Thanksgiving in South Carolina

 A phenomenon here in Dataw is the appearance periodically of a King Tide.  As I learned from Wikipedia this is not a scientific term but a coined phrase.  It means quite simply, the highest tide that occurs only a couple of times a year.  This week we had a full moon at Thanksgiving and at that same time we experienced a King Tide.  This picture shows the ramp that goes from the dock on Oak Island where we walk our dogs every day to the floating dock.  It is almost never flat but more often has quite a slope to it. This was most unusual.  The water came right up to where we park the car at the beginning of the island and Jenkins Creek looked more like a river than a creek.  Quite fascinating and fun to go out there each morning to see how high the water was that day.

We had visitors with us this week from Asheville, NC.  Our daughter Margot and her girlfriend Hadley along with their dog Brew.  Brew spent most of the week trying to get our old dog Buckingham to play with him.  As a result I think Buck will sleep for a week now that Brew has returned home.  They are good friends.  We found them curled up together after we had been out for dinner.  Of course I forgot to take a picture of that but here is Brew on the dock.  He has grown much bigger than the girls thought he would but he is a lovely dog and very friendly and fit in quite nicely with all the other animals here.  He even likes the cats and they don’t seem to be bothered by him at all.

I managed to get stung by a fire ant on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving so that put me out of commission for a day or so.  I had a very bad night after the sting and my hand swelled up to a considerable size and it hurt.  Luckily I was able to get in touch with my doctor here and she told me to take Benadryl and prescribed a steroid which worked its magic and I was able to play in our Thanksgiving Day scramble with the Lincolns and the Moses.  It was the Old Goats against the Kids and the Kids won (because we gave them strokes!!!)  It was a wonderful day with delicious shrimp snacks and drinks and lots of laughs.  The best laugh of the day was over the turkey though.  We worked very hard at figuring out how to get the oven to go on to cook the turkey while we were on the golf course.  This required us to actually read the manual and it took three of us to figure it all out.  We had it set and were getting our golf shoes on and Margot said quite simply – “perhaps we should actually put the turkey in the oven” – we had completely forgotten this one rather important step.  A good laugh for everyone.

Endings and Beginnings

This past week of Thanksgiving was the release of the last module for my course.  There are 40 modules, released one a week with a few weeks off for breaks and exams.  There is a certain sadness in having this end after so many months of having my focus so defined.  There is also a sense of accomplishment at having taken the leap to sign up for the course which I did last November, then proceeding to go through the Orientation and Fundamentals and to begin with Module 1 which was the incentive for my first blog post “Week 1 – Done” back in January.  As my family toasted me on Friday night I said what I was most proud of was having the intention to do the course and to greeting each week with the same enthusiasm as the first one and finishing each module in the week that it was released.  This was no easy task as much happened during the past 47 weeks.  The final exam is released on Monday and our official graduation will be on December 15th.  What a year.
Today is the first Sunday in Advent which is the beginning of a new church year in the Christian tradition.  It is a period of waiting and preparing for Christmas.  In many ways it is more about the waiting.  We know something is coming but when will it arrive and how.  That is a major struggle for me right now so this message of waiting and preparing is a good one.  It will be very different to have Christmas here in the south this year.  I don’t have all those traditional decorations and the snow to help me prepare.  However, we can make new traditions and so we will.  The waiting to see what will happen as we plan to be back up north for the winter.  Will the other house be rented, will Katie’s house sell, will I be needed to help my sister in Montreal, will we both handle the travel back and forth, how will the animals handle all of the upheaval on a weekly basis, so many questions and no answers – yet!

 My own darling daughter Katie will turn 45 on Thursday of this week.  It seems impossible that she is 45 as I still think of myself as being 45.  So to my beautiful girl, I wish you a very Happy Birthday and a wonderful year.  To that amazing woman that I met in the delivery area of the hospital 45 years ago.  Yay to both of us for not only being mothers for 45 years but being friends.  Thank you Rosemary Baxter!!!!!!

For my golfing friends I have played three rounds of 18 and am beginning to feel like my old self again out on the links.  Lots of fun this week with friends and family and that helps.  No pressure.  So the end of Thanksgiving week and the beginning of Advent and the lead up to Christmas.  The end of my course at IIN and the beginning of a post course career perhaps.  Life is good.  Have a wonderful week everyone.