Bottle the salt air

I made it back from some wild weather on water. It was either blowing a gale, near freezing, raining or sunny and warm. All in four days.  And I loved every minute of it.  A few people texted me to see how I was doing, and I talked to my wife several times a day. She knows that I am self-sufficient, so she doesn't worry--or at least that's what she tells me.

I was caught in a maelstrom for 24 hours as the boat swung at anchor. I didn't get much sleep during that night, listening to the wind whistling.  I rowed to shore after the wind dropped to around 20 mph.  The walk on the beach was invigorating in the cold.  And the next night, I made a camp fire, cooking some boiled peanuts and sitting with my dog until the fire was embers.  It amazes me that this island is near one of the most popular destinations in the country, and yet, I had the entire island to myself.  It helps that it's only reached by boat and that most people aren't quite as adventuresome as I am.

It was good to be home though. I took a long hot shower, getting rid of the smell of wood smoke and diesel fumes. I would like to bottle the smell of the salt air though. I wish that would not wash away.  It is a smell of the outdoors, the sea and the wind.

I've had several people email me that I am fearless. I don't feel fearful on the boat. I feel the most peaceful there actually.  My fear seems to come about when I am back on land, surrounded by traffic, obligations, responsibilities, and demands. Maybe it's not really fear but unnerving to think that I have to be doing something productive while I'm at home. I know that is a mindset from years of conditioning of working at a demanding job.  I sometimes have to remind myself that I don't have to do anything on a schedule anymore. Old habits are hard to break though.

My C. was really happy to see me. Her new medication is helping a lot. She is joking and seems much less stressed.  It's good to see the funny side of her come out again.  Humor cures a lot of things and definitely is good for our relationship.

Just in case you want to see some of the work that we have done on the interior of the house, I've included a few photos.  We are at a stopping point for now and will resume after Thanksgiving.  Mostly all we have done is painting and furniture placement.  We did add wainscoting in the dining room and foyer. Amazing what some different colors and a little carpentry will do.

Dining room

Foyer--added wainscoting and equinox pendant

Hallway to master bedroom wing

Staying busy

We have been busy with a lot of different things.  Mostly, we have been divesting ourselves of a lot of "stuff" that we no longer need. Going through chests and cabinets, sorting out the clothes to go to Good Will. Opening boxes and deciding what to sell at a garage sale.  We still have a long way to go on the fifty or so boxes that we packed up after my wife's parents died, but some progress is being made.

The good news is that the parents' house sold as did the car. I also sold my old rowing shell and have put my first sail boat up for sale as well.  I have the great desire to get rid of a lot of superfluous things that I don't foresee we will use or need again. And somehow, I'm not feeling sad about it nor am I wanting to hold onto things that I no longer need.

We are painting the interior of the house, going room by room and changing the colors.  We are also renovating the mudroom, putting down new tile, new countertops, lights and sink.  After the downstairs is done, hopefully by Thanksgiving, we will tackle the upstairs where the original bathrooms will be renovated to make them more modern, yet still in keeping with the traditional look of the house.  I think that this will be our last renovation---hopefully. Thankfully, none are as daunting as the kitchen redo.

The renovation work will keep us busy for a while.  I plan to go on the boat when I can.  In December, we plan to take some time to go cruising.  There won't be anything to really keep us around over the holidays.  It seems that it will be better to spend time on the boat and make some new memories rather than thinking about who we have lost over the past year.

I hope that each of you has had a good weekend. We did manage to have a dinner and movie date, going to see the movie, "Captain Phillips", which was one of the best that I've seen in a while. I read the book about the Somalian pirates hijacking the Maersk Alabama but have to say that the movie was better than the book.

I'm off to go cook some dinner for a tired wife.

What I have been doing

I've had a busy time lately.  I spent the weekend on a trip down to the ACE Basin.  I asked a fellow that I know to ride along, thinking that he would give me a hand at the wheel so that I wouldn't be at the helm for 8 hours. I found out that he really doesn't know much about boats.  And that's really okay, because I had made the ASSumption that because he belonged to a boating organization, he might know something.

He is an affable fellow so we had good discussions on a lot of things. He lost his wife six years ago and is still sad about that.  He said that his life pretty much went off track after she died.  Not the drinking kind of off track but just not really there, if you know what I mean.  We talked politics because he shares the same leftist liberal views that I do.  I can tell you that if he weren't, we would have had a lot less to talk about because I don't discuss politics with most people.  We talked about his being Jewish and his going back to synagogue.  And we talked about what kind of boat he would like to get. He spent a lot of time on the iPhone too.

We passed the time and eventually met up with some fellow boaters and sailors at a marina.  Happy hour was pretty happy but not over the top.  And the dinner was at a resort restaurant.  I was seated across from a lady and her husband who were doing the Great Loop which goes up the East Coast.  Interesting stuff, except that she was really snippy and rude to her husband who seemed to want to talk incessantly.  He was working on his third Dark and Stormy, repeating the earlier stories, and she was telling us how she knew who she was at 20 and didn't need to learn much more about herself.  I finally said that I didn't have a clue who I was at 20 and was really getting to know who I was over the past decade.  I am really happy that I have made that progress.  And I know enough to realize that I can last through a two hour dinner with just about anyone, learn something, and then walk back to the boat.

On Sunday, we headed back up the coast to my home port.  I was tired and in need of a good soaking shower when I got home.  But here are some photos of the scenery on the trip.

At the dock

Lots of marsh and lowlands

Storm clouds coming in 

Paddle boarders going by 

A bridge opening on the ICW

Old boat shed along the way

Yes, that is a manned gun boat telling me to stay away. 

And then there is the garden.  It is coming along nicely.  My wife has a green thumb.  We have mulched, planted, amended, and irrigated.   The flowers are her pride and joy.  I like them but am partial to growing the edibles.  I do like the strawberries and blueberry plants.  I had best show you the way it looks now because later in the summer, it will not look nearly as pretty or lush.  

The blueberries!

Irrigating the raised beds

Potatoes coming up 

The walkway to the front door

Today is also my mother's birthday.  I usually write a tribute to her here.  My tribute to her this year is short. She was an inspiration in so many ways.  I miss her every day.  She loved me as her child and taught me about dedication, science, a love for books and research, and to pursue my dreams no matter what.

Camp cooking and yearbooks

This is what is left of the kitchen after the cabinets and cooking island were removed.  The rugs are gone now as well, shaken, vacuumed and put away.  We are waiting for the sheetrock, plumbing, and electrical people to start.  Removal of the cabinets was a long process.  I worked with the handyman who helps out around here, and we got them off the wall, labeled each door and cabinet, and put them onto a truck to be shipped to a lady who is buying them.  It was a lot of work!

The adventure of camp cooking has begun.  The first night we had Chinese takeout.  Last night, we grilled vegetables and salmon on the outdoor gas grill.  Thankfully, we still have the refrigerator and the freezer as well as a microwave. And we actually enjoying this interlude of simple cooking.  

The cold that I had is gone. Must have been a mild one, thankfully.  Between feeling under the weather and doing the demolition work here, I haven't been to the boat in a few days.  So I'm going to check up on things there and maybe we will spend the night at the marina.  I don't think that the workmen will start until Monday at the earliest. 

I did spend a few hours yesterday morning with a fellow I sponsor.  It was good to get out of the house and take a drive to meet up with him.  He is so grateful to have someone to share his story with, and I'm grateful that he is so willing to do the work in recovery.  He is going to the convention this winter and wants to help me with one of the workshops that our district is doing. I know that I'll need his help.  I need to get through this remodeling before I can give much thought to anything else. 

Last night, I stayed up late reading what people had written in my high school year books.  I went through the writings from Sophomore through Senior year.  Aside from the usual stuff about having a good summer,  I was struck by how many people who wrote what a great friend I had been and how much I helped them with their studies.  Some wrote that I had the best sense of humor. Teachers wrote that I would be a good scientist one day.  I frankly don't remember much that was good from those days, but obviously others had a different take.  Perhaps my memories are just selective or skewed,  and I have chosen to focus on the pain and not the joy or the friendship.  I honestly don't know what is real or not from back then.  But I am warmed by the idea that so many did like me and call me friend. 

And the importance that writing in a year book took on was obvious.  There were reserved pages and lots of angst poured out on those pages.  I thought that this captured that by-gone era pretty well. It's from an article in New Yorker magazine:

"When you wrote in someone’s yearbook, you only had one shot. The message could be clever or sappy or crass, but you couldn’t spend all day on it and you couldn’t revise. As a teen-ager, I was obsessed with this idea—the yearbook-signing as a work of art. I knew what I didn’t like: vagaries (“we had some fun times”); empty promises (“let’s hang out this summer”); clichés (“stay sweet”). I prepared a mental list of friends and acquaintances, and drafted elaborate messages in my head. Just what I was after with all of this is hard to say. Did I think of myself as a writer? As a shy kid, I may have hoped that people who didn’t seem to notice me in real life would find me charming on the page.

These days I don’t thumb through my old yearbooks very often. The pages themselves seem to smell of adolescent angst, and trips down memory lane, while sometimes pleasant, are often embarrassing. But then again, isn’t that what yearbooks are all about? They’re time capsules, not live feeds. The foolish things that we wore, loved, wrote, and worried over are all there, preserved for us to cringe over later. We can’t edit them out, or bury them in a flurry of tweets."

Packing up

I am going to apply for some part-time work to use my Master's license.  It will be with Tow Boat US helping people who go aground, run out of gas or have no battery power.  I've already talked to the local franchise and will go in soon to fill out the paperwork and do some training.  It could be interesting and will give me more days on the water which will be needed when I renew my license in five years.  I'll see how it goes with going back to work for a few days a week.

The big project this weekend is disassembling the kitchen. We are packing up boxes from the kitchen cabinets.  And we are realizing just how much "stuff" we have.  So the idea is that we will have boxes of things that we will keep and boxes of things that we will sell.  All of the glassware and dishes and so forth are either antique or of high quality.  But we don't need all of this. And I am starting to think that it's time to go through the whole house and simply divest ourselves of things that we will not use or need anymore.

The kitchen as it is now.  Dining area and bar area aren't shown.

I know that the kitchen will look really good by the time the remodeling is done. The old kitchen is warm but dated. We are replacing the pine cabinets with a light maple and will be brightening up the space with the granite and painting the trim a beige.  It should make the room brighter.

Living with the mess for a while will be another adventure.  At least, that's what I hope.  So far, we haven't had any arguments about the project.  And both of us are looking forward to actually having the room gutted and beginning anew.   We are both at home this weekend packing the boxes.

I am going on the boat next week for a few days and will leave next Friday to go to my high school reunion.  I am looking forward to seeing people that I haven't seen in a long time.  Maybe this is the only one that I'll go to, but now seems like the time.   I guess this couldn't come at a worse time regarding remodeling, but the plan is to have almost all the stuff packed up by then.

Not much else is going on here.  The weather is humid again.  But I know that fall is coming soon.   Hope that your day has gone well.