Kingfisher Cove

Vacation’s Blasting By

FINALLY, the weather has improved! It hasn’t been nice out since the 4th of July (which truly was stellar, and I’m so thankful for that!) But jeeze. The otherwise work-week has not been all that. Other than not having to work, of course! I haven’t given work a second’s worth of thought. (Bliss!)

Our grape plant, which we’ve had for several years now (a guy JDub works with gave him a cutting way back when) actually has grapes! Oh, they’re itty teeny tiny bitty:  (Aren’t they cute?)

And the birds! They are so happy here with all the (excellent quality) birdseed I give them. The gold finches are like lemon drops constantly dropping out of the sky.

They’re darned cute, too. There have been times we’ve seen dozens of them all at once! I don’t even like yellow, but I sure do like these little guys. Hint: That’s a thistle “sock” my dad gave me and they love that thing because they can just hang onto it and pull the thistle seed out of the netting.

Mojo’s been pretty scarce, but every once in a while I’ll see him across the gully over at the neighbors’ with *something* dangling out of his mouth. So far he hasn’t graced us in the middle of the night with some headless thing deposited on the floor beside the bed. He also hasn’t been coming in to eat much cat food, as I’m sure his tummy is full of….whatever.

So here it is Thursday already! (Which means Nate’s been at Boot Camp for two weeks! Six weeks to go!) JDub’s folks stopped by yesterday to visit, and I sent home my first hand-written letter with his mom so she could mail it for me (there’s no mail service here!) I doubt he’ll get it by this coming Sunday (their only mail day), but by next Sunday he should get a bunch. I’ve since hand-written him another letter. Funny how my hand cramps up! I used to write all KINDS of stuff in long-hand (short stories, poems, school papers, etc.) Ouch! I also used to have a significant callous on my right middle finger from grasping pens, which is long gone.

There’s an osprey nest just up the road from us, in the very top of a big old snag. I was showing it to my mother-in-law yesterday and there was all kind of activity with one osprey sitting in the nest and two others soaring around it. Twice now we’ve seen an osprey (they’re BIG) grab a huge dead branch out of a tree on our property and pump his wings (hard!) in the direction of the nest for reinforcement. Quite an eye-popping sight!

Nasty Weather, Wonderful Mail

Basically the MOMENT our fun company left Sunday, the weather has turned to shit. (Yes, I can say that word. It’s my blog). Looking back at those previous pictures I’m almost blown away because I realize what a GIFT that was to have such amazing weather on the 4th of July. We’re back to typical non-stellar Washington State weather, and it’s a drag when you’re on vacation (at the beach…) So yesterday (Monday, our first official vacation day) we drove home to see if we could lasso the cat, hoping that he’d been driven inside from the wind and the rain. Turned out, yes he was! We immediately put the slider in the pet door to keep him in, threw in a load of laundry, then headed to the grocery store to pick up a few things. THEN: JDub brought up the mail and there was “The Form Letter” from the Navy (with various lines filled in by Nate himself). I now have his address!  And I know that his graduation date is August 21st! And he included the briefest, teeniest, tiniest note (all that was allowed):

“HI MOM. I LOVE YOU AND MISS YOU. I AM DOING FINE SO FAR. I AM BECOMING ACCUSTOMED TO THE NAVY WAY OF LIFE. MY PREVIOUS LIFE IS OVER AND MY NEW LIFE IS TAKING SHAPE. KISS THE CAT AND HUG JOHN FOR ME. I WILL WRITE MORE WHEN TIME PERMITS!
LOVE, SR BERENS”

(SR means Seaman Recruit).

Not much, but when I started to read it out loud to JDub, I broke down in tears and couldn’t continue — had to have him read it himself! Lots of emotions that I haven’t been prepared for that sneak up on me and bite me in the butt. (And the heart…)

So maybe Mojo’s absence when we were originally heading down here was for a reason; so we’d go home to find “Da Form Letter.” I also now have a lot of information for making travel arrangements for attending his graduation (PIR…”Pass In Review”). Before I do (at least for the air travel), I need to make sure that Nate isn’t scheduled for what they call “Grad-N-Go” which means that he would head to San Diego for his apprentice training directly after graduating from Boot Camp with no Liberty time off to spend with us. But I do need to make arrangements for time off from work, and probably hotel arrangements, as well, because they can be cancelled/revised pretty easily. Airline tickets can’t. (All I know is, I absolutely can not miss seeing him graduate. It’s such a huge deal, and he will have accomplished so damned much by then. And to see him in his Dress Whites? Jeeze…)

What’s a bummer is that now that I have his address, I don’t have a printer down here at Harstine to print off all the letters I’ve already written to him (in InDesign so I could include lots of pictures and stuff). And I certainly didn’t think to take HOME my laptop for the brief time we were there yesterday to get the cat, etc. So I won’t be able to print them until we’re home from vacation! Gah! Today I hand-wrote him a long letter and explained that he’ll later be getting a bundle of typewritten ones complete with photos that date back to the day he left. But now I need to get it mailed somehow. We’re pretty much in po-dunk remoteness. Poor guy, I know they really covet receiving mail.

Otherwise? Pretty mellow around here with the sucky weather. All day long today my internet connection wouldn’t work on my laptop (with the AT&T connector device that’s the same technology as the 3G iPhone). Turns out that with the two accounts I have with AT&T now (iPhone and this device) there was some confusion (?) in billing and they shut me off because of non-payment! So I spent a lot of time on my iPhone today talking to AT&T and getting it all straightened out. And being cut off — twice. What a nightmare! And what an expense this all is! Crap-O-Mighty! Is it worth it? (Uhm, yeah, I guess, but it also feels like a major rip-off).

Tomorrow’s supposed to be shitty again (yes I CAN say that word), but after that it’s supposed to improve in a big way. We’re in for a nice weekend at least. Now, I think I’ll bury myself in my Kindle! (Such a geeky electronic gadget ho I am!)

Wonderful Whirlwind

At the moment I’m writing this, it is hella windy outside! Blowing in some nasty, inclement weather…I guess we’re due. I’m just thankful that the 4th was utterly awesome. It truly was a perfect day, in all ways (and even if Mojo had been here with us, I’m sure he would’ve been hiding all day from all the dogs).

My brother and his wife and my niece came (along with their Pug, Milo; and their new little baby dog, Montey the long-haired Chihuahua). We also got lots of visits from Sam, the Yorkshire Terrier from next door. (Added to our two weenie dogs). Quite the menagerie! And then Helen came from Oregon! We chatted, ate cold cracked Dungeness crab (that my brother caught at Camano a couple of days ago), drank Crantinis (beer for the guys), went for a ride in the Fast Red Boat, swam/inner-tubed (it was a toasty day!), grilled King salmon and corn-on-the-cob, and set off fireworks while we watched all the neighbors’ awesome shows along the beach.

The day in pictures:

My brother’s tent! Helen called it the “Taj Mahal!”

 

Back from a boat ride in the Fast Red Boat!

 

The Harstine Island Bridge in our wake.

 

Summertime!

 

Helen on the beach.

 

Montey, the sweet and so adorable lil’ Chihuahua puppy. (Montey is short for “Montezuma!”)

A pile of wee dogs!

  

A beach fire.

 

Helen setting off the first fireworks of the evening. (Bummer I couldn’t get any decent shots of all the gorgeous mortars happening all around us, but fireworks just don’t photograph well, from my experience).

    It was one of the most incredible sunsets I’ve ever seen. This photo turned out a little blurry (such a shame), but it’s kind of cool that a neighbor’s sail boat almost looks like a ghost ship.

I’ve saved this as my new current desktop photo. It’s really stunning blown up. Click to see it a little larger (which still won’t do it justice as it’s not shown as big as the photo really is).

So company left early this afternoon and I pouted because we had so much fun and suddenly it was OVER! However, with this strong breeze/wind (nearly 30 mph sustained), it would have been a drag. JDub and I have been holed up inside the trailer the rest of the day. I tried to take a nap, but a damned fly kept pestering me.

Still Kind of Reeling

What a horrendous 4-day work-week it was! Man, I’m just now finally starting to chill out, well into the 1st day of our 10-day Harstine vacation. Yesterday was just nuts in All Ways. *Shudder* (Stressful deadline, tons of interruptions, work-computer failure, working through lunches, and certainly no way to get off work early yesterday. I was one of maybe 3 or 4 people left in the whole office when I finally escaped after 5:00. I didn’t even have time to plan any menus for even the first few vacation days in order to come up with an intelligent shopping list (other than knowing we’re having grilled salmon for the 4th). So my mind literally “clanked” in the attempt to shift gears on my drive home (with much squeaking involved). And then when I arrived home to hit it with meal planning, packing, etc., Mojo was nowhere to be found. JDub and I called and called and called him, and JDub walked around the neighborhoods in back of us trying to find him. It was very warm (upper ‘80s) so I’m sure he was snoozing in bushes somewhere. In order to buy some time, we went grocery shopping locally (instead of stopping on the way), but when we got home, still no sign of Mojo. We took our time pulling things together, but by 8:00 and he STILL hadn’t shown up, I filled up his kibble self-feeder, the big water doo-hickey, a couple of cans of Sheba, and we left with very heavy hearts. With the pet door, he’ll subsist just fine, I’m sure.

We’ll probably drive home Tuesday or Wednesday (it’s actually supposed to rain by then, which will drive that damned cat inside) and hope to grab his ass and haul him back down here for the rest of the vacation. There’s nobody home anymore to care for him while we’re gone! (Plus, I miss him terribly. He does absolutely love it here).

So we arrived on the island at “O’Deer-Thirty” (which means after dusk, when the deer tend to flock to the sides of the road). We were surprised to only see one; normally the place is crawling with them and requires careful driving. The only plus-side of waiting so long to leave was that we sailed down here in record time — everybody else had already made their destinations. I had TONS of food stuffs to find places for! Got a nice 3-pound King salmon filet for the 4th of July din-din. My brother and his family will be here, and Helen is coming from Oregon! AND…the weather is awesome. I can’t believe how wonderful our May, June, and now (so far) July have been. It’s unheard of. It’s like we’ve switched climates with the rest of the country. Normally? Summer doesn’t actually begin around here until July 5th!

We’ll take it! (Sorry east-coasters and mid-westerners!)

JDub is actually wearing SHORTS! And is BAREFOOT (reading his Kindle). This is after pulling the Fast Red Boat out from the boat tent and mixing up a new anchor to drop in the water for the buoy (that washed ashore a couple of weeks ago). Waiting for it to cure and for the tide to come up so he can launch the boat (and “launch” the new anchor/buoy).

Nate just finished up his first full week of Boot Camp, 7 more weeks to go. Nope, haven’t heard Word One, which is what I expected. I did find a detailed description of their week-to-week ordeal training online and it was an eye-opener. Man, they are put through hell. He’s very physically fit so I sense that he’ll handle that part just fine, except for the rigors of swimming requirements. He’s never been a strong swimmer. (But maybe he will be now…)

~~~~~~~~~~

Update: The boat is in the water, tied to the buoy (and new anchor!)