I’m awake far too late. Beau, the elder Schipperke, the blond one, isn’t feeling well. I suspect he’s having another bout with pancreatitis, and I’m monitoring him as he lays by the open back door, the coolest spot in the house. Last year he sought out all the cool spots, as he had internal inflammation, and that (and his ugly diarrhea) clued us in that he wasn’t well.

It’s been a busy spring…I ended my business partnership for strictly business reasons (I was doing all the work and still splitting my commissions 50/50; duh, why?) and immediately got busy, our daughter got married in April and we had a mini family reunion (my sister & BIL, son & his SO, daughter and now SIL, and us; love how close we are); we took a week to ride Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah National Park with 4 of our best cycling friends. That was amazing! The beauty, the views, the climbs & suffering, the company, the learning about how unfit I was for those hills, how gratifying it was to summit those climbs. Yeah, that was special.

We rode through a nearby state park close to our friends’ home, and it was pretty and fun. Then we rode some good roads to the Atlantic Ocean. Of course I had to step in it; I haven’t been in the Atlantic since 1997, at Ft. Lauderdale, before my mother died. So of course I shucked my shoes and socks to go push Doris in and scrabble in the water. Doris had not seen nor touch the Atlantic, so we fooled around there a bit. And it was fun!

Later we walked along the Chesapeake Bay to a diner on the pier, and of course I walked in the tiny waves. I love walking in salt water. I’ve loved it since I was a kid, walking in the Atlantic in Ship Bottom or Beach Haven, on Long Beach Island, where my dad would rent a house for a week. We spent so much time in the water and making sand castles that our fingers and toes looked like raisins. And despite the outdoor shower we always tracked sand into our apartment. Anyway…I love walking through small waves.

Our last day in Virginia we walked along the MUP and veered off into the State Park. I didn’t wear the right shoes; I thought we’d be walking on a beach again. Oops. The park is really pretty and has topography so it wasn’t totally flat. I heard bird calls that I didn’t recognize but liked. We walked about 6 miles.

Then we packed our bags and K & S drove us to the airport. And just like that, back to reality.

That was May 29th, when we returned and found all kinds of vegetables to harvest in our front yard garden, and took a day to decompress. A couple weeks later, boom!