Honeybells, the little card told us, are "a cross between the richly-flavored Dancy Tangerine and honey-sweet Duncan Grapefruit." They are harvested by hand and are only available during this brief season. Thank you Anne!
While I was posting an entry on my blog about our day in Swansboro, Martha decided to walk on the beach. It was low tide, and when she returned she said she had a great walk - I was a little envious. One of the things she had come upon was this Portuguese Man of War that had just washed in.
After a light supper, we got out our books and read for the first part of the evening. When it was 9:00 a.m., I tuned in to the Democratic Debate, the final one before the Iowa Caucuses in three weeks. It has not been easy to avoid all of the disturbing news from Washington on this Sabbatical, more so than usual, in fact. Since we have been here, our Commander-in-Chief, Potus Trumpus, decided to assassinate Qasem Soleimani, and it seemed as if we came perilously close to war with Iran. Last week, while we were hiking at Fort Macon, I started to tell Martha about the latest outrageous piece of Trump news, but then said, "No, on second thought, I'll tell you later. We're not bringing Trump on this hike!"
But unfortunately he is a part of our Sabbatical though not our hikes (not much of a hiker, I think) and we cannot avoid impeachment, the Democratic campaign, and the latest Evangelical Christian declaring his allegiance. And I can almost hear the BOOM of that big howitzer on the horizon, reminding us how close we are to war. So I watched with great interest once again as the contenders for the nomination "debated" one another, six of them now (and I have to say that CNN did a very poor job of asking questions). Can one of these people lead the battle against Trumpism?
I slept poorly, as I always do after these debates, and I am also not accustomed to staying up to 11:00 p.m. through what they call "Prime Time," nor to suffer through television itself. (We cancelled our Directv years ago and now we watch only what we like on our computers, mostly cable news shows and Netflix.) So I have to admit that I was not in the right frame of mind this morning as we left for the Fort Macon Picnic Area and another session of intervals.
But sometimes that's especially the time to push hard, to go the extra mile, both of which I accomplished this morning in overcast, mild conditions. I completed six intervals this week, all of them faster than last week, and added an extra mile of overall distance for good measure. Martha, too, had a good workout, six intervals also, and I pointed out to her while she was running that her form was perfect.
Martha went down to the beach this afternoon and set herself up in a chair to read, until the sun drifted behind the clouds and the breeze sprang up. I stayed indoors, changing light bulbs and doing odd jobs. Meanwhile, Martha texted me to come see some dolphins in the surf. I hurried out with binoculars and phone, but they had already gone. Martha had found this knobbed whelk, too. It was such a perfect specimen that I thought perhaps she was playing a trick on me! I had told her that I had seen a beautiful whelk in a thrift store the other day and considered buying it ($5.99) just to throw out in the surf and let her discover. But this was no store-bought whelk, it was a found whelk.
She also took these photos of the dolphins she had seen before I had frightened them away! Such beautiful creatures, glistening and leaping in the waves, as if they are filled with joy at the rolling surf and the bright sunshine into which they fly.
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