Let's see... David and I finally made a trip to Connecticut to visit Richard and pick up the boat-shaped object. It was a good albeit very fast trip and the boat is now safely tucked in our garage on saw horses, with the brand new trailer locked to a heavy concrete block in our back yard. This past weekend I vacuumed out the inside of the boat (it had collected much dust over the last year in the refuge of Helen's garage) and yesterday David added another coat of epoxy to the inside. I saw it shortly after he applied the epoxy and it looked very nice. Of course we still have more sanding and likely still more epoxy and still more sanding. And then we paint. But progress... I'll post photos before long.
Our garden has exploded with tomatoes - huge numbers of sweet yellow heirloom tomatoes and quite a few plump red plum tomatoes. Our few cucumber vines are still spreading out but producing fewer cukes. Those that they do produce are sweet. This past Sunday we had a shared dinner with our next door neighbors, Melissa and her son Tobias. They grilled on their tiny charcoal grill, and so did we. We had local halibut steaks, fresh sweet corn and onions from our CSA, a zucchini grown by Melissa and Tobias, tomatoes and a huge sweet green pepper from our garden. Delicious. Yesterday David pulled our first carrots and we had those for dinner.
Here they are, seconds after being pulled from the soil (and maybe 2 hours before being eaten):
When we got back from our CT trip, Ella got sick - her stomach again but this time a serious bout of vomiting, serious enough that I took her to the vet. They did test after test ($610 worth), which was good in that they ruled out all kinds of extremely serious stuff like tumors and so forth. Apparently she has a very sensitive stomach that was very inflamed. As a result she was on a 6-7 day regine where we fed her rice in small amounts every few hours, and gave her 2 different medications 3 times a day. She did well, and a week later was to be back on her regular food without medications. The first day - which was this past Saturday - she threw up her breakfast again. Back to rice. After consulting with the vet, we're going to try giving her Pepcid AC before every meal and see how she does. Two days so far, and she's doing okay. Here's our girl, resting with her head on a pillow on the couch:
Although it's only early September, Rosh HaShannah - the Jewish New Year - has already come. I attended services at the local synagogue and found the experience particularly meaningful, I think, in part because of the gratitude I feel about living here, the community, the visiting rabbi was friendly, down to earth and even uplifting. David and I were invited for a meal at a couple's home the second day; unfortunately David had to work, but I went and enjoyed the meal and the company of the hosts and other guests.
Meanwhile, Ella and I keep up our morning walks, and as the seasons turn and we swing toward fall, the sun moves across the eastern sky in the mornings a little more each a day so that the sun now begins to rise again behind the sea toward the breakwater. A couple of pictures from this week:
The Rosh HaShannah liturgy says that on Rosh HaShannah it is written, and on Yom Kippur, it is sealed... who will live out their full life span and who will not. The prayer book we used suggested that one way of thinking of this is - who will live their life to the fullest and who will not. Of course we each should try to live life to the fullest - but what if we can't. I've been thinking a lot about Syria and Obama's beating of war drums. Yet another Middle East war? I've been thinking about the 2 million Syrian refuges - what about their lives being lived to the fullest? What about the lives snuffed out by chemical weapons? You look around you at what happens in the world today and you have to ask the same question that the Jewish prayer book asks: What are we human beings? On Rosh HaShannah we say that man begins from dust and ends as dust. The possibility of magic is found in between - in life. Why do we treat each other so abominably? Rodney King asked "Can't we all just get along?" Apparently not. At least, not yet.
Still, as I head toward Yom Kippur to fast and "confess" my "sins," I will be praying for peace, for justice and for compassion by each of us for the other.
Join me?
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