Category: perseverance

'scene' along the way, a second look, adventure, family, friends, home, life goes on, memories, perseverance, photography

Traveling

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Sometimes the word traveling means exactly what you would expect.  A journey from one place to another.  A journey such as my travels for the last few days.  But that journey also led me to a journey back in time.  As I skirted the DC area the route that the GPS had me on caused me to pass by my old neighborhood in Columbia, MD, where I lived for about 30 years.  This is the lake in my former backyard.  More of a lake than the little pond in the backyard of the FL house I’ve lived in for the last 10 years.  So I stopped for pictures, not a big surprise there.  Times have changed however, and there was a sign suggesting that you not leave valuables in your car, and my car was full of them, so I only wandered a little with Ozzie, and only took a few pictures.

But that little walk brought back so many memories.  Memories of walking around the lake with my kids.  It was 1.86 miles around, according to a painted on hash mark and notation on the bike path.  We walked with the kids, and a succession of dogs, four that I can think of.  Time passed and my son and his friend would take our inflatable raft out into the lake, and come back soaking wet, insisting that it just tipped over.  I saw them out there one day when I had the dog out however, and they were. falling off on purpose.  I was glad he was able to have those adventures, that was my attitude at the time, but by today’s standards I should probably be arrested.

Then there came the day that my son came home asking my permission to go ride his bike off a ramp and fly through the air into the lake.  “It’s supervised,” he insisted, “There are adults there.”  I said no, but it only took me a minute to decide that he probably wan’t going to be able to resist, and what the heck was going on anyhow?  So I put the dog on the leash as my excuse to go check on him, and sure enough, there were kids flying through the air with their bikes and landing in the water.  There was an adult there to retrieve the bikes, and everyone had matching tee shirts on.  And no, he didn’t get to do it.

One day at the end of the summer my son proudly brought me to se the tree house that he and a friend had built.  All built with scavenged wood from the construction in the neighborhood, or so he assured me.  When we got there I saw little short pieces of wood that created a stair of sorts up a VERY tall tree.  And the platform up there was small, and downright scary looking.  He was probably 14 or so, an awkward time in a kid’s life, and all along I was happy that he was happy and busy all that summer.  Now I was prepared to worry about all the potential disasters associated with it, but the condo association eventually got wind of it and tore it down.  I was relieved to not have to be the bad guy in that situation.

Eventually grandchildren came along, and we walked to the playground when they were little.  Even they got old enough for adventures.  Kara was walking on the rocks around the lake, which was man-made and in a planned community, and when her foot slipped between two rocks she disturbed a bee’s nest, and I could hear the screaming as she and her brother and a neighbor kid came running home.  Kara got the worst of it as I shampoo’d lots and lots of bees out of her scalp.  Why do I mostly remember the mis-adventures?

I lived in that house longer than I lived in my home town in Massachusetts, longer than I lived in New England.  And yet home, to me, is still New England.  I moved away from that neighborhood with all it’s fond memories, and never looked back.  I lived in lots of places in my life, Indiana, and California, and that house in Maryland.  But I never called a place ‘home’ in the same sense that New England was home to me.  And I’m so happy to be here right now…12-16Elkhorn212-16Elkhorn312-16Elkhorn4

adventure, family, finding my way, friends, fun, leap of faith, life goes on, old dogs new tricks, perseverance, photography, road trip

Serius, seriously…

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It seems like I’ve been on the cusp of heading north again for a very long time now. One box at a time, packed in one house and unloaded and put away at the other. Probably not the most efficient way to do things but it has cut down on the number of boxes I’ve needed.  It has seemed endless, but we are nearly ready to go, and it’s only six months since last time.  It had been two years before that and I was so homesick.  It was a wonderful visit, which explains why I turned my life upside down and decided to become a snowbird, with the mother of all road trips ahead of me.

My only complaint about that last trip was my frustration with the radio.  I’ve never bought music in any form, the radio was fine with me.  But on that trip I had a hard time finding a radio station, and I’d lose the station in no time flat.  And Ozzie isn’t much of a conversationalist so it was annoying.  Even after I got home it seemed like the stations I listen to play a little music (always the same play list) between obnoxious car commercials (“It’s HUGE”), and competing clinics that treat erectile disfunction.  But frustration with the radio is a thing of the past for me because I now have Serius XM radio, something I’d never been interested in before.  And it came complete with a nice comfy car, with lots of room for Ozzie and me, plus all the stuff we would like to tote with us.  Like cameras and dog toys.  I’m not great at traveling light, and Ozzie, well, he IS the elephant in the room, so more room for him.  I knew what car I wanted, but I was ‘just looking’ when I went into the dealership to see what they had.  Not the first dealership I’d been in to either, but somehow they shoo’d me out the door, sending me home with the new car and called it an ‘extended test drive’.  “Drive the car”, they said, “It’ll help you move,” they said.  It proved to be a good strategy because yes, I went back and bought the car.  One step closer…

 

 

 

a second look, eagles, Florida wildlife, nature, nesting, perseverance, photography

Away in an eagle nest…

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I had heard that the eagles were now sitting eggs, and that meant that there was always going to be an eagle on the nest.  So heading over there one more time became my priority on Sunday.  Only it took quite a while to see an eagle.  The new nest seems to be tipped away from our vantage point on the street, so you can’t see into it, but the weather was windy but perfect so I waited, and after a while I saw a head pop up for a second.  And I waited some more.  Then then I saw one make a circle in the sky and I was focused on the nest where I expected him to go, but he landed in a nearby tree.  I heard the other one call a few times, but the new arrival sat on his branch.  I began to wonder if that was all that I was going to see, but then he flew to the nest tree and I got to see the changing of the guard.  As we have seen them do before they both sit on a branch and seem to have a chat for a bit, then the new eagle took over the nest, and the other one flew off to hunt.  I was probably there about two hours, a lot of that time was spent crouched, squinting into the view finder, and with my finger on the button.  I wanted to catch one of them in flight.  Or one of them bringing in a fish for lunch. Maybe next time…12-2eagles312-2eagles512-2eagles6

adventure, finding my way, life goes on, old dogs new tricks, perseverance, photography, road trip, technology, travel

Life lessons…

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A visitor to my yard sale the other day gave me just the message that I needed to hear at the time.  I was dithering.  Anticipating the money that I would receive from the sale of my house, and wondering if I ought to buy the car that I had identified as the one that would be wonderful to drive going forward, since a lot of driving would be in my immediate future.  And it would provide for even more possible travel to farther flung places, should I choose to do that.  And how do I know how long this particular phase of my life will be possible?  I am getting seriously old you know.  So I ought to make the most of this time, don’t you think?  But I also like knowing I have money available, possibly more than I like spending it.  Never once in my life have I ever had to wonder where my next meal was coming from, and yet the fear of finding myself homeless is very real to me.  And it goes way back, long before now when homelessness has become so obvious to us all.  I don’t mean to make light of what. must be a cruel reality for a lot of people, I’m just admitting to a (hopefully) irrational fear.

So what was the message that was so timely?  He told me that he was selling his house also.  He had remarried, he was an 80-something newlywed.  He was married to his first wife for 55 years, he said.  When they got married he told her that since she liked doing bookwork, etc, then he thought she should handle all the bills.  And so she had, for all those 55 years.  He told me where she had worked all those years, and he described a nice enough life.  But after she died he discovered something shocking.  He had to take over the bills of course, and that’s when he discovered that they had $300,000 in the bank!  Totally unbeknownst to him.  And he cried bitterly, he said, because she had worked so hard for all those years and never enjoyed that money.  So sad really, but maybe watching her nest egg grow did bring her enough satisfaction and security to be worth it. 

I really didn’t expect that ending to the story, and it taught me something.  But if I was going to net anything remotely close to that $300,000 then I wouldn’t be worried about what car to buy now would I?  And, just to be clear, that’s not my family in the photo.  I used this stock photo because the panoramic moonroof is a plus for possibilities of camping, and since Ozzie wouldn’t need the electronics I wouldn’t buy those either.  Always thinking…

'scene' along the way, finding my way, Hudson Beach, leap of faith, life goes on, on closer examination, perseverance, photography, sunset, weather

The “afterlife”, sort of…

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I was messaging with my daughter in PA yesterday and I referred to ‘our recent cold spell’ here in FL.  She found that thought to be hilarious, but I told her that the struggle was real.  The fact that I was too cold had me hunkered down in place for a couple of days, not making much progress with the move.  But I shut down my yard sale at about 2:30 and ventured down the road to see if I could accomplish some unpacking/organizing there.  And I purposely left in time in time to stop at what now will be my closest sunset location, Hudson Beach.  Which comes complete with a beach bar, which just might become my new favorite place for a bite to eat, once I move, and once I get back to FL.  The sky was full of dark clouds, with a break in just the right place for some color.  And a very nice conversation with another photographer.  Life will go on…

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go with the flow, life goes on, perseverance, photography, unintended images

Yard sales…

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I’ve never understood yard sales.  What makes a person want to sort through someone else’s junk that they want get rid of so they can pay money to bring it home?  I’ve never stopped at one, but it looks as if having yard sales and attending yard sales is a ‘thing’ in this area.  It makes walking the dog in the morning a bit of a crap shoot as cars suddenly swerve to pull over when they see a yard sale and they aren’t looking for pedestrians.  I’ve also had to wait while the shoppers shop, because they haven’t pulled over far enough and they are blocking the street.

Now I’m holding yard sales with no experience and no idea what I’m doing.  And I was quite pleased with my first one.  I had hordes of people all day long, but I found out later that there was a big estate sale in the area so I must have benefited from that. Today  I was going complain that I gave a yard sale and nobody came, but as I’ve been writing people have been showing up, and it’s been fun talking with them.  And when one woman paid me with a two dollar bill, another shopper who watched that transaction bought the $2 from me for $2.25!  It’s turning out to be a profitable day!

11-30casualty.jpgBut alas, there was carnage…

Did you notice the Ozzie photobomb in the feature photo?