A GenX’er Rediscovers September

So apparently it is September now. About to experience her first Fall in 8 years in which she can spend most of the days outside, and with less estrogen in her body, Mel finds her opinion about September has changed. Before her kids flew the nest and she swapped the nest for a boat, experiencing September was akin to watching the closing of a garage door. With closing the garage door, your view of all of your fun leisure-time activities slowly gets restricted from the sky to the ground, as you back away to go do something less fun, like work. September was a month of saying goodbye to summer freedom, closing the pool, packing up the outdoor grill, sorting out the kids’ new afterschool schedules, potentially driving home in the dark for the first time in months, and trying to recall if a low of 56 and a high of 72 meant you should wear short sleeves or long. Accordingly, Mel has always given September a big thumbs down. Well, no longer!  September is awesome!

Why the change of heart? Here’s an old menopause joke with the answer: “Ladies, is it cold enough…and warm enough…in here for you?”

You see, Mel’s thermal comfort window, already fairly narrow, has shrunk even further in recent years. Even though it is adorably erratic, the September weather gives her the best chance of actually being comfortable outside, for a few hours.

Another reason September is a middle-aged-Midwestern-expat-empty nesters’ dirty little secret:  All of the kids are in school! The vacationers can’t afford to go back out there so soon after the last one, and so those of us no longer dictating notes at 10:10 AM on a Tuesday can avoid crowds while pursuing glorious off-season travel and activities!

(You know, the internet makes fun of GenX because we act like we are the first group of people in the history of humanity to experience aging.  There may be some truth to that.)

To take advantage of a beautiful day in September, Greg and I did the famous Newport Cliff Walk.  You can view some photos below for a taste of the experience. To get even closer to knowing what it’s like, imagine Greg frequently interrupting your downloaded audio tour to discuss the plight of the working class during the Gilded Age while you realize, with horror, that jumping off a rock now hurts more than jumping on one. Near the end of the tour, he will also happily provide you a comparative analysis of the different materials we spied along the walk that were used to construct the pipes to carry the gilded poo of the rich to the sea.  This shouldn’t be a spoiler: iron is a bad choice.

We also happily hosted our first fellow sailors on the boat, getting good tips about cruising New England.  Now we have some friends to follow on the Noforeignland app!

Boat projects continue. Last night, if you happened to be by Goat Island after sunset, you may have seen two people with headlamps in the aft cockpit and port engine room shouting expletives.  Mel was up at the helm servicing the port genoa winch, scraping off emulsified grease from cogs, and trying to figure out where in the hell the fiberglass spacer she found at the bottom of the cleaning bucket went.  Meanwhile, Greg was in the port engine room, changing the oil for the first time.  This means he spilled some.

More boat projects for boaty people: Greg replaced the corroded connectors in our dinghy davit motor with “Marine-grade” ones. Greg also is replacing our coolant-leaking water heater with a bigger, new one. Right now. OMG more swearing.

Mel continues to inventory the inherited parts on the boat. Mel is commissioning the replacement of some aging seat cushions.  Then there is the constant vacuuming-up of hair…

Oh well!  Mel makes these posts on boat project days to remind her of the fun parts!  See the pics, below!