Day 199, Year 11: Happy Mother’s Day
Date: Sunday, May 8, 2016
Weather: Partly Cloudy with Some Rain, High mid-60’s F
Location: At Home in Evergreen Preserve, Lowell, MA
Happy Mother’s Day to all of the mothers that we know, but most especially to the mothers of our grandchildren–our daughter Heather and our daughter-in-law Jo. We saw both today, one in person and the other via Skype video, and in the same way, we saw our five grandchildren. It is such a wonder to see the children of your children growing up and we cherish every moment we are with them. Heather and gang arrived at about 8:30 last night and Ollie was fast asleep. But we did get to spend time some time to talk with Heather, Jed, Sam, and Jonah.
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| 160508 Day 199 Cape Cod, USA–Mother's Day with the Goldstones |
Sam recently came in second place in a Cape Cod poetry contest and they brought the newspaper article about that with a photo of the contestant winners. He is a very proud poet and we are very proud of him.
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| 160508 Day 199a Cape Cod, USA–Poet Sam |
This morning we had more time together. The three boys got up and immediately went in the living room to snuggle with Heather and wish her a Happy Mother’s Day. Then we went to the kitchen to make breakfast. Once we sat down at the table, I made a toast asking the boys to guess who I was describing—the most beautiful, intelligent, talented, clever, caring and loving mother in the whole wide world. The boys all responded in unison, “That’s momma.” And I could have made the same toast with Ziggy and Coco and they would have responded, “That’s mummy.” So here’s to a very special Happy Mother’s Day to Heather and Jo.
When we talked to Justin via Skype video this afternoon he gave us a tour of their new, but temporary, home. They had to move out of the home they have been renting since the fall of 2014. They are in the process of buying a home, but that is a long process in Puerto Rico, so thus the need for the interim home. It is in the town adjacent to their old home, so not too far away, and they seem to be settling in just fine. While we were talking, Ziggy drew a picture with chalk on the drive-way. At first it was just Oma. Then he added Ziggy and Coco, and after we hung up he added Windbird. I made Justin promise to take photos of the drawings and send them to me and he did, as you can see here.
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| 160508 Day 199b Cape Cod, USA–Ziggy's Pictures |
While all of this was happening, we were also Skyping back and forth with Lee and Lynda Kaufman. Today other friends, Jane and Roger Bonner, joined them and they were making an all-out assault to get our belongings packed up and off of Windbird. After packing yesterday, they had to go buy more plastic boxes, and then today around lunchtime, they had to go buy even more. It is amazing how little fits in a box. While they were packing up Windbird, we were packing the books off my niece’s bookshelf in the living room. I really didn’t think it was all that much, but in the end, it took six big boxes to pack up those few books. So I certainly understand why Lee and Lynda keep running out of boxes. We had to make some decisions today to leave lots of things on the boat. And we will be donating a lot of our food stuffs to Helping Hands. Since I had just stocked the boat for a couple of months in the Bahamas, we had more canned and boxed food than we would normally eat. Hopefully the folks at Helping Hands can take advantage of that. Lee emailed this evening that they now have 30 big plastic boxes in storage, plus lots of other smaller boxed items and miscellaneous things like fishing rods. We didn’t get a photo of today’s results, but yesterday this is way the storage unit looked.
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| 160508 Day 199c Cape Cod, USA–Windbird's New Storage Unit |
What they are seeing is that all of our things are not going to fit into a 5 x 8 trailer. They have already rented a storage unit to put the packed boxes in until time to load the trailer and we might need to keep that unit to hold the things that won’t fit in on this first trip. It looks like we might need to find a way to get more things here in another trip. There is so much stuff even with that we are giving away and leaving on the boat. But we have so many wonderful friends. We have already received an email from Alan and Helaine Kanegsberg offering to fly to Myrtle Beach and drive a one-way rental truck back with the additional gear if needed. Add that to the gargantuan efforts by Lee and Lynda and you can understand why we feel blessed with such wonderful friends. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Today wrapped up the Food Revolution Summit I have been listening to each day for the past week. The Summit presented 3 one hour-long interviews each day and each interview was jam-packed with information on what we should be eating and doing to keep ourselves healthy. Every one of the people interviewed is regarded as the best in their field. All of those people and all of the scientific research findings that were presented came up with the same recommendation that author Michael Pollan came up with back in 2008. I don’t want to sound like a broken record as I have quoted him over and over, but those famous words are worth repeating. “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” These seven words are withstanding the scrutiny of time and research. I’m working on a little summary of what I gained from the Summit and will share that with you in tomorrow night’s log.
