You may wonder...

It is challenging, this "let go" that Ben and I are doing. Let go of frantic planning....to enjoy the moment...and be able to say yes to whatever comes up. Let go of "gotta" be there, do this, see that....so that we can stay, savor, dig deeper. Turns out, though we asked each other from time to time, we really couldn't stay at anchor. We needed electricity. We needed electricity because I wanted refrigeration. Ben and I wanted an electric windlass. I needed pressure water, and Ben wanted an automatic sink pump. And the milk spoiled without refrigeration. And maybe a shower... A couple of days, perfect days, perfect warm weather, perfect warm water, perfect gentle cooling breezes turned out to be enough for us to put into memory running aground and all the you dids, you shouldas of a transit from there to here. Enough time to start talking about can we's and what do you thinks and hmmmmms. So another successful navigation from there to here is in our log. This morning we did it again: gotta because if replaced with hmmmm. The morning is done, and the afternoon.... The sky is clearing, tide rising, hmmmmmm....

Big Day

I'm resting.

Last week, Mr Wonderful and I took our first cruise in a long, long time: three pretty great days in Petaluma. Got the haircut, hosted our friends for dinner on our boat (tested the barbecue), saw a movie at the local cinema. With the exception of returning a little late for a meeting, the whole trip went off pretty well.

Not so much this trip, really not so much today!

We wanted to spend as much time as possible until my knee joint replacement "up river" in the Delta. We hoped to join our club on its River Rats RRR Cruise.

And, we have, with little tweaks here and there.

We started late: too late to leave when they did last Friday 0700.

New provisioning was required. That took time. A list of items I wished I'd had in Petaluma had to be checked off. I had to pack. A ten day trip takes a lot more packing time than a three day one....

And then friends were at China Camp - on the way, really.

So we went to China Camp and enjoyed a visit Saturday, and left in time to join a race on our way up river. We turned in a day late to the RRR destination and happily caught up Sunday...with a berth in the Marina.

Ahhhhh! Cruising!

Today is a big day. Not only is our destination a place with shallow spots, but a baby is due!

I am so ready....and joyful.....and present.

a Haircut...

It's about that time. And my "time to look good again" hair styling is done in Petaluma lately. 

We sail there, a nice romp up San Pablo Bay followed by careful bumping along on and off the soft riverbed, a trip scheduled in time to arrive before the D Street bridgetender leaves for the day.  

The D Street bridge is a drawbridge, raised for sailors and motoryacht skippers wishing the peace and convenience of the Turning Basin just west.  On a good trip, arrival at the bridge is well before the late afternoon rush hour begins. Incoming flood tide moves the boat nicely up the river.

On a bad day, the deep keel of the boat glides deeply into the oozy, sticky, smooth mud of the river's bottom, too deeply in fact, something dreaded, and the boat runs aground.  On a terrible day, this happens as the tide begins falling, the river is ebbing to sea.  You probably can't imagine our 40' home, Georgia, lying slightly on her side, on the worst day, a day when Ben did not get all the way to Petaluma for another 8 hours. 

(Long before we met, by the way.  I have a photo, and guess it's time to figure out how to insert photos into the text!)

The Turning Basin is one short block from the main shopping street in town, the new movie house, and now my favorite hairdresser too.  When we had a gym membership, we soaked in the outdoor jacuzzi overlooking our boat in the Basin.

I've been going to Petaluma by boat for years.  Long, long ago, another life, another sailboat. A Frostbite Cruise over the President's Holiday weekend, we played poker in the cabin with all the children: Wendy, Kim, Pete and Nora when they ranged in age from 11 to 6.  Corn nuts, M&Ms and cashews served as poker chips. A web of shore power cords enclosed the fleet, boats rafted together, side to side.  Drunken sailors huddled nearby in one or another boat's cabin, sharing yarns woven stronger with salt water.

Petaluma by boat is so far away it's like cruising to another country.  A good place for a mind "reset." Ben and I sailed to Petaluma for his birthday, and for club cruises on big weekends like Memorial Day and the town Butter and Egg Parade, and just because we wanted to go far away in under a few hours. 

We found my new hair stylist on a cruise "just because." 

We had a few days, and quickly sailed straight for our favorite beach, China Camp.  It was not our favorite that night,  a rolly anchorage with wind pushing the boat against tide.  Our departure was so unplanned, we were surprised to find the stove propane tank empty when we wanted coffee in the morning.  Petaluma was just up the bay, so anchors aweigh and up the river we went.

After chores came lounging, this time meandering through town, stopping here for pastry, there for chocolate.  Ben noticed a nice frock in a store window, but I preferred grooming so we went off in search of a salon open on Monday.  I also needed someone brave enough to eliminate my remaining chin-length hair.  Two years of steady decline and multiple liver disease treatments didn't leave much, so I needed someone with some spirit. We stopped in two salons, and finally found cheery Maria at the Capelli salon, and she's seen me through the  worst of the transplant wait and the changes along the way.

It's a good thing to have Petaluma to go to when I need a haircut.  There's the wonder of going across the country to get there, the beauty of the river winding through peacefully with dense suburbs a few miles away, and inner salve of a good haircut shared with joy.

Buttercream!

Oh, the worlds awaiting my fingertips!

Today I wanted to list blogs I follow, and change my profile photo. Not to much to figure out, seemed like these elements are on many blogs and web pages. Such a great feeling, to accomplish something new, too.

Along the way to a profile photo, I confirmed that I have many multiples of many photos on my notebook, but that nice viewer I had in Hawaii last year, the one which let me see the image in a thumbnail while I merely hold the cursor over the file is truly gone.

I also learned that if I've added an image to my Kodak viewer, I'd better not change the image name in my library. Don't even mention the variety of folders where the images are lost.

Yes, it does sound like gibberish to me, too. More work ahead. Very nice to have that vacation wrecker of a flu a few weeks back, as well: I'd recently seen prints of the images as I put them into two albums.

Listing some of the blogs and pages I follow was a similarly winding path.

I opened Bakerella (to copy the URL), and immediately added "make a cake" to my wanna list when the oven got hot on my test "on." I save myself a lot of calories because the oven rarely gets hot.

Waiting, I opened the Contest Lady page and subscribed to her blog. This degenerated into email cleaning, and, lovely, a post from 101 Cookbooks. Oh, look at her links to her visiting friends. Golly, he has some beautiful photos, amazing. Her page, with the "swipe," neat. She could not take those with a phone...

See how this goes? Around the world in fashion, food and photos. Just my fingers following along, curious.

The buttercream frosting, always far out of my reach, was found in Epicurious, it's Amy Sedaris'. The reviewers thought it too sweet, seriously?

Those links I wanted to share with you are on my full profile. The gadget eluded me.

Got a lot done today!

AFTERNOON NUMBER TWO!

As promised, I hunted around this very simple "create a blog" site today and I think the reading type is larger. Not big enough, but I'm gonna wait and see.

I woke up with words from an unread-until yesterday wellness newsletter I get in my email...which means my phone...about ear wax build up haunting me.

I did not know that ears were self-cleaning. The things I'm learning now that I have a few decades under my pillow.

Pretty interesting. The article was about a method involving vacuum theory and heat and was not necessarily safe. It goes on to recommend mineral oil for an extreme cleaning challenge.

Now, getting impacted, hard ear wax out of my dainty ears is on my mind because I have had the sorry experience of having two doctors observe the problem just this week as I fight my first post-transplant cold. I bought stuff at the pharmacy and everything: earaches are no more fun as an adult as they seemed to be for my son during his toddler years.

And I'd been doing such a good job with my cotton swabs, too. Gently twisting, never digging, just as I understood the way to do it. WRONG!

The swab was likely the weapon of wax impaction, not destruction. Or so the newsletter claims.

Hmmm. Back to my mineral oil.

See for yourself. I think the link will post too, but I'll find out later. You can google Berkeley Wellness Alert for yourself.

Time for a nap!

By the way, I'm sharing this as though you found it yourself. I'm not promoting it as true or any of the legal things where you might understand me to be liable for anything. Just thought it was interesting, certainly is personal!

BEGINNING, late

Clearly, I am not an early adopter. Just now, August 25, 2011, I am back to starting my first blog. (The liver cancer inspired me to create one in 2008, who knows where that one went?). And my first post just got lost in "previews."

So, I picked a background, am gonna look for how to make the typeface big enough to read, and look for some connections.

I'm starting a new, stay out of the cold, hobby: contests. And I have found food blogs. Even the cake pop one who is just today 2 1/2 mos post kidney transplant #2, wow.

Now, on to broccoli chicken soup...

Ps: Have you considered becoming an organ donor?