2021 Life Logs, Day 173: Last Day of School
Date: Tuesday, June 22, 2021
Weather: Some Sun, Some Clouds, Some Rain; High 79, Low 56 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Today was the last day of the 2020-2021 school year here in Falmouth and the beginning of the ninth year of Camp Oma. During the first summer of Camp Oma in 2013, it was only Sam and Jonah as Ollie was too young. But every summer since then, Camp Oma has adapted to meet the needs of the Goldpebbles. Once Ollie was four, all three boys could basically do the same things with me, but starting last year, we needed to adapt to accommodate a teenager. This year, like last summer, the boys will be at home in the mornings, and I’ll pick them up at noon and we’ll go from there. It has been fascinating to me to watch our summer activities change depending on the ages of the boys, and last summer how we had to adapt due to Covid. The adventure began today and we’ll see how it goes forward.

I have picked Ollie up at the end of the school day all of this year. Mr. Tom walks the kids from the school across Route 28 to waiting parents and grandparents. Ollie has really enjoyed his time with Mr. Tom and at the end of the today’s mid-day Early Release, they took the time to let me get a photo of them. Then we were on to the beach. Sam went to one beach with his friend Robert while Ollie and I headed to Menauhant Beach. Just as we arrived at the beach, it started sprinkling rain and most people who were there left. But Ollie and didn’t let a few drops of rain stop the fun. He played happily digging in the sand for about an hour before Jonah and Jed arrived. Then Jonah and Ollie frolicked in the water, diving like dolphins, riding the surf on their body boards, and playing beach soccer with Jed. We had some sun, some totally overcast times, and some sprinkles. But mostly we had summer fun.

Since Jed could take the boys home, I headed home to play ball with Shadow before I left him again. Jane and Bruce Woodin had invited me over for dinner before we went to the opening night of the College Light Opera Guild’s first performance of the year. Thanks to another friend, Olga Mitchell, we had free tickets for The Pirates of Penzance. There was a late decision to have live performances this summer. But despite that, there was an almost full house for opening night. This was the third time I have seen this Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera in the last thirty years and it was by far the best I have seen. The cast of college ‘stars’ were so talented and their enthusiasm for performing in front of a live audience was contagious. It was so much fun.

201 Life Logs, Day 172: Happy Birthday to Jo
Date: Monday, June 21, 2021
Weather: Overcast and Misty; High 76, Low 65 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

It was an overcast and sometimes misty first full day of summer here in New England and I heard from my daughter-in-law Jo that it was a freezing and wet day in England. But regardless of the weather, it was Jo’s birthday, and she was enjoying it despite the weather. So, Happy Birthday, Jo!

When I went to pick Ollie up from school this afternoon, I was dressed all in white. Ollie asked me if I was going to a funeral. I replied that actually I was going to a celebration of summer where everyone was requested to wear white, but it was an interesting moment as I realized my nine-year old grandson is much more multi-cultural in his thinking that I am. In other cultures, white is the color of mourning. But I explained to him that I in my experience, black had been the color of mourning. It was an interesting conversation, but then he said that if I was going to the summer celebration, I needed to stop at the car wash on the way to taking him home and have my white car cleaned for the occasion. So. we did. I then took him home and headed to the Cape Cod Winery.

Eileen and Billy Sullivan are members of my Newcomers Wine Group who hosted this evening’s ‘summer, wear white’ event to celebrate the opening of the summer season at the Cape Cod Winery. It was a fabulous gathering and all of us that attended were giving thanks to Eileen and Billy. I sat with other members of my wine group and we caught up with what everyone has been doing since our last gathering in late fall. It was a fun evening and great transition into summer.

2021 Life Logs, Day 171: Happy Father’s Day and Happy Summer
Date: Sunday, June 20, 2021
Weather: Mostly Sunny; High 79, Low 65 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Happy Father’s Day to all, especially to my two favorite fathers, Justin and Jed. I spent the late afternoon and evening with Jed and talked to Justin, Ziggy, and Coco via Skype. They are all still in quarantine at Jo’s parents’ home in England, but they managed to have a lovely day at home. And happy summer on this longest day of the year. Summer solstice happens officially at 11:32 tonight, making today the official first day of summer 2021. But in my mind, tomorrow will be the first full day of summer since there will only be 28 minutes of it today. I love summer and I love the long hours of sunlight. But I prefer to celebrate the winter solstice as the days start getting longer from that day onward. Starting tomorrow, our days will get just a wee bit shorter each day. I love long days of sunshine.

Heather, Jed, and boys came over late in the afternoon for some fun out on the water. Sam has decided that he loves sailing after only two times out in the sailing dinghy. He is already lobbying for a bigger boat. At some point, Sam joined Ollie and Jonah on the Maui mat while Heather sailed for a bit. It was another afternoon of water fun in the Eel River. Heather and boys allowed Jed to sit on the shore and read as a Father’s Day gift, but he landed in the water by accident as he was helping get all the boats in at the end of the day. I spent most of my time cooking dinner for all and Shadow had a great time running from the dock back to the cottage to check on what I was doing.

2021 Life Logs, Day 170: Dog Training, Garden, Basement
Date: Saturday, June 19, 2021
Weather: Mix of Sun and Clouds; High 76, Low 63 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

The good news is that a good night’s sleep solved the problem of my achy body. I guess climbing and crawling on concrete is harder than I thought. But it is strange. I felt like I worked harder today, but no achy body. Today I was lifting heavy bags of compost in the garden and lifting heavy storage bins in the basement and putting them back up on the shelf. At the end of the day, I have a slightly more well-behaved dog, a mostly planted garden, and a basement that is almost back to normal. Life is good.

2021 Life Logs, Day 169: Insulation Job Completed
Date: Friday, June 18, 2021
Weather: Sunny; High 76, Low 64 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

The cottage is now well insulated and the shelf in the basement is freshly painted and ready to have all those storage containers returned. I’ll work on reorganizing the basement tomorrow after I do some gardening. But I can’t do that until I go to my last private lesson with Shadow at 10:30 in the morning. It will be a busy day, but only if I feel better than I do tonight. For whatever reason, I am totally exhausted and every muscle in the body aches. Maybe it was just the climbing I did to paint the three to four-foot shelf in the basement. To get into the corners, I had to climb a ladder and crawl on my knees on the shelf. So that is probably the issue. But I have taken an attached tick off me every other day this week. They all looked like common wood ticks to me, but if a good night’s sleep doesn’t make me feel considerably better, I’ll make an appointment to be checked for Lyme.

2021 Life Logs, Day 168: Insulate2Save Rocks
Date: Thursday, June 17, 2021
Weather: Sunny; High 75, Low 55 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Insulate2Save arrived this morning to start work on insulating the cottage. What an impressive amount of work they accomplished today. They will be back tomorrow to finish, but honestly, I was amazed with their expertise and friendly and caring service. They were equally amazed that this cottage built in 1964 had ZERO insulation in the walls. From their experience, most homes of this age have some insulation in the walls, but the fact that this one did not made the blow-in insulation process easier and more efficient. Today they put fiberglass batting insulation between each of the basement sills, insulated, weather stripped, and added a sweep to the door leading from the bulkhead into the basement, weather stripped and added a sweep to the back door, installed vents in the soffit, vented the bathroom fan through the roof instead of having it run the entire length of the house to vent out the side, and completed the job of blowing the insulation into the walls. Tomorrow they will blow 11-inches of R-40 cellulose into the attic.

The process of blowing insulation into the outside walls was interesting. They turned one wooden shingle between every stud sideways, drilled what looked like a 3-inch diameter hole in each space, and then blew the cellulose insulation in to fill the space from top to bottom between each stud. Then they sealed the hole, turned each shingle back in place, and you can’t tell they did a thing. But I watched and they did. Peter Baranowski was next door cleaning the basement in Shirley’s home and installing a new dehumidifier. So, Shadow and I visited with Karen and the aunties for a bit and then Karen and I sat in the side yard and talked and watched the work.

I did not know that cellulose is “green”, but I certainly did know that the alternative, fiberglass, is not. Cellulose is 80% recycled newsprint that is chemically treated with what are supposed to be non-toxic borate compounds that resist fire, insects, and mold. I read that insulating a 1500 square foot house with cellulose will recycle as much newspaper as an individual will consume in 40 years. That doesn’t mean as much these days as it once did since so many people read their news online. But CIMA, the Cellulose Insulation Manufacturers Association, claims that if all new homes were insulated with cellulose, it would recycle 3.2 million tons of newsprint each year. At this point, only about 10% of new homes are using cellulose, so there is lots of room to grow ‘greener.”

The cost of the work done today and tomorrow is $5,330, but with program incentives for rental homes the cost to the customer is ZERO. If you own your home, you pay 10% to 25% depending on your income. The Mass Save program is funded by the energy efficiency charge on all customer’s gas and electric bills. I, therefore, want to thank everyone in Massachusetts for footing the bill. My winter heating bills should be significantly less, but the most important thing is the amount of nonrenewable energy that will be saved. And this is in the best interest of all of us.

2021 Life Logs, Day 167: Finally, a Productive Day
Date: Wednesday, June 16, 2021
Weather: Partly Sunny; High 74, Low 56 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

Maybe it was the sunshine, but for whatever reason, I finally had a productive day. The attic, the basement, and the perimeter of the cottage outside is ready for workers tomorrow. The insulation process will begin sometime between 7:30 and 9 am, go all day tomorrow, and all day on Friday. The weather looks good for doing the insulation in the outside walls. They have to drill holes in the siding up high and about halfway down and somehow inject foam insulation—down low first, and then up high. Cellulose insulation will be blown into the attic and I’m not exactly sure what they are doing in the basement. But whatever it is, it will be better than it is now.

Shadow had his last day school class today in the introductory training package with The Reliable Dog and I have my last private lesson on Saturday. Shadow is still no where near ‘trained’, so I will probably continue with some group lessons. I guess I expected more, maybe a miracle, but he is still his exuberant self. But he is more responsive and does now sit and stay. Coming when called is another thing. He comes if treats are involved, so I will continue with lots of treats.

Justin, Jo, Ziggy, and Coco arrived at Heathrow today and will spend the next month in England with Jo’s family.

They do have to quarantine for a period of time before they can visit with Jo’s sister and her family, but they can enjoy that quarantine period with Jo’s parents. Their garden is in full bloom and looks like paradise, so they have a wonderful place to quarantine.

2021 Life Logs, Day 166: Lost Day
Date: Tuesday, June 15, 2021
Weather: Rainy, Mid-day Deluge; High 75, Low 58 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

In between taking Shadow to day school training and picking him up, I didn’t get a lot accomplished. It was mostly a lost day. I spent most of my morning catching on up bill pay and tracking down the $1700 Honda owes me for drive shaft replacements on my Fit that are part of a recall. I did a little work in the basement, did a laundry at Heather and Jed’s, and while eating lunch, I watched last night’s Stephen Colbert show. I record it every night, but don’t often watch. If I do watch the recordings, I just watch the opening monologue. But last night’s show was special. I read about it in the NYT’s ‘The Morning’ online and decided to watch the whole show. It was the first show with a live audience in fifteen months . . . since the Covid lockdown in March of 2020. The opening of the show was so uplifting, Dana Carvey’s impersonation of President Biden was very funny, and Jon Baptiste’s music was fantastic. But the main guest, Jon Stewart, was a disaster. He ranted on and on about how it is obvious that coronavirus came from the lab in Wuhan. When Colbert asked him if he was working for Senator Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, he just went right on. Colbert handled it nicely, but how much damage was done? I did not find it funny. I’ll stick to watching just the monologue from now on.

2021 Life Logs, Day 165: Scattered
Date: Monday, June 14, 2021
Weather: Mix of Sun and Clouds, Drops of Rain; High 71, Low 62 degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

My day was scattered, a little like my brain these days. Today’s field trip was postponed until Friday. Then members of our Dining-in group that were signed up for the trip decided to go tomorrow. The weather forecast changed, and tomorrow’s trip was out. Then I discovered that the insulation work on the cottage is going to be done on Thursday and Friday, not Wednesday and Thursday. So, I cannot go on the official Friday rain date trip either. We all bought our tickets ahead of time, but they are good until October. So sometime between now and then, I will get to the topiary garden.

Otherwise, I did a little of this and a little of that. Peter Baranowski came over to help me get a wooden twin bed frame, headboard, and footboard out of the attic. It was up there when I moved here, but I had forgotten about it until now. The insulation folks want nothing stored in the attic when they arrive to work. And I did get some gardening done. To the basement tomorrow.

2021 Life Logs, Day 164: Day Trip to Newburyport
Date: Sunday, June 13, 2021
Weather: Beautiful Day; High 76, Low 57 Degrees F (80’s in Newburyport)
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA

My dear friend Detta Porat’s birthday is the first of June. For the past few years I have missed wishing her a happy birthday in a timely manner. This year I was determined not to miss her birthday, but our schedules didn’t allow us to get together until today. There are four of us who, prior to Covid, got together periodically. Cheryl Dolin lives in Concord, NH, Detta lives in Greenland, NH near Portsmouth, Leslie Kole lives in Rye, NH near Portsmouth, and I am down here on Cape Cod. Based on a recommendation from a wine group friend, I suggested that we meet at the Tuscan Grill in Newburyport. It was about an hour’s drive for each of them and two hours for me, but I was fine with that. What a great recommendation. It was a lovely spot to meet up for the first time in over a year.

I returned around 5 pm and found both of the Goldstone’s vehicles in my driveway. I heard voices down by the water and headed that way. Ollie and Jonah were out in the water on the Maui mat, Sam was out in kayak, Jed was out in the kids’ Optimist sailing dinghy, and Heather and Shadow were serving as home base on the dock with another kayak ready to go in case anyone needed assistance. What fun they were all having!

Tomorrow I have to make sure the basement and attic are ready for the team coming on Wednesday and Thursday to install insulation. I was scheduled to go on a Newcomers field trip to a topiary garden in Rhode Island tomorrow, but it was rescheduled due to a rainy forecast. I am now going with a small group on Tuesday and the others are going on Friday. Looks like Friday is going to be gardening day. A full week ahead.