Scattered Thoughts . . .

My health has been less than stellar lately so I have not accomplished a thing on the house in weeks. The exceptionally wet weather isn't helping get any renovations accomplished either. For a change, however, my health and the weather are in sync... they are both on the bad end of the spectrum but they are in sync. Needless to say, I'm not getting a thing accomplished on the house.  I'm doing a lot of sleeping and resting so my health can heal but I'm also searching for things to keep my mind occupied. One of the things I often do when faced with this particular dilemma is to sift through recent and old photos.  I came across a few loon photos and thought I would write a bit about them here. This first one isn't too bad.  The early morning sun was up because we had no fog on the lake this particular morning. Although it is quite early in the morning (around 6:20am), this loon has some light on him so I was able to capture a decent photo. It could be crisper and

We've always had a little fleet of boats at the lake house but, this year, we expanded our little fleet by also bringing along two new kid kayaks for Lukey and Kenzie. They are getting too big (heavy) to squeeze into our adult-sized kayaks (total weight capacities are the main problem) so it was time for them to learn to kayak on their own.  Lukey loved the idea... Kenzie hated the idea! For about two weeks, Kenzie consistently insisted that she will only be using Gee's kayak with Gee!  Lukey is more independent when it comes to physical stuff. Kenzie prefers to be dependent when it comes to physical stuff but will slowly ease into it when she sees Lukey is having no problems and even having fun. Truth be told, even though we purposely bought a kayak in Kenzie's favorite (but a bit sickening) color, we expected Kenzie to balk at using her new bright pink kayak. We started them off at our little beach. Kenzie, however, wanted nothing to do with it. Lukey was paddling a

Although the lake house is fairly close to our home (only an hour away), it is still a bit isolated. Being isolated means that we must travel over to New Hampshire to do our food shopping. This is only a half hour away but it is still quite different than our usual five minutes to the market from our home in Waterbury so , whenever we are at the lake house, we plan a trip to Woodsville, NH before and after every weekend so we can refill our pantry and refrigerator.  Woodsville is a nice little town so we actually enjoy making this food run twice a week. Plus, the prices in Woodsville are only 50-60% of the prices in Waterbury where we usually shop and the quality of the produce is far better in Woodsville! So we actually enjoy this little excursion from the lake house. Here is a short two minute video of the kids in the back seat of the car on the way to Woodsville... it is abundantly clear that they really do enjoy this trip to Woodsville... no fighting (okay... there is a little

Back a few months ago, I wrote about the grandchildren playing with bubbles with Gee as they went for a walk. I even recorded some video of that outing and shared the video here on my blog.  The kids were liking the bubbles so much that we decided to go a bit overboard with bubbles while the grandchildren visited us at the lake house this summer.  Below are a few photos from one evening of bubble fun!  The sun was getting low... the temperature was just right... and we were all winding down from a day on the lake. Gee filled a stock pot with some overly slimy bubble mix and placed it on the dock... the kids were like jumping beans filled with boundless energy and excitement but careful not to slip in the soapy water on the dock... I grabbed a camera, leaned over the railing of the deck, and shot a bunch of photos... Kenzie managed to create a bubble Genie... A big bubble beginning to pop after hitting the deck railing... This is what happens when yo

After our followup appointment with the surgeon on Friday, suddenly, we found ourselves with a three day holiday weekend, no plans, and a cleared schedule for a week or two as we wait on further test results.  After a few weeks of hospital visits, surgery, and bad news and even worse news it was nice to have a little breather. As you could probably imagine, under these circumstances, we both wanted to get away for a bit.  Sheila wasn't in much of a mood for socializing so a weekend for us alone was what she really wanted and needed. I think there has been too much focus on conversations of cancer and treatment over the past three weeks and Sheila needed a break... and some rest... and some sleep...  generally speaking, she needed some quiet time and a change of scenery. Friday afternoon, we searched online for a hotel room for the long holiday weekend... as we expected, we had waited too long to book a hotel room on a holiday weekend. We even talked about the option of some t

Friday, we were back at the hospital again for a followup with the surgeon.  Sheila's recovery from her surgery a week prior to this appointment has been relatively uneventful for which we are both very thankful. I definitely want to point out that Sheila's surgeon has done an outstanding job on this partial mastectomy as well as the biopsy and in effectively managing a slightly different and perhaps slightly creative protocol to avoid Sheila's history of problems stemming from anesthesia. In previous surgeries, Sheila has had significant problems with anesthesia and this new surgeon and anesthesiologist really came through in finding a solution to Sheila's rather unique problems.  Additionally,  Sheila's incisions are healing nicely and she is getting more and more comfortable each day. In our appointment on Friday, the surgeon cleared Sheila to begin doing more physically demanding things again as she feels up to it. Naturally, this is good news.