Bread is in the oven. I have exercised, fed the cat twice, put out the flag, brought in the paper for Eileen (I use the app but don’t usually look at the hard copy), and written about 400 words, experimenting with doing some non-blog prose writing in the morning.

I didn’t figure out how to do a word count in my updated WordPress but I did find it in my Google docs.

WordPress provides videos to help users learn. They are a bit tedious. I started one yesterday after blogging and will probably continue to try to learn more about this new update.

I just took the bread out of the oven. It smells great of course. It’s a nice, cool fall day today. So a good day to heat up the oven without making the kitchen miserable. The bread making is a small task for me. I have learned not to belabor the whole thing. I mix up what is called a sponge which is simply warm water, flour, yeast, and salt. Set the time for 30 minutes. Then, after the sponge has done some rising, I add the salt and the rest of the flour. I mix it in with a kneading motion and by the time it is mixed in, I stop kneading and shape it into loaves. Then a 30 minute rise and pop it into the oven. Easy peasy.

The wind was crazy at the beach yesterday. There was a red flag warning which means no swimming. However, we did see the huge kites in the sky that people use to kitesurf with. We also saw someone walking toward the beach in a wet suit carrying a surf board so maybe that activity is not prohibited.

Eileen and sat out in the wind for a while. We both enjoyed that. It’s pretty exhilarating to sit and let the wind blow over you. It usually reminds me of getting stranded on Cape Hatteras with my family when I was a child. Childhood memories are so tricky. Especially growing up with photos being taken. My Dad was a big photo slide nut. So we ahve hundreds of old slides of family and my parents trips to Europe.

Hatteras was actually an island at the time. Now you can drive along the coast of North Carolina and there is a bridge that lets you get on and off the Cape.

We were traveling with my Grandfather, Pop Ben. Pop Ben is what we called him. He and Grandmother were with myself, Mom and Dad. This was pre-Mark, my brother. I don’t remember too much even with the help of color slides. I know we must have gotten on to the island with a ferry. We were traveling in cars and had camping equipment with us. We may have even planned to stay the night on the island but the family story I remember is that we missed the ferry and got stranded.

We slept in tents and wind howled. I have a memory of fishing right off the Atlantic shore on a cold windy beach. I associate it with this time on Hatteras. I was sitting in a folding lawn chair, holding my rod, when suddenly I was being pulled into the water. I had a bite! Someone rescued me. I don’t remember if the fish was reeled in or not.

Anyway, the memories are all mixed up but that’s sort of how I remember it.

Yesterday the strong winds and sand in my hair and eyes reminded me of this. Eileen and I decided to move to the car to have our picnic lunch because of the wind and sand. We stayed in the car for our daily boggle game but went back outside to continue reading.

Today is the local Farmers Market and I need to stop blogging and go buy some tomatoes.