changes

In windswept anchorages where we hid our little salmon trolling boats from August afternoon north-westerlies, my mind used to spin a comforting fantasy.  I imagined a place nestled deep in Puget Sound country, a quiet backwater around a corner and up the head of a bay,  where a guy could be close to the salt chuck but protected from the billows on the open ocean.

Twenty years later, I ended up living in the exact place the day-dream visualized.   Some kind of woo-woo magic maybe; more likely random chance coincidence.  Been thinking about it a lot lately, now that we are going to sell the house on the beach.  Move into town.

Mary Jane and I have divorced and will be living separately after the house sells, possibly in the same 55+ community.

Last year I did an article about Mary Jane going to work for the school district in Marysville.  Two milestones this year.  Passed a difficult test to keep the job.  Major accomplishment.  No less a hurdle came the other day, changed soiled diaper on a twelve-year-old girl.  "...she is so little and cute, born with no eyes but sometimes she gets happy, laughs and sings...."

Working for Mary Jane's junker business has been a lot of fun, but I am ready for a change.  Seven-hundred weekends in Fremont Sunday Market,  ten-thousand or more eBay ads, countless shipping cartons, workshop piled with half finished projects, hardly wait until I can preface those things with the phrase "I used to . . . "   Really looking forward to settling into my own place, be available for family activities with the time I used to spend working the business.

UPDATE LATE APRIL

After managing to eek out four weeks at home on Sundays, I am once again roped into every other week in Freemont through the summer.


photo credit - top - Richard Crow - at anchor behind Three Arch rocks, Oregon coast
bottom - shot from the front lawn of Mary Janes house on Livingston Bay, summer morning