Home, sweet home.
The Eagles have landed…in California and in Canada. All the little ducks are back home and all four families are back to life as it used to be. We had a wonderful time with all fifteen family members in a beautiful house in Duck. It was a short walk on a private trail to the beach, and many times some of us rode bikes to the beach (I was not one of them!) The weather was beautiful, even too warm at times, but then I found a treadmill in the cool fitness center of the Club nearby for my daily walk. The pool behind the house was a lovely gathering place many times of the day, where there was always shade to be found for those of us who did not want to be in the sun. There was a clean jacuzzi, always at the right temperature, and a large hammock-for-two nearby. The house had a theater downstairs; some of us watched the soccer World Cup, some a movie. They had a pool room, and literally everything we could think of was available in the house, for young and old. We enjoyed wine, beer and Margarita’s in the evenings, and delicious meals prepared by the kids in turn all throughout the day. We watched a lovely 4th of July party jn the street next to ours, and everybody went shopping more than once.
The older boys bought chicken necks! at the local bait store and went crabbing. A bucketful of crabs was deposited in the freezer until cooking time, and they had a great time dismembering them afterwards and eating the little slivers of meat that came out. I tasted the contents of one leg, less than a teaspoon full, just to be a good sport. But crabs are not for me! Tasteless to say the least, and I find it cruel to catch and kill them just for fun.
We went to see an open-air production called “The Lost Colony of Roanoke”, right there at the tip of the peninsula, which educated us about historic things that happened in the early fifteen hundreds. A fantastic 2 1/2 hour drama, performed every summer from May through August, it excelled in everything, from the actors and actresses to the costumes to the decors and stage changes to the lighting and more. We enjoyed every minute, although the “sit” became a little long in the end.
The California clan came a week early and the Canada clan stayed a week afterward so we could do age-related things with the grandchildren, and for the first time in over a year I used my oven and the VitaMix!
Another surgery..
While still doing exercises to get the complete range of motion of my shoulder back without pain, I had surgery of a small squamous cell carcinoma on my lower right arm this week. Compared to the shoulder this was a minor cut and the stitches will come out in two weeks. It dates back to my growing-up years in a tropical country when sunscreen was not yet discovered; then my teenage years in the Netherlands when it was “in” to sunbathe and create a tan; then my young-mother years when they had bikini’s that let you tan through the material (who remembers those?) and get a tan all over, called Tan-Through; the time that baby oil was the thing to use, all to enhance a lovely tan. And now, while I have been wisely using sunscreen for years, the brown spots keep coming, the damage done so many years ago. No turning back, just hoping that this third small cancer surgery on my arm will be the last warning from the past.
It’s a Wonderful Life!
Until next time!
Ronny