Busy Week

I haven’t posted much of late. The reason is not that there is a lack of things to write about; quite the opposite is true. There just hasn’t been time.

Seems like every day this week has been a whirlwind. I sold my boat, closed on a piece of property, spent part of a day volunteering at church, worked on a news article, and on and on it goes.

My wife and I often joke with each other about how we ever got anything done when we both had full time jobs. The truth is that in “retirement,” priorities, duties, interests and energy are all different. In many ways, I so much enjoy what I’m doing now that time itself seems to be evaporating.

Tomorrow we’ll attend a wedding of a relative who lives some 50 miles away, as the crow flies. The bride is the daughter of one of my many cousins on my mom’s side. My late uncle, the bride’s grandfather, was a stubborn, self-willed, often cantankerous, but extremely lovable old Finnlander.

I spent many hours with “Uncle Bill” in the old days, and most of them involved fishing. Virtually every male anywhere on my mother’s side of our extended family was a fisherman. It was “Uncle Bill” who “tested the mettle” of my wife, one day at the ocean just after we were married, by handing her a live fish he had caught, “just to see what she’s made of.” She passed with flying colors, by-the-way, screaming all the way to the cleaning station as the sea perch struggled wildly, but unsuccessfully, to escape her grip.

Just after the Seahawks playoff game on the morrow, Bill’s granddaughter, Kelly, (pictured with Jonathan, her betrothed) begins her life as a wife. Things have to look “rosie” for her, being Linda’s daughter and Beatrice’s granddaughter. Wonderful women seem to be everywhere in our family.