Category Archives: Whatever

In the neighborhood, Pastimes, Snapshots, Whatever

A day on the river

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Okay so… this whole boat thing is kinda novel and the learning curve is pretty steep, too. Sitting here typing, I still feel myself rocking back and forth, kinda like you feel after a day spent rollerskating. Very disconcerting. I almost think I may be seasick. Is that even possible or did I just get too much sun?

😉

Mention a boat and my brother Brian magically appears. Our idea today was to do some crabbing, so Bri found himself in charge of cutting bait, which I learned he’s pretty good at.

I also learned he’s really squeamish about these worms… nasty things he was using for the fishing poles. They made him squirm like a girl. Very funny.

I really need to do something with my hair. Could it maybe stick up in one more different direction?

I was surprised (boo hiss!) to find mute swans on the river…

Nice, though, was this oystercatcher feeding near a sandbar. They are such cool birds. It’s very hard to take pics on a rocking boat… though at this time we were almost stuck on that sandbar.

😉

Have I mentioned that my brother is a total goofball? You’re suppossed to stay in the boat!

So… we didn’t catch many crabs at all, but Bri did the goofy fisherman grin anyway. A bad day fishing…. (you know the rest)

He got the pretty blue claws, but I got this tiny little calico crab that didn’t even try to bite me.

😉

Birds, In the neighborhood, PSA, Whatever

Little killers free to a good home

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Cat lovers cover your ears.

I used to like cats. Then I decided that I liked birds and other wildlife better.

What really happened is that I had a beautiful fat black cat that got sick and broke my heart when I was a kid.

So I swore off cats for good. I like other people’s cats well enough, but I really don’t like my neighbor’s cats that are allowed free run of the neighborhood.

Some of my favorite people have *mostly* indoor cats that are *let out* each day to do whatever it is that their dear owners think is so necessary to a domestic cat’s nature.

Kill birds and torture small furry innocent woodland creatures and HAVE KITTENS UNDER MY SHED!

Why are these kittens my problem? I don’t own a cat.

Have I mentioned the free catch and release (to the SPCA) program we run here?

😉

This was tonight’s catch. 4 adorable and hissy-scared little killers. We’re trying to catch their mother, but she ran the DH out of the backyard one too many times and he finally said uncle. What a protective mother!

I don’t know the answer. I don’t understand why this behavior is tolerated from cat owners. Jeez… I can’t even walk my dog on a leash in the local park except for under the cover of darkness for fear that I’ll be ticketed by the local police. My town is very serious about protecting our parks from dogs. I once had the police follow me home after walking my dog in the cul-de-sac that leads to the park.

Cats get a free pass. Why is that?

NJ Audubon has collaborated with the American Bird Conservancy in an effort to educate cat lovers to be more responsible cat owners. Cats Indoors has lots of great info, but I’m not so sure that anyone will be so easily convinced as me.

Birds, In the neighborhood, Whatever

A new bird list!

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Circumstances beyond my control (a husband with a mind of his own) have necessitated the start of a new list: birds seen by boat. Not just any boat, either… THE boat… our boat, apparently.

(Men and their toys!)

😉

An osprey scared from its nest just when I thought I finally had the perfect photo opportunity – a nest at eye level, just outside of the river channel. I love all the found stuff osprey include in their nests. Also interesting is the rope ladder up to the nest… I guess somebody bands these guys.

I have no idea what this bird is. I’d thought it was a tern, but its back is reddish. Help anyone?

A tree full of great egrets, waiting out the tide, I guess. I know these pictures are awful, but I was too scared of having to swim to shore to bring the good lens. (The boat is something of a fixer-upper.)

Storm clouds full of gulls… who cares what kind; they’re just gulls!

😉

Conversation following inaugural boat tour of the river:

“So… are you happy with it?”

“Um… I didn’t want a boat.”

“Yeah, but… are you happy with it?”

“Um… it’s a boat.”

(I might get to see some good birds though.)

😉

Pastimes, Whatever

I lifted 325,719 lbs. and all I got was this lousy t-shirt!

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It’s a slow day here in blogland, so I’ll use the excuse to toot my own horn a bit. Indulge me.

😉

I’ve been going to the Y for months now and have actually (gack!) learned to enjoy exercising. I love the Y. I’d thought of joining a gym in the past, but could never get past the idea of all that spandex and lycra and all those muscleheads and really skinny blondes. Not my sort of scene. Not to mention what you have to pay to a gym for the torture of lifting weights or taking a spinning class or whatever.

I looked into the local Y (mostly for yoga classes) and found that they offered a really great discount for volunteer firemen and their families. Bingo! $31 a month and I have use of the whole place and the pools and the hot tub and whatever classes I like whenever I can manage to drag myself there.

I was really, really good about going for months: 4 or 5 times a week plus two evening yoga classes. Then the weather got nice and I found other things to do. I’m the sort of person that has to be regimented about this type of thing; any slacking off, even just a little bit, leads to a total collapse of my commitment. That’s pretty much what happened for most of June and July. I was lucky to get there twice a week.

But the Y is smart. If you’ll allow it, they’ll send you congratulatory emails when you’re making progress or nastygrams when you’re slacking off. I’d been getting these nice emails telling me that I’d lifted the equivalent of 5 African Elephants in the past month and burned enough calories to eat 3 ice-cream sundaes. Then I got a couple of those nastygrams that intimated that I’d not been trying very hard and that left me feeling like a lazy bum. So I started going again, every day, and now I’m feeling really great about being committed to it again. Plus, physically, I feel so much better! There were those days, in my first week back, that every muscle in me ached, but that only lasts so long.

That sort of inclusiveness, regardless of your level of fitness or commitment, is part of what I love so much about the place. There’s senior citizens there and a musclehead or two, plus that awful grunting guy I’d mentioned before, and ordinary people like me just trying to be healthier, one stomach crunch at a time. Plus, they send nice emails when you’re trying hard, with animated balloons and stuff. Today I’d finally lifted enough weights and spent enough hours there to earn a t-shirt as an incentive to keep going. A silly thing, really, but you shouldn’t lift the equivalent of 38 elephants without someone noticing.

(Plus I’ve finally got muscles enough to open my own pickle jars!)

😉

Image from National Geographic

Birds, In the neighborhood, Snapshots, Whatever

Pausing (tern)

3 Comments


Most of the weekend was spent within view of the ocean, on various benches along the boardwalk. That’s a pretty nice way to watch the world go by, I think.

Anyway… I noticed that some of the Laughing Gulls seem to be pulling back their summertime black hoods in favor of a more undistinguished (or is it indistinguishable?) look. The terns still look the same, though I could imagine this one suddenly remembering an appointment someplace to the south.

There were small flocks of peeps feeding back of the jetty and flying, fragile bits of silver and pale russet, among the beachgoers. Telling one from another is impossible, because even among the normally *easy peeps* like sanderling and semi-palms, no two in a dozen look the same at this time of year. They’re all a scraggly mix of winter gray and spring red. Shorebirds just escape my abilities!

Seasons, Whatever

Sailing weather

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Autumn comes at night, I think. It creeps in on soft footsteps in the darkness after days of thunderstorms and billowy clouds. Its telltale creaks on the stairway are the katydids, rasping at the edges of the night and shaping the season from August to September, to Autumn.

Autumn is my favorite time of year and I’m happy for the hint of it the last couple nights have brought. The air is almost crisp and there’s a tinge of ripening apples drifting in the open windows; the stale humid air of summer is a memory on nights like these. It makes me want to head out the door after midnight, down the road and to the beach, to feel the cool sand underfoot and to look at the moon and the stars and the sea with its ever-changing moods.

During daylight hours, it’s still high summer. Wet shells shine in the noon sun and the air smells of coconut oil; the slap of flip-flops is the soundtrack, the atmosphere like an amusement park. Nights though, and Autumn, bring relief. Relief from all that energy and heat and all these people. The beach can be mine again.

Cropped out of this pic is the ice and snow that decorated the bay on the January day it was taken. Also cropped out is any sense of scale; this is a remote-controlled toy sailboat. I watched a bunch of *grown-up* men playing with them in the midst of a snow squall… proof that many of us are so enamored with the coast and its many pleasant pastimes that seasons or weather can hardly keep us away; we pretend our way through the meantime.