2023 Life Logs, Day 162: Visit with Orsi Gorgenyi and Her Family
Date: Sunday, June 11, 2023
Weather: Sunny and Warm: High 72, Low 58 degrees F
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Today I drove to Concord, New Hampshire, to meet up with Orsi Görgényi and her family who traveled here from Hungary for Orsi’s 30th high school anniversary. I have written in other logs that we were Orsi’s home stay family when she was at St. Paul’s School. I last saw Orsi five years ago. But this is the first time her husband, George, and their twins, Lisa and Peter, have been to this country. The twins are 13 years old and are both tall like their mom and dad. We had a delightful visit and then I headed home and they headed to Acadia in Maine. From there, they will return to Boston and on to New York City before flying home. I find it totally unbelievable that it has been thirty years since Heather and Orsi were in high school together. The years pass so quickly.

2023 Life Logs, Day 161: Everything and Nothing
Date: Saturday, June 10, 2023
Weather: Partly Cloudy: High 65, Low 54 degrees F
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Thirty years ago on the first weekend in June, my daughter graduated high school from St. Paul’s School in Concord, NH. Orsi Gorgenyi also graduated. Orsi was a student from Hungary and even though she lived at St. Paul’s, we were her home support family—her home away from home. This weekend is Anniversary Weekend at St. Paul’s and Orsi and her husband and two children came for the celebration. Heather couldn’t attend this year as today she attended an all-day training program designed to introduce new and aspiring school committee members. Before Heather got elected to the School Committee, we had hoped to get the two families together. But that just was not meant to be. It has been a busier than usual few weeks around here. So, I am driving alone to Concord early in the morning to have breakfast with Orsi and her family. They were willing to drive here, but in the end, it seemed so much easier for me to do the driving. It will take most of the day, but I am really looking forward to meeting Orsi’s husband and children.

Today was an everything and nothing day for me. I did a little bit of everything but felt like I got nothing done. I did get the cottage ready for a 1 pm realtor’s showing despite all the boxes sitting all about. I headed into town with Shadow to work in the garden at the new house, but it started pouring rain. I went to the laundromat instead and then just gave up and came home to do some organizing in the basement. I guess I really got some things done. It just doesn’t look like it. I’ll start again on Monday morning and hope it is a more productive day.

2023 Life Logs, Day 160: More Moving Progress
Date: Friday, June 9, 2023
Weather: Partly Cloudy: High 67, Low 51 degrees F
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

From now until moving day, I hope to make just a little more progress each day. Today was different from yesterday. Yesterday Christina and I got over 40 boxes packed. Today I only got a couple of boxes packed, but Karen Baranowski came over and she helped me get all of the food the food in my pantry into plastic storage boxes that can be packed up quickly. And we started getting the spices out of the drawer in kitchen and into a plastic box. The box was not big enough and that led to a trip to Walmart to get additional plastic storage boxes. She also helped me move things into my dresser that will be in the dining room in the new house as storage for table cloths and placemats. The clothes that were in that dresser went into a bureau in the guest bedroom that will be in my bedroom in the new house. Progress was made.

In the afternoon, I did the needed shopping in town and did a little more work on the drip irrigation in the garden at the new house. I am hoping to focus on that again tomorrow afternoon. I went to pick up Sam for rowing practice but had missed a text from him saying he had decided not to go today. That added a few hours to my afternoon to do even more move-oriented shopping and time to come home and play outside with Shadow. When we came inside, we actually took a little power nap together on the sofa.

While I was in town, I got a call from Justin. I sat in the Walmart parking lot talking to him for quite some time. I had read in the New York Times earlier this week that Puerto Rico is facing record breaking high temperatures. The combination of normally hot and humid summer weather being impacted by climate change is resulting in temperatures that, this week, made it feel like 125 degrees F. Justin verified that the reports are correct. It has been very hot. Work must go on, but Justin and Jo have taken time to get the kids to the water for daily cool downs. Today they went to a local waterfall

2023 Life Logs, Day 159: Jolted into Reality
Date: Thursday, June 8, 2023
Weather: Partly Cloudy: High 66, Low 51 degrees F
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Yes. I knew before today that I am moving in three weeks. But not until I actually started packing today was I jolted into what that reality means. Moving is never easy, but since I have moved twice in the past seven years, it seems this should relatively easy. Today was a lot of work, but it was not difficult. Friend Christina Brodie spent most of the day with me and she is fantastic packer. Thank you, Christina. But it is when I start in on the plastic bins in the basement that it will get difficult. Deciding what can be thrown away, given away, or sold is the hard part. Today we packed 44 boxes of books and kitchen items. There are more boxes than normal because I bought small 12 x 10 inch boxes so I can handle the weight. A regular small moving box full of books is just too heavy for me to move if I ever want my back to heal. So, my summary of day one is that is was not hard, just overwhelming. Karen Baranowski is coming over tomorrow morning to help for a couple of hours. Then I will put the move on the back burner for a few days while I get the garden at the new house under control. Once that is done, I can focus my full attention on the move. But things are moving along.

I talked to my friend Lynne Kirwin tonight. She arrived in this country from New Zealand late last week and is now settling in at her sister’s home in Michigan for her summer and fall visit. At some point she will be coming here. I look forward to what is becoming our annual visit. Maybe one of these winters, I’ll have to fly to New Zealand to visit her!

2023 Life Logs, Day 158: Countdown to Moving
Date: Wednesday, June 7, 2023
Weather: Partly Sunny AM, Cloudy PM: High 66, Low 50 degrees F
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

It has finally dawned on me that I am actually moving … in three weeks. Yikes. Three weeks from today is June 28. I am supposed to be out of here by July 1. So the major moving day will be sometime between the 28th and the 1st. The complication is that Lynda is moving out of house next week. The house will then be empty and contractors are coming in to replace flooring in the bedroom, kitchen, and dining room and are sanding and refinishing the wood floor in the living room. The question in my mind is whether that can be done in two weeks. Lynda has been promised that it will be done but promises from contractors can be broken. We shall see. On this end, I need to figure out what I can pack now and still have everything I need to live for the next three weeks. I seem to be having difficulty figuring that out, but tomorrow, I am going to start the process and just see how it goes.

One of my major problems is that I have to split my time devoted to moving with other things. I am still spending a lot of time getting the new garden established. And I still have one boat project to finish. And Christina Brodie and I are gearing up to take over the leadership of Encore. I split my day today between cleaning house and working in the garden at the new house. I am devoting all of tomorrow to moving projects. I’ll have a better idea at the end of tomorrow of just how much I truly have to do. Here’s hoping it goes smoothly and faster than anticipated. I’ll fill you in tomorrow night.

2023 Life Logs, Day 157: Field Trip to Tree House Brewery
Date: Tuesday, June 6, 2023
Weather: Partly Sunny, Warm. Rain Late: High 71, Low 51 degrees F
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

When I walked outside at 7 am with Shadow, I was elated to greet a warm morning. It felt like summer and I loved it. I was out and about early as Shadow had an early grooming appointment. But when I got back inside, I checked my phone and saw that a text had come in at 4:13 am from Shadow’s groomer saying she was sick and would not be in today. We reset the appointment for tomorrow, so hopefully she will be better.

A little later in the morning, I headed off to a Newcomers/Encore field trip to have lunch up by the canal and then on to the nearby Tree House Brewery. The brewery is on the water where the Cape Cod Canal enters the Atlantic Ocean. Lovely location. And everyone enjoyed the beer and canned cocktail tastings. I left a bit early to get back to Falmouth to pick up Sam and take him to rowing practice in Harwich, but I should have left even earlier. There was an accident on Route 28 on the outskirts of Falmouth and traffic was diverted and then came to a standstill. I had left the brewery in time to get to Falmouth 15 minutes early so Sam and I could stop by my house to pick up Shadow. Because of the accident, I arrived 15 minutes late and there was no way I could take the time to stop and get my little buddy. I sent a text to Karen Baranowski asking if she could run over and give him a pee break, but she was on her way to a meeting. She suggested Peter do it, but that made me extremely nervous since he is recovering from back surgery. But Peter did go over and sat on the wooden bench by the water for an hour while Shadow played. I know Shadow was very appreciative, as am I. And the report tonight is that Peter is fine. Thank you, thank you, Peter.

As Sam and I got underway, I had him check Maps to make sure we had a clear shot. Nope. There was an accident on Route 6 near Hyannis. The further along we got, the further away our arrival time got. So, we took a suggested detour on Route 6A. We were still 25 minutes late, but just in time, as the boats were in the water but had not yet gone out. The detour paid off.

Tomorrow is supposed to be a gardening day, but as I look around this cottage, I see that some house cleaning must happen first. Not my favorite activity, but one that must be done.

2023 Life Logs, Day 156: Gardening and Jonah’s Band Concert
Date: Monday, June 5, 2023
Weather: Windy and Cloudy AM, Some Sun PM; High 58, Low 52 degrees F
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

If the weather forecast is accurate, today was the last really cool day for a while. Tomorrow’s high will be about 15 degrees warmer than today. I sure hope it feels warmer because I was basically paralyzed by the cold today. Because my doctor has Covid, I had a 9:30 am Zoom annual check-up. As soon as that was over, I called my friend Karen Baranowski as I have been out of communication for days, or has it been weeks? Whatever, it has been too long. When I got off the phone, I fully intended to take Shadow for a short walk and head to my new home (in three to four weeks) to work in the garden there. I got as far as taking Shadow out for a few minutes and I then came back inside to warm up. It was windy and cold outside … not exactly gardening weather. I spent another hour catching up on communications and tried once more. I got no further than the front steps when I turned around and came back inside. I kept this up until 1:30 pm when I decided that I had to make myself go work in that garden. Magically, as I drove into town, the sun came out. It was only partly sunny, but that allowed me to take my coat off and get to work. I got three of the four raised beds ready to plant, installed the drip irrigation in those three beds, planted most of the San Marzano paste tomato plants that I grew from seed, got the cucumber climbing trellis in place, and planted a few more plants I bought at the Master Gardeners’ plant sale a couple of weeks ago. It looks great, but I still have a lot to do. Getting the drip irrigation system hooked up is the next priority. But that will have to wait until Wednesday as I have a full day on my calendar for tomorrow.

Next on the agenda was going home to feed and walk Shadow and getting out of gardening clothes and into concert-going attire. Tonight was Jonah’s band concert, his last for middle school. Next year he will be in the high school band! I can hardly believe it, but both Jonah and Ziggy will be in high school next year. Jed and his mother, whom the kids call Grammy Marti, had a good trip from DC to here and were home in time to have dinner before the concert. In the jazz band, Jonah plays bass guitar and a girl who looks like a reincarnated Beatle plays lead guitar.

The last piece they played was Chicago’s 25 or 6 to 4 from the 1970’s, one of Jonah’s favorites to play. Then Jonah joined the regular band playing his trombone. The concert was enjoyed by all and it was great that Grammy Marti could be here.

2023 Life Logs, Day 155: Ollie’s Soccer Game, Moving Dirt
Date: Sunday, June 4, 2023
Weather: Mix of Clouds, Some Sun, Misty Rain; High 53, Low 49 degrees F
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

I drove with Heather and Ollie to Ollie’s 9 am soccer game in Dartmouth this morning. This was Ollie’s last game of the season. I got a couple of final season photos and Ollie can be identified by his jersey number, 18. They didn’t win today, but the coach told them he was so proud of how much they have improved during this season. Ollie felt good about that. These kids missed a year and a half of playing due to Covid, so they had some catching up to do.

After I returned home, Heather came over to help me dig up and move garden soil from my raised beds here at the cottage to the raised beds at the new location. Each raised bed there is 4 feet by 4 feet and I filled each to 10 inches deep. An online calculator tells me I put about 14 cubic feet of organic garden soil in each bed. I bought 8 bags of organic garden soil today to top off the soil transferred from my gardens here at the cottage. Each bag I bought today was 1 cubic feet and the cost per bag was $12. I put 2 bags in each of the 4 beds. Not counting those 8 bags, I moved the equivalent of 12 one cubic foot bags for each of the 4 beds at the cost of $144 per bed. Doing that for 4 beds equals $576 worth of dirt! It was quite a process to get it dug up, loosened from roots, and transferred into the1 0 gallon felt bags that I could handle. The Baranowskis helped me with the first 7 bags and Heather helped me today with another 7 bags. I have lost track of how many I moved by myself. But let’s just say that it was a lot of damn dirt. And I sure am glad that is done. I’m hoping to get most things planted by the end of this week.

Jed flew to DC yesterday, helped his mother shut down her home there for the summer, and tomorrow they will drive here . . . hopefully in time for Jonah’s band concert tomorrow night. So, gardening and band concert on the calendar for tomorrow.

2023 Life Logs, Day 154: C-O-L-D
Date: Saturday, June 3, 2023
Weather: Overcast with Misty Rain; High 60, Low 46 degrees F
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Right now, WeatherUnderground tells me it is 47 degrees F, but feels like 41 degrees. That is C-O-L-D for June, at least it is in my opinion. It was warmer just after midnight last night than any other time during the day. And tomorrow’s high is supposed to be only 53 with more rain possible, especially during the evening. Thankfully, Monday should be a tad warmer.

Gardening just was not inviting today, so I spent time in the basement trying to go through boxes and get rid of things. That didn’t work. Every box I went through only had a couple of things I could make myself throw away. So, I gave up and went back to gardening. I was able to get seven more bags of garden soil loosened and dug out. I took those over to the ‘future’ house. If I can get that much more tomorrow and buy a few bags of organic raised bed garden soil, I will have the four new raised beds full of soil and ready to plant. But before any of that, I will go to an early morning soccer game that Ollie’s team is playing off-Cape. If it is rained out, I’ll sleep in. Then I’ll get back in gardening mode.

2023 Life Logs, Day 153: By the Light of the Silvery Moon
Date: Friday, June 2, 2023
Weather: Sunny; High 77, Low 54 degrees F
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

At 7:30 this evening, I was standing on the dock in Quissett Harbor watching Eider (still to be renamed Ardenna) pick up a mooring. Not long after, a dinghy manned by Sam, Jonah, and Ollie came to pick me up. What a strange feeling it was to be headed out in that harbor to a boat that was not my own Windbird. But at the same time, what a wonderful feeling to be headed out to a sailboat that I have ‘adopted’. I was invited out to the boat for dinner and as we ate, the light of silvery ‘almost full’ moon shone down on us through the companionway.

And we used the light of that moon to get us back to the dinghy dock at the end of the evening. Eider will be moored in Quissett Harbor until mid-month when her mooring in Wings Cove back across Buzzards Bay in Marion is available. Hopefully the Goldstones will be able to enjoy sailing the boat out of Quissett during the next two weeks, but if this weekend is any indication, they will have very little opportunity. Tomorrow Heather will attend the Falmouth High School graduation ceremony as a School Committee member and in the afternoon Jed flies to Washington, DC to help his mother close her home there for the summer and drive her to Boothbay, Maine to her summer home. He will return home on Monday. Sam has two more full days of Driver’s Ed class this weekend. So maybe Heather and the boys will get out to the boat on late on Sunday afternoon, Busy times, but hopefully they will get in a few after school and work sails while the boat is on this side of the bay.

I started my day with a two-hour Encore meeting, came home to have lunch and then dig up more garden soil to take to my new gardens in town. I then joined Bruce and Jane Woodin for happy hour on their deck before heading to Quissett. It has been really warm the last two days and it was a lovely evening on the Woodin’s deck. But things cool down for the weekend. And we might get some rain. Tomorrow I will continue my dirt moving project and hopefully work on the drip irrigation system for the new raised beds.