Day 332, Year 8: Oh, My . . . It’s October
Date: Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Weather: Sunny Day with Daytime Temp in the Upper-60’s F
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
It was a bit of a shock this morning to realize that it is the first of October. We have only two weeks until we leave here. We’re not ready, but then you never are. So we celebrated the first day of October by doing a little bit of everything to get us closer to being ready to leave. We started out by going to the chiropractor. Both Mark and I have been going two times a week for the past two weeks to get ourselves in shipshape for the sail south. Actually, I made the appointment for myself as a recommendation from the Spine Clinic at Mass General. Dr. Cha told me to keep doing whatever I had been doing to solve the issue of the pinched nerve in my neck. And what I had been doing was going to an Activator-type chiropractor. I have had no pain since leaving South Carolina in the spring, but I thought I should at least meet the doctor here in case I might need him next spring. I took Mark along to see if he could help with the problems Mark has been having with pain in his neck (note I didn’t say he is a pain in the neck). We’ll go one more time on Thursday and then hope everything stays in place until we get back here next spring.
Next we went to Heather and Jed’s to take care of Ollie. We were greeted with wonderful news. I suppose as a birthday present to his mother, Ollie slept better last night than he has for months. So Heather actually got some sleep. Hurray!!! Ollie still has his cold, but he was feeling much better today. Heather had to go to Boston to do her first TV taping of a science piece for a program called Greater Boston. It is my understanding that she will go to Boston every Tuesday to tape a weekly piece that will be aired on Friday evenings. But I could have that wrong. Whatever, she looked great and felt great and was on her way. Mark and I played with Ollie until almost noon and when he looked like he was ready for a nap, we put him in the car and headed to Hyannis. I needed to do grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s, fabric shopping at JoAnn Fabrics, odds and ends shopping at Bed, Bath & Beyond, pick up a pair of soccer shoes for Sam at a sports store, and check the Hyannis West Marine for a piece of clothing. Ollie slept through all of his and only opened his eyes as we were leaving Hyannis. So Ollie had a great nap, but unfortunately the rest of the trip was not a total success. We started out with a very expensive mishap. When Mark put Ollie in the car, he put his beloved Nexus 7 tablet on the top of the car along with some papers and a pair of soccer shoes we were returning. I started to remind him to get the things, but as I was getting in the car, I was sure I saw him reach for them. So I said nothing. A few minutes later when we got on the highway, I saw things flying at the car behind us. I immediately knew it was the tablet, papers, and shoes. We pulled off the road and the car behind us stopped blocking traffic. The driver was a woman who jumped out and started gathering the items on the road. Mark was there to help her, but when he returned to the car, it was obvious that the tablet was a goner. He was able to put it back together and it turned on, but the screen is broken and the image looks a bit like a modern art painting. Mark is way too attached to this electronic device, so tonight he is having a bit of withdrawal. But we did recover the shoes and the papers. So not all was lost. The shopping in Hyannis was also not so successful. As always, I should have known better. The downside of living on the Cape is that if you need something, you really have to travel off the Cape to find it or order it online. So tonight I am searching the internet to find the items I need because they were not in Hyannis.
We got back to Heather and Jed’s just as Jed and Jonah were getting off the bus from Woods Hole. Jed left work early so that he could take over with Ollie as Mark had a 3 pm doctor’s appointment. This was a wellness check with the ever-vigilant cardiologist who helped diagnose Mark’s colon cancer. At the same time, this Dr. Christman discovered that Mark has a bicuspid aortic valve. Most of us have three cusps or leaflets in the aortic valve, but Mark has only two. This requires bi-yearly checking to make sure everything is okay. So he visits Dr. Christman when we arrive here in May and again in October before we leave. Dr. Christman works with Mark’s oncologist so that when Mark gets a CT scan at Mass General, they also check the thickness of the aortic valve and send that info to Dr. Christman. If the valve gets too thin, then something needs to be done. But until then, Mark has no restrictions—just lots of doctor appointments.
After the appointment we went to our storage unit and worked for about an hour. We had things in the car that needed to put in storage, so while we were there we went through some boxes and took away enough stuff to fill the back of the car. This stuff will go to the Swap Shop at the town dump and hopefully find a new home. Our hope is to do this each time we go to the storage unit. Eventually we will get rid of enough stuff to allow us to move into an even smaller unit. That won’t happen this year, but maybe next.
Little by little, we are getting ready for the sail south. We are gathering the things we need and searching through storage for things that we will take to Justin and Jo in Puerto Rico. Tomorrow is a consulting work day for Mark and my day to watch Ollie while Heather tackles major house cleaning projects. The weather is just gorgeous this week. The daytime temperature is supposed to be in the mid-70’s tomorrow, so maybe we’ll have to bring the house cleaning projects outside!
