After 8 months aboard the boat, we weren’t in any rush to spend more time on the boat, at least not in June, at the beginning of the summer. We enjoyed our “dirt-dwelling time” and readjusting to life on land. It goes without saying that we were absorbed in grandchildren, family, and friends (see last blog!)
Returning to land life also means catching up on health issues, doctor and dentist appointments, etc. It was time for me to pay more attention to my lymphedema so I spent over 3 weeks in compression bandaging, 24/7 for a “tune-up.” Al had another melanoma removed from his forehead, a teeny tiny spot on his forehead. We had a good laugh at ourselves when we arrived at the hospital to meet our newest grandchild, Addison Rae.
Summer isn’t summer without ice cream. Our local ice cream place changed hands and became Cromwell Creamery, still the best deal around and most the delicious ice cream around. For the ice cream aficionado out there – These are “kiddie size”, supposedly smaller than small.
I decided to tackle weaving again on my rigid heddle loom, which meant that I had to get out the books and online sources to reteach myself all that I had forgotten in the two years since I last touched the wooden frame. It may not be like riding a bike, but I am figuring it out again.
Bottom – Finally finished the old dish towel project. Very absorbent, and I do really use them!
One of my best cruising gal friends, Annette, gave me a “dish scrubbie” made from tulle. I loved it! Well, as much as you can love doing dishes…… It cleans the dishes and it never gets stinky or slimy. Just rinse it, bleach it, and it is good to go again. I decided to teach myself to crochet and give it a try. I even found an online site with inexpensive rolls of tulle in a rainbow array of colors. Now I have something to keep my hands busy, on the boat and on land (read that as long winter.) Annette is an amazing seamstress, her blog The Seamless Sailor is definitely worth checking out, especially if you are a sewing & boating. I feel honored to be included in her latest blog post on scrubbies.
The blog kept me busy and occupied as we cruised, preserving memories of places and people. I began to wonder if it could be turned into print form, just for us. Sometimes it feels nicer to hold a real book in your hands. I did some research and found that there are sites that will suck your blog into them (that’s as technical as I can be) and then print it out as a book. When I experimented, the results were less than adequate, IMHO. I finally settled on Lulu.com, which does not do it automatically. I had to copy and paste every blog entry into a defined Word template and then PDF it before sending it off to Lulu electronically. Every page needed formatting and checking. It took a long time, but the book’s layout is much better than the more automatic and faster sites.
Al’s newest and latest obsession will require a blog post all on its own, sometime in the future. That’s all I am saying for now………………..
We have kept busy during these summer months with land and water activities. Our boating trips were short, 2-4 days, to Watch Hill, Montauk, and Fishers Island, but nothing more than that. Then July rolled into August. Time to go out for a little southern New England island-hopping. What a treat it would be to go away in late August-September! As an educator, I was never, ever able to vacation at that time.
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