Day 82, Year 7: Living Vicariously
Date: Sunday, January 29, 2012
Weather: More Sunshine, High in the Upper 30’s
Location: Brewer Fiddler’s Cove Marina, N Falmouth, MA
I spent much of my evening reading blogs of friends who are out there living the life. Our friends Jon and Heather on Sailing Vessel Evergreen stopped here on their way south in late October. After installing a new engine in Miami, they are now in the Exumas in the Bahamas, headed for the Pacific. As I read their blog entries about diving and snorkeling, I felt myself being pulled into the sea. For the first time in six years, I was seeing the world through someone else’s eyes instead of my own. But living vicariously isn’t so bad. I’ve started learning about a place we had never planned to sail to but a place that now might be accessible to us. It is going to be three years before we can stray very far away, but we’ll study the Bahamas carefully to see just where we could travel and still get back to Boston for check-ups every three months. Probably not next winter, but possibly the winter of 2013-14 could be spent there. And then I went on to read our friend Patsy Decker’s blog about her birding trip to Oaxaca, Mexico. She’s seeing the birds, not us, but through her blog entries, I felt I was right there with her. And where she, as an experienced birder, sees twenty birds, I would probably only have seen three or four. So through Patsy’s blog, I am learning more about our fine feathered friends that I love so much.
This morning Mark and I went to Heather and Jed’s to take our morning walk. It was very windy here in the cove, and I thought there might be less wind inland. Wrong. But it was a good choice for a walk. Jonah went with us and we walked down to the cranberry bogs. There were lots of water birds—Canadian geese, mallard ducks, sea gulls, and trumpeter swans. The bogs are currently partially flooded, so these guys were floating on a feast. Cranberries left behind after the fall harvest are floating on the water in abundance and the birds are helping themselves. Mark also saw a muskrat swimming in the water. We then came back to H & J’s and I played in the backyard with the boys while Heather and Jed put the second coat of paint on the bedroom walls. Sam and Jonah were digging in the garden and I was munching on arugula left-over from the summer and wild land cress that is a pesky weed in the summer. It has been such a mild winter that some of the lettuce from summer is still edible. Unbelievable. Then Mark and I took the boys to the playground at the local elementary school. I pulled Jonah in the wagon and Sam rode his wooden balance bike. It has no pedals as he uses his legs and feet for propulsion, but he can fly on it. By the time we got home, the second coat of paint was on and it was time for lunch. In the afternoon we worked on getting new curtains hemmed, but that job got only partially completed. Slowly during the week we will all pitch in to get furniture moved from one room to the other . . . unless Heather decides she wants to paint the other bedroom before moving their furniture in. I have a feeling that might end up being the plan, so we’ll have to see how much we can get done before Mark and I leave for the Carolinas next weekend. Heather and Jed make a great paint team and don’t need Mark and I to help with the painting. But they need someone to watch the boys so they can get the work done and that is what grandparents do best. We ended the day by going to watch the boys ice skate at the arena. Jonah went out but came back off the ice very quickly. There are so many kids and almost all of them bigger than he is, so I think it is just a bit overwhelming. But Sam had a good time and is getting better and better at skating without the help of a milk crate.
Mark goes to Boston tomorrow for more medical appointments, but I will stay here and do my granny nanny thing with Sam and Jonah. And maybe I can actually get those curtains hemmed.
