2022 Life Logs, Day 198: Getting Ready for the Week Ahead
Date: Sunday, July 17, 2022
Weather: Mostly Sunny; High 83, Low 68 degrees
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth

Like most of my summer Sundays, I spent today getting ready for the week ahead. My friend Lynne comes tomorrow . . . Ollie and I hope she will join us in some of our activities during the week . . . Jonah starts a four-day all-day soccer camp that requires daily transportation to and from . . . Sam works W-F-Sat-Sun and does his own thing on the other days . . . if all goes as planned, Heather closes on the sailboat tomorrow and makes phone calls to the boat yard in Maine to see if the boat will be ready to sail away this coming weekend . . . and we all hope we will survive another busy week! Heather is single parenting this week as Jed is away at a conference. That means she is super busy, but still she invited me over to have dinner tonight. Dinner was great and Jonah and Ollie got to show off their freshly cleaned bedroom. That was their project today. Since Sam was working today, he will attack his room tomorrow. And all of us are enjoying the beautiful, warm weather.

2022 Life Logs, Day 197: Tropical Christmas in July
Date: Saturday, July 16, 2022
Weather: Mostly Cloudy; High 80, Low 66 degrees
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth

I am so lucky to be a member of a great wine club. One of the members, Kim Caverly, has two big parties each l—a Christmas party and a Christmas in July party. Tonight was her Christmas in July party and the theme was ‘tropical’. I did not know most of the people there, but all of our wine club members were in attendance, so we had an unofficial meeting. I had great conversations with Billy and Eileen Sullivan about the Cape Cod Curling Club. They are active members, and I was there recently for the Celebration of Life of member Peter Mitchell and learned so much about curling. I talked with Don Mroz and Susan Lapine about boating in Buzzards Bay and life in general. David Brassard and I had a long conversation about grandchildren that love to play soccer. We were able to grab Kim long enough to get an official wine club photo. Kim is one of the Beta Readers of my book and she presented me with her copy with her added notes. I wore my Maui’s hook earrings tonight and a woman sought me out to ask where I got them. I replied that I bought them in New Zealand. She is from Nelson on the South Island of New Zealand and that led to another great conversation. I had spent my day cleaning house and was not enthusiastic about attending tonight’s party. Glad I did. It was great!

2022 Life Logs, Day 196: Jonah’s Graduation from ASLP
Date: Friday, July 15, 2022
Weather: Sunny; High 79, Low 61 degrees
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

The Advanced Studies & Leadership Program (ASLP) held its graduation for the class of 2022 and Jonah Biggs Goldstone was in the graduating class. This was a 10-day college-like program that emphasized leadership as well as project-oriented classes in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) plus the humanities for Cape Cod students entering grades eight and nine in the fall. It is sponsored by the Cape Cod Collaborative and takes place on the Massachusetts Maritime Academy campus with their cadets serving as counselors. For Jonah, the greatest part of the experience had nothing to do with the classes. It had to do with social interactions. Students were up at 0630 every morning and to bed at 2200 (10 pm) every night, with very little free time. They were involved in classes or social activities all day and evening. Students were not allowed to bring phones or any other electronic devices–and they survived. The total focus was on positive face to face interactions with other students. There was no contact with parents for ten days. Jonah was beaming when he saw his mom and dad, but I don’t think there was time to miss family. Jonah was too busy making new friends. On the way home he did share that he won’t miss getting up at 6:30 am every morning!

I will spend my weekend getting ready for a visit from my friend Lynne Kirwin. She arrives on Monday!!! Jed and Ollie are away at Cub Scout camp this weekend. Ollie will come home on Sunday with a friend and Jed will continue on to Boston for a flight to DC for a conference. He returns on Thursday night. On Friday, if all goes as expected, Heather and Jed, and maybe Jonah and Ollie, will head to Brooklin, Maine to officially take possession of Eider, the 36-foot Cape Dory sailboat, they have been trying to buy for a couple of months now. Closing should finally take place on Monday. So, fingers crossed that all goes smoothly. I have said it before, but I will say it again. It is going to be so exciting to have a sailboat in the family again.

2022 Life Logs, Day 195: Afternoon at Wood Neck Beach and Little Sippewissett Marsh
Date: Thursday, July 14, 2022
Weather: Sunny; High 82, Low 62 degrees
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Sam, Ollie, and I had a wonderful afternoon at Wood Neck Beach and Little Sippewissett Marsh. We were totally unaware of the fact that there were high levels of bacteria in the water. When we drove into the parking lot, the attendant warned us that due to the super low and super high tides today, swimming would be at our own risk. The attendant said nothing about high levels of bacteria. Since we arrived at low tide, we weren’t planning to swim, so on we went. It was not until we were leaving that Sam noticed a new sign that had been posted saying swimming could cause you to be sick. Again, it said nothing about high bacteria levels. As we drove out of the parking lot, I asked the attendant to explain the meaning of the sign. That is when she told us about the bacteria level. Oops. Ollie and I had spent the last two hours in the marsh waters on our boogie boards. But at least we weren’t swimming with our heads in the water. The tide was coming in, but it was still too shallow for diving and swimming. Sam was safe as he had spent his entire day sleeping on the beach. I guess ignorance is bliss, as we had a great afternoon totally unaware the problem. After we ate lunch on the beach, Sam slept and Ollie read while I walked along the water line, far out from the beach. I then talked Ollie into going back in the marsh with me to look for jingle shells. Eventually, Sam came looking for us. And as a last activity of the afternoon, both Sam and Ollie took turns on the skim board. Ollie was so excited that he is so much better at skimming this year. Tomorrow morning we all, except for Sam who has to work, travel to Mass Maritime for Jonah’s ‘graduation’ from the ASLP program. It looks like this gorgeous weather is going to continue for another couple of days. Ollie and I are hoping we can convince Jonah to go to the beach with us tomorrow afternoon when he gets home. But since he has been away for ten days, he might just want to chill at home. We shall see.

2022 Life Logs, Day 194: Fun Afternoon with Ollie
Date: Wednesday, July 13, 2022
Weather: Sunny; High 85, Low 65 degrees
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Jonah is still away at camp and Sam works on Wednesdays. So, this afternoon, it was just Ollie and me. Yesterday he told me he wanted to go to the beach today, but by this afternoon he decided he didn’t want to go with just me. I try, but I know I am no substitute for a friend or a brother. But when I mentioned going to play minigolf, his eyes lit up and he said, “Let’s go to Cataumet. We can also do the bumper boats.” And I added, “Then we can stop by Megansett Beach for a late afternoon swim.” This was going to require a bathing suit which was at my house, so that was our first stop. We ate lunch outside where Ollie spent some time reading in the hammock. While he did that, I got my summer window fans out of the basement and did my best to clean them. It is finally getting warm enough that I might need a fan. Then we headed to Cataumet to play minigolf. Ollie beat the pants off me. I had three holes where it took me six or seven tries to get the ball in the hole. While this has happening to me, Ollie was consistently getting each ball in the hole in two tries. There were a lot of players in front of us, but there was no one behind us. Instead of just waiting to go on to the next hole, we took advantage and played each hole twice, just for practice. We played 36 holes, not just 18! Then we got in the bumper boats, and again, Ollie cornered me in what I call the lagoon and then pushed me into the waterfall. It was his afternoon.

On our way home, we stopped for a quick swim at Megansett Beach. This is one of our least favorite beaches, but it was right on the way home, so it was the choice for today. Ollie and I were playing water tag when he stepped on something and cut his foot. It was bleeding, so we got out of the water sooner than planned. We cleaned the cut, put on a band aid, and then headed back to my house where Ollie put my new bike rack on my car with very little direction from me. We are hoping to do some bike rides in the next couple of weeks in different parts of the Cape, so now I can once again transport our bicycles. My old rack was so rusty that I finally took it off. I will take this one off during the winter so, hopefully, it doesn’t rust like the last one. It was another great summer day.

2022 Life Logs, Day 193: Book Club, Beach, and Top Gun Maverick
Date: Tuesday, July 12, 2022
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Warm, Windy; High 78, Low 67 degrees
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

My book club met this morning to review Miss Benson’s Beetle, in my opinion a totally unbelievable but thoroughly enjoyable book, where a woman named Miss Benson travels to New Caledonia to find a rare beetle. Someone asked if anyone had every traveled to New Caledonia and I said that Mark and I sailed there. And yes, the way the author depicted New Caledonia the way we found it when we were there. Reading the book surely brought back memories. We were meeting in the backyard of a book club member that lives on the water, and as we talked, we had to compete with the sounds of baby osprey yelping for food. There was a nest next door and it was delightful to watch the mother feeding the babies while talking about our book. Another member who is an avid gardener talked about seeing the first monarch of the season. When I drove home after the meeting to pick up Shadow, guess what greeted me as I drove up to the cottage? Yes, the first monarch I have seen in my gardens this summer.

I switched gears and went to pick up Ollie and Sam to take them to the beach at Quissett Harbor. They chose this beach because we could take Shadow. Or so we thought. Dogs have always been allowed on the beach there, but when we arrived there was a sign that there were to be no dogs on the beach in the inner harbor. It was too far to drive Shadow home, so we walked on the trails to the beach in the outer harbor. We weren’t sure that was totally ‘legal’ but since there was no one else on the beach, we decided to give it a try. Sam, Ollie, Shadow, and I spent a wonderful, relaxing afternoon there. We saw very few people except for the teenagers who walked by us on their way to swim out for their afternoon sailing lesson. It was quite windy this afternoon and watching them get their sails up was quite entertaining. But once the sails were up, they looked like they were having a great time. Ollie spent his afternoon digging a hole and surrounding it with a wall of sand.ps://handleysail.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/03-Afternoon-at-Quissett-with-Ollie-and-Sam-5-300×225.jpg” alt=”” width=”300″ height=”225″ class=”alignnone size-medium wp-image-26163″ /> Ollie and I spent time in the delightfully warm water. Sam helped Ollie from time to time, but mostly spent his afternoon relaxing and even taking a nap. We stayed for almost four hours and then headed to my house. We stopped and bought burritos for dinner and after dinner and showers, we went to see Top Gun Maverick. We all loved it. Then we drove home by the light of the full moon. Perfect summer day.

2022 Life Logs, Day 192: Water Fun on the Eel River
Date: Monday, July 11, 2022
Weather: Another Beautiful Summer Day; High 79, Low 65 degrees
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Two weeks ago, while I was carrying a 5-gallon bucket of garden soil from one raised bed to another, I tripped and fell onto the ground catching myself with the hands and right knee. It was a hard fall, but I got right up and seemed to be fine. The next day, however, I started having the same issues with my back that I did two years ago when I ruptured two discs. I have been doing all of the things that I was told to do at that time, but things are still not right. So, I made an appointment with my chiropractor, hoping he could help. He thinks the hard jolt of the fall did cause the previously injured discs to flare up again and suggested I continue my current regimen of minimal exercise and lots of walking even though it is painful at first because the further I walk, the better it gets. This is what the neurosurgeon also suggested two years ago, so I will continue gritting my teeth for the first quarter to half mile, finish the mile with relative ease, and come home and ice my lower back. It took five months for the discs to heal two years ago. I sure hope it doesn’t take as long this time.

It is almost the middle of July and I still have not been to the beach. That is just not acceptable. But try as I might, I could not convince either Sam or Ollie to go to the beach with me today. Ollie decided he wanted to come to my house and launch the Opti sailboat, so at least I got to hang out near the water. The Opti (Optimist) is a small, single-handed sailing dinghy for kids up to the age of 15. Heather and Jed bought one for the kids last summer. Ollie had the most interest, but we always had to ask Sam to help us get the mast in place and get it under sail. This afternoon, Ollie and got the small, but heavy, boat down to the dock, but were stymied by the sail. We needed Sam. He does not work on Mondays, so I texted him and he agreed to come help us. Sam sailed it down the river, with Ollie following in a kayak. Then they switched places, Ollie sailed it back, and I enjoyed watching. Sam also does not work on Tuesdays, and I think I talked the boys into a beach trip to Quissett tomorrow, so I hope this beautiful weather we have been having continues.

When I first picked up Ollie today, we drove from town to my house on the back roads to avoid the traffic. We drove by the Coonamessett River Conservation Area and Ollie asked me if I had been the observation walkway now that it is completed. I had not, so we stopped. It is a semi-circular walkway high up on posts so you can view the entire area. What a beautiful addition.

2022 Life Logs, Day 191: Happy 89th Birthday to My Sister Patsy
Date: Sunday, July 10, 2022
Weather: Another Beautiful Summer Day; High 75, Low 59 degrees
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

My sister Patsy and I are the only ones left of our generation in my family and today was Patsy’s 89th birthday. She is in North Carolina, so I could not be with her. But I was with her in spirit. Happy birthday, Patsy!

I had another lazy day. I gave Shadow a bath and visited with my neighbor Andrew who arrived late last night and was leaving before noon. He drove up from New York to get his boat trailer. He will return with the boat next Saturday and then he and the entire family will be coming for the last two weeks of August. They were here all of last summer and I have missed them. So, I look forward to their visit in August. I ended my day by having Heather and family over for dinner. I made it easy on myself by buying pulled pork from our local weekend outdoor barbecue vendor, Wicked & Wood. I made red cabbage coleslaw, bought corn-on-the-cob, grilled marinated potatoes, and made 40-minute hamburger buns. I love that these yeasted buns actually take just 40 minutes as advertised and they are always so good. We had a late dinner beginning at 7 pm and ate in the back yard. It was warm and there was still plenty of daylight. And there were no bugs! After dinner, we took the tray of fresh fruit down to dock to enjoy the rest of the evening. We missed Jonah. He won’t be home from ASLP camp until Friday.

2022 Life Logs, Day 190: Just Me and My Shadow
Date: Saturday, July 9, 2022
Weather: Another Beautiful Summer Day; High 76, Low 55 degrees
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

I spent the entire day at home. It was just me and my Shadow. We took a nice long walk and then I cleaned a little, read a little, did a little food and activity planning for the next couple of weeks, caught up on some emails I needed to return, and checked my bank account to make sure all bills have been paid. That was it for today. Tonight, I watched DUNE (2021). I never watched the original back in the 1980’s and have never read the book. Now I think I need to do both.

2022 Life Logs, Day 189: Celebration of Life, Final Pottery Class for Ollie
Date: Friday, July 8, 2022
Weather: Another Beautiful Summer Day; High 79, Low 64 degrees
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

At noon I went to the Concord Curling Club for a celebration of life for my friend Olga Mitchell’s husband, Peter. I only met Peter twice before the pandemic hit. He passed away in January of 2021, so the celebration of life was postponed until now. Both Peter and Olga were originally from Canada, both had PhD’s in physics, and both spent their lives working in the Bell Labs in New Jersey. But outside of work, Olga was an avid skier and a stunt pilot while Peter was a curler. Today many of the attendees were curlers with Peter in Canada, New Jersey, and here in Falmouth where Peter and Olga spent their retirement years. Peter was a force in the curling world at both the local and national levels. Today was beautiful celebration of his life. On the back of the program there was poem that I will copy at the end of this log. So beautiful.

I left the celebration and took Ollie to Somerset Creamery for an ice cream cone before his final pottery class in this session. He has another week of classes the first week of August, but we needed to celebrate this week. When he saw the ice cream cone he said, “How can this be a small?” I agreed. It was a small cone with a mountain of chocolate ice cream atop. But he had no trouble wolfing it down. While he was in class, I drove home to have lunch and then returned later to pick him up. When I arrived, he was still sitting at one of the wheels practicing. Then I got to see the pieces he made this week of which he was very proud. The Barn Pottery really was once a barn, but it has been transformed into a great space for pottery classes. After saying farewell to the instructor, Kim, we headed home as Ollie’s friend Simon was coming for dinner and an overnight. Ollie said that even though he is enjoying his time alone without Jonah, he really misses him. He was excited to have a friend over for tonight.

Poem by Mary Elizabeth Frye:
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am the thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glint on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.