Finals week, Moving and Surfing

This week has one of those typical crescendo effects, the full week works like a magnet for opportunity and more intriguing prospects come into view. We have decided to move two doors away to a new rental home. It still has a sea view, just not the stunning beach view we've had. There is more park like yard for the kids, a greenhouse, lots of garden beds, a solarium, a good efficient wood stove and wetback wood fired water heater. We will be saving 200 dollars per week on rent. I will miss the aesthetics of our current home, but taking the financial pressure off ourselves should be more than enough of a reward. This will be our sixth move in three years here, wow.
Ive had two catering jobs in coordination with the neighboring B and B and that has been satisfying. It's good to add a dash of something I do well when I am learning new things. It reminds me that I am are good at something. Lillian is all questions when I cook. She is my only child of the three with a natural interest in food preparation.
My Evergreen studies have been sluggish this term. This is my final week to get all of my writing work done and submitted. I lack motivation for the writing and have focused on the other aspects of my learning contract. This week I have put in about 8 hours in the water with my surfboard, which translates to about a total of one or two minutes standing on it on a wave. I'm getting strong arms, though and less intimidation of the big waves that come and relentlessly rearrange me and my little white board. If nothing else, I'm more water worthy in general. Desmond shows promise as a surfer. He has always had impeccable balance, even as a toddler he would prance right across beach logs.
Surfing is an apt metaphor for many things in life. When your wave comes, you might have to forget about your fear and misgivings and just take it. If you take the wave, you can be transported, if you cower, you'll get rolled over in the crush of a powerful (and impartial) wave. It's best to just face the beach and take the wave. I feel hesitation and eagerness dovetailed together for surfing and after my final lesson today, Ill rest my weary arms and shoulders and consider if I'm really up for the pummeling of it all. I never thought a simple P.E. credit would result in such reflection.

Karekare Beach Races complete

The day was fun, exhausting and goose bump worthy. The sea was rioting with lacy pale green grandeur as the horses came thundering down the beach. The announcer had such infectous enthusiasm in his voice that several times during the day I had to finish my customer and drop my tongs or my shovel and run towards the race track along the shoreline and join the country betters and family members cheering on their riders. I was in charge of plenty of baked goods and hustling up prizes as well as the design and construction of the kids area. The kid zone was a big dug out hole in the sand with a deeper hole in the middle. There were six huge flags around it and flax flower wands were woven with flax reeds to provide wind shelter. Our Kite made its final all day flight (with us) before meeting it's new owner, who it surprised by breaking free of the spool and darting to his heals, finally resting like a needful puppy looking for a new home. Jordan won third place for his hat. We all are now aloe vera users, having forgotten our usual sun hats.

Alligator Galivanting- children's picture book by Kate Stone

Louisa, a lovely little lady, looked in the lavatory.
It was her week when washing the water closet was warranted.
She safely slid on size small sheaths and surrendered to the situation,
Suddenly, she seemed surprised!
Wow! Wandering wet and wide eyed, was a weird and wild thing!
After ample attention, the animal offered its autograph- “Ally Gator”!
Loudly, Louisa let out a laugh! Ludicrous! Lingering in the loo with the Lizard...
After the gator greets girl, gayly gallivants and gambols.
Watching, she wondered, what would a wise one do...
Should she scream and shout? Should she simply scrub (away from the snout)?
What would you do with such a wild wonder? Well...
“First things first”, she said, fussing and fretting:
She must move this monster making a menace of her mission.
She fetched a fragment of fabric and fastened it 'n front of the fierce little face
To tame the temper she tickled the tummy: trying to tease it.
When- what do you know!
Why-the wiggling wet wonder wailed “Wait!-
When will you work on your washing if your wrestling with me?”
Surprised stopping her struggle... "Suppose such silliness!
Saying sentences! Shocking!"

Not knowing the nature of the newt, Nice.. Naughty... she'll never know.

Zing, zap zoosh! zipped the zoological zealot.
Down, down, deeper down, in a deluge of dampness
Then Louisa lamented a little
For flushing her fiendish find,
Looked around the lavatory
And left.

Karekare Beach Races

Im busier than 700 elves this week. The Karekare beach races are a few days away and Im in deep in the bake sale and kid zone department. Check out this Karekare site to see what Im talking about. Ill be back to writing in a few days. Kate

working gramps

My grandparents operated as a team. In fact, when my Grandfather was diagnosed with lung cancer it was not completely surprising, as he had been a smoker for many years. What was surprising was that my grandmother died quickly before he passed. Was it that she had always spent her life as his assistant and wasn't keen to change her role at that late stage? Maybe it was that he had the stronger constitution for coping without the other? They, The Ganty's, were from an era when you could sculpt your fortune with hard work and focus. In their home, in which cocktails each evening were a given, there were small silver boxes filled with cigarettes on the coffee table and in the den. You could almost always find a little blue can of macadamia nuts in the bar refrigerator. There were always square loaves of homemade white bread that was good toasted. Grandma Caddie prepared top notch dinners every night. Sometimes it was Lima beans and ham, other times, corned beef. I remember the cheesecakes and the aspic salads with the precious crab legs encased within them, usually she finished them with a dollop of mayo' and a sprinkle of paprika. During the day we ate grapenuts with cream and plenty of sugar (which was freely and openly positioned on the breakfast table, on top of an ironed tablecloth). Grandpa had a boiled egg which was runnier than my sister and I thought palatable, he quietly read his paper and drank his coffee each morning. At lunch time my sister and I writhed over the option of tongue sandwiches. Even though my grandmother did a lot of ironing, of which she would break from, to drink a glass of buttermilk, she sent out Grandpa's shirts to be washed and starched or pressed or whatever they do to shirts that businessmen wear. We got to draw on the stiff white cardboards that they came back on.

They were the only 'complete set' couple I had to observe up close in my early years. Prosper and Clarabelle (although everyone called her Caddie) Ganty were an old fashioned couple. Pros was born into a poor family and I wonder if he was named Prosper to change that fate. Caddie was from Jessup the family. The Jessups operated the local paper in Bremerton, the Searchlight, for years and years. Caddie's family was known for humor and ridicules antics. Pros's family, who were from Alaska, was more stoic, although both sides had some colorful characters. By the time I came along Caddie and Pros were spending their time between their home on Lake Washington and South Eastern Alaska. They shuttled between in the Cessna that floated out in the boathouse on the Bellevue side of the lake.

Recently, the history of the Ganty's has been pieced together with the help of my Aunt Maryjane. Maryjane, my father's sister, who lived in Seattle throughout my youth, has very good taste in hats, she can pull off hats that you'd look silly in. She has a lovely rustle in her voice. She has three children who were close in age to my sister Gretchen and I. Gretchen lucked out with a cousin, Jennifer, who was exactly her age. Jennifer had a brother on either side. I was often matched up with the Johnny, the youngest. I remember we had baths at my Grandma Caddie's, with Mr. Bubble from the pink box. I also remember the day my sister pointed out that “Ooh, you are taking a bath with a boy!” Poor Johnny, I think I refused to bathe with him after that. Gretchen also terrorized me at about age three or four by revealing that she was in fact “really a boy” Despite the obvious evidence, I believed her, and was quite perturbed. How had she fooled me all this time?

Now really, with that kind of thinking, it's a wonder us Ganty girls ever got around to reproducing at all!