Pardon My Absence. I’ve been in Heaven

With particular apologies to Carol, Don and Denny who posted comments of worry, I’ve been in heaven lately and for the first time since I got a laptop and internet connection, heaven lately has not included a computer.

I didn’t intend to be away from the blog this long.  It’s just that every time a thought popped into my head for writing, I walked away instead to the beach, to the yard, to the Cape Cod homes of other people selling cool stuff on craigslist like the perfect pine bookshelf, 48″ by 48″ that fits the wall and my expanding book collection better than the old one.

My favorite plants, roses and hydrangea

In short, for the past couple of weeks, even a sink full of dishes appealed to me more than coming up with something clever for the blog, for just above the dishes, outside my kitchen window is a branch of roses blooming and reaching over as if to wave a “thank you” for all those hours spent high on a ladder getting scratched by thorns and for tilling manure and compost around their roots three times per year.

Charming little cottage on Nantucket

For the full week after my last post about dads I was still in Syracuse in full-tilt prep mode.  You know that feeling, when there are simply not enough hours in the day to tie up all the lose ends before you depart for a lengthy trip out of town.   As luck would have it, on that last day when my chores demanded 28 not 24 hours in a day, I woke up to a flat tire.  Even though I was fortunate to find a garage to repair it with no notice, that same tire flattened again within hours as I raced around town to complete my errands.   After that experience, I needed a vacation more than ever.

Tom and I with a view of the harbor in Provincetown

But now I am here on Cape Cod,  one week down, 8 days to go.  Sunshine is streaming into the living room windows of my modest little house.  The TV talks of all the traffic heading to the bridges over the Cape Cod Canal.  Giant cobalt blue hydrangeas six feet in height dominate the view out of two of the windows.  I placed them there when they were foot long sticks with a couple of roots nine years ago.  I had no expectation they would survive but now they stop you in your tracks.

Dinner on the wharf in P'town

There are more of the roses saying thanks outside the windows to the backyard.  There are neighborhood children speeding past the front windows on their bicycles, bicycles that sometimes get tossed by the side of the road at night and are still there in the morning because no one would dream of taking them here.

I’ve already been to Dunkin Donuts for my coffee and enjoyed the first few sips of it in the parking lot of Bank Street Beach while studying the color of the ocean and sky.  At 9:00 am there a few families with very young children setting up towels and toys.  I told Natalie when she and her brothers were that age, they used to wake up at dawn and ask if we could go to the beach now which makes Natalie chuckle for realizing how far she has evolved from that early bird.

Two beauties: Natalie and a Nantucket street

It all sounds so relaxing and peaceful, but week number one involved much more activity.  My friend Barbara and her daughter Mikel joined Tom, Natalie and I for our first weekend here.    The demand for a lobster dinner was so pent up, that we ordered the crustaceans from George’s Seafood in Harwich from the car on the Massachusetts Turnpike.

There were lots of such meals and excursions those first few days.  When Barbara and Mikel departed, Tom, Natalie and I hosted our Cape friends the Nearhos’ for dinner and we took day trips to Provincetown and Nantucket.  There is no end to the photo ops here.

The picture on my home page was taken one year ago just off the wharf in Provincetown.  I cannot believe a full year and five pounds have occurred since then.

Lively Provincetown

Tom returned to the office two days ago.  Natalie welcomed her friend Sarah from Maine yesterday and expects two more friends to arrive from Rhode Island this afternoon.  All will leave early Sunday morning for various destinations, including Natalie who will head to Boston for friends there.

That will leave me and my Cape girlfriends and the beach and my book and my roses and hydrangeas and the Red Sox on TV nearly every day and anyone else who looks at the perfect forecast and decides on a whim that a Cape trip is possible.

So apologies once again for this long delayed check-in.  It was probably a little callous of me.  When comments don’t pour in I sometimes forget anyone reads what I write and I think no one will care when I don’t.  But I learned my lesson.  It’s a comfort to know people click on and it is especially heartening to think readers I’ve never met can actually worry about me.

Like the roses waving thanks from outside my windows, I give a heartfelt thanks to you all from sunny and sandy Cape Cod.

The "New Dawn" climbing rose says "thanks" and so do I

Tagged as: Cape Cod, Independence day, Nantucket, Provincetown, vacation