That which did not fall.....

This is the wood burning cookstove that had the good grace not to fall through the floor into the rot.

Find Your Place, HA!

   I rarely wax-poetic, but when I do Fate is right there, ready to lob a hornet's nest at my head.  Two posts ago, I wrote of joy of finding one's place in the world.  (For me it was an old house my father bought in 1953 on an island off of Massachusetts.)
   While re-shingling one side of the house, we decided to have the area behind the outside shower done as well.  When the shingles came off (see above), we learned that the foundation had rotted through.  (Behind the adjacent stone chimney sits a large cast-iron, wood burning kitchen stove.  That it didn't crash into the hole created by the rot is the only bright spot in this story. )
   We were lucky that it happened off-season.  No litigious tenants fell through the floor.  Repairmen avoid Chappaquiddick unless the blues are running.  The bluefish have been elusive this Derby, so my brother got a mason to come on a Sunday morning.
   But by now, Fate was in a full windup pitch.  The mason poked and prodded all around the foundation.
   Our house is apparently upright on a wing and a prayer.  The remedy is to jack-up the house and replace the foundation.
   I didn't ask for an estimate.  The hornets are here.

The Side-Hill Saugus

    Once, when I was young and foolish, (and possibly drunk), my husband convinced me that there was a goat-like animal in the Andes known as the Side-hill Saugus.  It circled the Andean mountains, always moving in the same direction.  Over the generations, evolution stepped in. The Side-hill Saugus developed uneven legs, the right side legs longer than the left.  Evolution has done odder things.  
    Days later I was furious to find he had made up the whole thing.
    Flash forward forty years.  My right ankle has built up so much scar tissue from repeated sprainings  that I cannot navigate uneven terrain, like a beach.  I can walk in one direction, with my right foot waterside, but turnaround, with my right foot on higher ground than my left and it is unbearably painful.  
    That's karma for you.  My husband now has his own genuine Side-hill Saugus.

"Find Your Place"

   The Trustees of the Reservation, a Massachusetts conservation group, has a wonderful motto: "Find Your Place."  So simple, so true.  A place where you feel at peace.  Isn't that what we all want?
   My brother doesn't buy lottery tickets because, as he put it, "I won the lottery the day I was born."  Me too.  My father bought the above house in 1953 for the princely sum of $8000.  It is the emotional center of our lives, even though most of the time it is vacant or filled with renters.

This is the view from the front porch, and this is my place.  I suspect it is other people's place as well. When  I was a teenager, I was bored silly by the quiet emptiness of the space. I couldn't wait to go to town, a ferry ride away.
   "Find Your Place" had a darker meaning today, my first day back.  My password list vanished from my desk while I was gone.  Poof.  Whom the Gods destroy, They first make mad with ever-changing passwords.  Who can keep up with this nonsense?  Why doesn't cyberspace have a 'find-your-space' option?

Boomers on the Beach

You know you are of a certain age when, surrounded by miles of white sand and clear water, you hug the shadows.  Between the six of us there are dozens of scraped basal cells, MOHS surgeries and In Situ cancers.  Oh for the days of baby oil and careless abandon.....

Summertime and the Scraping is Easy

    Ah yes, it is that time of year again, when I pick up the scraper and  renew my Sisyphean task of woman versus the elements  This old beach house has withstood countless hurricanes and tenants.  I wish it had more fortitude against salty air.  This winter must have been particularly vicious as the the paint flakes practically leapt off the porch railing when they saw me coming.
   One of the amusing aspects of tenants is what they leave behind.  Yesterday I found an issue of "Garden & Gun" magazine, which claims
to be "the soul of the South".  Interesting in so very many ways.  (It put me in mind of a store I once saw that sold 'clams and computers'.) I don't know which tenant left the magazine, but it is fun to speculate.
   I have always believed this house has a soul.  I imagine all it has witnessed, and realize I don't know the half of it.  Inadvertently, I discovered a man online who told me he had danced in my kitchen many years ago.  (He was a friend of one of the tenants.)  I'm glad this house has brought joy to so many, but I can't help feeling it's been cheating on me.

Oh, Canada

    I've been away.  Unlike last year's endurance death trek through the London Museums, this was relatively relaxed, no alarm clocks going off at O-Dark Thirty.  We went to Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. (The weather was the same as London in May, daily rain and cold.)  I was there for the photographs, source material for my paintings.  In nine days we logged 2400 kilometers.  My husband was the soul of patience.  We would be hurtling along a pockmarked road,when I would scream, "stop!" then, "back up", "no, a little bit forward."  Like I said, I was there for the photos.
     The Maritimes are flat out gorgeous, even in the rain.  The people are relaxed , the beaches rocky.  We went in search of old fishing villages.  (A word to Canadian Tourism,  don't say you've "restored a 200 year old fishing village" and then paint the shacks with neon colors.)  The guidebooks proved unreliable, promising heart shaped rocks and historic villages.  We took many leaps of faith looking for authentic maritime scenes.   Avoiding tourists, we opted to take the road less traveled up the southern shore to Cape Breton.  (There is a good reason it is less traveled.)  The guidebook touted  Guysborough was a must-see.  We headed off on what the map indicated was a real road.  It was in fact, a logging trail, 40 kilometers of dirt and ruts.  And Guysborough was a bust.
    Lodging was hit or miss.  The Broadwater Inn in Beddeck was run by a true raconteur.  He sent us to a place not mentioned in the guides that proved to be our favorite spot. My husband booked a room in Charlottetown based on Trip Advisor's four stars.  More a Victorian crypt than an inn, our room had old dolls on the massive furniture, Sunday-best hats hanging from the wall, and a hand holding a glove on the dresser.  Two diminutive pillows and sheets from before thread-count was born, left me to curse Trip Advisor.
    But as I said, the Maritimes are gorgeous, the pace is slow and the people warm.
    Oh, and as you will see in the upper left corner, as promised, there is a heart shaped rock.