23 August month 2010
I was so happy with how beautiful the spindles and lower rails on the porch looked....yummy....we needed to take a bit of a break from the constant scraping and painting so we went blueberry picking.....they grow wild all over the place...this year there seems to be less berries and they are a bit smaller but still delicious. There is an abundance of partridgeberries that will ripen when the weather cools...they are similar to cranberries. The all grow pretty low to the ground so it is a lot of stoop labor...I get around it by kneeling or sitting down....no matter how fast I pick I can't seem to keep up with Chet...We will start freezing them for next year as we have them in oatmeal....it is so beautiful to sit in the fields and watch the clouds and the sea...what a magical thing.
Oh, I got sidetracked...the painting. We started on the green columns yesterday. As Chet was peeling near the yellow he ended up peeling almost a foot of freshly painted yellow. I am ready to turn in my brush or bulldoze the whole porch. We will try to get as much primed as we can or should I say re-primed while the weather lasts, until next summer. The cabinets in the dining room and pantry are being painted and the couple of cabinets in the kitchen. The house is upside down for a week or so....
We started cleaning the inside of the motorhome yesterday...it has been a year + so it is time. The cats have been in and out and definitely recognize their first home. It is going to be a bit of a problem keeping them in when we hit the road again as they have had several acres of open land to roam and hunt on. It is cute to watch them disappear in the tall grass. They keep bringing shrews as presents...sometimes to the door and sometimes in the house. Chet was lucky enough to step on one when he went outside yesterday...gross.
We still haven't completely kicked the crud...the worst part being the exhaustion we feel...time, time, time.
I made a throw and gave it to our neighbor, Sheila, across the street and a felted sweater I decorated with crocheted designs to her daughter. They are the wife and daughter of Paul, who drowned. It was so touching and felt really good to do it.
It almost feels as if fall is coming....waiiiit...summer hasn't really gotten here yet...there are still two of my trees that haven't even gotten their leaves.
My moods have been swinging a lot lately...it has a lot to do with the schizo weather, the tragedy that still lingers here, the pressure of getting the hall I sold empty by the end of the month and on and on....we are supposed to be retired,,,,not just plain tired.
Oh I miss my family.....
Peace
20 August month 2010
Soooo...the paint.....I guess around the beginning of June I started to put a second coat on the green posts on the front porch and they were all bubbled the next day...I saw a split on the handrail and of course had to pull at it and the paint peeled in strips right down to the bare wet wood....from there down to the spindles, bottom rail, other decorative pieces...all around the house, stable and garage. Everyone said they had never seen that before....we were heartsick. Last year, five men working and we still didn't get finished so we thought we would be able to get it completed this summer....well, summer has barely come and Chet is still peeling while I paint...got the spindles and the handrail finished on the bottom half and some of the border around the house....have made a few color changes much to my liking....we will NEVER get this finished this summer...maybe it will go on until it is time to repaint in 5 years or so and all we will have to do is the body of the house. HAH HAH
Chet called Pittsburgh Paints and got so frustrated he hung up soooo I called back. I asked for someone who was not totally bored with what I had to say. He said he had just talked to my husband and he hadn't sanded the house....I said to him " you are sitting on the other end of the phone line and telling me we didn't follow the exact directions on the can...and on top of that we used your primer instead of the primer from the paint store as we were told it was the best". We scraped and sanded and never saw another color on the house....when it peeled we saw several other colors. The primer congealed with the paint and became a stripper...fortunately NOT on the clapboard...I went round and round with the rep and when I told him it was not a small house and was in the newspaper he quickly changed his story and said they would refund the primer costs....whoopie but at least it will pay for the extra paint we have had to buy.
Looks like the weather may hold so off to work I go.....the inside of the house is upside down as the cabinets and pantry in the dining room are being painted a luscious red and the cabinet doors in the kitchen will be a sage green.
This is NOT the way we planned on spending our summer....we did get to pick the first blueberries of the season yesterday while watching an astounding sunset.
Love to you all
19 August month 2010
I said I would be back on the 12th of July...guess it took a lot longer than I expected. I think about writing often but there is so much going on that I don't want to take the time to do it...perhaps if I could type faster and with less mistakes.
So much has happened in the last 5 weeks that has been a life experience that has been heart wrenching. Our Fish, Fun and Folk Festival was to start on the 18th of July month and last for a week. Brett was here and that was a beautiful thing. I woke on the morning of the 18th and saw several cars across the street at our neighbor's house. Chet had been up and already on the computer and read of a boating accident here, right here in Twillingate. He mentioned that two men and two boys were lost during the night. Our neighbor across the street, his friend and two young boys that I would believe everyone in this town knew. They were everywhere and always on their bikes, eating ice cream cones, their faces covered in it. They were always at the wharfs as the boats held a fascination for them. They were the first people who came flying up when we moved in and were around often to say hello. They were on their ATV almost every day going across the back of the property from here to their house and had cut a nice path back by the hills behind our place. I would watch them and they would stop and I would yell for them to be careful. They said they would....back and forth and up and down the rock road on the north side of our land. Strawberry blond hair and freckled faces....boys to the core. Josh and James....Joshua and James...we will never see them again.
When Chet mentioned it to me I thought there were a lot of cars across the street right next to our fish market...I said I hoped it wasn't some grandparents with their grandchildren and then I said oh god, I hope it wasn't Josh and James...it couldn't be....the island wouldn't be the same. I say island as we are three islands off the main island of Newfoundland that are connected by a causeway. We asked our neighbor's, Marilyn and Gordon Ashbourne what they had heard and they confirmed my worst fear......it was Josh, James, Paul from across the street and his friend Danny who had just come home from Yellowknife three days before.
The men were working on the engine of Danny's 3 meter boat and the boys asked if they could go out with them. Their mom brought them their life jackets and off they went around 4:00 pm. The story I have heard is that they were having some engine troubles but people had seen them outside of the harbour and all looked fine. A fishing boat came in around 10:00 pm and reported they had seen a life jacket and a cooler floating. The search began and during the early morning they found 1 of the boys. Hours later they found Paul and the other boy. Danny has never been found. He had a 60 or 70 hp engine on the boat and a high sea came on. If a wave hit the boat it would have gone right down due to the weight. People say life jackets are just for finding bodies due to the temperature of the water here. Hypothermia is the silent killer.
It was so different experiencing this tragedy here then all of the ones we would hear of when living in Los Angeles....a county of 10 million people. Here there are around 3,000 people and the whole town was devastated....the grief was palpable and cast a pall over the island that is just starting to lift. The festivities of the 1st day of the festival were called off and the next night there was a candle light vigil at the wharf where about 1,000 people came. I could not contain my grief... actually we met the boys while we were negotiating to buy the house. They were told there were cameras and alarms that would sound if they passed the gate on the side of the house. Sweet boys, there were never any cameras or alarms...it was just another lie told by the man we bought the house from.
Twillingate cried, people wept everywhere, such a tragic thing to happen. The festival just never pulled itself together as everyone's hearts were broken.
We went to the Josh and James funeral. We got to the church over an hour early and were in chairs on the very last row. Many people couldn't get in....They were my little 10 and 12 year old friends. Josh had been in our car the week before helping us return a cat to a little girl up the lane to the south of us. James and his friend Nicholas were running along in front of us.....the three of them often on the ATV together. On the 17th of this month we went to the cemetery and I put roses on Paul and the boys graves. The two boys were buried together in the same casket as they were never apart. Little men....time is starting to lift the pall but you are so sorely missed...I still get a start when I see children on bikes near the house....
It was hard to deal with and I was sorry Brett had to experience it...there wasn't a window we could look out of without seeing almost all of Twillingate stopping across the street. We walked over to see Sheila just as the RCMP came to tell her they found Paul's body. I couldn't close my eyes without seeing the fear in their faces as the cold water took them...oh, it will never leave me.
I have wanted to write but just haven't been to able to until now.
There is more to tell but I will do that at another time....it is about the disaster we had with the paint on the decorative wood on the house...enough now.
Live and love to the fullest every day while you have life to do it.....
An Ode to James and Josh
by Gaye Ann Flyer on Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 1:37am
Little men, just on the edge of the prime of your young lives....when we first moved in to our house, there you came, flying up on your bicycles to see who we were and ask if the alarms were still on. The alarms that were never really there in the first place...just a story told to you by the man who owned the house before we bought it from him. We talked and told you who we were and that you could come back whenever you wanted as long as you used the driveway instead of the lawn with your bikes...you respected that wish and only had to be reminded once. Josh, you were around more often and your freckled face was always covered with ice cream as you were gobbling down another cone. Will the ice cream place ever be the same again??? No.
Just two weeks ago you both helped us find a house where we could return a kitty to the little girl who was trying to get it to come home...James and Nicholas running so fast ahead of us and Josh in the back seat of our car giving us directions....your spirit will always be there, the memory of your sweet face.
You reminded me of my two older boys who were much like the two of you...everyone in our neighborhood knew them and they had the same spirit for life that you did.
Riding your ATV across the back of the property sometimes three of you and I would stand and fondly watch....sometimes calling out to be careful. you even told me where the old well for the property was. We walked on the path that you cut through there and I was going to ask you to be sure and keep it driven down every year......
Little men, I feel your fear and wish I could rock you and tell you you would be safe. You are being rocked by something much greater than me now.<
You were the first two I thought of when I heard the news this morning...the North Atlantic took you and Paul, our neighbor across the street, and his friend Danny....my tears joining so many others that openly wept today and will openly weep for days to come.
I had a little bit of ice cream in honor of your memory tonight....I am not supposed to eat it but had to raise my spoon to your memory....
I will miss you, my young friends....I will miss seeing you, so much.
I have been told we are put on Earth to do what we were we were put here to do and when we were finished then it was time to leave.....
Why? Why you, little men, why? What lessons did you have to teach us.
The whole island just went black as we just lost the electricity...there is a whole lot of lightning and the sky is crying for you...the blackness of the island depicts the blackness in the hearts of everyone on the island.....we collectively grieve.
We went to the candlelight vigil tonight and I watched the wreath in the water and sent a kiss.....you were loved by the town....you precious boys will lie together for eternity.....what a comforting thing to know......
12 July month 2010
I have really missed writing my muzes....I got all tied up in Mafia Wars and Farmville and lost my life for a very long time....went cold turkey and am delighted...I do miss my farms because they were really cute but life must go on. One other BIG reason for not writing is I really don't like a certain ex knowing all about our lives except that I have found the most loving, gentle, patient, caring, sweet, intelligent, delightful, precious man to be married to....coffee and breakfast in bed...what more could a woman ask for.....I am going to give it a try again and see if the same passion is still there for the writing. I have to say I have certainly gotten much better at my typing but FAR from good.
I don't even know where I left off but here we are at now....an extremely hot, muggy day with air that is so thick it could be cut with a knife. It has been awful for days and we have slept in the motor home the past 2 nights and will be there again tonight and until it seriously cools down. It is like having a motel in the back yard. We had a 50 amp hookup installed so we can run both of the air conditioners at the same time....heaven.
We have been in Newfoundland for a little over a year now and spent our first winter here. Chet wanted to so badly so I made the 6 month commitment to do so and I promise I will not do it again. It was amazing even though it is one of the warmest winters they have had in about 70 years. We wanted to see the fury of winter and wore holes in the floor running from window to window to look for snow. We would see flakes and I would yell blizzard....we wanted to see it sooooo badly. Finally around New Year's Eve we had 2 weeks of real winter and would sit at the windows and watch the snow blow sideways past the house and wondered where it would all stop. It was just amazing....white flying by and the wind was just like a train as it would blow for days by the house...it was so exciting and I would get so cold if we went out that it would take hours and a hot bath to warm my "linings" up. I was frozen from inside as we would be dressed so no wind would touch our bodies. It was really a pain having to put on all of the layers of wools, gloves, hats, scarves, jackets and my life saving double wool 33 BELOW hoodie. We would leave, come back, undress and start all over when we went out again. I remember my momma telling us that is why we moved from New York when I was 4 as she would no sooner get us dressed and we would have to go to the bathroom. It took a while to learn how to properly layer as we would go in the store or a mall (not in Twillingate) and the perspiration would start running down my back...ugh....
We had a lot of friends to do things with and were busy all of the time...it is so interesting to learn a way of life that is so very different than what I was used to after living in Miami, Los Angeles, and then Portland, Or.....BIG cities with everything at one's fingertips 24 hours a day and then here in Twillingate, Newfoundland, with 2,500 people, 2 small grocery stores and 2 restaurants that stayed open for the winter. As a matter of fact, almost everything closes down the end of September. We would go to or have pot lucks, play games, watch movies and tv and just visit. It was quite an experience and more of a social life than I have had since high school. I will finish later.......
