1 Last day to go

Its time to take the dogs to Super Care Kennels for their care while we’re away. This isn’t new for them as each year we usually travel for about two weeks. Ipo and Pico love their caregiver, Pam Spencer, and her open spaces in the south of the Big Island



Buzz and the dogs wait for Pam while I am having my nails done. That's Buzz' finger admonishing them. Pico looks ashamed while Ipo is wary of that finger.





Time for the handover.


Bye now - don't look so sad, but cuddle up for your hour long trip south. We'll see you in a month!!

2 Days to go

All the heavy stuff is done, purchased or made and packed. Now the fine details - Buzz is confirming our plane reservations to Honolulu; I am checking all prescriptions but can't find the bottle in which I put the vitamins. Won't hurt to go a month without, I guesss. Also I collected quarters in change as I shopped the last days in order to use laundry facilities on the ship. Buzz said, "the purser can help you" but I prefer to go prepared.

Last minute shopping at Costco brought us treats for the rest of the week (doughnuts) and snacks to carry on the plane (Macadamia Roca) which is more than half eaten already. My carryall that I use instead of a purse is full (and heavy) with two books to read on the plane, a notebook to write in, snacks, crossword puzzle book with pencils and extra pair of glasses.

3 Days to go

On our way home from picking up my new glasses, we stopped for the mail. Although we have a mailbox on the highway one mile above our home, we prefer to keep a box at
the main (and only) post office in our village.

4 Days to go

I've worn framed glasses, contact lenses since the first grade. Without that aid, I not only cannot drive, I can't find lost things around the house or worse, for me, read well. Three weeks ago we went to Costco to order a backup pair of glasses and today we went to pick them up. I'm shocked to find the glasses before me are sunglasses!! How did that misunderstanding happen? I know they would have replaced them with indoor glasses but decided to keep them for outdoor wear.
©Natalie Norman Baer 6/2/10

5 Days to go

I checked the Mango trees today and see they are ripening.



I'll let Vanesa (my son's wife) know she's welcome to pick as much as she wants while we're gone. Other years I've tried slicing and drying the pieces when I'm overloaded with the fruit, but they become a bit chewy. I'd rather give them away.
Good advice from Empress Bee (of the high seas) to get rest because the port calls tend to be strenuous.
©Natalie Norman Baer 6/1/10

6 days to go

It's Memorial Day, the day our family took flowers to the graves of our people. I looked in vain through photo albums filled over the past twenty years searching for a picture of our family graves. In vain, indeed, but not from memory. I am the last of our family to be part of this tradition. My three sisters and I would cram into the little Ford Coupe along with Mother and Dad, eager for the 75 mile drive to Forestdale, Mass. As we headed out of Greenville, we'd drive through Providence, Seekonk and passing the towers at the head of Cape Cod, Mother would take a deep breath and say, "Ah, smell that fresh air."

Before crossing the Bourne Bridge, we'd stop to buy flowers - usually gladiolus, Spring flowers. Then it was but a few miles through Sandwich to the Forestdale Cemetery. While Mother would arrange the flowers at the headstone of her father and the one next to it of her grandparents, we girls would wander about the small graveyard reading the headstones. I didn't know until my daughter, Barbara, researched it, that my 3rd grandparents Prince and Azubah Fish were buried here. Facing the road was a long line of gravestones for Calvin and Martha Fish along with many of their 11 children. While I still live, I want to clean the black mildew from their stones.
Today I am sad because I am too far to lay flowers on any of my family stones: I lay in my mind flowers in memory of my sister Doris with Herb and my Dad at the Veteran's Cemetery in Exeter, RI; sister Edie is with Ralph in Attleboro, Mass, Cemetery; while my last sister Nancy is with Arlie, my Mother and stepfather and my always remembered first husband, Ralph, at the cemetery in Kaneohe, Hawaii. You are always alive for me.
©Natalie Norman Baer 5/31/10

7 days to go

I'm clearing out books I've read or don't want to read (after a good start) and taking them to Kona Bay Books, undoubtedly the best used book store on our island (and I haven't seen his brother's store in Hilo) Buel's store has grown in just the past seven or so years from a small rented section of a building in downtown Kona to his own library-size building in our "Old Industrial Area" not far from town. I bought "Italy in Mind" here, a book of essays written over the past two hundred years on Venice, Rome, Naples, Sicily and other spots in Italy.



Now I'm returning it, with others purchased there or elsewhere, for a credit of 50% on original used store price. With that credit, I broused the History Section, and bought a book on the history of Croatia. From now until we leave, I'll make notes on its history for background when we tour Dubrovnik. I'm not good at remembering dates, but have already read that it has been 1000 years since Croatia was last an independent country, before being divide by Hungary and Venice. But I have to make those notes before swearing the truth of the above.
©Natalie Norman Baer 5/30/10