Kingfisher Cove

Countdown

This Saturday is our cousins’ picnic here at Harstine and I’ve got my lists going. I always rebel about lists because my mother was the List Queen (and I’m still a rebellious teenager), but events like this do call for them (sigh). I even made a list for John! That way, he doesn’t have to read my mind about what I need him to do, nor do I need to nag. #Win!

Around here, the last weekend of July for a picnic (or even an outdoor wedding) is statistically the best chance of having a rain-free weekend, and the chances are also damned good that it’ll be sunny and summery. A week ago, it looked like we might be looking at temperatures in the 80s or even early 90s for our cousins’ reunion, but not so much now. (Extended forecasts don’t work well in Washington beyond about 4 days max). At this point it looks like it’ll be in the 70s, which might be perfect as long as the sun comes out. There’s also a 10% chance of rain. That’s not much, I know, but I sure would love it if it could be sunny and colorful and beautiful. I’m still holding out hope about that. (And ultimately, I’ll just be happy as long as it doesn’t rain AND it’s not windy).

I haven’t posted for a while (I’ve been a reading fiend—LOVING the mystery series Margaret recommended, “Chet and Bernie” by Spencer Quinn where the first-person protagonist is a DOG. I know, it sounds silly, but it is not. It is hilarious, tense, loving, exciting, and did I mention hilarious?)

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I watched last week’s Republican National Convention and it was so incredibly painful. It was like a trainwreck I couldn’t shift my eyes away from. So dark and dystopian and hateful and ugly, and then all focused on the unhinged narcissistic psychopath, Donald Trump. What a difference this week’s DNC is! Based on optimism and diversity and intelligence and common sense. Tonight, for the first time ever, a woman was nominated as the democratic President of the United States. Not just any woman, but a supremely well-qualified, exceptional woman. I remember when John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate with the obvious thought that doing so would make all women flock to voting for his ticket. Nope. We don’t go for bimbos! Nobody has ever been more qualified for president than Hillary Clinton, and today is historic. That glass ceiling is cracking, on the cusp of shattering, and I’m over the moon.

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Our neighbor snapped this picture of Mojo and sent it to us (caption: Mojo forgot to check the tide tables!)

His paws are in the water! Lol!

And… a couple of recent sunsets:

Crab! Eagles! Sunshine!

Something tells me that Camano Island was the only place in western Washington where a person (me) could get a sunburn yesterday. Certainly on our trip up there, riding the ferry from Kingston to Edmonds, I never considered that a sunburn would be a possibility that day.

When we hit Smokey Point on I-5, a huge black cloud hung over our heads, dripping rain drops. But off to the left distance there were sparkling blue skies. I said to John, “Over there is Camano, you know.” And it was.

Camano Island, for some reason, is known to be in a sunbelt, and I later learned that with all the crappy weather we’d been having at Harstine all week, my brother was enjoying his vacation week off with very decent weather, and a fair amount of sun. It was BEAUTIFUL there! I swear I could feel my body sucking in the Vitamin D! (And UV rays…)

Mt. Baker was still shrouded in clouds, but oh well. You can’t have everything. I was just over the moon with how nice it was! We spent most of the entire (long) day outside. In the photo directly above, that’s John puttering out in the tiny little Livingston (it’s at least 30 years old…maybe older? With the Honda 4HP motor that is the same age!) to check crab pots! He and Dave had to work really hard to get crab; so many checks of the four pots had females, undersized, or soft-shell crab that all had to be tossed back in the water. But after all their efforts, we did finally get our limit.

Nothing better than fresh cold cracked Dungeness crab! Dave had caught some earlier that we stuffed our faces with on the deck (in the sunshine!) so John and I brought home yesterday’s catches. (We had some for lunch today out on OUR deck and experienced heaven all over again).

All day long, bald eagles soared above us. (We were hoping they wouldn’t, you know, poop on us). They were everywhere! We see them frequently here at Harstine, too, but they are especially plentiful at Camano. People keep a concerned eye on their cats and small dogs along there.

Speaking of dogs! Dave and Julie got a new puppy back in May and we finally got to meet her. Oh my, what a sweetie. She is a miniature Golden Retriever, only supposed to get to about 32 lbs. She’s 4 months old now and such a love! She definitely captured my heart. Her name is Sadie.

She is such a nice little dog! She was gentle and sweet with the geriatric wiener dogs, she was affectionate and curious about us “strangers,” she and their cat like each other and play together, and she’s just an overall GOOD DOG. Yeah, they’re still  having some issues with pottying in the house and some chewing, but she’s getting there. It was very easy to fall in love with so very soft little Sadie!

As the afternoon drew into evening, the weather changed. Clouds moved in and a stiff wind kicked up, so I suspect some of my sunburn is actually windburn. When John took the little boat out the final time to check and pull his pots, he was nearly swamped with big swells and current. He said it was quite harrowing, which is something coming from him—a hydroplane boat racer! There were floatation cushions in the boat, but he really should have been wearing a life jacket.

The weather change made the sky really pretty:

We made a very full day out of it, and finally left about 9:30pm. We arrived at the ferry terminal in Edmonds at 10:30, but the ferry had just left 5 minutes before, so we had to wait until the 11:10 sailing! Ugh! (Oh well. You have to go with the flow). It’s the first time I’d ever been on a ferry at night, and honestly, you can’t see much because of the lights on inside the boat (unless you cup your hands against the window). We got a decent coffee from a vending machine, and that helped perk us up. We didn’t get home until 1:00 a.m. and man were we TIRED. We still are today!

But what a great day it was!

And num, CRAB.

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Also, standing on the ferry deck and then being outside at Camano all day, especially when the wind kicked up, here is me—with what I call “ferry hair.” I’m getting it trimmed this week and I can hardly wait!

The Matter of Lives

Another hellacious week of white cops killing black men at traffic stops and a black man terrorist sniper killing five white Dallas cops. Guns and race. I swear, humans are DEvolving.

From the start of the Black Lives Matter movement (which began after several other black men were shot dead at traffic stops by white cops), I understood the movement’s intent. Rooted in frustration and fury and FEAR—I never had to worry when Nate left the house that a cop might pull him over or kill him for being black, and that’s what they mean by “white privilege”—the point is to draw focus on their lives. I notice that the right blasts this movement with their “ALL Lives Matter” rhetoric. They don’t get what a complete insult that is, and how completely off the mark they are.

A law professor, responding to a group of his students who took offense of his Black Lives Matter t-shirt and accused him of being racist to whites and repeating the blather about “All Lives Matter,” said this:

“There is a difference between focus and exclusion. If something matters, this does not imply that nothing else does.”

“The Black Lives Matter movement arose in a context of evidence that they don’t. When people are receiving messages from the culture in which they live, that their lives are less important than other lives, it is a cruel distortion of reality to scold them for not being inclusive enough.

“Black Lives Matter is not a statement about white people. It does not exclude white people. It does not accuse white people, unless you are a specific white person who perpetrates, endorses, or ignores violence against black people.

“To assert that the Black Lives Matter movement is about violence against the police is to ignore the causal reality that the movement arose as an effect of police violence. Yes, the movement is about violence, in that it is about the subject of violence, but it is not about violent retaliation against the violence that it is about. It is a tragic fact that rage as a consequence of racial injustice sometimes gets enacted as violence (although not as often as we might expect, given the long-standing causes of that rage). We can all lament the fact that violence begets violence. But we can’t even do that if we ignore the violence that has done—and is doing—the begetting.”

You can read the entire post here, including the “memo” written by the students, followed by the professor’s response (keep scrolling). It’s enlightening.

And I think it’s important to educate ourselves.

*YAWN*

I don’t think it could be any gloomier out these windows today. Heavy clouds shrouding Squaxin Is. across the gun metal gray water; dripping, drenching rain; and color sucked out of sight by the world’s most powerful optic Dyson. (heh). Makes me sleepy. We’re two hours away from sunset and it looks like dusk already. July? Really?

We were supposed to go to Camano Island today to catch some crab and visit with my brother and his family, but we’ve all decided to wait until Sunday instead. Hopefully it’ll dry out and perk up by then. Hopefully summer will finally start happening.

However, yesterday afternoon was quite pleasant and John and I were sitting on the deck when he started waving his arms and pointing, “Look!” And there was a long line of harbor porpoises diving and surfacing through Peale Passage! They were a ways out, so I ran in to grab the camera that has (relatively) decent zoom and then we both fumbled with it to try to capture photos between the trees. (It was acting hitchy; we need a better digital camera, but it surprises me how expensive they still are). John did get this one (click to embiggen, although it’s not super duper).

Oh! I wish we could have gotten a good picture! It was so cool! For the 13 years we’ve owned this property, we’ve never seen or even heard about these creatures! I read up on them, and apparently they used to be common in Puget Sound and then disappeared back in the 1970s. There have been several reports of sightings this year, and just a couple of weeks ago our neighbor posted some pictures of them out here in front. This is how they look up close:

So awesome!!!!!

Our 4th of July weekend was fun with Helen and Ron visiting. The weather was pretty good (about 20° less than last year’s 92°!) It was such a bummer though—we learned that our neighbors who have always put on an incredible (professional) fireworks display, no longer have access to those super great fireworks! So although it was noisy and somewhat colorful out there, it was nothing like how it used to be. I will sure miss those amazing shows.

But WE had fun! Ate steaks, drank crantinis, and yapped our lips off. Here are some shots from our time together. This is Helen and Ron:

And me and Helen!

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And finally, I wanted to mention this series of movies that John and I have watched this week. There are three of them (John has seen all three, but I’ve just seen the last two at this point) and they are by filmmaker Richard Linklater, who did “Boyhood” (which I loved!) The first movie is called “Before Sunrise” and was filmed in 1995 and stars Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, who ALL wrote the three movies. The second movie is called “Before Sunset” and takes place with the same characters nine years later. And then the last one is “Before Midnight,” again with the same characters nine years after that! It follows the relationship between these two characters and it’s fascinating! Heavy on excellent dialogue, watching them age, observing their life changes. The movies are also technically amazing with long, long uninterrupted shots of them talking as they stroll through Venice, Paris, and Greece backdrops. No, there is not a lot of action, so if that’s important to you, you may want to take a pass. But a lot does happen, and the dialogue is so natural and in-depth, without being contrived. (I do wonder how many couples talk that much, though! Ha!) Anyway, I highly recommend. Similar in “idea” as Boyhood, so if you liked that, I suspect you’ll enjoy this nifty little trilogy.

Off to steam some steamer clams!

Food for Thought

Stephen Hawking: “I can’t [explain Trump]. He’s a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator.”

 

But it’s OK, right? After all, Trump has people like Mike Tyson, Scott Baio, Dennis Rodman, and Ted Nugent in his corner — who needs Stephen Hawking?!

 

A Rather Boring Post

Out and about today, trekking to town to load up on groceries. It was the first time I drove on the new blacktop, and wow! (Black top is so pleasant to drive on!) Such a boon to not have to carefully navigate around nasty potholes. But traffic was bad and the grocery store was a circus! Side note \rant: People! Use your common sense and peripheral vision and STOP clogging the aisle with your clueless body and cart! Move the hell over! /rant

Jeesh.

I can’t believe it’s now the 4th of July weekend! Looking forward to seeing my friend Helen and her husband. Weather will be iffy but not a washout (a little different from last year’s 90°+ temperatures) and I’m sure we’ll have a great time. What I’m not sure of is whether the neighbors who put on such an amazing fireworks display will do their festivities on the 3rd or the 4th. The 3rd would make more sense, because the 4th would be a work night for all the friends and family who come for the show. I guess we’ll find out!

I took some photos of the driveway wall! This is now what you see when you pull in:

One. Block. At. A. Time.

John had the excavator for a brief time this week and dug a big trench for the stormwater piping, laid it, then filled it in. He also did a fair amount of backfilling behind the wall. He still has more blocks to place out to the private road, then he’ll be building forms on the other side to extend the concrete wall. (I’m having a hard time picturing it). It’s not what I was expecting for the driveway, so it’s all kind of baffling to me. I do understand the walls are necessary for containing the slopes, but I was hoping there wouldn’t ultimately BE all the slopes. What a slog it all is.

We heard (and John earlier saw) osprey today! And a flicker has been hanging out at our feeders. I even was able to take some pictures, one through the blinds and one carefully through the deck door. They are very skittish so I didn’t want to startle him. I really like them! They are LOUD! They’re also pretty good-sized, especially compared to the tiny little finches and hummingbirds we mostly see.

 

Interesting how he anchored his tail beneath the feeder tray so he could contort his body to reach the seed. That took some doing!

Kind of a boring post, but it’ll probably be several days before I have a chance again. Time to go saw some logs.