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Beach Combing

It was a beautiful morning.




















I tend to stay in bed until 7:30-8:00 in the morning. It's cozy and it doesn't get to be light until after 8:00. This is much to Mitzi's disgust as she paces up and down the bedroom, wanting me to get up. Once I am up, I pull on slacks and a warm top, socks and pad downstairs to the lounge (aka sitting room) to build the fire in the stove. No, not a cooking stove, a heating stove. We figured out last week's gas heating bill--aaghhh! Need to re-think this heating thing. There is no thermostat here, heat is either on or off. But there is a time switch so we have decided to heat the house from 5:00 am to 9:00 am (makes getting up and washing more pleasant) and then from 5:00 pm to 9:00 pm. Thus reading or watching my iPad in bed is de rigeur after 9:00. We shall see how that goes. However, the solid fuel stove in the lounge warms the room up quite nicely and we stay there for most of the day. 

When we are not outside. I do still love my morning walks, and today was no exception. We headed down to the park and as the sunrise was so lovely, I decided to walk down to Ladies Cove. 





As I walked down the path, two dogs appeared ahead. After I gave her the go-ahead Mitzi ran off to make friends. As I turned on the final steps, I saw a man down on the beach, picking up armloads of rocks and bringing them up to the retaining wall. I greeted him and asked him what he was doing. He gave me a short history of Ladies Cove--how this was a "ladies and children only" beach when he was small, lovely sandy beach. There were bathing huts and chairs. The men swam in a cove around the point and there was a long dock for them so they could jump into the water. Over the years storms have washed debris onto the beach and, apart from building a retaining wall, the town hasn't done anything about moving the rocks off the beach. So he has taken it as his one-man mission to, when he can, take some of the rocks off the beach and move them. I wish my back were up to helping him! Much to be learned just chatting with him for ten minutes--he seemed so content, so matter-of-fact. Self deprecating in saying that of course it is a silly project but he likes to do it.

 Ladies Cove is also where a young man died in 2014. He was walking his dog when he apparently slipped on wet rock and fell, banging his head. His dog stayed with him and tried to raise an alarm. But, by the time walkers found him, he was dead :( His parents leave flowers for him every year as it was January 9th when it happened.

So there is sadness in this cove as well as happy memories of families. And that is what life is--happiness and sadness. We can't always be on top of the world and yet somehow we (I?) always seem to feel that if I do have moments of sadness, moments of looking back, that negates the validity of where I am now. No, it doesn't, it just means that is what life is about, good times, bad times, reflective times, silent times.

Spent the rest of the time quietly, just hanging out at home reading and watching Youtube. Our modem did get delivered and we hooked it up--there is a signal that comes up on my devices but not strong enough to be able to use WiFi. Chatted online with eir.ie once again. Well, apparently the service isn't turned on yet. Why not? Well, a serviceperson has to come out and look at it. What do they have to look at? We have the modem turned on, we have it plugged into the box. Well, I guess they need to play with the strength in some mysterious place somewhere. I give up. Don't know when they will be out but oh well, I will continue to pour money into my hotspot account. Or convince ourselves that it really is better to read. I think I need to take a leaf out of Dominic Whittle's book and just not worry about whether every minute here is "counting."





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