We were lucky with the storm here. Only 6-8 inches of snow (I didn't go out to measure it). It was over by 3pm and the road and my driveway plowed and clear by 4 pm. luckily the temp was and still is above freezing. About 35 degrees on my front porch right now. I'm ready for the cottage on the lake.
Where did everything go? I wondered that in the same way I wondered where mummy went when I got lost in Woolworth's that time as a kid, and felt completely abandoned and absolute panic. It only lasted a minute while I raced around hoping against hope - and there she was in the back somewhere. I'll remember the creaky wooden floorboards in that horrible, horrible store forever.
I muse sometimes which to me means walk through my thoughts and memories like a tourist at NASA gawking at all the stuff. I remember getting caught taking some candy from an opened bag in the supermarket and getting grabbed by an angry employee who escorted me out. I was shaking when I walked back to the car where dad was waiting and just slipped into the back seat. "Is she nearly done?" he asked impatiently. I mumbled something and sat low hoping the mean man wouldn't see me. Two decades later, Dianne and I sometimes went to that plaza which had a pizza place in the back and we would share a pizza and a bottle of rose wine.
My third floor window in the attic in the house I grew up in. That small room had it's own staircase and a peaked roof. The small window faced west and I spent hours and hours looking out of it dreaming. I'm pretty sure my main dream landscape fifty years later is from my ideas about what the city was like then. The way it extends along the lake doesn't fit with reality but it fits neatly into what I imagined back then.
"Show me." That's what I say when I have a thought with questions around it. That is, unless I'm busy running uphill away from the tsunami. I hate that I couldn't save her. I remember feeling a deep disappointment that this was all there is. This strange girl in this basement apartment in a depressing world of junior clerk in an awful, brooding sick green building run by people that lined the desks up in rows where the finance manager had a desk at the front facing all the others as though school never ended except now I got paid enough to live on in a basement apartment.
How that evolved into the meaningful life it did has a lot more to do with accepting what life was and getting used to things, than it did with any spiritual breakthroughs. I've always been hugely disappointed by what life is like in equal measure with gratitude and fear. That was our family motto - Dianne and I - 'growth and fear'.
The best condition for a human being is to feel lucky in their lot, I'm sure of it. No particulars required; just meet that condition. I've known that feeling many times and in quite different places and circumstances. I'm one of those people that looks around once in a while and takes things in. No idea why. I remember seeing Ferris Bueller years later and when he looked into the camera and said, "Life goes by pretty fast. If you don't look around once in a while, you could miss it." Right in the theatre I answered "you are so right".
I think survivors may go through this trying to stitch up the ripped off parts with thoughts and memories. Like feeling twinges of pain in a long lost limb that isn't there anymore. An exercise steeped in the word 'poignant'. The dictionary misses the point on that word. It isn't sorrow or misery. It's that delicate balance point between love and pain in a similar way biting into the dark chocolate to release the cognac inside is.
My wife never lived unmarried or without me. She did lose the ability to 'know' that. Only I live unmarried and without her. I have to learn how to live in that with the goal of living well. That is a proper use of the word poignant.
There is a balance my rational mind can reach which is that there are about as many good things as there are bad things. There are tons of truly great people walking around right now just as there are truly bad people. There are as many beautiful scenes happening and inspiring events going on as there are miserable things going on.
I get the local paper in our mid sized city because I'm supporting journalism. I've been a subscriber for 11 years and I've actually started reading it. It's full of local stories of people helping each other or giving or saving someone just as it is full of break ins and even a serial killer in our city.
Laying here in the hammock, I think about the word 'breakthrough' and after wondering what that means, I settle on 'where the boundaries of fear meet opportunity'. You have to be at the boundary of a thing to break through. You don't break through from the middle and you don't break through when nothing's happening. You need an opportunity.
Very little of any of this was like that. In so many ways, it was like losing more things in life before seeing any new ones added. The tiny singularity I became was a serious shield. The depression grip and spiritual torment were familiar live-ins for over a decade. The truths of the horrors lost their relevancy and revealed a bitter and lonely man. It was transitions within transitions that began other transitions where there never was any boundary so much as a state.
When the hero finally did leave her behind and rode off into the sunset alone, he wasn't happy about any of it. How in heavens name did I ever not always know that? Because I learn every day and I live in a world where nobody wants to know. The hero rides off into the sunset with his squeeze. End and close book. Nobody wants to know about their 401k or their real lives.
And, yet, that's how it actually was. No writer or director. No proper storyline. Which wasn't a problem going through life, face pressed against the window, tongues hanging out, living forever. I spent my life suspending disbelief while certain I wasn't. I spent my life in a world I became deeply attached to, that became so real, I still sit here sometimes by the side of the road where the car went over the cliff, stitching together thoughts and memories. That car took ten years to veer off that road and go over that cliff and the whole time, there wasn't a thing I could do.
I'm the survivor of a catastrophe, and that's one of the things we do afterwards. Sit and stitch.
I'm also blessed with knowing I live in an ineffable universe. Unlike the mangled truths of the self aware living together, physics is always exquisite and elegant in revealing the language and the nuts and bolts of what God actually made. Unlike the jealous and needy ones of human imagination, the universe that's really here is a masterwork of coherence, universality, redundance, and beauty.
Make the rock get up and dance and tell jokes. Don't know how? This universe does. One minute you're rubbing two sticks together and the next you're Henny Youngman starting out in Vaudeville and after playing some violin you look at the audience and say, "Take my wife." "Please." And you wait.
Or take the greatest advancement in mankind. Sports. The little darlings finally stopped needing to kill each other to get their ya-ya's out and instead beat each other up getting pieces of leather into a fishing net or over some sticks.
Like all things, it depends on how we look at them. Which takes me back to Pollyanna who said a mouthful when she said "If you look for the good in people you will surely find it. And if you look for the bad in people you will surely find it."
To which Frank Drebin replied, "That's right. And stop calling me Shirley." (did you see that coming bhv?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ9X2I3X6UQ
A very young Jim Carrey in his first appearance on the Johnny Carson show in 1983.
So that’s you hanging out on the hammock musing, Wolf. Mind if I take the other one and muse along with you. Heard you talking about the best condition to be in is to feel lucky in one’s lot. Strange, I’ve never thought about luck. Though I suppose I am lucky. I am lucky, I know, not to be a refugee carrying her dying child on a road to the unknown to get away from war. I was lucky, I suppose, to be able to care for my love through to the end and still survive, although I am still stitching the wounds that continue to bleed some and giving myself psychic physical therapy to aid the healing process. Last night I hosted a corned beef and cabbage dinner for eight guests. (easiest dinner ever, just peel carrots and potatoes slice cabbage and put everything in a crockpot.) This meal was more boisterous and raucous than I had anticipated and full of laughter. Therapy for the day a success.
But what I think of more than luck, or feeling lucky, is feeling joy and experiencing laughter. I have a picture of my love on a desk that I need to pass each time I walk through. In it she is laughing and her eyes are twinkling. She is seated on a bench overlooking a mountain looking at the camera, looking at me. I can’t help but smile back at her when I go past her picture. I don’t laugh a lot anymore. But laugh? Last night I laughed.
If I can laugh and experience joy, then I will be lucky. But I probably won’t notice I’m lucky. Thanks, Wolf. You always make me think.
I've been out in the ravine deadheading the native plants that filled the area with last year's rains. Been working at it for more than a year now - filling the big trash bin each week. Clearing out the dead stuff to limit fire danger, but keeping the base of the plants so the roots will slow erosion. It is quite the project. But expends calories, keeps me out of the bars as they used to say, gives me quiet time for the mind to go blank. Now I am sitting at the end of the dock dabbling my feet in the water. Sipping a glass of wine. Listening to the slight chirp of the hammocks as Wolf and Lindylou slowly sway. This is peaceful.here. Debating what kind of imaginary ice cream to find in the freezer. Might be able to entice them to come sit on the porch and have a wafflecone.
Just to be cheeky, I'll change that to 'is to feel joy in one's lot'. Or perhaps for the more reserved, 'satisfied with one's lot'.
Make mine Swiss Mocha. It should help me achieve the creamy oneness with the universe I seek. Well. Seek, in terms of relaxing in a hammock although I have lazer focused intentions. Actually, one of those wafflecones sounds good.
I know this lollygagging around seems lazy, but this isn't nearly my best work. The most important thing I'm doing is waiting for the next Falcon Heavy launch. Our people just put a red convertible into space and that thing is almost certain to be out there orbiting the sun hundreds of millions of years from now. He's hoping it will be discovered by aliens and since the universe is the same everywhere and this one speck in it has life on it that is whacko - it's completely logical that life elsewhere is just other bunches of yahoos
[The alien debriefing from the findings is being discussed]
Alien 1: We found a land transportation vehicle orbiting the star Alien 2: A what? What's the purpose of that? Alien 1: We don't know. It was intentially inserted into a stable orbit. Alien 3: Was it perhaps a symbol of some kind? Alien 1: No sir. The vehicle had been used on land. Alien 2: Anything else? Alien 1: Yes. There was a plastic figure in a space suit seated at the controls. Alien 3: An android? Alien 1: No sir. Just a plastic figure. There's more. Alien 2: Yes? Alien 1: On top of the control panel there was a much smaller vehile with a smaller figure. Alien 3: What could this mean? Alien 1: We think it might be funny, sir. A joke. Alien 3: I don't understand. Alien 1: It could be a joke on whoever finds it. It could be the joke's on us. Alien 2: That's funny!
[They all laughed because they understood funny. After all, they were made of the same stuff. Everything was. Nobody had to tell them what a stable orbit was or explain the second law of thermodynamics. They knew it was all made by the same creator.]
....
[The next time cycle dusk news report on the alien home planet]
"Explorers recently discovered evidence of life on another planet, and apparently they had a sense of humor. What they found was a used car orbiting that star. It was being driven by a plastic dummy in a space suit. On the dashboard was a tiny car with a tiny dummy in it and on the display, the scientists deciphered, were the words 'don't panic'.
Analysis indicates the artifact is some 380 million years old and that it had no instrumentation or equipment that could possibly serve any useful purpose out in space. They conclude that it could only have been a joke on whoever found it, making it clear the aliens had a sense of humor, as well as making it this quadrant's oldest joke.
In other news, the spring equinox is coming up. Don't forget to set your oomplas forward one doowop on Sunday when you emerge from your nutreant pools.
Sounds like it's summer here. Certainly better than the weather we're having. Winter is refusing to leave - our wind chill for tonight & tomorrow morning is going to feel like -13 F. I think I'll spend a bit of time here. I'll sit on a lawn chair & join Wolf & lindyloo as they enjoy the hammocks. Wolf, I enjoyed youtube with Jim Carrey - he was so young - but then again it was 35 years ago! Such a long time ago....1983 - my kids were 6 & 4 - ah, good times...
Sometimes I think I should move here permanently!!!!!!!!!!! We are due for another Nor'easter shortly dumping another eight inches of snow upon us. Fourth this month. Yay..... Shoveling out on the first day of spring. Gonna dangle my feet here in the virtual lake and take some deep breaths to relax before I go back to face the winter that doesn't want to leave back home. Really am ready to swap hot cocoa for a bowl of maple walnut ice-cream any old time. Back home I gotta try to find the 'Joy in my Lot' as I shovel MORE SNOW.
lindyloo - OMG - another 8 inches!! And I thought our winter here was hanging on... Are you in Massachusetts? I'm from Canada but heard that one of the places getting a lot of snow is Massachusetts (did I even spell that right?)
Yes you spelled it right and yes I am from Massachusetts. Tomorrow I was scheduled to go to celebrate the spring equinox with some friends. Guess we won't be doing that. I just want to see pansies and crocuses and pussywillows. Not more snow. Where in Canada are you, Nicky? Its a big country. At least it doesn't snow here at our lake thanks to Wolf's suggestion that we make it so. I'm bringing a new pot of coffee down to the dock so we can all sip together.
I lay in the hammock in the dark sometimes looking at the northern lights. There aren't any but I look for them. That's the way things are sometimes. Especially when you're like a homeless person even though you have a house.
My sister finally does understand. I don't belong to anything for the first time in my life even though I can visit parts of what it used to be. I grew up at home, married when I was 19, and recently was dumped out on the road from a moving car that took her and the disease with it.
When I could walk again, I learned that life without your core is also known as time passing. I learned too, that even after you recover, there are lingering costs. Trust is one. Caring emotions are another. I laugh and I empathize, but I know it's different. I'm visiting and don't belong anywhere except inside here.
I had a fit about that this morning. I was yelling. The subject isn't even important as I watched myself venting. And then watched the crying break out that I was doing my best and on blubber on blitzen. I was my own soap opera. "Look! I'm having emotions!" I announced to no one. I usually have to rent mine from Utube when I join random families momentarily and share meaningful experiences with them.
Speaking of which, I'm often in the backwaters like Dr Livingston I presume. My personal experiences in here are less like a faceplant against the first person window and more like a museum curator and live-in floor sweeper. I mostly get stuff and watch. I used to have an actual life with real people and real friends, but now my life is my interests and so I'm trying to find some of those. Or one even.
...
Not many people know that Nashville and Toronto have bonded. That's partly because it's completely unimportant in any way whatsoever - so of course, I went there.
A few years ago, at a hockey game in Toronto, the microphone cut out just as the singer was in the middle of the USA national anthem. The audience chimed in and finished it. That made the news nobody watches (look at the view numbers years later). It made a number of US television stations where there was speculation that Americans could never finish the Canadian national anthem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhBrp5TH8kU
In the second short clip, the announcer is sure that would never happen in America because they would never know some other countries' anthem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUvMU-DX-6w
But in the third short clip almost nobody watched, was the truth. We forced a handsome ski instructor to run the country because we loved his dad. No. I mean that Nashville proved the talking heads were wrong. Again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzE1o0WV_Pw
They learned to sing O'Canada so they could say thanks. CBS, not so much, telling their audience what they can't do. Just another moment. Like realizing that fearing that my old cats are getting even older is one side of the coin. The other side of that coin is loving them while they're here more. Spin it, Bob.
I remember that hockey game story. I went to college at Brockport, NY, just across the lake from Toronto. We all liked it late at night when the tv stations went off the air they played both anthems. We could sing along with both. Loved the footage they played for Canada with the Royal Canadian Mounties, and beautiful countryside.
I've done this before. Once I could whistle whole sections of Beethoven's ninth symphony. This song isn't much less popular even though I never paid any attention to it until this month. In fact the Utube version I'm learning it from has been viewed by over 500 million people. I've copied the lyrics and it's the middle section I'm mostly interested in. In researching it, I've found it's studied seriously by Julliard's, the royal society of music, and is being played by orchestras, string quartets, and other groups all over the planet. I had no idea.
The middle section I'm interested in has these lyrics:
I see a little silhouetto of a man Scaramouch, scaramouch will you do the fandango Thunderbolt and lightning very very frightening me Gallileo, Gallileo, Gallileo, Gallileo, Gallileo Figaro - magnifico
But I'm just a poor boy and nobody loves me He's just a poor boy from a poor family Spare him his life from this monstrosity Easy come easy go will you let me go Bismillah! No we will not let you go - let him go Bismillah! We will not let you go - let him go Bismillah! We will not let you go let me go Will not let you go let me go (never) Never let you go let me go Never let me go ooo No, no, no, no, no, no, no Oh mama mia, mama mia, mama mia let me go Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me For me For me
I had an idea on where that would play and it was one of those times where a little side piece in the background takes over and becomes a thing by itself you're chasing down the rabbit hole. Somebody says "dark matter" and one persons says "excuse me?" and Wolf is already chasing it with his tongue hanging out yelling "wait! wait!" because I need to know because...well, there isn't any because, because I don't really need one.
Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen, 1975, specifically 3:08 to 4:11
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ9rUzIMcZQ
The video is dreadful of course. Pretty much all rock videos are.
Simultaneously, I'm playing one of two Madonna songs I like over and over. It's a back piece to imagining through that narrative I often use of the hero getting the girl and riding off into the sunset together. Outer form is happenstance and in this duet, Madonna is the girl that gets on the horse with the hero and the last rider who falls off his horse in the video is that hero. It's iterative in the process of teasing out my own story nuance (God, this spellcheck really does need to get out more). The truth there is that I don't really care what anybody else sees or believes. They can do as they please. I'm learning about what love is in the one reality that matters which is this one soul and I have both the time and the inclination to luxuriate in how much I know already. This song resonates my authority and ability to define what love is. Don't tell me love is just something we do. Don't ever tell me to stop. And, no, I'm not getting off the horse.
Don't Tell Me, Madonna
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLFWRDsx5AI
And, if those aren't your cups of tea, my friend's wife who had a tumor the size of a golf ball that was inoperable in her lung, got her report yesterday after getting a full body scan and other tests a week ago. She doesn't have cancer. The tumor is dead from the chemo and radiation earlier and is already reabsorbing into her body. That bullet was coming right for her head and she dodged it. No need for any followup. She doesn't have cancer anymore.
I told them both that if either ever complains about anything ever again, I would come over there and kick their butts.
Now where was I? Oh yes, "Oh mamma mia, mamma mia, mamma mia let me go!"
I'd been in the hammock so long my skin was a herringbone pattern, so I decided to get off my duff and build a campfire since the sun was beginning to set. We just sat around it for a while and took it in.
You could hear the wavelets lapping and a loon far across the lake and the crackling of the fire as the sun set in a glorious sky.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUKKzdVy0EI
Lakeside Campfire with Relaxing Nature Night Sounds
(it's four hours long and while the campfire does burn down the sunset is kept still in time but I do recommend staying at least a minute and a half to hear the loon across the lake)
I'm going swimming out to the island. Far from the sleet and ice outside my home, where a few miles from here they are running the Boston Marathon. I'll be picking blueberries and eating them since I will have no way to swim back with them. Virtual reality, here I come.
Lindylou, I finally relaxed enough to stop by here. I know, it is paradoxical, but when I am too keyed up I can't seem to find the way here. Yesterday I spent a few minutes in my sewing room. I made a couple of small mesh drawstring backpacks. We can swim to the island. Eat our fill of blueberries and put the rest in the backpack to bring back and make blueberry cheesecake. With hb being lactose intolerant this is the only place I can have cheesecake any more so let's dig in.
I have a.recipe for NY style cheesecake from an Air Force friend from Texas. And I have another one called bl ueberry strata pie. The cream cheese is much soupier in that one. I haven't actually made them in years. Want me to share the recipes?
Was sitting at home being cross that the only vacations available to me at this time were "virtual" ones. Then I slapped myself on the wrist and said don't sell virtual vacations short. So I slid down here to the cottage, found a patch of wild strawberries, picked some and am now waiting to see if bhv will join me. Or anyone else for that matter. Beautiful sunny day here. And since there are no allergies here, I can just enjoy the scent of the lilacs without worrying about sneezing.
Stopping in for a cup of coffee with you, lindyloo. A clear, cool morning--it's going up to 78 today though. Look at that deer coming out of the woods to drink from the lake. So pretty.
Hi. Lilacs. I like that since we don't have allergies here. When I was a.kid we had two trees. One purple, one white..we played in the shade of those trees happily for years. I can't do the strawberries though. Oh, I forgot, no allergies here. But I don't really like them anyway.
I think I will sit in this adirondack chair at the end of the dock and watch that deer. I found a cattail and lit it to pretend to smoke and keep the nonexistant mosquitoes at bay.
Girlfriends are the best discovery at this point of my life.
Time for a party, Mitsou. Read throughout this page and know that this is one of two places we gather when we need company and need to get away from all the heavy duty of caregiving and the isolation that often goes with it. Also a good place to gather with dear friends when hitting a patch of heavy duty grief. (My partner's birthday would have been tomorrow.)
What I have done for all of us is to make sure that the freezer is full of ice and ice cream. The refrigerator has six kinds of salad. There are hamburgs, hot dogs, steak and salmon if anyone feels inclined to grill. I don't, but you can find charcoal and lighter fluid and matches in the cabinet beside the refrigerator. BYOB. The dock has the chairs on it. The canoes and paddles are pulled out.
Thank goodness, along with mosquitoes, massive heat waves are also banned. Rodstar will you being flying in? I'm sitting on the dock now with my feet dangling in the water sipping on a glass of wine. See you all.
Ha ha there you are Lindylou! I just plopped down next to you with some wine. Nice to know heat waves are banned too. Oh the water feels sooo cool on my toes. It is awfully nice to see you here. Need to remember to take a break every now and then.
Ahh yes, the grilling. Normally I'm under a restraining order to stay away from grills. Apparently I burn the meat more than the approved amount. I like everything thoroughly cooked without being dry. Personally, I don't think people use the phrase 'well done' the right way. It doesn't mean scorched earth policy, it means it's done well. Never mind.
That's one of the nice things about a cottage by the lake. You get to put your feet up and take in some air and remember the sounds and the feeling of being relaxed for a while. I remember lazing in an Adirondack chair or laying on a towel on the dock with my eys closed feeling the sun on me and knowing when the clouds were passing, while I listened to the sounds of various people chatting or laughing and little kids screeching and the birds and the breeze and the sound of water lapping against the sides of boats or onto the shore, while I drifted in an out of semi dreams and memories. I knew that was good then and I know for certain it was good now.
And suddenly you're too warm or warm enough and you suddenly get up and wide eyed plunge into the cool lake hearing that splash cut off, replaced by the underwater sounds of things like the motorboat you noticed passing way out there - loud now, and the feeling of your body moving through that cool medium like a part of you belongs as you turn upward kicking against the colder water up towards the sun that wavers languidly waiting for you and suddenly you break the surface and shake your head as sound returns to normal and the sun is already warming you, treading water like a ballerina knowing that this is a good time to open the Merlot and sit in the Adirondack under the shade tree and leaf through that magazine I brought down from the cottage.
Or maybe I'll think about life. The young don't know what they have, the say, and I say thank God because that's part of the joy of life. The discovery of it. A lot of that has to do with how we see things. I can look back and wish I'd been more like this or that but I know that if I change one thing, I set off a new chain of events from that point and each time I would end up being someone else - and not this, what I am and how I see right now.
What I am right now is someone who wonders what the male equivalent of the vagina monologues is - the penile pronouncements? The trouser snake dialogues? How would Disney Studios draw that? Would he be wearing a tuxedo? What kind of eyes would they give helmet head? How would they animate the vaginas helmet head meets? Like closing your fist with lipstick painted on moving your thumb to make 'her' talk. Except you'd have to rotate them ninety degrees and then the mouth it would monologue out of would be straight up and down. "You try talking like this", it would say like someone talking out of the sides of their mouth. Vagina face would need animated eyes too and probably eye lashes and they'd both have stick bodies and legs. They'd have to do a dance number so imagine there are three vagina sisters belting out "Mama Mia" and you've got a Disney animated movie that has zero chance of ever being made. Good thing too. There's another thing to be grateful for.
Anyway, I was opening a bottle of Merlot. Something I've done so often I can do it with my eyes closed. Like the time, early in my sex life with Dianne, where I held her breasts and stuck my eyes into her nipples, and called out "up periscope!". Or the time I woke her up sleeping in the car at about two in the morning and asked her to roll down the window and stick her breasts out. The solitary truck ahead was weaving I pointed out. He was falling asleep and we were going to wake him up. Gamely, she pulled up her top, turned to the window and as we passed the truck me honking my horn, she stuck them out into the howling wind as best she could, closed the window, and went back to sleep. The truck flashed his lights on and off for a while saying thank you. Wakey wakey. Life's like that sometimes. Which depends, of course, on how you see it.
And for the first time I look at that from that truck driver's perspective. I'm so tired I should pull over at the next service centre but I don't want to because I've got a long haul to go and I'm fighting it all alone out here on the highway. And then this car pulls up and honks the horn and I look over and this woman has her top pulled up and is waving her tits out at me and in a flash he passes me and pulls away. And suddenly I'm wide awake. Like a guardian angel sent to help in some ways though probably also not Disney Studios kind of thing.
I decide to take the Merlot down to the rock and put my feet in the water. Have a drink to the places I've been and maybe another to the hope that there will be more.
I liked my father's bbq chicken. It was black on the outside and juicy inside. My parents came to visit me at my first base in Louisiana. Dad was bbqing chicken when my hb to be came running into my apartment yelling for water. "There's a fire!", he said. My Dad and I were co fused. Dad was just bbqing as normal LOL. Years later we visited my Dad and his wife back east and he bbq'd swordfish perfectly. He said he learned from Jim.
Hi guys. I'll have some of that merlot, Wolf. It ought to pair well with my hotdog that is slathered with mustard, relish and onion, don't you think? I am hoping someone wants to canoe with me and portage over the dam and into the river. Never had a problem with the portage when I was 12 or so. Now that I'm 70+++++ it may take a bit more effort. After the portage we'll canoe through some cat-o-nine tails till we get to the main current. Then I suggest we paddle upstream and look at the snappers and sun turtles sunning on the logs, the red winged blackbirds flitting back and forth, and watching with wonder when a dragon fly lights on your arm for a moment of rest. And we'll listen to the grasshoppers hum. When we get lazy we'll turn the canoe around and float back down stream. It shouldn't be too much work to haul the canoe back up over the dam, but if it is, we'll enlist the help of neighbors to help the old fogies who have gone on this "ill conceived" adventure "by themselves". Ah, if they only knew.
Sedgly, you can just drift in and out of this place when you need it. Today I do. Anniversary today........ Don't think it is in any way addicting. Just a very safe port in a storm.
Lindylou I remember doing that with you last summer and was going to ask if you were up to it again. I love cat o'nine tails and all the rest. Out here in CA we have orange dragon flies and they are huge! Let's go. I was working outside this morning. 112 in the shade now. I was repairing the storm damaged blind as well as I could. Nit fnished but I can't do any more. So let's canoe. Yay!
lindylou, the angel food cake came out perfect. Thanks to my mother in law's pan! This year, for his 75th birthday I added blueberry pie filling and whipped topping. Surprisingly it is not sickenly sweet. And here at the cottage, even though I have removed several slices, there seems to be plenty left. Join in.
We need to recharge our batteries after that canoe trip. It was sooooo much fun. I grew up on the Great South Bay. Canoeing on a river is a completely new and wonderful experience.
Today we could swim over to the island and pick blueberries. I have to go find those mesh back packs I made last year so we can bring some with us on the return swim.