Neighbor's Mailbox

One of our neighbors has this fishing lure mailbox. It makes me smile everytime I pass it. Look carefully to see the hooks hanging down front and back.

Is this 'the blood-dimmed tide?'

Yesterday Son of and I heard a huge crash, ran to the source to discover that our dining table (handmade, solid cherry) had collapsed. There are two metal slides that hold things together -all eight screws on one side had come out, so it just fell apart.

Why? Apparently, because I had put my treasures on the dining room table during the renovation, and they were too heavy. Who knew? I keep telling myself that this is just nature's way of helping me let go of material objects. I'm grateful that a few important things survived, but....

But why didn't I send the little tiny china teapot with the pink roses on it to The Grandchild last week when I sent some other things?

Could this be the blood-dimmed tide, after all?

Or is this still in the category of 'the champagne has gone flat and we're out of caviar. Will our suffering never end?'

Things Fall Apart

The center cannot hold;/ mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

Perhaps,it's a bit grandiose to compare my life lately to the Second Coming and there hasn't been (so far) a blood-dimmed tide. But there has been a lot of anarchy in the last few months, and there's nothing 'mere' about it.

Case in point: my left hand. I broke my little finger slipping on our newly refinished floors. The bandages have gotten bigger and bigger because it continued to be painful. Now, in this humungous bandage, it is stable at last and only aches a little, sometimes.


OK, if you are going to break a bone, the little finger of your left hand is one of the best ones to break, I"m not claiming that it's a Big Deal. However, it has made everything -from showering to typing (therefore, blogging) much, much more difficult. It will be a month tomorrow since I broke it and I'm done now. I want it to stop.

The picture is blurry because (duh!) it's hard to hold the camera steady with one hand.

The Paint Game

Play the Paint Game! You get to match colors to paint names - see how many you get right. Click Here

Cranes Beach, Autumn evening: I hate Jetskis

Idyllic evening, apart from the horrid noise of 2 jetskis. These are so far out from the beach that you can't see them, but they were way too noisy. Otherwise, the evening was perfect.

The COG on the beach

This is my typical view of The COG on the beach. He is stooping slightly to line up a good photo - in this case, a fisherman in the surf.

What a Difference a Year Makes

In the Newborn Nursery.

A year later: Sooooo Big

Birthday Girl

By tradition, first birthdays in our family are accompanied by messy-faced pictures. In this case, the Grandchild of COG had to be induced to cooperate. The chocolate cake was much less interesting than the fresh raspberries that adorned it. Once those were gone, however, we got the picture we wanted. (I must confess to some qualms - forcing the child to eat chocolate cake when she clearly preferred fruit - not ideal. But... Tradition demanded it).