Archive | August 2026

I Took Off My Shoes

Aug19

As soon as the work crew left my house, I sank into my favorite living room chair and kicked off my shoes. The work I’d hired them to do in the dining room was finally finished. Leaning back, I planned, “Tomorrow morning, I’ll wipe away the construction dust on my kitchen counters and living room furniture. Then I’ll return things I had to remove from the room so the work could be done.”

Hours passed and dusk began to settle over the countryside. There was still dayglow in the sky, although the sun had set nearly an hour earlier. I got up from the chair to return a cup to the kitchen. Not wanting the cup to be stained by the last few drops of tea in it, I turned on the sink to rinse it out. Not a single drop of water came out of the faucet.

I suddenly remembered that I had turned on the water hose while the workers were still here, and I had forgotten to turn it off!  The realization made me shout, “Oh no!” Although I had a new well dug several years ago, and the drill rig went very deep, I have a low output well. It can run dry if I turn on a tap and leave it running constantly for over two hours. I’d started watering the garden at least four hours earlier.

Usually all I had to do when this happened was wait an hour or two and then go to the basement to turn the pressure pump back on. But running my well dry has happened so seldom that I forget in between times how to turn it back on. What I don’t understand is whether the switch moves to the off position when the pump kicks off, or if stays in the on position. I’ve been told the words “on” and “off” are printed by the switch, but there isn’t a light by the pump so I’ve never seen them. None of this wouldn’t be a problem if the pressure gage would go up when it is turned on. Unfortunately, there is no immediate way for me to know if I made the right decision or not! This has me not knowing what I’m doing.

My garden is inside of a plastic-covered hoop building, so I need to irrigate the plants each day. When I set up my irrigation in spring, I have to attach the drip tape to a headline, then attach the headline to a pressure regulator, then attach that to a 50-foot hose that has an easy on/off connection (for lawn mowing) to the last 25-feet of hose which is then attached to a water timer that is then screwed onto the outdoor water spigot.  The water timer is important. When I turn it on to water the garden, it stops the flow after a set time, thus preventing me from forgetting and running my well dry.

Every year I have problems with my irrigation system. No matter what I do, one connection or another leaks. I’ve tried many different things to prevent this. This year, whenever I tried screwing the water timer to the spigot, it leaked badly and soaked directly into the foundation of my house. My solution was to just leave the water timer off. I would have to trust my memory to turn off the hose.

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Groundhog Day At the Airport

Aug12
Parlez-vous Fracais?

A lilting tune violently tore me away from deep slumber. I resentfully opened my eyes to total darkness. The crisp white bed linen wrapped around me and the huge bed that surrounded my body didn’t feel familiar. In the darkness nearby, I heard my daughter, Tammie, say, “Mamma? Wake up. It’s time to get going.” She turned on the bedside light next to her bed and the brightness blinded me. The last twenty-four hours instantly came back to mind. It had been late when we entered this room and now, while it was still the middle of the night, we had to get up and leave.

Despite the two huge, five-acre sized beds in the room, there was only one bathroom. I told Tammie to use it first. While waiting for my turn to use the bathroom, my thoughts drifted back to yesterday morning. I was up before seven A.M. The alarm clock hadn’t even gone off. Instead of feeling relaxed and looking forward to a day spent on the cruise ship, I mentally listed all the things my daughters, granddaughter and I had to do before disembarking in Quebec City, Canada. Our lovely week spent on a cruise ship had come to an end.

I felt uneasy because I didn’t know how the day would work out. Since our flight at the Quebec airport didn’t leave until the afternoon, Tammie said there was time to use a Hop-On-Hop-Off bus to tour the city, but there would not be enough time to get off at any of the stops. I wondered what we would do with our luggage while on the tour bus. I didn’t know where we had to go to get picked up by the bus. I worried about getting to the airport on time.

The cruise terminal agreed to hold our luggage for a small fee while we went sightseeing. A parking lot bus took us to a spot near one of the tour bus stops. Surprised that everything was falling into place, I relaxed and looked forward to seeing a bit of Quebec City. We didn’t know where the tour bus pick-up was, and all the signs in Quebec are in French. None of us could read them, so we walked several blocks before realizing we had walked a long way past the pick-up spot.

Finally, the bus came. I didn’t want to sit in the sun, so I stayed on the lower level, but Niki, Tammie and Claire sat on the top deck where the view was better. The name, Quebec, is an Algonquian word. These were the indigenous people who lived there when Europeans arrived. In their language it meant, “Where the river narrows.” Quebec is also the name of the province where the city is located. When speaking about Quebec, it is necessary to differentiate which one is being mentioned, Quebec City or the province.

The bus followed a highway that had me swiveling my head to see everything. Below and to the left was the Saint Lawrence River; to the right was a steep cliff that towered over the bus. I saw something on the cliff sparkling in the sunshine. The earbud guide said that in 1540 when French explorer Jacques Cartier saw this sparkling cliff, he was convinced he was seeing diamonds. He gathered some of the stones. But when he was back in France, he was told they were just quartz crystals. Despite that disappointment, the place is still called Cape Diamond.

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It’s All Fun!

Aug5
Our tour of Quebec was on a sunny day. Tammie sat on the top deck. The view from there was excellent, but unfortunately she was painfully sunburned!

Tammie pulled out her phone to take notes, and I had a tablet when we sat down across from each other in the living room. My daughter stated, “Let’s get this all figured out tonight, because shore excursions filled up really fast before our last cruise.” I did remember. There had been some excursions that were fully booked by the time we looked at what we wanted to do!

I also remembered that we had managed to schedule shore excursions at each port of call. The things we saw and did were fun, but when our ship pulled out of dock, I wished that Tammie and I would have had time to visit the town built around the port. Also, the cost of all those shore excursions had doubled the cost of my cruise.

That night, Tammie and I agreed that the only excursion we really wanted to go on was the one that would show us where the story about Anne of Green Gables took place.

Three months before taking this cruise, I had had my right hip replaced. Walking suddenly felt good again. While aboard ship, I surprised myself by walking a few laps around the promenade deck with my daughter, Niki. Although walking was painless, I was out of shape. Our first port of call on Sunday morning was Portland, Maine. Tammie said, “The church where we will attend Mass is just a few blocks from the dock.” What I failed to remember or maybe didn’t realize was that the distance was all uphill! I wasn’t used to that type of energetic walking.

We stopped often and rested along the way. When we arrived at the church, we were told, “Because today is Corpus Christi, Mass will take place at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.” He pointed uphill and said, “It’s just a block or two up that street.”

In Halifax, we bought tickets for a Hop-On, Hop-Off bus. This line of ancient, double-decker buses had a set route through the city, stopping at several places of interest. By the time we finished going through the Halifax maritime museum, we only waited five minutes for another bus to roll up.

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