so, it has been awhile

Obviously I haven't wanted to post anything since August.  Funny, the last post was about a storm, and today we are expecting a full-on snowstorm.  

It's not like I haven't had anything to say... I just haven't been motivated.  Between Covid and politics, it's just been zapping all my energy.  So far we've still managed to avoid the first.  Vaccinations have just started here.  I figure my kids and I will be able to get it anywhere from April to June.  We just need to hang in there until then.  It hasn't been horrible, but it's not very fun doing little to nothing.  My daughter can't find a job yet; my son is finishing up his first semester of junior year in college (at home), and I'm bored.  But hey, it could be a lot worse.  Cases are going up because people are being stupid here... 

Politics dragged me WAAAAAY down.  Honestly, there are some faces in the news I hope I never have to see again.  Ugh.  That's all I'm going to say about that. 

We did manage to get our Christmas tree up and decorated though.  It's our first Christmas here in the new house.  

I always set up my little white tree too. 

My daughter always did lights on our old porch.  She did the new one too.  It was a bit easier since this porch is smaller.

Sometimes we get some pretty wild sunsets in winter.  This past week we've had a few. 

Stay-at-home means lots of time to walk the dog.  It catches up with Ivy.

I've never seen a dog sleep on her back as much as this one does.  She's weird.

So now I'm counting down the hours until the snow starts to fall.  Hope you're all doing well. 

 

isaias

Tropical Storm Isaias came roaring through here on August 4th.  My neighborhood came out rather unscathed - tree branches down and the usual other debris - but we never lost power.  So imagine my surprise to see everything else around me upended.

All around us, thousands were without power.  Big beautiful trees were upturned.  A mile down the road looked like this: 

That road finally opened yesterday.

Oddly enough, we lost our power a few days later for about 24 hours.  We still don't know why.

Storms are weird things.  We got slammed in Hurricane Sandy and lost our power for almost two weeks.  It was never officially confirmed that a tornado went up our street, but I can tell you that it most certainly did.  Some areas were leveled, while some got minimal damage.  I think it was all in how the storm swirled.  Where we vacation at the Jersey shore was a perfect example.  Every other town seemed to get destroyed while the ones in between did not.  It was all in how it swirled.  The people here in my new neighborhood told me that they never lost power in Sandy.  Weird.

 

butterflies

I don't know anyone who doesn't love butterflies.  I don't see as many as I would like, but when I do, I'm always fascinated.  Sometimes they are very camera shy, but sometimes they are so wrapped up in their flowers, they will let me snap away.  These two didn't seem to care that I was lurking.

Monarch

Yellow Swallowtail

outing

Other than to my local farm stand, I haven't really gone anywhere lately.  The other day my son told me that one of our local gardens opened back up, so we decided to check it out.  It happened to be a pretty nice day - temp in the high 80's but less oppressive humidity.  New Jersey summers are hot and humid, so when we get a break in that, we like to take advantage of it.

It's called the Leonard J. Buck Garden in Far Hills, NJ.  You can click on the link to read about it if you're so inclined.

I got my son a new camera for Christmas, which he seems to be enjoying, and he brought it.  My cameras are still packed from moving.  I know where they are, but I haven't yet taken them out let alone charged the batteries and all that.  I still have film cameras too, and I do use them, but I don't have any film on hand.  So it was just me and my iPhone, which is good enough sometimes.

When we got there, we noticed that the paths we usually roam around on were now marked with directional arrows to keep people moving in the same direction so as to not have to pass one another.  I liked that.  It wasn't crowded anyway, which I also liked.  It was nice to get out and feel somewhat normal.  Nature is always soothing.  Enjoy.

My very skinny son. He's actually a very good photographer. Better than I, I think. 

Which way?

We were at least six feet apart.

Please

A little history.

Probably don't want to eat these.

Probably don't want to eat these either.

No dogs allowed, but Ivy would have loved splashing in this.

sharon's harmony hut, ii

I have a half-written post about a song that took me back to a particular point in time.  Things came up, and I haven't finished it yet.

This morning I woke up and did my usual run through of Facebook and Twitter.  Within ten minutes, I was pretty certain today would be a day I need to avoid the interwebs.  I just don't have it in me to deal with all the crap going on.  Some days I can handle it.  I think I'm too fragile and tired today.

However, there was on post on Twitter that may be my saving grace.

David Lemieux does a show called 'Today in Grateful Dead History' on the SiriusXM Grateful Dead channel.  I love the show and follow him on Twitter.  Today he posted this:

I was at that show.  I had friends who traveled the country following the Dead.  I considered myself a super fan, but I didn't stray far from NJ to see them - maybe as far north as Massachusetts, as far south as Northern Virginia, and as far west as the middle of Pennsylvania.  JFK stadium was less than an hour away from my house, so you know I was there.  I went with my usual crew: Stevie G, Jenny R, Suzanne S, and Turtle.  Someday I'll have to dedicate a whole post to Turtle.  He is worthy of it.

It was HOT.  I think every Dead show I went to was in the middle of summer.  I don't remember ever being cold at one.

Those who know the Dead know that there were some shows when Jerry just wasn't on his game.  This show was not one of them.  They were spectacular.  It was so good, in fact, that the recording of it was released on an album called, "Crimson, White & Indigo."

I looked up JFK stadium on Wikipedia and found this:

Six days after the Grateful Dead's 1989 show, then-Mayor Wilson Goode condemned the stadium due to multiple findings by city inspectors that the structure was structurally unsafe and a potential fire hazard. Just hours before the concert, city inspectors discovered piles of combustible materials, numerous electrical problems, and crumbling concrete. There had been reports of falling concrete for some time before then. The Grateful Dead concert was allowed to go ahead due to strict no-smoking regulations that had been enacted some time before. Renovating and repairing the stadium was quickly ruled out, and it was demolished on September 23, 1992.

Hahaha.  I'm surprised we survived.

So there it is.  I started the day off sad and tired, but once again, the Grateful Dead picked me up.  If you are feeling blue, sit back and give this clip from that iconic 7/7/89 show a watch.  It's hard to feel bad.  You may even feel like dancing a little.

thank you for coming

It has been increasingly difficult to think about blogging with everything going on in the world.  Honestly, I am overwhelmed.  I am.  My children are.  My friends are.  I know some of you are.

The other night while many cities erupted in violence, my town's local Black Lives Matter group held a funeral procession for George Floyd.  They had announced it a couple of days before.  It was to start at 7pm at the high school, travel a route throughout the town, and finish at the town's police station where there were to be speakers and a (socially distant) candlelight vigil.  Residents were encouraged to watch or participate, and my daughter wanted to participate.  So around 6:45 pm, she and I got into her car and headed toward the high school, which is only one mile from our house.  She had made a Black Lives Matter sign, which she stuck in one of the windows.

There were lines of cars in all directions of the high school waiting to participate.  We got a spot on line in the parking lot, but lines of traffic jammed up all the local streets.  My son, who had been out on a "destination walk" as he calls it (where he drives to a location and walks there) had been on his way home and got stuck in the mess.  He texted me and said it took him almost a half hour to go a quarter mile.

The procession started at 7pm as scheduled, but there were so many cars that we sat for almost an hour and a half before we started moving.  There were that many people.  During the time we waited, some people walked through the lot with signs, and when they did, everyone honked their horns.  Most people had signs on their cars.  I took some pics.

The line of cars that we were in

We finally started moving close to 8:30.  Everyone honked horns during the procession.  As we drove, people on the sidewalks waved, held up fists, and some had signs that just said, "thank you for coming."

I took some video here and there, which I'll post, but none of them do the procession any justice.  I really wanted to watch and not concentrate on filming.


Starting out:

Participants.  You can hear all the horns:

The line of cars goes on and on:

Some scenes throughout the town route.  We got in on the honking:

The streets of town look empty.  Normally this town is bustling at night, but since the pandemic, it has been very quiet like many other towns.  We drove to where the candlelight vigil was being held, and I think that's where everyone in town was.  It was packed.  My daughter and I decided to just drive back home after that because we didn't want to take a chance being around so many people.  It just didn't look like social distancing was possible.  When we got home, it was almost 9:30.

The next day I had read that there were close to 400 cars in the procession.

We are lucky here.  This town has had its share of racial unrest in the past, but now it is fair and welcoming, and our police are also.  There was not one problem with the whole event.  It was quite a different situation in the rest of the country.  We came home from a unified event to find the rest of the country blowing up.

This morning I let the dog out for her usual run around, and I sat at my little garden table by the lilac bush.  The blooms are just about done with only a few fresh flowers left. I talk to nature a lot.  I'm sure people must think I'm crazy, but why wouldn't you talk to nature?  I took a long sniff of one bloom then said, "thank you for coming."  Then I thought about the signs I saw on the route saying those same words.

odd fascination

Ivy didn't have access to the bathrooms in the other house.  Being that the layout of the new house is somewhat different and that Ivy is a bit older now and more reliable as far as roaming is concerned, she been able to explore this uncharted territory.  And she seems fascinated. 

Often I find her in there just looking around.  One day she was just sitting in the middle of the room.  Another day she was obviously more relaxed.

She is most intrigued by the shower.  For faster drying purposes, we had a habit of leaving the doors open.  Old habits do die hard.  We learned that this habit needs to be nipped in the bud.

One never realizes how dirty a dog's paws really are until they are wet.

She usually keeps me company while I dry my hair.

Sometimes she can't get close enough.

I don't know if or when her bathroom lust will grow old.  It's pretty funny though.  My previous dog had zero interest in bathrooms.

moved

It was a looooooong process.  I decided that I didn't want movers inside the old house or the new house, so we moved EVERYTHING ourselves.  Well, everything but the things in the garage and sheds.  Anything that could be moved right from the outside to the outside or the garage to the garage I let the movers do.  But that left the entire house for us to move.  Four bedrooms, two offices, TV room, living room, kitchen, attic, and basement... ALL of it.  To a slightly smaller house.  It took a whole week, with mostly 12 hour days.

I certainly got a lot of exercise.  On the last day, my watch told me this.

Honestly, I'm sure I did more than 26,821 steps that day.  And the watch doesn't count the furniture and boxes that I lifted.

Looked like the Beverly Hillbillies.

Me following to make sure nothing falls off.

I have to say that I felt pretty good doing it all.  It wasn't until about three days after we settled in that I felt like I was going to die.  Yesterday I was so exhausted that I did not want to get out of bed.  Of course then I wondered if it was covid-19, but seeing that I didn't get any worse, I figured not.  I mean, I literally have not been anywhere but between the two houses for the past two weeks.

Even Ivy was exhausted.

I did finally get the kitchen organized.  It looked like this for a couple of days.

Our paper towel island

It did clean up nicely.  Ivy seems to approve.

When the house was being built, we decided to do the closets ourselves.  We used some temporary clothing racks to hang things.  Mine was also too tired to play nice.

It actually fell over twice. 

The basement is a hot mess.  It's full of things that either don't fit or that we are playing keep or don't keep.  We probably should have done that before we moved it all, but things were so crazy.

Kind of like what my old attic looked like.

Emotionally it was hard, but being so busy made it easier not to think about.  I did have a few moments here and there when I got weepy.  The last morning I woke up in my old bedroom, I took a long look at my view.  I will miss it.

The first morning from my new bedroom, I took a long look at my view.  I have much closer neighbors, as you can see.

If it's possible to be in love with a structure, then I'm in love with that garage.  It belongs to the neighbors behind me.  I keep saying I want to buy it from them.

The neighbor to the side of me has a lovely weeping cherry tree.  My outdoor patio set and bird feeder complement it nicely.

It has become my afternoon tea spot.

There's that garage I want.  And that orange thing is our kayak. Don't know where to put that yet. 

I was going to post pics of the outside of both houses, but I can't seem to locate them.  I'll get around to that.

Hope you are all doing well.