I'm Just Looking Around....

My time on the boat is fast ending.  I have completed the major tasks and now am down to the final wipe here and there.

Trying not to buy to much of anything as I will just have to give it away.

Most of the boats have left for the salt water and with everyone that I witness leaving the dock a little piece of me goes with them.

But this is not my year to go sailing.  This is my year to get my husbands and my health back in order.  This is the year to re-evaluate what is important. The year to continue the search for ancestors and to celebrate the new grand-children in our lives.

I hate letting go.  I am not very good at it.  I tend to want to be angry when I leave or let go.  Seems to make it easier at the time.

We have had a good run of 10 years on the boat.  And we may still have a season left in us.  That is the plan.  So as I put the boat to bed and look around I am reminded of the drinks and meals shared aboard her.  Sitting at the table with waypoints to put in and double check.  That last little bit of fresh veg just before you cast off.  The hours of school work that Cynthia did at the nav. station.  Watching energy consumption and running the generator for power. Lower and raising the dinghy.  Hoping the outboard will start.  Jumping in the water to cool off.  The hours of Mah Jongg in anchorages that were rolly and we were waiting for weather.

So on Tuesday when I get on that tube called an airplane I will be a little sad.  But I will also be full of hope.  Hope for the next year and the one after that.  Hope that we get to travel a little in our land home on wheels.  Hope that we all see each other again.

And We Fly...

Airports used to be fun.  Not so much anymore.  You can’t wait with someone and then watch them taxi away.  You can’t wait at the gate and greet them anymore.  You have to wait in the baggage claim area.  Just not as enchanting.

Now we go through Security a couple of times.   We get our carry on searched, our checked bags x-rayed and we get scanned, wanded, patted down, etc.

These boots were made for walking

And that's just what they'll do...

I know that I love going into Security where it smells like a High School Gym locker room.  There is nothing like the smell of multiple pairs of sweaty feet.  Because we all have to take off our shoes I try to wear something that I can slip in and out of with minimal fuss.  So, I have trouble with all the people in shoes that have to be tied, the boots that go up to your knee and either zip, lace or a combination of closures.  One person I saw on my last trip had to have help pulling her boots off!   That really helped to keep the line moving.

Boarding the plane.  The carrier that I use has Zones. Why??? I am not sure.  It is always a mad dash to hurry up and wait.  Zones mean nothing.  Why isn’t someone enforcing the rules?  If they call zone 1 and your ticket reads zone 4 you should not be at the front of the line.

I wonder why the airlines even bother having the dimensions of bags for carry-on bags.  Nobody uses them and certainly most airlines don’t enforce their rules.  Why is it that people who sit in the back of the plane use the overhead bins in the front of the plane?  I don’t know about you, but I like my stuff where I can keep track of it.  So now that someone has used my overhead bin, I have to search and take someone else’s bin.  I especially like it when the airline staff takes the carry-on luggage from someone in the front and has to put it in a bin in the back of the plane.  And why doesn’t the person in the back bring it up to you?  They are the ones that used your overhead bin in the first place.

Ultimately, I am like a hermit crab.  I search for an empty shell that can be my home and when it becomes too small for my belongings, I search for a larger shell.  I like my stuff with me.  I wonder will it fit in the crematorium.

Addiction

 My name is Cindy and I am addicted to Apps.

As a therapist when I think of addiction I usually think of Drugs and Alcohol.  Now there are sex, gambling and computer addictions.

Since I switched to Apple/Mac I have become addicted to Apps!  The 99 cent ones are my favorite ones.  Free is even better.  Then before you know it you are looking at $9.99 ones and then it's $14.00 ones.  Okay, I admit that I have purchased a $30 app!  It was for learning Spanish and I do use it.  See I can justify it so easily.

You can have apps for your iPhone, iTouch, iPad and now for your Mac.  In the first 15 minutes I consumed and my enabler husband helped me download 5.  The first one was free and just to see what it was like.  It was like crack...the next four were so easy!

I find that I watch and read about all the new tech gadgets.  Gadgets have always been a problem.  Now there are apps for those gadgets.  If one browser is good at least three are better.

Not only is my son sending me apps to think about, now I can download it on my Mac and I wanted it before he even talked to me.  You will be proud of me.  I am waiting a little longer.  It costs....drum roll...$79.  Even I have to stop and think about that one.

I won't download an app today.  That's all I can promise for now.

It All Started With a Simple Post

I am a smart ass.  Just ask my parents.
I started with a simple post on Facebook. "1/1/11 and  still that troubling question...what to make for dinner?  And a good friend replied, "Are you kidding me?  Black eyed peas of course!  Do you want bad luck all year?"

I don't like bad luck, but I can't stand black eyed peas.  I have never made them and am not about to start at this point of my life.  I have always just considered it a "Southern" thing.  I don't say that with any disrespect.  In fact it appears that I am from the south.  Ancestry.com doesn't lie.  I have more ancestors south of the Mason-Dixon Line than I ever knew.

When I  think of Black eyed peas I think of collard greens, ham hocks, grits, etc.  I did not grow up with these items on my dinner table.  I have not acquired a taste for them.  In fact, I know that I horrify my friends from South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, etc when I say I do not like grits.  Even if they are a "butter delivery system".

So off I went to find the history of Black Eyed Peas.  No we are not talking the musical group.


 As per Wikipedia:

"Eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day is thought to bring prosperity.
The "good luck" traditions of eating black-eyed peas at Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, are recorded in the Babylonian Talmud (compiled ~500 CE), Horayot 12A: "Abaye [d. 339 CE] said, now that you have established that good-luck symbols avail, you should make it a habit to see qara (bottle gourd), rubiya (black-eyed peas, Arabic lubiya), kartei (leeks), silka (either beets or spinach), and tamreidates) on your table on the New Year." However, the custom may have resulted from an early mistranslation of the Aramaic word (rubiya (fenugreek).^[4]
A parallel text in Kritot 5B states that one should eat these symbols of good luck. The accepted custom (Shulhan Aruh Orah Hayim 583:1, 16th century, the standard code of Jewish law and practice) is to eat the symbols. This custom is followed by Sephardi and Israeli Jews to this day.
In the United States, the first Sephardi Jews arrived in Georgia in the 1730s, and have lived there continuously since. The Jewish practice was apparently adopted by non-Jews around the time of the American Civil War.
In the Southern United States,^[5] the peas are typically cooked with a pork product for flavoring (such as bacon, ham bones, fatback, or hog jowl), diced onion, and served with a hot chili sauce or a pepper-flavored vinegar.
The traditional meal also features collard, turnip, or mustard greens, and ham. The peas, since they swell when cooked, symbolize prosperity; the greens symbolize money; the pork, because pigs root forward when foraging, represents positive motion.^[6] Cornbread also often accompanies this meal.
Another suggested origin of the tradition dates back to the Civil War, when Union troops, especially in areas targeted by General William Tecumseh Sherman, typically stripped the countryside of all stored food, crops, and livestock, and destroyed whatever they could not carry away. At that time, Northerners considered "field peas" and field corn suitable only for animal fodder, and did not steal or destroy these humble foods.<sup>[7]"

So I guess I should thank the Babylonians and my Jewish friends for blacked eyed peas.
Happy New Year everybody...no matter what you are eating for dinner.</sup>