Life After Windbird, Day 54: Home Alone
Date: Wednesday, October 5, 2016
Weather: Mix of Sun and Clouds, High of a Chilly 60 degrees F
Location: Back Home at The Studio, Falmouth, MA
On Sunday, it will be one month since we lost Mark. Since then I have been surrounded by love from visiting family—Justin, Jo, Ziggy, and Coco, then Mark’s family, and then my nieces and nephews. We had that glorious day with friends and family out on the water when we sent Mark’s ashes out to sea and last night New Hampshire Public Radio had an absolutely beautiful memorial service to celebrate Mark’s life at the Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, New Hampshire. And now I am at home alone. But so far, so good. I think I am truly exhausted and need to just sit at home alone and rest for a few days. But having just written the word ‘exhausted’, I must tell you a funny story. Yesterday I got a text from very good friend Detta Porat, aka Pollyanna, checking on how I was doing. She wrote, “I know you have been busy with family and you must be sexhausted.” I read that and howled with laughter knowing that Pollyanna had been deceived by spellcheck. She had typed ‘exhausted’ but an ‘s’ had been added to the front of the word. When Detta realized what she had written, she wrote another text saying that she thought Mark would approve of her new word. That brought another smile. But however you spell it, I must admit that I am tired. My voice is even cracking. Sure hope I’m not getting sick. I don’t think so because I feel fine, but I’m going to go to bed a little earlier tonight and see if that helps
But I can’t sign off and go to bed without writing a little about my day. I had breakfast with Sam and Dawn and we talked boats and weather. They were flying back to Charleston, South Carolina, today to do the last preparation of Windbird before Matthew hits there this weekend. On Monday of this week Windbird was hauled and put on the hard for her refit in Charleston. Unfortunately for Sam and Dawn, that work will be delayed due to this storm. They had hoped to have the boat back in Little River and be living aboard full-time by the end of the month, but that now looks very unlikely. After breakfast, I headed south. I made a stop in Boston and it took much longer than usual as traffic at 11 am in the morning in the city was unbelievably bad. After battling the traffic for over an hour, I traveled on to IKEA. I made the stop there to find a shelf that will fit under the dining room window. I want to put the pots of plants that are on the deck on that shelf to grow things inside during the winter. I found lots of great things, but the shelf I went after was not one of them. I made a final stop at the bank here in Falmouth, and by the time I got home, it was almost 5 o’clock. I drove over to see Heather and congratulate her for doing such a nice job speaking about her father last night and then came home and had a nice long talk with friends Ed and Lynne. Heather, Jed, and the Goldpebbles are headed to Maine this weekend, so I am having them over for dinner tomorrow night so I get to visit with them before they leave. Then on Friday, I really will be home alone. Maybe I’ll sleep for three days!
