorrow evening it will warm up and rain. And then when the temperature drops at night, we might get snow again. ‘Official’ winter is 5 days away, but someone forgot to tell the weather gods. Either that or they decided to play a trick on us and send us a really good dose of winter early.
Now to the Christmas tree part of the day. In addition to getting covered tonight, we brought our little Christmas tree inside, put on the lights, and have just finished decorating it. We bought the little 3 foot-high fir tree a month ago and have kept it outside until tonight. We bought it early for fear that the small ones would be gone by the time we were ready. It is still as green and pretty as when we bought it, but I’m sure it will start drying out now that it is inside. We’ve never had a live Christmas tree on Windbird. We’ve always decorated but thought a tree would be too much in our small cabin. But it is sitting on the table beside me and looks beautiful.
Today was a chemo day for Mark, which should have meant a day of rest. But somehow it ended up being anything but that. The guys from BoatWorks came to the boat this morning to check things out, but by the time I got outside to talk to them, they were gone. Still, I figured the visit meant they were thinking of covering the boat tomorrow, as I never dreamed they would do it tonight. But their visit got me busy cleaning the deck and getting a few things off the deck so they would have room to work. The birds have been super busy since Saturday when Mark sprayed off the boat, so I took advice from Heather and used a car window scraper and brush to get the frozen droppings off the canvas and deck. This was MUCH easier than spraying down and icing everything in sight. I picked Mark up just after noon and when we came home, I went out with a hammer to break the two-inch thick ice in the dinghy. We left it in the water as we knew it would be needed when covering the boat. I thought we had been pumping it out regularly, but we have gotten so much rain and snow in the past week that it was full up to the tubes. The first two-inches were frozen and there was water underneath the ice. I banged away, lifted out the chunks of ice, and then pumped the remaining water out. Then Mark came out to help me lift the dinghy out of the water. We used the dinghy pulley to raise it up and tie it to the side of the boat. We wanted to make sure it didn’t fill up again before the boat got covered. We should have stopped there, but we didn’t. We then drove to Hyannis to return a Christmas gift and do some food shopping. And then we came home, had dinner, and decorated the Christmas tree. They say there’s no rest for the wicked, so we must be mighty wicked indeed!
by Judy Handley | Dec 15, 2013 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 56, Year 9: A Handley Family Tradition
Date: Sunday, December 15, 2013
Weather: Icy Rain Overnight, Cloudy with Temp in the 40’s Today
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, Massachusetts
We spent today at Heather and Jed’s making braided bread wreaths. This has been a tradition in our family since Heather and Justin were very young and Heather wanted to do this to start passing the tradition on to Sam, Jonah, and Ollie. The wreaths are made from whole wheat flour which means that the dough is very heavy. But that was no problem for the Goldpebbles when they joined into kneading process. When I am just about finished kneading the bread, I always throw the dough down on the surface a few times just so it knows I mean business. Well, all three boys really got into this. We sent flour flying all over the kitchen, but we had a great time. And later the boys helped with the braiding process. At one point Jonah noted that he was braiding the dough just like Oma braids her hair. But even though I braid my hair every morning and have made bread wreaths for over three decades, Heather is by far the better braider. Her bread wreaths are perfect. So this meant that after I braided a couple, I handed that job over to her. She made 14 bread wreaths and I made 14 half-pints of cranberry freezer jam to go with them. The jam recipe called for a couple of shots of Grand Marnier and that added just the perfect touch to the cranberries. The wreaths will go to friends and neighbors to spread a little holiday cheer. And hopefully Sam, Jonah, and Ollie will begin to see that it can be more heart-warming to give than to receive.
The weather today was strange. When we woke up it was 48 degrees F outside, but as the day progressed the temperature regressed. It is back to freezing tonight. A change in the previous forecast says we will get snow on Tuesday. We were hoping to get the boat covered on that day. But now Thursday looks to be the more likely possibility. I’m hoping to celebrate solstice undercover.
by Judy Handley | Dec 14, 2013 | Cape Cod USA, Sailing Logs Year 9 |
Day 55, Year 9: Old Fashioned Shopping
Date: Saturday, December 14, 2013
Weather: Overcast with Snow Showers, Windy, Temp in the 20’s F
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, North Falmouth, Massachusetts
Until today, all of our Christmas shopping has been online at Amazon. We have Amazon Prime and that allows us to ship Prime items to Puerto Rico with no shipping charges which is a great plus for us. We have been ordering gifts for Justin, Jo, Ziggy, and Coco for Jo’s family in England as well. So we have kept the Amazon warehouse busy this week. But today, we decided to go out and shop in stores the old-fashioned way. Actually the shopping was not so much for Christmas as it was for survival. I really needed a winter jacket. In August when we moved our things in storage from New Hampshire to here, I got rid most of my winter clothes, including my only jacket. I was sure I wasn’t going to need those winter clothes in Puerto Rico. But plans changed and that has left me with a bare bones winter wardrobe. I have a long coat that is warm, but it is really hard to maneuver in. Getting in and out of the cockpit is not easy, and playing outside with the boys is not an activity for a below-the-knees coat. Up until this past week, my polar fleece jacket was enough, but it has gotten too cold for that. So the time had come to find a jacket ASAP. I was also looking for snowboots, but I wear a wide width and I’m going to have to order those through Zappo online as none of the stores in this area carry wides. I’ve been wearing the same two long-sleeved shirts for weeks now, but I added four new ones to that mix today. Hurray! And while we were out, Mark and I also picked up a few things for each other for Christmas. So it was a successful shopping day.
It is a little on the chilly side in the boat tonight. The outside temperature was in the low twenties all day and it has been windy. So even with both heaters going full blast, it only 66 degrees F in here. The temperature outside is rising, however, and will be in the 40’s by tomorrow morning. The snow will turn to ice pellets during the night and into rain by morning. And when I look at the 10-day forecast, it looks like cold weather and lots of precipitation will continue heading our way right through Christmas. We are still waiting to have the boat covered and we are hoping it will happen this next week. With this kind of weather, we really need that plastic bubble protecting us from these wicked winds and ice on the deck.
