August 2021 Island Trip – Day 4

We started the morning with tea, and pumpkin pancakes with big fat blueberries in them. Mid-morning my tenant and I spent way more time than necessary renewing the lease on the house. We enjoy each other’s company, and kept wandering down conversational paths. She thanked me for the ‘opportunity to re-lease the house.’ I kept thanking her for staying. It works for both of us.

I returned to Stella to find my DH snoozing on the couch! I almost wish it’d taken the tenant and I longer to go through the lease docs so he could have napped longer.

Next my DH and I topped off Stella’s batteries. This is a regular chore. To date we’ve been doing it every three months. This time three of the cells (of six) on one (of two) of the batteries were damp rather than having water in them. We’ll check them every two months going forward. Our little Airstream has a deep-cell marine battery (only one!), and you never have to mess around with it. The plan is to proactively replace Stella’s current batteries with deep-cell marine batteries. Maintenance aside, the batteries weigh 50ish pounds each, and are a pain in the neck (back) to get in and out of their teeny cubbies in order to service.

I cut up a mess of honey crisp apples to go with the wheel of brie we took to today’s afternoon reunion gathering, and we headed to the beach. The food was delicious and unending, and then there was fresh crab cooked in water from the sound. I’ve never had crab so good. My dad taught me to boil crab in water that mimicked sea water. It’s always good, but clearly I have not been adding enough salt!

Both last night and this afternoon were a study in how people don’t know how to hold conversations anymore, Yes, there’s a group dynamic at play here when lots of people (35ish last night, and 30ish today) come together and are trying to catch up on 10-years of news. However, when someone asks another a specific question, and only waits for a third of the answer before being distracted by another conversational thread, well, it’s flabbergasting. But maybe not, because I truly think most of my classmates were raised in situations where conversation wasn’t valued. That, or screens have diminished peoples’ ability to interface with each other. There were only two people I had extended conversation with where we stayed on the same topic/s for a significant amount of time. Ah, maybe I’m a dialog snob. I did enjoy lots of the interactions, yet am left wondering how meaningful exchange can take place when everyone is redirecting the conversational thread to themselves rather than learning the full story of, say, how ‘Marcia’s business developed.’ 🤷🏼‍♀️ It was good to see everyone, and kinda exhausting. Not their fault. If I saw 30-35 of any group of folks, I’d need to retreat after the event!!