Life – Page 20 – New England's Narrow Road

My Seashell Collection

Do you ever come across an old post that is just awful? Well that is what this one was. So now it’s updated, with a link that works. It’s still not a great read, but it’s better.

My original post idea was to share some pictures of my seashells, but this one photo covers it pretty much. I gathered as many interesting shells from my Florida shell collection as I could and took a picture.

If I could still find this image on my computer I would put a big watermark over it, but since I can’t, please don’t steal this image and use it for yourself.

If winter has you down, close your eyes and imagine that you have just filled your bucket with some wonderful sea life specimens.

Are you seashell knowledgable? Can you spot the sea biscuit, sea urchin, sundial, cowry, lighting whelk, and kitten’s paw? If you found a rare seashell, would you know it? Maybe you need a seashell identification lesson. I write about seashells (and other tropical subjects) on my Seashells by Millhill blog.

For those who don’t know, I lived in central Florida from 1979 to 2005. Over the years I traveled to Sanibel Island and Fort Myers a couple of times (wish it could have been more) and went to New Smyrna beach hundreds (?) of times – it was only a 30 minute drive.

The kids and I collected numerous shells and I brought the collection back to New England when I moved here. I’ve been photographing them for a couple of years now for my Seashells by Millhill online store.

Lazy Cat

After feeding the cats the other day,
I turned around to find Richie lying down with his head in the bowl scoffing up his supper.
Now that is lazy!

We call him a black and white Garfield. I bet he’d like lasagna…and he’d eat it lying down.

Boys, Bikes and Changes

bikes in driveway — When the boys would visit

This photo was taken over the past summer. It’s just a bunch of bikes in the driveway but it reminded me of the fun my son had over the summer while his 3 friends lived up the road.

When we moved into our rental, I was thankful that some good friends lived just down the road and there were 2 boys who my son could hang out with.

Then the man who ran the Girl Scout camp moved out and a new family moved in there. My son and I were happy to hear that they had 3 boys around the same age as my son. Now he had 5 friends close by! It was awesome.

Those boys turned out to be an enormous blessing in my son’s life. He had been facing a lot of changes and having all these friends brightened his life greatly. The boys were at my house all the time and I would take them to the lake to skim board and swim.

I usually drew stares as I’d pull into the parking lot at the beach and six loud boys would pile out of the back of my car.

Although my son has 3 siblings, they are all grown and he is more like an only child so having great friends was the best thing for him. He had nice friends to bike ride and swim with. They played croquet in the back yard and were always in the back bedroom playing video games. Sometimes my son would go to their house and jump on the trampoline. They had a great time together and I appreciated the fact that they were such nice kids.

Then one day the 3 boys said they were going back to Tennessee for a visit. They came by to say good bye to us and my son was disappointed that they would be gone for a while, but that turned into shock when they called us from TN and said they were moving back there and would not be returning!

The family had only been here for the summer to run the Girl Scout camp and apparently didn’t like it here and missed their old home. The older boy did return with his dad to pack up so my son was able to hang out with him for a couple of weeks and then say good bye, but the whole thing was very odd. And my son was devastated to have lost 3 of his best friends. He still prays at night that his friends will move back one day.

It’s a hard lesson in life that nothing stays the same. I believe that adversity, sadness and troubles come our way to help mold us and strengthen us for whatever lies ahead in life. But my son is just sad- still.

When I came across this photo I wondered why I had taken it. But I guess there was a good reason.

Funny, Water Loving Cat

One of our new kitties -Richie- seems to be fascinated with water. They told us at the shelter that he would always tip his water bowl over and then lay in the wet newspaper.
We’ve caught him doing some strange things.