family and friends

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looking around Bass Lake

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here are some of my favorites places in Bass Lake

it's all about dillon

Here's some pictures i've taken of Dillon while we've been here. he's very photogenic and instantly goes into his pose (that started when he was very young!) when i say "Dillon, smile".

scenes from my mom's house

here's a little taste of what dillon and i get to experience when we come to Bass Lake. you can see where i get my gardening and yard expertise from! mom's yard and garden are full of fun and whimsy. i'll introduce you to her little family. she's got 2 dogs, Blossom (2nd row, 3rd photo), Paddington (1st row, 1st picture). then there's the cats, all rescues: China (1st row, last picture), Sugarplum (4th row, 1st picture), Jingles, a "ragdoll cat" (last row, last picture). missing is Edith Ann, a orange and white kitty who declined to be photographed. she also has her darling little doves who make the cutest little cooing noises.

the picture with the flower and the bee is her Hollyhocks which are covered in bees right now. i just loved how the bees are covered in the pollen. guess they don't have allergies!

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erika (my niece), her friend and my sister arrived yesterday. we went for a quick swim at Falls Beach and a nice dinner at Yolanda's. It's tradition to be initiated at Bass Lake by going down the falls. dill & erika have been going down the falls forever, but it was her friends first time. she was very brave and let dill hold her hand as they went together. notice the fools gold in the 3rd picture, first row, with my footsies dipping in the lake.

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here's us stopping at the Pines Market to look at mom's card display (she sells cards of her photography). don't you love the girls in their matching dresses?

do you like hummingbirds? i sure do

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my mom gets hundreds of hummers at her feeders. she has 4 feeders and they are constantly feeding from them. She has to fill them at least once a day. (to read all about the do's & don't's of feeding hummingbirds, go to my mom's blog, Ageless Adventures here and here. mom volunteered at the hummingbird banding network for a few sessions and learned plenty.

the hummingbirds that come to her feeders are called, Anna's. they can be very terroritorial and love to duel (dillon's words!) while angling to get into the feeders. i stood on a chair while taking those pictures and i was there during happy hour - where bunches come in to feed before it gets dark. they were swarming around me head and i could feel their wings in my hair. it was cool. i stuck my finger on one of the perches and a few of the landed on my finger while snacking.

in other news, tuck is starting to feel better. his test for influenza A was negative (thank god). so now he just needs to mend from whatever nastiness he got. some neighbor friends are pitching in to do what little they can. i've had horrible dreams about him since being here, so hopefully they will go away now.

More from Florida

On Sunday, Pam and i hit Miami and went to a street fair/flea market on Lincoln Road. it was a beautiful day, sunny and warm. we found wonderful treasures and had a really nice lunch. here are just a few of the cool things we saw.

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these are the treasures that i came home with:

On Vacation!

I'm in Baco, Florida visiting my friend, Pam. I flew in yesterday (wed.). i spent mon and tues. in bed after a bout of 24 hour horribleness. (i'll spare you the details). i'm feeling better, but still a bit fatiqued and my stomach is still very queasy and wonky. might be on the plain foods/broth diet for a few more days to get this thing settled. it was rough flight with thunderstorms (perfect for the already upset stomach!) and my poor seatmate was terrified. i finally reached for her hand and said, "are you all right? i told her we would be fine and tried to send calming energy to her (that sounds dorky!) but i felt really bad for the terror she was feeling. she began to relax and told me as we were debarking, that just having someone acknowledge her fear made her feel less alone and much better. job well done then!
it rained most of the day yesterday, so pam and i went and got much needed pedicures, which was very relaxing. then we came to her beautiful home and did, what else, but art! i forgot my camera battery, so we will need to go out and find one so that i can take some photos while here.

getting out in the world around me

Sometimes i tend to get a little isolated here. Tucker requires a lot of care and attention - which i lovingly do as his mother. it is my life and there is no 2 ways around it. and it isn't so much the constant care that wears me down, but the grief of what happened to him and us. at times it can be crippling. sometimes my husband and i like to compare our lives to the movie "Ground hog day" where the same day happens over and over again. honestly though, the only time i really feel stressed with my role as a caregiver is when tucker isn't feeling well and that is simply because i fear for him. i wonder will this be the illness that takes him from me? things like that. it's hard. So what do i do? i create. i make things and drown out my sadness with art. my husband, who i love dearly, finds other non -healthy ways to cope. this also isolates me from him. but it is what it is. we all cope differently.

so that being said, i made myself get out of the house today. dillon is in the Poconos with his girlfriend and family, tucker had caregiver help for most of the day and tonight and my husband was over at his mom's house working on some projects for her. so i decided i would pretend that i was on vacation. i would eat what i wanted, do what i wanted and pretend that i had not a care in the world. I made a wonderful lunch of hummus, cucumbers, red onions and pita bread. i finished another page in my "gatherings" book, i went to ACMoore to get some craft plywood to make a gift, then i took a nap. in the early evening i went to see the progress on the backyard projects at my MIL, Janet's, house. after chatting with Janet for awhile, i left and headed over to Manasquan beach, in particular, the dog beach. the dog beach is the only place i know of locally to find sea glass. there is no drift wood to be found and i don't know why. how come driftwood doesn't drift onto the beaches around here? weird. alas, upon arrival at the dog beach, it is high tide. there will not be much glass to be found today as it tends to get buried under all the rocks. low tide is the best time to find it. we find a lot of blue sea glass here, which is rare. even rarer is when we find red pieces. when dillon was younger, we use to hunt for blue pieces telling ourselves we could not leave until we found one more blue piece each. it always worked.

i decided to walk the beach anyway. it is fun to watch all the doggies get excited to chase balls into the water, run after each other; barking and getting sandy. i always walk to the way back where there is a bend and it gets quite marshy. i like to think of this as my secret place. it can be kind of gritty, so most people don't go back there. guess they think it is gross. but i love to go there because you can see the most fabulous birds. and i wasn't disappointed. i got to see 3 egrets, 2 black crown night heron, a darling sandpiper, some purple martins, a momma duck and her ducklings and some funky bird that i don't know the name of. this little bird kept hovering over the marsh pools. he'd wait and wait as he flapped his wings and then dive into the water for whatever it was he saw. he made a huge splash for such a little bird. i'll try to identify him later in my NJ shore bird book.

after awhile i figured i'd better start my way back. i decided to take some photos of things that had been left behind on the beach (besides garbage!) so here are some of the things i found that had been forgotten:

tomorrow morning i plan on getting up and heading over to the Manasquan Reservoir to take more pictures over there. it is a really beautiful area and i haven't been over there in years. tonight for dinner i plan on having a bowl of lucky charms or trix. now how's that for a vacation?