2021 Life Logs, Day 313: Robbing Peter to Pay Paul
Date: Tuesday, November 9, 2021
Weather: Sunny; High Temp 63, Low Temp 47 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

The fabulous sunshine and warmth continued today. I started my day by getting my Covid 19 Booster shot. My arm is a little sore tonight, but otherwise, no other reactions as yet. I had an appointment but still had to wait a bit, so by the time I got home I had just enough time to take Shadow for a walk and head to my book club meeting. We met outside and it was actually hot in the sun. Two members were out of town, so we connected with them via Zoom on a tablet. About 50 minutes in, the tablet that was set up on the table shut down saying it was too hot. It is November. Right?

I spent the afternoon outside cleaning up more tree limbs and branches. Yesterday, and for part of this afternoon, I was lopping off all the branches on each limb, stacking the limbs, and dragging the branches down the hill to throw into the brush pile. But about half-way through this afternoon, I decided to drag each big limb down the hill and do the branch clean-up later. This enabled me clear the entire side yard this afternoon. Hurray!!! I must say the before and after photos showing today’s progress are quite impressive. But taking this short cut made me feel a little like I was just robbing Peter to pay Paul. I just moved the mess from the yard down the hill and out of sight. And there are plenty more branches still attached to the fallen tree in the woods right next to the yard. I will have to wait for Jed to return with the chain saw to work on that. There is no school on Thursday, so Sam will come in the afternoon to do lawn work. Hopefully Jed, Jonah, and Ollie will come along and help with the clean-up. However, if nothing else gets done until later, it will be fine.

2021 Life Logs, Day 312: Storm Clean Up
Date: Monday, November 8, 2021
Weather: Sunny; High Temp 58, Low Temp 38 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

It has been almost two weeks since we were clobbered by a nor’easter that managed to fell a tree in the wooded area next to The Cottage. It was a big oak tree with lots of limbs and branches still laden with leaves. In other words, a major job to clean up. Thank you, thank you, thank you to Jed for getting the job started yesterday. When he and Sam and Ollie stopped here on their way home from Scout camp to give Shadow a mid-day potty break, Jed went to work with his chain saw. He got all of the limbs cut away from the tree trunk and pulled the branches off the raspberries that had been covered by the felled tree. But that left all those branches in the side yard. He apologized for not having the time to clean up the branches, but it is a time-consuming job and he and the boys were exhausted after a weekend of camping. The boys wanted to get home and take a shower. I didn’t even know he was going to do anything with the tree yesterday, so I was elated when I got home and saw that he gotten so much done. I am totally capable of cleaning up the tree limb mess, but I don’t have a chain saw and even if I did, I’m not sure I would tackle such a big job. But he has been so busy, I had not even asked him to help with the clean. Again, thank you to Jed.

Today I made a lot of progress in cleaning up the limbs. I have a lopper that will easily cut through 2-inch limbs, so I started lopping off the limbs and dragging them down to my brush pile. I probably got about a third of the limbs cleaned up and will continue the job over the next three days. Today was beautiful and this same weather is supposed to continue until Friday when we get rain. I hope all those branches will be gone by then. Tomorrow morning, I go to get my Covid booster shot and then go to a book club meeting. I will be home in time for a late lunch and then get busy lopping limbs.

2021 Life Logs, Day 311: Day Trip to New Hampshire
Date: Sunday, November 7, 2021
Weather: Sunny; High Temp 54, Low Temp 41 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

At Jonah’s level, a soccer game is divided into two 35-minute halves. With a 10-minute halftime and a few delays in the game, the total time is usually about an hour and a half. But when you have to drive two and a half hours each way to a game, the total time ends to be same as a work day, 9 to 5. Heather picked me up at 9 am and we drove to Yarmouth to pick Jonah up at Greenough Scout Camp where he had been since Friday evening. We then drove north to New Hampshire, getting there in time to stop and get some lunch for Jonah before heading to the soccer field at Derryfield School. It was a beautiful afternoon but our team lost this last game of the season. After the game, we drove into Manchester to get Jonah a burger at Five Guys. Heather and I ordered something a tad healthier from Panera, and we were on the road home. By the time we got to the Bourne Bridge to cross over to the Cape, it was just about 5 o’clock and almost dark. Sunset today was at 4:30 pm, but as we crossed the bridge we got a great view of a western horizon that looked like it was on fire. It was incredible. I took a quick photo through the window as we drove. Not a great photo, but it captured the beauty of the colors.

Thanks to Sam, Jed, and Ollie who stopped on their way home from camp to walk and play with Shadow for a bit. Still, it was a long day at home alone for Shadow, so he was really happy to see me when I got home.

2021 Life Logs, Day 310: Getting Ready to Fall Back
Date: Saturday, November 6, 2021
Weather: Sunny; High Temp 52, Low Temp 33 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Shadow and I were greeted by ice this morning. Beside one of my raised garden beds, I keep a 5-gallon bucket of composted soil. The bucket has a lid on it with a bit of a rim and water collects in the lid. Recently, I have been adding to the water as Shadow loves to grab a drink from the lid when coming in from outside. This morning we went for his early morning potty break and he went to the bucket to get a drink. No go. The water was frozen solid. So, I guess it did get down to freezing last night. It is supposed to be almost as cold tonight, then the nighttime temperatures rise a bit over the next week.

This afternoon I went to an event at the First Congregational Church in Falmouth. They had a public celebration in honor of the new solar panels they just had installed on their church roof. One of the speakers at the event was Heather. She gave a presentation on the importance of including values in climate emergency decision making. She addressed the reason why it is so important that we refer to climate change as an emergency, not a crisis, not a disaster. As she said, when you think of a crisis, you imagine people running around not knowing what to do about the problem. In a disaster, the problem has already happened and the only thing to be done is to clean up the problem. But in an emergency, such as a medical emergency, we know what to do. We just have to get into gear and do the things needed to fix the problem and prevent further damage. That is where we are with the environment. The emergency is happening now and we just need the will to do what we know has to be done. Easier said than done, but we do need to take action now.

Tonight, we fall back. We turn our clocks back one hour to get back on standard time. No more Daylight Savings Time until March. For people like my daughter Heather and my grandson Sam, this is a good thing. Heather gets up in the dark at 5:30 am to make sure Sam gets up and out the door, still mostly in the dark, to catch the bus to the high school. High school classes begin at 7:15 am. Sunrise today was at 7:20 am. Tomorrow morning with the time change, sunrise will be at 6:22 am and Heather and Sam will have light in the early morning. But on the other hand, for people like me who are not early birds, it is the end of the day that will affect us. Sunset today was at 5:31 pm with last light at 6 pm. Tomorrow sunset will be at 4:31 with last light at 5 pm. Ouch. This change is no fun for me. It means that my last time to be outside with Shadow has to happen before 4:30 pm. I find this difficult as I often have meetings or help out with after school transportation for the Goldpebbles and am not home until after 5 pm. Before I was warned by neighbors last year about the coyote that wanders through our neighborhood at sunset, I used to walk Shadow after dark. I do take him out after dark, but we no longer take long walks. I will adjust, but I don’t have to like it. Sunset will continue to get a bit earlier from now until the winter solstice. I love winter solstice because that is the turning point. It will begin getting lighter in the late afternoons, only a minute here and there, but I already look forward to that.

2021 Life Logs, Day 309: Friday Without Misfits
Date: Friday, November 5, 2021
Weather: Partly Sunny; High Temp 50, Low Temp 32 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Every Friday morning, I get a big box of organic fruits and vegetables delivered to my door from Misfits Market. The produce is sold at a reduced price as it is either too big, too small, or too ugly to be sold in grocery stores. But today, I didn’t get a delivery. I knew that was going to be the case as I somehow either did not receive or I deleted the email last Sunday that invited me to make my order for the week. I tried to get into my account to make the order, but I was only successful in cancelling this week’s order. I have been receiving my produce through Misfits for a year and a half and I really missed it today. I had to go to the grocery store to buy all of the staples that are usually delivered to me. I’ll make sure not to lose the order email for next week.

House cleaning won the bid for my time today, along with a little outside winter preparation. When I saw that the low tonight will be 32 degrees F, I knew it was time to disconnect the summer automatic garden watering system. That should have been simple, but of course, I could not get the timer unscrewed from the outdoor faucet. That required going to the basement to get tools to help me. Then , as along as I had the basement open, I carried some of my summer outside chairs into the basement. You know the drill. One thing leads to another.

Back inside, I worked on moving bedroom dressers away from the wall to clean behind them. In order to do this, I had to empty all the drawers so I could take them out. I couldn’t budge the dressers as they were and I couldn’t lift the drawers out when they were full of clothes. Clothes are heavier than I thought. So went another day in the life.

It is cold out tonight. Tomorrow night is forecast to be cold as well. The Goldpebbles are camping out this weekend. I sure hope they took lots of warm clothes. At least it is not raining.

2021 Life Logs, Day 308: Hopeless
Date: Thursday, November 4, 2021
Weather: Mix of Sun and Clouds; High Temp 52, Low Temp 41 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

So much for plans. We are only four days into November, and I have already abandoned my November 1st plan to divide my days equally between all of the jobs that I need to get done. Good idea, but it is not working for me. Today, I spent my entire day working on photo organization on my computer. I thought about house cleaning. I thought about all the yard work that needs to be done. But I just couldn’t get there. Shadow always gets his cut of the day, but other than that, I guess I’ll just plod along getting done what I can as I can.

Mid-afternoon Shadow and I headed to the library to pick up my next book club book and then we picked Jonah up and took him to his last Steel United soccer practice for the fall. The final game for that league is on Sunday in Manchester, NH. But between now and then, he, Sam, and Ollie will spend their weekend at an annual Scout camp-out called Turkey Shoot. I dropped Jonah at his practice and took Shadow to nearby Dowses Beach for a walk. We first walked on the pavement to get in our second half-mile of the day. Then we walked on the beach to make me happy. On the way back to pick up Jonah, we stopped in Osterville to check out a place called Gone Chocolate. I saw it on Google Maps when I was tracing the route to the beach. I loved the name and just had to stop. It is an ice cream shop that also sells its own homemade truffles. I bought seven—one for me, one for Jonah after practice, and then one for each of the Goldstones for after dinner. I’ll be anxious to hear their reviews.

2021 Life Logs, Day 307: Sticking to the Plan
Date: Wednesday, November 3, 2021
Weather: From Cool to Chilly, Sunny; High Temp 52, Low Temp 34 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Today was all about trying to stick to my plan of spending an hour on each of the major activities I am working on right now. But I got a late start. When I left Costco yesterday, I stopped by a Dunkin’ Donuts to get a decaf iced-coffee. I always check when I get the coffee to make sure the sticker on the side says decaf. It did. But when I took the first sip, it tasted really strong. I figured that it had just been sitting in the pot for a couple of hours, but still I couldn’t make myself drink all of it. And that was a good thing because by bedtime, I was wide awake. I tried to go to sleep, but I couldn’t. I don’t know how long it was before I fell asleep, but I was up and down all night. So, I slept in this morning. I really cannot drink regular coffee, especially not in the afternoon. I never have trouble falling asleep at night, so I am sure I was given caffeinated coffee by mistake.

Getting a late start meant I had to delete something from the plan. I eliminated doing yardwork today. The trip to the laundromat took two hours, but while things were in the washer and in the dryer I was able to run all sorts of errands in town. In all, I spent an hour on the computer organizing photos, an hour cleaning house, and an hour outside with Shadow. Maybe I’ll double up on the outside work tomorrow.

I talked to my sister who now lives just north of Charlotte, North Carolina tonight and she said it was really cold there, She gets cold very easily since she only weighs 78 pounds, so I thought she was exaggerating. When I got off the phone, I checked Weather Underground and found that, indeed, it is colder there than here. The low tonight there is forecast to be below freezing. Here it is forecast to be slightly above freezing. It has gone from cool to chilly this week. Today was the first day that a windbreaker left me still cool when walking Shadow. I guess I am going to have to break out the winter jackets.

2021 Life Logs, Day 306: I Get Around
Date: Tuesday, November 2, 2021
Weather: Sunny AM, Overcast with Sprinkles PM; High Temp 56, Low Temp 39 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Tonight I have been humming the old Beach Boys song, I Get Around.
“Round round get around, I get around, yeah
(Get around round round I get around, ooh-ooh) I get around
From town to town (get around round round I get around”

It was up early to take Shadow to the groomer. The groomer is about 20 minutes away, just before the Bourne Bridge that takes you off Cape. If I need to go off Cape for any reason, I try to combine that with Shadow’s grooming days, but I didn’t think that going to work today. As soon as I dropped off Shadow, my plan was to head back south to Falmouth to get blood drawn for a physical update with my primary care physician next Monday. Then I had to get northeast to Mashpee for a 9:45 am chiropractor appointment. My back is fine right now, but every six to eight weeks I go to the chiropractor to head off any misalignment issues. The hitch with this plan was that Quest Diagnostics where I had to have blood drawn had about twelve people in their small waiting. Oops. And they have a new process. If you are a walk in, you have to sign in on a computer and choose an appointment time. The first one available was at 10:20 am, so I had to drive 20 minutes to Mashpee and then 20 minutes back to the lab. It was only 10:30 am when all of this was done. If I went home, I knew I was going to have to drive back north to pick Shadow up in the afternoon. And since I really needed things from Costco and IKEA (located next to each other), I made a last-minute decision to head off Cape and pick Shadow up on my way home. All of that worked with one exception. Costco was out of the item I went to get. It was not a wasted trip as there were other items, but the German beer I need for my wine group gathering on Friday will have to come from somewhere else. The last time I was at Costco they had a variety of German beers packed as an Advent special . . . a case containing 24 different German beers, one for each day of December leading up to Christmas Day. Maybe next year.

Once back on the Cape, I picked Shadow up and headed to the grocery store. I needed a few items to make a big batch of my special chicken mineral broth. I got home, took Shadow for his daily mile walk in the sprinkling rain, got the broth on to burble all evening, and put in an hour on the computer organizing photos before I stopped to fix dinner. I am now watching election returns for the governor races in Virginia and New Jersey. Traveling around today, I got constant updates on elections happening around the country today and what was happening in Glasgow at the UN Climate Change Conference. And tonight, Heather called and confirmed that she was kept super busy today with announcements from the conference.

Tomorrow I will go back to yesterday’s plan of one hour of computer work, one hour of house cleaning, one hour walking and playing with Shadow, one hour plus yard work. And if there is time before a 3 pm Woodwell Climate Research Center webinar, I’ll make a trip to the laundromat. I have a couple of big items that need to be laundered in an extra big machine. One is the new king-sized duvet I bought at IKEA today.

2021 Life Logs, Day 305: Welcome November
Date: Monday, November 1, 2021
Weather: Beautiful, Sunny Day; High Temp 62, Low Temp 40 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

What a beautiful day! There were bright blue skies and sunshine all day. I divided my day between computer work, yard clean-up, dog walking, and house cleaning. I started a list of all the things that need to be done in the hope that completing a job and marking it off the list will give me the incentive to do more. This evening I took Jonah and Sam to music lessons and then came home to cook dinner. That was it for today.

I need to make one addition to yesterday’s log. Heather told me she was going to send me a photo of Sam dressed in his costume yesterday, but I never received it. I also did not hear updates on my friends who had surgeries last week. Then this morning I had no emails. My phone had accidentally been put on Do Not Disturb sometime yesterday and had received no calls, texts, or emails. The first text that came through when I changed the setting was the picture of Sam dressed as a Hobbit. I went back and updated yesterday’s log and am including his photo with this log as well.

2021 Life Logs, Day 304: Happy Halloween
Date: Sunday, October 31, 2021
Weather: Partly Sunny AM, Sunny PM; High Temp 64, Low Temp 51 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Happy Halloween . . . however you do or don’t celebrate Halloween. Evidently Halloween began as the ancient Celtic festival known as Samhain. This was a Pagan holiday observing the Feast of the Dead. Later it became the Western Christian feast of All Hallow’s Day and eventually became known as Halloween. In Mexico, it is celebrated as the eve of the Day of the Dead, or Día de los Muertos. This began as a belief that the souls of the dead return to visit their living family members on that day. Thus, all those scary ghosts. Before I ever had any idea that there was any reason for Halloween other than dressing in a costume and going Trick or Treating, I just enjoyed the frivolity of the holiday. Maybe that is because my maternal grandmother was a red-haired Scot through her mother, Rebecca Jane Campbell. My red-haired grandmother married my grandfather whose mother was another Scot, Sarah Catherine McGhee. I have been able to trace Sarah McGhee all the way back to Iain Dubh MacGregor, born in 1360 in Scotland. I don’t know where in Scotland he was born, but he died in 1415 in Stronmeloahan, Scotland. Tracing the McGhee line was fascinating. As I went back in time, the name changed in spelling to McGeehee, then to Mackghee, MackGehee, MacGahye, and then to MacGregor. Wait. Why MacGregor? There is a story of a feud that caused the name change from MacGregor to MacGahye to ‘protect’ the innocent. Long way around to saying Happy Halloween!

I went over to Heather and Jed’s mid-afternoon to see what Halloween mischief might be going on. Jonah and Ollie were deep into cleaning out their pumpkins and Heather was sorting out the pumpkin seeds to roast. The boys then started carving. The end results were quite impressive. I took over a shirt that I thought should be put in with their Halloween costumes to be used another year. But Heather decided immediately that she was going to be a ghost tonight and that shirt was going to be her costume . . . along with a white hair wig that I had back at my house. So, I took off to get the wig. Tonight, Heather was ghost, Jonah was Loki (a Marvel character), Ollie was a gorilla, and Jed was the gorilla’s big yellow banana. Sam was already at a Halloween party at his friend Robert’s. He went as a Hobbit. Heather, Jed, Jonah, and Ollie were going to an outside party at of one of Jonah’s friends at 5 o’clock. Ollie really wanted to Trick or Treat in his neighborhood since they did not get to last year because of Covid. He just wanted to see what Halloween in the new neighborhood was like. They decided that they would walk down their street when they came home from the party. I’ll have to check in with them tomorrow to see how that went.

I talked with Justin, Jo, Ziggy, and Coco today. Coco explained that they could not find a pumpkin to buy so they were going to try and turn a honeydew melon into a jack-o-lantern this afternoon. I checked just now on Facebook, and indeed they were successful. There were also photos on Facebook of them dressed in their costumes. They are certainly a creative crew. Ziggy’s costume for tonight was similar to the one he wore to school on Friday, but Coco went from being dressed all in black to a clown-costume.

She who loves Halloween was the only non-participant tonight. Instead of having me stay at Heather and Jed’s to pass out treats while they were at the party, Heather just put out a bowl of eyeballs and candy next to the street with a note telling Trick or Treaters to take one item on the honor system. I came home and enjoyed a quiet evening with Shadow. Only one family with young children Trick or Treating in this neighborhood tonight.