Sylvia's Journal

I woke up in the middle of the night, yet so sound asleep that, on my way to the bathroom I walked straight into the door. It was not a serious encounter but a reminder that sometimes the body does stuff the mind has no idea about, or the other way around.

The BU students have completed their third week of the intensive summer course (8 credits) and are getting increasingly preoccupied with the presentations in front of MSH staff and invited guests, next Wednesday. So yesterday they practiced short presentations, on topics of their choice, on each other. We learned about what to do in Boston over the weekend, do’s and don’ts about pick-up lines, about Christmas and about names. They learned about being clear on what you want your presentation to accomplish, about teamwork and that there is no alternative to practice, practice, practice.

I learned that my trip to Ethiopia, on August 5, has been postponed until later notice. With that I gained another 2 weeks of summer, something I am grateful for. Coming home to Lobster Cove at the end of a full week was even more wonderful than it would have been otherwise. The sun was out, the sky blue and the tide high. Armed with two gin tonics we walked down to the beach and toasted to each other and miracles. We did not mention the ankle. And then we climbed into our kayak and Alden shell and shoved off, leaving the empty g/t cups on the beach. The water was choppy and the rowing challenging but being out there with the sun setting was spectacular and stretching arms and legs felt wonderful.

Back inside Axel cooked dinner while I was plotting my course for today’s flight to either Owl’s Head, we are trying again, or Rutland in Vermont. We ate dinner while watching the movie ‘A 2001 Space Odyssey’ and marveled how many of the things in that movie, science fiction when it was made in the 60s, are now normal, such as individual screens in planes, PCs and Skype with a webcam. We both fell asleep watching and did not see the end which we could not remember from the last time we saw it, so we must have fallen asleep then as well. We’ve had several evening and nights alone this week and could do whatever we wanted – such freedom!

I still haven’t seen Sita even though she came back on Monday. She left on Tuesday again to her new home in Western Mass and is now in Nantucket with Jim and her in-laws for a short vacation. Maybe I get to see her this weekend, since she still has much stuff here and the move-out has not been completed. This is a source of friction with Tessa and Steve who are driving down on Sunday, moving out of Canada, and ready to move in, which we know they cannot do yet. The professional cleaners that Sita and Jim hired first have to remove a year’s worth of cat hair from the barn before they settle in with their dog. Boomerang kids! As for dog Chicha, the chipmunks and squirrels have no idea what’s coming, fall will be challenging for them.