The Quiet Evenings Return

It is mid-August and the osprey have left their nest which sits so empty and quiet on the water. The mother osprey no longer scolds me when I cross the dock. I can see the family of three some evenings teaching their single offspring how to soar above the river and then dip their talons across the mirrored surface before surging up into the blue once again and perching on an overhanging snag. Soon they will be heading south for the winter.

The wren nest is also empty as they must have learned to fly while we were visiting in the city. Grandchildren are back home wrapping up the last few weeks of summer camp. Our company have all finished with their vacations and are now back home across the Pacific ocean. The house is now quiet of much activity and busy meal preparation. Children's games and toys are slowly being returned to their cupboards, sheets are washed. We have some leftovers to finish eating and that leaves me time to wander to the water's edge for sunsets once again at days end as the sun moves around into a center stage position. We can even catch a sunset down in the village when it crosses the bridge.

Sighing with gratitude.

Just Pondering the Near Time Ahead

It has been a long three weeks of August. The first week I had company, caught a cold, and got the oldest grandson for a few days. The second week I got the youngest grandson who kept us busy with wanting to do something most of the day including kayaking and a 10 mile bike  ride. Although, I will admit we binge-watched "Merlin" on Netflix and he did make it through two seasons and loved it. The characters were uplifting and real. I always like how Britain uses all ages in its series. 

That week was followed by three days with granddaughter  at our house where we played with photography a bit (she says she loves photography but not sure she loves the patience and details required. )  I also supervised her  exercises to get ready for Cheer leading  Camp.  She did 250 jumping jacks and high knee runs interrupted by push-ups for another count of  250.  I got  tired just counting!  She has a really lovely well-muscled body.   We also binge watched the new season of  "Anne With an  E...Anne of  Green Gables."  That is so  well done that she was completely enthralled  and  truly upset when the character, Cole, left. Avon Lea..and we left home had to head up here.  (Her parents have Netflix, so she can watch the ending.)  Then we drove her back home to here in the suburbs outside  the city.  We are being chauffeurs  in taking her to cheer leading  sessions the rest of this week while  also sitting the  oldest grandson  who now has a  little  cold.  The busy life of a  family!

We will  celebrate a birthday of the grand-girl and our  48th wedding anniversary on Thursday evening, and then, hopefully, head home on Friday evening after doing some more chauffeuring during the  day.

It will  be a strange time in the coming week with no child obligations  and only gardening  and housecleaning to do.   It is always like a mini-childless time similar to when my children  headed  off to college and I had  only a job to distract and fill  my days followed by quiet evenings  and  an even  quieter dinner.  Like everything in this world it requires some adjustment.  It just seems in  retirement you have more  time to ponder over the  adjustments being made and less to  distract you.  It seems to bring a magnifying glass  to the  ever creeping end of times ahead.

I am not saying this with huge sadness, but more a realistic view as to how  to adjust so  these final years are more carefully planned.

Kayak Lessons

We have the youngest of the grands for a week and I become somewhat bipolar in making sure they have something fun with which to build a memory and also making sure they are left alone to just vegetate as their summer weeks are usually filled with travel and camps and heavy scheduled time. Yesterday was Kayak lesson day which put Grandpa in his sweet spot. I guess the photographer also enjoyed this!

He is a bit of a water bug, so not afraid to get out on the river.

He practiced strokes while we held the kayak by rope. Then we got into the canoe and he stroked around us while we held on to the rope, then we let him go.

We paddled just around the point and found our selected beach was a bit gone at high tide.  It was still walkable and they got out to rest for a while.

I stayed in the canoe and took photos of the late summer fruited trees against the setting sunlight.

And I watched the kayak bob on the colored water.

The older male taught the younger male how to cast and as luck would have it we got a nice 8-inch perch to add to our crab dinner that night!

It is always a miracle when everything goes perfectly!

Some Days It Is Like Walking Through the Looking Glass

I have my HVAC annually maintained, but this year I skipped the winter check and when spring arrived the spring maintenance team found several issues.  The company explained they could replace some parts but with no guarantees as to how long this 12-year-old unit would continue to function.  I agreed and weeks later they sent us a repairman.

We are old people and my husband loves chatting.  So, as we showed this pearshaped 40-year-old to the basement we talked about house structure, property taxes, maintaining yards.  The man worked for about an hour on both the inside unit and the outside unit and then he told us that the concern for the loss of Freon was not an issue and we would at least not have to pay for that expensive replacement.

As he was preparing the bill at the kitchen table, the man brought the subject around to how divided our country was over politics.  We agreed but left it at that.  Then he began to talk about conspiracy theories.  We smiled and said that many people were easy to dupe if they wanted to believe something was true, but as a former librarian researcher (me) and a former science researcher (Hubby) we felt comfortable in finding the facts we needed to make decisions.

He continued talking and brought up the moon landing and how he wondered how it could possibly be true if that flag was flying in the photos where there is no atmosphere.  My mouth fell open briefly and then I said I had never considered that and I thought it was unrolled stiff plastic because scientists knew it would be limp---NASA knows more about the atmosphere than anyone I know. ( I had to later Google this flag issue to realize that there are people who think the whole moon landing was fake!)  Then he went on about flat-earthers' arguments and I began to get a creepy feeling that he was one of them.  

As he was collecting his tools he went on to tell us a story about his grade-school stepson who was being bullied in school and how he was teaching him martial arts at home.  When I asked why he did not bring the bullying to the Principal's attention, he said the bully was a black kid and they would not do anything because they were afraid of it being a racial call.  I had to take his word for it but was suspicious since he had been so strange in his deductive reasoning in all the prior conversations.

At least you do not have to be smart about conspiracy theories to fix the AC because he must have done what was needed since we have had cool air inside all this month!  (Yes, I do live in one of "those" counties, lord help me.)

A Long Weekend and We All Survived.

This was one of the best days the whole time!!

A man and his wife came to visit us from Hawaii these last few days. We have known the man for decades and his wife (second) for a little less than that. (His first wife died of cancer and we knew her quite well.) My husband hired the man as a graduate student years ago on a grant. They lived together on a boat in the harbor in Hawaii before their marriages, dived together, did lab research together and my husband probably even saved his life when he had an appendix attack in the middle of the night by carrying him to the car and carrying him into the emergency room. Together they were a good team. The man is a big practical joker and hubby went along on some of the actions including re-editing the Science Building calendar announcements to more risque messages for a few months until the University finally got a lock on the glass-encased board.   I write this just to give you an idea of how close the guys were.

This couple, after moving to Texas, now live in Hawaii and we visited them once a long time ago.  The man has recently retired and they are now doing some travel.  The man, let us call him Joel, is a tall thin cowboy type.  His wife is more the shorter wider version of a country girl (woman).  They came to spend four nights at our house as their first stop heading down the coast to Florida.

Since I had visited them many years ago in Hawaii and hubby had also reminded me of their quirks, I was somewhat prepared.  Quirks?  We all have quirks, right?  Well, on the first dinner I served chicken and rice.  The wife, Molly, said she really liked rice, but they don't eat it much anymore.  When I asked "why", she explained that you had to buy such large bags of rice in the big box discount store that they decided they never could get through them before the rice got too old.  (?)  Yeah, I know.  I did not say anything but watched her plow through her second serving with gusto.  She really liked my coffee and I wondered if they also did not buy coffee because it came in such large bags at the discount store.  (Kona coffee is marvelous.)

They brought in big boxes of cereal, a cooler of food, etc. since they were touring the entire southeastern U.S. via rental car, visiting friends and relatives.  I stowed it away for them.  While they ate most of what I cooked, they did eat cereal for both breakfast and dinner some days.  My husband who had stayed with them a few years ago said that Joel would eat nothing but cereal at every meal while hubby was there.

Joel and his wife liked to go to the local large hotel in Hawaii when they had live bands to dance.  He said they did not go for dinner because it was too expensive, but they did order dessert and then danced.  They stopped going dancing a while back for two reasons last year.  The dance floor got too crowded and they started an annoying $10.00 cover charge.  (Joel has over a million dollars in stocks for retirement.)

Hubby also cautioned me that they were very conservative in their political views and so we had to keep the TV off most of the time.  The only news channel they watch is Fox.  Hubby explained that we watch a number of news channels, but mostly Public Television and BBC since they are the most balanced in news.  Thus, we watched the weather channel and few detective shows.

To further complicate this visit my grandson was due to come stay two nights before they left.  This actually worked out really well, because grandson taught them card tricks and Joel had some good card tricks in his repertoire that he taught grandson.  

To further complicate the visit we had 5 inches of rain the first day, 2.5 the second day and rain off and on the entire rest of their visit!  We did take a few day trips, but they were carefully arranged around the many storms.

To further complicate the visit, Molly came down with a cold the first morning and Joel came down with it a day and half later.  They were brave to soldier on with a few trips, but we actually let them sleep most of the time.

Molly acted like a good-old-girl, but she was smart as a tack and I think she knew where we stood regarding our illustrious leader.  She kept complimenting me on food, the house, our letting them sleep in and I kept wondering if she thought liberals were usually not this "nice."

They left today, and we hugged and smiled and proved that people can get along when we admit we cannot change each other's mind.  I did wonder if they were thinking about how blind we were to the truth, because that was what I was thinking about them.

Oh, you can catch a cold from a conservative, because I am now soothing a scratchy throat with tea.