Splashdown

Owing to the long cool Winter that is stretching into Spring, the beach here fills up at even the slightest increase in sunshine and warmth. We had a record 2 sunny and hot days in a row before the coolness returned. One day it was 50 degrees F and the next it was 85. The sunburns are everywhere.

Even though it has warmed up a tad, I am still wearing my leather jacket. My jeans hide knee socks beneath the denim and when I walk the sands, it is in sensible shoes. Today the tide is way way out as my dog and I do our daily outing. Unbelievably, at the water's edge is a tiny woman with her toes exposed to the water. She is laughing as the water tickles in and out. A couple in their 60's earnestly tries to find out who this lady belongs to. She just laughs her delightful laugh and then suddenly I hear her say: "Ask her. She knows." She means me.

The couple pounce on me and begin an onslaught about negligence and elder abuse and should we call the police so someone can come and take her back to whatever old age home she escaped from and on and on and on. The man has his cellphone out. I look over to the barefoot lady and I recognize her at last.

"No no," I tell the couple, "She lives on the bluff there. She is fine."

Still unconvinced they mutter and walk off. He has his cellphone at the ready, clearly hoping to use it. The little lady calls my dog who is delighted to run over and try to climb onto her.
She bends over and pats him inbetween chuckles.

"How are you doing Bea?" I ask her.

She laughs some more.
"Almost every time I come down here this happens. Some kindly soul tries to save me from myself."

It might have something to do with her tiny stature. Bea is 4 foot nine. It might have something to do with her choice of wardrobe. Bea wears three shades of pink, non matching, and layered innovatively. It might have something to do with the incongruity of a small elderly woman being one mile out from the safety of the curbs where every other person of her age sits.

I ask Bea if she can make it back up the steep stairs or if she is going to walk around the long way. She gives a little snort and I feel chastised.

She stands up releasing my dog. She looks me in the eye, a distance of a foot or so and says:
"I have been coming here since I was 21 years old and newly married. The only thing that has really changed around here is the number of people who have never seen an capable old lady before."

I get the idea and change the subject.

-----------
"If I have lost confidence in myself, I have the Universe against me."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

posted to a client's fridge (in bold block letters)

his little note pasted to the fridge door, at the home of a very pleasantly confused client, I

surrepticiously copied it to my planner while pretending to take notes to the progress report.

This is cute.
And oh so very apt for people like me:


+-------+-----------+----------+-------+

I'm Lost!

♥ I've gone to look for myself.
If I should return
before I get back,
♥ please ask me to wait.

+-------+-----------+----------+-------+



If you see me wandering about with this taped to my forehead,
you'll know what happened.

Magpie Convention on the Water

-=-
I had my schedule changed. (There's a surprise.)

Instead of galavanting about the entire District I was to the same house for 6 hours.
Normally I decline these sorts of things but I happened to know that there was (yet another)critical shortage of staff. Flu season you know.

I had traded my regular heavy-care day, here, there and everywhere, for one little care task, and was companioning, (bfd). The hardest part of the day was staying awake whilst my client watched that square box that broadcasts garbage 24/7.

Returning home, I was muttering about how cold I was.
Everyone who knows me is aware that when I mutter about being cold, --
it means I am about to fall aszzzzzleep.
The last person to know it is always me.

Despite being layered in fleece, and coming upstairs to my warm room,;
despite blankets and yes, towels, strangely adorning my shivering body, I bravely decided to update my blog.
Possibly 45 seconds later I was under my down, snoring.

I am living proof television is mind-numbing.
The less you do the less you want to do.
Give me the heavy care any day.
-=-
There was a wooded area around the river's edge in the middle of the District which until very recently was not developed. A handful of people had homes along the waterfront and accessed them via a poorly serviced road. Perhaps 20 years ago a development adjacent to them was put in alongside the Highway. Still, the rickety road was not upgraded and the waterfront remained mostly virginal.

3 years ago the parcel must have changed hands and suddenly the little road was paved and widened. One by one along the waterfront, big homes went in; big and bigger. Now that area is one of the very elite among this area of nothing-these-days BUT-eliteness, and every house is over $750,000 with many way over 1.5 million. There are no empty lots left on the waterfront and even in the estuary, right to the river's banks, whole streets are being put in to maximise the big bux housing area. After all, the beachfront there is *private*.

On either end of the waterfront there are 33 foot frontages for public access to the beach. Most of the (now) pricey homes have constructed breakwaters and other strange landscaping devices designed to keep the great unwashed public away from *their* beach.
Guess what I think about that!

One of my new clients is down on this street.
Hers was the very first house in that area on the waterfront. *THE* first.
She and her husband built it 39 years ago and enjoyed all the wildlife.
She told me how her husband was a boat builder but refused to so much as make her a canoe or rowboat. She borrowed one for herself, and went out to merrily row along the seascape.
She wanted to look at areas she could not get to by foot.
"I never did it twice. Do you KNOW how hard it is to row a damned boat?"
yup, I do.
And yup, I don't much go in for rowing.

We sat and watched for herons after a good big chat.
I was a little worried about her.
She has been on her own for rather too long and is just plain vunerable.
I believe she would welcome anyone at all into her house, which would be fine,
except she is no longer capable of discerning intent. After all, I walked in after knocking,
and not knowing me from a hole in the ground nor why I was there, she showed me
the whole house including awesome stashs of things I too collect.

I loved her for it, and certainly I am considerably more gifted at first visits than most,and of course there is always that "people tell YOU everything" bit, but even so, this was rather special. I enjoyed it, but took pains to gently advise her against leaving the doors open and/or giving tours of certain things/areas.
I hate it when I must do that!

Perhaps in a few years it will be me giving tours of my tiny condo here.
Perhaps my family will be frowning in as I show off my bits and baubles and give the impression that I am rolling in BIG CASH MONEY because of all the shiny things I possess.

Magpies just collect shiny things.
Paper money aint shiny.
I am destined to be *just making it* and never rich in cash.
Magpies never sell their shinies for big huge cash money no matter what! (awww)

Our little town is growning at a rate unsustainable and with every new family come possibilities good and bad. Crime is going up and we have a problem with crystal meth.
The street kids are more than just summertime slackers. They are addicts.
Like other paradises, everyone wants to live here.
Who am I to say what "undesirable" really means.

I would rather have ten homeless persons enjoying that waterfront than ten more million dollar palaces. Funny how the newly rich want to fence out everyone else.
My new client is not like that.
She does, however, need to find a middle ground.

-=-