Moving Beer

 I got a text from DS today that OJ wasn't feeling well so he'd be staying home with him tomorrow and could I maybe visit him today?  Yep.  I got there to discover him moving beer from the fermentation tank to the bright (carbonation) tank.  Every time I go I get to see another piece of equipment and another part of the brewing process.  Today it was pretty dark red beer flowing from one tank to the other and then beer flowing across the floor when it was time to drain the first tank.  Don't worry the beer on the floor was cloudy with yeast and other particles from the brewing process, not good to drink.  

 The other good thing was he was able to unhook the old car seat from my back seat so I can replace it with another booster seat so that when I can have my grandchildren in the car again I'll be ready.  I wouldn't have been doing this seat exchange now except I've been keeping my eye on the booster seats and a couple weeks ago they were on sale so I bought one.  I'll put the car seat on Nextdoor to see if anyone needs it.

Lots of buds on the Christmas cactus.  I keep watching them, waiting for them to open, and hoping that they don't pucker up and die or drop off.  Fingers crossed.

 

We had our Zoom Clearing breakfast this morning.  I made oatmeal in the microwave with dried cherries in it and put brown sugar and cinnamon on top.  I had my coffee in my Zambaldi mug and drank it with my left hand so the logo showed.  Gotta advertise when I can.

Tonight I cast on another toe cover for casts.  I enjoy making them and there's always a need for them.

 

 

23 November--Barbara Malcolm, The Seaview. 

Chapter 14

My cargo container did indeed arrive the next day and it came hard on the heels of the rooster’s early morning cock-a-doodle-doos.  I was lying in bed fantasizing about ways to cook that rooster so that I could sleep late just one morning a week when I heard a very loud, very slow diesel coming down the road, getting nearer and nearer.  I leaped out of bed, threw on clothes and raced to the entrance of Sydans.  Trying to hide my bed-head and barely clad form behind the bougainvillea by the door, I craned my neck out to see if it was my container coming and it was.  Forgetting that I was badly and scantily dressed I darted out into the road and waved like a crazy woman, whooping and hollering.  Then I realized that I was barefoot and was jumping up and down on gravel.

I scurried back to my room to brush my teeth and hair and get myself decently dressed to sign for my goods.  By the time the coffee had perked I was brushed and flushed and looked more like a woman who had just bought herself a Caribbean beach bed and breakfast than the crazy woman who had been dancing in the street fifteen minutes earlier.  I poured myself a travel mug of coffee and hurried down to see my container.

The truck with the crane on it had moved down the narrow road so slowly that he was barely past Sydans when I emerged.  The vehicle was so wide that no one could get around it so I took off across the road, past Johnno’s, down the beach, and back between the Seaview and Tamarind Watersports.

Silas was up and out, standing in the sun bare-chested wearing only his Levi’s and flip flops, waiting to direct the driver how to place the container.

God, I thought, I hope that none of the Customs agents made off with any of my goods.  I had heard horror stories about people opening their supposedly sealed containers to find that most of their things had been detained or summarily relocated as payment for some imagined unpaid tariff owed by the freight company or the haulage company or even the recipient himself.  As near as I could tell the Customs seal put on the container in Miami was still intact.

I was certain that right behind the delivery truck would come the Anguilla Customs agent with his clipboard and his hand out for any duty he could devise to charge me.  I had my checkbook ready but I had been reassured by Johnno that the Customs agent on the island was a fair and reasonable man.

Silas turned to grin at me when I came up beside him.  I thought he looked like a kid on Christmas morning.  “Now the fun really starts, huh, Mrs. Rose?”

“Yes, Silas, now the fun starts.”

With delicate maneuvers and tiny tweaks on the controls of the crane the operator positioned the container right in the center of the lot with its door a few feet off the edge of the road and facing out.  It looked like he had dropped a prebuilt shed on the spot.  The driver jumped out of the truck cab, climbed up the ladder welded to the corner of the container, unhooked the crane cable, and slid back down to earth looking like a gymnast he was so graceful and quick.  He reached into the cab for a clipboard, handed it to me with his finger pointing to the line I was to sign on without saying a word.  When I handed it back he climbed aboard, raised the crane hook and the lifting chain clanked off the metal container, then he spooled it back into the boom, turned the cab turret back the way he had come, and began the slow crawl back to the cargo off-loading dock at the other end of Sandy Ground.

“Talkative, isn’t he?”  I pulled the keys out of my pocket and started to cross the road and unlock it but Silas put his hand on my arm and stopped me.  “What’s the problem?” I said.  “Don’t you want to see what’s in there?  I’m so anxious to get started I can’t wait.”

Today's toss was another sleeve of magazines into the recycling.

Writing went pretty well today.  I always start with a daily prompt and today's was "write about being underwater."  Well, I can write about being underwater with the best of them.  I just sent my character on a scuba dive.  First she took a practice dive and then signed up for class so I got to write about all the fish and critters she saw down there.  Piece of cake.

--Barbara