last week in cocoa.

it went quickly.  mostly we worked.  and missed consuelo.  we NEED another dog.  tom was grilling dinner one night and said he missed his sous-chef.  yes, she really was a major part of our lives. 

friday, we drove over to the south side of the canaveral national seashore (we were at the north side last weekend, by new smyrna beach) and the merritt island refuge.  our plan had been to drive as far as we could along the shore and check out the beach so at the last parking area (there are 13), we stopped and got out of the car.  ummm....  no one told us that it was where all the nudists went.  sigh...  nevertheless, we were there already, greeted at the top of the boardwalk by some fat naked guy all sprawled out in the corner letting it all hang out.  it was definitely not an attractive sight.  there really weren't that many nudists and they were spread out on a very long beach.  some were surf fishing, some laying out and some just walking around.  no one was talking.  the funny thing was that here was tom carrying his big camera hahaha...  anyway, we ignored them and they ignored us.   i don't "get" nudity but well, whatever.  we had planned to drive a bit more around the refuge area but the the bridge at the haulover canal was left open so we could not cross over to the other side so we just headed on out to mikey's and since we got there early, we left again with him to visit a mall by marie's office and then picked her up when she was done with work.  dinner at home was pancit palabok (a filipino noodle dish), lumpiang gulay (vegetable rolls) and dessert was turon (deep fried banana rolls)!  so good...  it was so much fun to have filipino food again and to introduce them to tom! 

we left early the next morning for the boat as annie had a meet that tom and i weren't going to attend since my old high school friend, richie, and her daughter, anna, were coming to visit.   i am glad that i stopped to think about when anna was born and calculated how old she was.   i hadn't seen her since she was 10 and here she was, a young lady at 33.  where did the time go?  we had lunch at a nearby thai place when they arrived and then walked around cocoa's historic village district.  tom and i finally got to see the inside of some of the interesting shops (i know, after one month in cocoa, you'd think we would at least have gone into one of them but tom and i are not big on shopping.  however, it was fun to watch the others spend money hahaha.....).  we really had a good time and they must have, too, as they said they had to leave at 5:00 p.m. and stayed until 7:00 p.m.! 

the next day, sunday, we had our usual pancakes and bacon at home and then left for harbortown marina on merritt island for a nautical flea market to see our friend, patty, who was going to be one of the vendors at the event.  we went there primarily to see patty but i'm afraid that we walked away with some stuff, too.  for the longest time, we had been looking for metal locking rings for our power cords.  apparently, they don't make the metal ones anymore, just plastic, which break constantly.  tom found one while he was wandering around by himself and i found three more when i went through with him.  great finds - i don't think we will dismiss nautical flea markets ever again!  we also got some solar dock lights.  after that, we passed by the publix to do a little grocery shopping and then home to the boat.  mikey and marie came over that afternoon.  it was marie's first time to see the boat so i gave her the GRAND two-penny tour and then we left for an early dinner at a filipino restaurant in cocoa beach that mikey had heard about from one of his friends.  well, it certainly was an experience for tom - the food, the ambiance, the karaoke.....  hahaha!  tom said he could have done without the karaoke singing but i thought it was a hoot.  the singing was really REALLY bad :) 

anyway, this is our last night in cocoa and we leave in the morning.  it's hard to believe that a month went by just like that.  we enjoyed our stay except, of course, for the part about consuelo but if it had to happen, i'm glad that it happened here where we were sitting for a while and with my family nearby.  consuelo is with us now as we are taking her ashes back to the chesapeake and we are looking forward to being on the move again.  interestingly enough, since i'd never done it before, the package included the "urn" which was a can with a paw print pattern all over it, a certificate of cremation and a card with the rainbow bridge poem.  we also received a condolence card from the staff at the animal hospital.  there was a bookmark, too, with another poem and a butterfly-shaped thing attached to it with instructions on the back to remove the butterfly and to plant and water it - it was to become a little wildflower garden.  i thought that was pretty neat.  i gave the bookmark to marie who is way better with plants than i ever will be and she said would get a special pot for it.  and if/when it blooms, they can send us a photo and maybe next winter, we can see it when we visit again.  because we will be back next winter and every winter from now on. 

can you see the nudists in the pic?

at the merritt island refuge

baby mangroves and a great blue

american coots

more baby mangroves - eventually they coalesce!

they look like mushrooms

interesting droopy flower

shopping.

it was a very expensive weekend.  on the other hand, i was reminded of why mikey is one of the two persons i enjoy shopping with the most (and both are men, mind you!) if i even have to go shopping to begin with.  our project was to find tom a new laptop and we went all over the place, checking out prices and such.  tom also wound up with five pairs of new shorts since the ones we got him last summer were already more or less trashed, plus two new pairs of crocs (they were on sale so we had to get two).  okay, now for the laptop....  we ended up buying it at the microsoft store at the florida mall.  it is a lenovo touch screen, i7 quad core, 16 GB RAM with backlit keyboard, a fabulous graphics card and a solid state drive.  it is lightning fast and i have to confess, i really do have laptop envy even though i have two perfectly good dell laptops with i3 processors that are satisfactory for what i do!  we hemmed and hawed over a few others in the store, but in the end, tom decided on the lenovo along with a product key for office 365.  the salesman also threw in a tutorial on windows 8.1 which i know nothing about (i do now) along with three $5 starbucks gift cards.  feeling markedly poorer, we went home to pick up marie and annie for a dimsum lunch (yummy) and then to yet another mall as annie needed to find a bathing suit for a pool party.  i'm sure the poor kid would have loved to stay at the mall a little longer but after the morning we had, we were all just exhausted and as soon as the bathing suit was in the bag, it was time to go home.  tom took a nap and left the laptop in my hands to configure stuff - installing antiviral software, dropbox, office and others, and then i started transferring his stuff from the old laptop.  naturally, these things are never straightforward.  computers are like boats - there is always SOMETHING. but whatever i initially messed up, i fixed, and tom was very happy with his new toy.  it didn't have an optical drive so off i went to trusty old amazon to get him an external drive.  anyway, i don't know....  spending all that money wore us out! 

sunday morning was our usual - mikey cut up fruit and made coffee.  tom fried up the bacon and marie made french toast.  i stayed out of the kitchen and played with tom's new laptop and started packing up stuff to go home to the boat. 

being away from the boat on the weekends helps.  but when i am home, i still wake up in the middle of the night thinking that i forgot something.  i leave the boat and come back thinking she'll be there waiting.  there is just this enormous void.  i miss her very, very much. 

this is our last week in cocoa with one more weekend to go.  yesterday, the AIS that tom sent off to the manufacturer because it kept cutting out on us, arrived in the mail.  or rather, a NEW unit arrived (they replaced it) and it got installed and configured to the nav laptop.  and that is it - the last thing and TADHANA is ready to leave now and head back north.  we won't be leaving consuelo behind though - mikey picked up her ashes at the vet today. 

oh well, carry on, we must. 

still in cocoa, FL.

it is the end of the first week without consuelo.  we feel her absence acutely.  every time we open the refrigerator door, we expect to see her little face poking through the baluster, every time we see baby carrots, whenever we look in the corner of the salon where she normally sleeps during the day, there is less and less dog hair in the vacuum bins, etc. etc.  yesterday, we took TADHANA out for a sea trial after tom replaced the water-injected exhaust elbow the day before - a whole day affair that involved a lot of sighing and cursing and groaning and two trips to the NAPA auto parts store.  anyway, it was the first time the boat ever left the dock without consuelo in it.  out of habit, i checked to see if she was on board, and of course, she wasn't.  later, as we were doing maneuvers out on the indian river, TADHANA's engine was put on wide-open throttle and since tom was checking below in the engine room for leaks, the hatch was open and the noise was terrible.  again, i checked to see if she was okay because the noise always bothered her.  anyway, that's how it has been this whole week.  we look and she's not there.  we miss our little girl very much. 

to me, the cure for this terrible sadness is to get a new puppy.  the old dog isn't there to mind the intrusion and it certainly is NOT an insult to her memory - she would not want us to be sad.  you find yourself in the state of shock going from geriatric to pediatric and too busy and overwhelmed by this new bundle of energy to feel any sadness, plus you're giving the little one a home and lots of love.  it's really a win-win situation in my opinion.  yes, we plan on getting another dog but it will have to wait until we get back to the chesapeake where we can sit for a while and whip a new puppy into perfect boat dog shape.  this is mainly because our plan is to hightail it up north as fast as we can and 12-hour cruising days just wouldn't be fair to a new dog.  so, well, we will have to adjust to this dog-less life and carry on as best as we can.  i honestly don't know how other people can say that they just can't take that kind of pain again.  with life comes death, that is a given.  it isn't death that is crippling - it is pain.  anyway, well, that's just me, i guess.  we are all different. 

in any case...  so this week, we kept ourselves busy with work and, today, we left TADHANA once again and drove up to the canaveral national seashore.  our original plan had been to go to the kennedy space center but after being almost paralyzed by the atrocious price of the entrance tickets, we figured it could wait until we were a little less poverty-stricken.  as an official senior citizen, tom has a national parks pass so we went to the national park instead.  it actually was a good choice because it's our kind of thing anyway - except for the part where we found out that dogs aren't allowed on the beach.  well, we didn't have a dog anyway so i guess that worked out.  they are, however, allowed on the trails and the lagoon side so we are going to have to keep that in mind for next time.  it was food for the soul to be out there in all that open space and natural wonder and even though it's spring break, where we were there just weren't a whole lot of people.  i am sure that we will be back again and again and we even thought about bringing the boat into mosquito lagoon and staying at anchor for a bit if it isn't too shallow for us.  we will see.  the fact of the matter is that this is our first year as snowbirds and there is so much more to explore and, the truth is, life, at this point, is just starting to get exciting!  i'm glad that consuelo was there for the beginning of our dream and that she made it as far south as marathon in the keys with us.  she had a great life, full of fun and adventure and new things to smell.  how many dogs can say that they chased an armadillo? 

today is my sister-in-law, marie's, birthday.  we got together with family and had dinner out at a japanese restaurant.  tomorrow, we are going shopping, and, hopefully, will come home with a new laptop for tom.  it would have been cheaper to go to the kennedy space center.

since i don't know how to do panorama on my camera, i just did a video of the beach instead.  

some photos from the canaveral national seashore:

the trail to castle windy midden

i thought at first this was wild coffee but maybe not

fine sand and coarse sand

fog starting to roll in

view of mosquito lagoon from turtle mound

boardwalk to turtle mound midden

mosquito lagoon

castle windy midden

there were butterflies everywhere

woodpeckers

coping.

tom and i drove to mikey's in orlando for the weekend.  friday was my day off but since i got absolutely no work done the night before, i worked in the morning as tom had some things to do on the boat anyway and we had a cummins tech over to check on the engine as well.  but, by early afternoon, both of us just wanted to get off the boat, something unheard of since we moved in six years ago.  we just needed to get away.  i had given all of consuelo's dog food and treats to kelly, the dockmaster, and had put away all of her things that i decided to hang on to for a while.  but tom and i still would turn around and expect to see her in her usual spots and there were other little things that reminded us of her, like opening the refrigerator door - she always took an interest in that.  consuelo always had laser focus especially when it came to food.  it was time to leave for a bit. 

my niece, annie, is a runner in her school's track team.  i thought it was pretty cool that she picked the sport that was my brother's when he was her age.  in any case, she had a big meet on saturday and was slated for four events:  the 4 x 800, 4 x 400, 1600 and 3200.  four events, three medals, a personal record in the event that she did not medal in  and 8 hours later - it was a whole day affair - my conclusion was that i probably would not do well as a track and field parent.  it was pretty brutal sitting all day at the stadium under the hot sun even with our hats and umbrellas (other people actually brought tents!), armed with coolers, snacks and lunch.  we were very pleased with her performance though and extremely proud of her. it is one of the reasons that tom and i made it a point to stay in cocoa for an extended period of time - to spend time with my family and to watch annie run.  my brother, mikey, who knows me so well, was impressed by my endurance and patience but i really had no wish to be elsewhere, to tell you the truth.  it was good to be somewhere different doing something else.  i may have even welcomed the discomfort because it kept me distracted, although at one point, in between annie's events, tom and i left the grandstand to go sit under a tree outside to get some respite from the sun burning down on all that concrete.  i can't think of anything more far removed from my world than that day at the showalter field in winter park, florida!  but here is our annie in fine form. 

like a gazelle :)

here is annie leading the pack in the 3200

it's amazing how much she looks like mikey at that age - deja vu!

we had dinner at a burger place after the meet and then went home.  everyone was hot and tired and ready for showers, annie most of all.  we all just parked ourselves in front of our respective computers for the rest of the night.  i went to bed later with the intention of watching an episode or two of game of thrones season 4 on my iPad and just relax.  i checked email first though and found one from mikey asking me to please check for ripe kiwi fruits in the fruit basket in the kitchen and put five or six of them in the fridge.  that really cracked me up.  mikey has a two-story house - the family sleeps upstairs but the guest room where tom and i were was downstairs.  so i hit reply, said "ok," pulled off my ear buds, got out of bed and padded over to the kitchen to check the kiwis.  at one time, it would have been decadent to actually have an intercom that connected the various rooms in a house - now we just text and email each other.  i just thought it was really funny. 

the next morning, we all had breakfast together (except for annie and i guess that at 17, why would one want to hang with a bunch of lame adults anyway?).  mikey cut up fruit (including the refrigerated kiwi) and made the coffee, marie made the waffles and tom fried up the bacon.  i did nothing at all in the kitchen - too crowded.  i ran a load of laundry and started packing up our stuff to leave.  it was a very domestic scene, very comfortable, very comforting. 

back home late this morning, it was good to open up the boat again and let the air run through it.  tom and i still turn around and expect consuelo to be there.  that will go on for a little while, i expect, but that's just how it goes.  tom worked on the engine and didn't even have to be told to change to ratty clothes.  i went to work.  later, we went for a walk around the village and then for another one after dinner.  today is day #3 without her.  life goes on, of course, but we miss her terribly. 

consuelo: november 9, 2000 - march 12, 2015

my child died yesterday.  other people have children and grandchildren who survive them.  i have survived all of my children.  when people say they can't imagine how this must feel, i tell them that it feels like my child died.  never having had any human children of my own, it is literally true. 

as i had mentioned in the previous blog, consuelo was not doing well.  we first noticed her slowing down last summer when tom finally retired and we started full-time cruising.  more and more she spent her time in the salon rather than with me at my desk at the pilothouse.  i figured that she just wasn't up to the jump anymore - it is quite high - and well, i have said this many times - consuelo was very independent.  she did NOT like to be helped.  it was undignified.  i just figured it was old age but then i noticed that she was losing weight even though she was eating the same amount of food and getting less exercise.  and then we had the incident in miami where she had managed to hurt her neck/back while we were at the boat show.   she was never the same after that and just seemed so frail and brittle.  in miami, tom and i had already had the discussion about letting her go if it came down to having to make that choice.  when she started up with the breathing difficulty symptoms in cocoa, after the initial vet visit, we had the discussion again and i simply said that if she wasn't dramatically better by the end of the month when we were to leave for parts north, she wasn't coming with us.  i was glad that tom agreed with me.  last saturday, we were prepared to let her go but dr. klein wanted to try the antibiotics first after looking at the test results and she did get dramatically better for a day or two and then the symptoms started up again and she was hardly eating anything.  in any case, after tom and i had had that discussion, we knew it was just a matter of time.  everyone says it's about the quality of life, keeping them comfortable and free of pain, etc. etc.  not everyone lives on a boat where the ground isn't always steady and level, and it can be a production getting on and off at the docks. 

on wednesday night, consuelo had a really bad night with the breathing issues again and it was really disheartening.   we hardly slept that night - she kept getting up and drinking and then lying down again, trying to find a good position.  the next morning, thursday, before dawn, i got up to let her out, put her on the finger pier and then ran back in to grab the leash.  i know i should have had that leash on her before i even got her off the boat but it was still dark and i guess i was discombobulated from lack of sleep.  she started to wander off towards the main dock and i went after her to snap the leash on but she was walking the edge and then just slipped in with a big splash!  i woke tom up while grabbing the boat hook and after numerous failed attempts to hook her harness, tom just went into the water to get her.  she just swam around and around.  her hearing was pretty much shot so there was no point in calling her.  it was still dark and she couldn't see very well to begin with especially with the resolving hypopion in her right eye. i was down one of the dock ladders with my boat hook now trying to herd her towards our swim platform where tom was waiting until he just finally decided to get in the water after donning a life jacket and swimming towards her.  he managed to get her up on a neighbor boat's swim platform and another neighbor who had heard the splash came out and helped carry her up to the dock and gave her to me.  the docks at cocoa village marina are pretty high so it was a long fall.  she must have been in the water for 5 minutes at the very least but consuelo swims like a lab - it's just that she couldn't see, couldn't hear, and didn't know which direction to go.  bless tom's heart for getting into that filthy water to find her and swimming around blind in the dark without his glasses on and with only my very bad directions to go by.   all i know is that i had visions of tinkerbelle's lifeless body sinking into the water back at regatta point.  i must have been hysterical at the time, telling tom "it ends here!"  it had been a very, very bad week of ups and downs, thinking that she was to be put down only to bring her frail little body home yet again just to watch it deteriorate.  yes, i was angry, and i was torn. 

consuelo has always been this solid little thing - all muscle.  when she jumped up on your lap, you felt all 30 pounds of her distributed in those four paws digging into your thighs.  she was a ballerina, too - low to the ground and very stable and well balanced.  she always walked the edges which made me nuts although i learned to live with it since she never fell.  after 14 and a half years, she must have fallen into the water about five or six times, most of those times not her fault.  you get the picture - she was NOT clumsy.  and now....

i got her hosed down and dried off and she wanted to walk over to the grass to do her business.  she seemed full of energy - it might have been the "invigorating swim," i don't know.  but when we got back to the boat, she only just picked at her food and then lay down.  tom had called dr. klein to let him know what had happened.  we also noticed a fluid collection in her left "good" eye and it was impairing her vision - she was, for all practical purposes, blind.  dr. klein was in surgery when tom called so he just left a message.  consuelo went to sleep for hours and her breathing, surprisingly, was not bad.  i watched her sleep and thought - this is when she should go, while she is still feeling "okay," while she can still walk, while she is still the consuelo that we know and love.  i didn't want the failure of her body to overshadow the sparkle that made her unique.  the truth is, i wasn't even sure she recognized us anymore.  she flinched every time she sensed someone was near.  she was bumping into walls and staggering around on unsteady legs. 

dr. klein called tom back and i could hear them talking and when i heard tom say, "we're not ready," i interrupted and said, yes we are.  to give tom credit, although he has been a huge part of consuelo's life, he acknowledges that she is my dog and defers all decisions to me.  i, in turn, did not want to leave him out of it completely, and we had already talked about this - we knew that it would happen sometime before the end of march which is when we plan to leave cocoa.  he looked surprised but said into the phone, oh, i'm sorry, yes we are.  and i just sighed.  there....   and i didn't really hear the rest of the conversation except for the appointment time. 

you see, this is the way it is - we can do this for our animals, and we do it because we love them and because they love us and trust us.  mikey said he wanted to be with us for it so mommy, daddy and uncle mikey were with consuelo when she peacefully went to sleep for the last time.  she was this sweet little angel just sleeping there. 



there was a rocket launch that night from the cape - it was spectacular! as i watched it rise up, i thought of it as a celebration of consuelo's life. it was up there a long time, too, just like the length of time that she was with us, getting smaller and smaller until it faded away into the clouds. the light winked back on a couple of times, just like she did, and then it was gone.

we will bring her ashes back to the chesapeake which is where she grew up and learned to love the water. 

tom hale, proptalk, april 2015, p.39

chestertown

cocoa, FL.

the weather was not great when we left vero beach on a sunday but the rain cleared up eventually and we reached the cocoa village marina without incident.  mikey came over that afternoon to pick us up so that we could have his car.  we drove over to his house and FINALLY got to see it after all of these years.  we waited for marie to come home and then had dinner out in orlando's version of asia-town.  if there is anything that i have been deprived of all this time, it is noodle dishes so i really enjoyed my dinner.  anyway, it was so good to see all of them again - mikey, my sister-in-law, marie, and little annie who is not so little anymore at 17!  we took the car home to the marina that evening and let me just say that for a cruiser, having a car is just such a luxury - it makes things so much simpler so we were extremely grateful to have it.  later that night, mikey sent me an email saying that the SpaceX Falcon was launching that night from cape canaveral - he sent me this email 5 minutes before the launch!  so we scrambled and it's a good thing that we were able to catch it.  what a spectacular site it was, seeing it from TADHANA's flying bridge. 

our first week in cocoa was spent trying to get caught up with work plus tom had scheduled for a Cummins tech to come over to check things out.  TADHANA is currently out of commission but that was planned as we are sitting here for a month anyway.  we did manage a drive out to cocoa beach and port canaveral to check things out and, of course, the usual places - publix, west marine and the pet supermarket on merritt island, plus walked around the historic village in cocoa.  on friday, we drove over to titusville to check out marinas there as alternatives to cocoa, but the titusville area really  pales in comparison.  as i had previously said in an earlier blog, cocoa is a nice little town to spend some time in.  we also drove to sanford to see what we were missing since our plans had changed about going there this winter thanks to the SAIL rally.  yup, cocoa was definitely the better choice.  sanford is way inland and although we've been told that the st. john's river is just absolutely gorgeous, it would still be a five-day cruise for us to get there from the coast.  not to mention alligators ugh...  i was, of course, thinking of consuelo. 

speaking of consuelo, she was having some breathing issues, tired easily and simply just wasn't up to doing anything.  she stayed in the car a lot this whole time.  we drove to mikey's after sanford to stay for the weekend, leaving TADHANA safely tied and buttoned up at cocoa, but that night, we didn't get much sleep.  consuelo was really having trouble breathing and kept getting up and moving around and making the most horrible breathing sounds.  she hardly ate and there was blood in her pee.  it was a really rough night and we were at the pine castle animal hospital the next morning (it is a walk-in on saturdays) and quite frankly, i thought that was it for her - she was just doing so badly.  dr. bill klein asked us to leave her with them for a few hours while they did tests and to come back before noon when they closed.  so tom and i went back to mikey's and waited and you can't imagine how those hours dragged by.  we were expecting the worst and bracing ourselves to let her go - i really thought it was the end.  dr. klein had said that she had enlarged lymph nodes in her neck and groin and he suspected a lymphoma.  she was also blind in the right eye which was completely bloodshot and then, of course, the urinary issues.  when we finally got back to the animal hospital, dr. klein went through the blood work and x-rays with us.  the complete blood count showed a markedly elevated white blood cell count with a preponderance of lymphocytes but surprisingly little else and that went the same for the x-rays.  there might have been a mediastinal mass but it also could have been enlarged lymph nodes from infection, pressing on the trachea causing the respiratory difficulty.  no bladder, kidney or ureteral stones or masses either.  no lung masses.  the liver looked slightly enlarged, possibly from congestion.  in any case, dr. klein told us that when he first saw consuelo, he thought she was done but after seeing the results of the tests, he gave her a shot of Baytril, which is enrofloxacin - doggie Cipro - an antibiotic, and we got sent home with a five-day course with instructions to return on monday for a followup.  the plan was that if she did not get better, we would call it quits.  the change in consuelo that afternoon and evening was quite dramatic.  she was still wheezing but she looked much brighter.  she was also hungry.  we all slept a bit better that night. poor tom had a cold and not sleeping the night before did not help at all.  the next day, sunday, she was even better and we went home to the boat after breakfast.  on monday, it seemed like she had more or less plateaued and we took her back to dr. klein in the afternoon.  another blood count was done and the white blood cell count had gone down as expected.  so we are to continue the antibiotics - we were given more - plus a bronchodilator and a nonsteroidal.  yesterday, tuesday, she showed quite a bit more animation - a good day.  the other thing is that her right eye is much better and i do think that she can see out of it now.  however, today, wednesday, she barely ate and her breathing is rapid and shallow although there is no wheezing or stridor.  she looks exhausted.  even so, she insisted on walking the dock all the way to the grass outside the gate.  i carried her back and she struggled to get away like she always does.  she was not happy about being carried.  there is plenty of fight left in that little body, that's for sure.

i have no illusions.  she has been losing weight and has been getting slower and weaker.  although there is no tissue diagnosis, a malignancy is really the first thing that comes to mind.  consuelo is 14 - a grand old lady in dog years - her body will fail her anyway, whether it is a cancer or something else.  in any case, the thing here is to keep her comfortable for however long it takes, until it is "time," whenever that may be.  so, we live from day to day here from now on.  good days and not so good days - it is what it is. 

the day you bring that cute little ball of fluff home, you already know that she will eventually break your heart but you do it anyway because what she gives you in return is priceless. 

tom hale, proptalk, march 2015, page 30

deltaville