Islamorada Flea Market Day

Saturday 2/24/2018
No boat travel.

Having gone to bed at 1:00 a.m., neither of us felt like getting up when the alarm went off at 6:55. Jim on Hour Plan rented a car and planned to depart at 7:30 to get there early in the day. Even though I did not plan to attend the outing, I got up with Clark to help him get his stuff together for the day.

It rained when they left but bad weather was not predicted.

Rainy Route 1 on way to Islamorada Flea Market

Sunny day at the Islamorada Nautical Flea Market

I fully intended to crawl back in to bed after Clark left, but that just did not happen. Instead I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast. Having agreed to meet Sandy at 9:00 for a drive to the farmer's market,  I wiled away the minutes caught up in my latest adventure novel.

Knowing Clark would be away for a reasonably large chunk of time, I had high hopes of enjoying some time by myself. That hope was shattered when the phone rang and it was Clark on the line with a request for me to measure a section of the electrical panel for him. He called at 8:50, and I had my "date" with Sandy set for 9:00.

With something in the way of the area I needed to measure, I tried to estimate the size of the opening in the electrical panel. Sadly, the dimensions of what he had in his hand at the flea market too closely matched one dimension or the other of the space I had to measure.

As I tried to measure, I watched the time. I also watched that I did not injure myself. The front of the electrical panel is basically harmless. Unfortunately, I had to open it up and stick my head into the dark space behind it to examine the backside for measurement purposes. Clark has warned me repeatedly not to touch certain parts of the backside of the panel for fear of being "fried".

I found holding the door open (it springs back) with one hand while trying to juggle a tape measure and a flashlight in the other an exercise in futility. Finally I decided that I had to find a screwdriver to remove the item blocking my view to get an accurate measure of the cut out. Talk about stress! I did manage to get the measurement he needed, help him decide on the size to purchase, and meet Sandy on time. Whew!

The trip to the veggie stand took very little time. No sooner did I get back to the boat than the phone started ringing again. When I answered, a familiar voice said, "I need more measurements." This time he texted me a number of pictures to go with the call - 5 altogether looking like the ones below.

Cleats for sale at flea market

Although we have four cleats port and four stern, the ones on the bow are frequently too far forward to be of optimal use. We hope to add one port and one starboard cleat more conveniently positioned at the bow. He did not buy any cleats. We decided that he would need to look closely at the boat structure to see where and how they could be attached.

I finally got off the phone with Clark having told him I would be offline for the next hour. I just sat down to apply sunscreen when Jen from Fat-n-Sassy came by to collect me for today's yoga session. I tried yoga once before recently at the YMCA near my home and hated it. For Jen, though, I decided to give it one more try. She even found me a mat to use, so how could I say no?

The activity confirmed for me that yoga is not my thing. I have had neck and shoulder issues for years. My broken arm I suffered in October just made it worse. Yoga, especially the moves the instructor focused on today, caused me a lot of pain. I did what I could, kept looking at my watch, and prayed that the hour would get over soon.

My prayers were answered!!! It started to rain and the session was canceled twenty minutes early. I am sure no one else there prayed it would end, but I cannot feel sorry I got a "get out of jail free" card.

When I returned to the boat, I called Clark to tell him I was back "online" in case he had need of me. I could tell when I talked to him that he was eating lunch (it was 11:00). After our call I decided that if he could eat early so could I, and I made myself lunch. I wanted to finish my current, somewhat depressing novel, and move on to a new subject matter. As I tried to read, I found myself nodding off. The late night, early morning combination had decided to take its revenge.

Shortly after Clark returned, around 1:00, I decided that I could not keep my eyes open a minute longer. Sleeping while supposedly reading was aggravating my neck. I crawled into bed. When I came out two hours later, I found Clark asleep on the sofa. He must have heard me come out because he opened his eyes to look at me. After rousing himself, he went to work on taxes and I sat down to my blog.

We planned to join docktails tonight having been rained out the night before. Having items to drop into the recycle bin at the end of the dock, we turned left first. While I dumped my recycle bits, Clark got into a conversation with Linda and Scott on Ramble On. I then got engaged talking to Patti and Tim next door to Ramble On on Craic. An hour later we left to return to our boat. We never made it to docktails.

Somehow Clark managed to get a really cool sunset picture.

Almost looks like the cloud is on fire.

We worked on taxes after dinner again tonight. Afterwards, for a relaxation break, I put on my headphones and watched internet TV. Having had naps earlier, we both stayed up until after midnight.