Solitude

It's 2:49 pm as I'm writing this. My last car was at 12:43. Over two hours without a vehicle. The river's come up in the last few days, actually it went up a foot overnight. That means the riverbank I like to walk along is submerged. I've walked a bunch of laps around the boat today, and up and down the ramp a few times. Earlier today, I was singing and dancing in the cabin to one of my favorite songs, when a car snuck down onto the boat without me noticing, until I turned around and found them grinning at my dance moves.

When it's slow like this, I do start to get a bit stir crazy. The last two days, I've watched a season and a half of 30 Rock, until my iPad data plan decided I'd had enough and made me cough up more money. Cause I've got to have internet down here. I truly don't know how I managed the first few months on the boat before the iPad. I started a sock on Sunday, and finished it this morning. I played through all of the levels on Plants vs. Zombies and most of the bonus games.

I think I'm trying to keep myself busy so I can escape my own brain a bit. Life has taken a really sad turn, with a beloved close family member diagnosed with terminal cancer. I wonder how I'll survive it, how my whole family will, and what life will be like on the other side. I can't fathom it. I don't want to.

I think about my blog a lot, sometimes thinking in bloggable sentences. It's hard for me to write right now, I feel like so much of my life is sad and depressing, and I've always wanted this place to be somewhere to describe the fun, interesting and goofy things that happen here. I do love and value the fact that I have people that care about me, and about what I right, and I hope when I come through this all, I'll still have people wanting to read.

To try to lighten the mood, or at least pull it up a few knotches, here's some random ferry going's on. Nothing super entertaining lately, but just....stuff.

-Evidently the other night a huge tree lodged against the low water line. The next morning, the operator had to call for assistance to get the line free. The tree is probably 20 feet downstream of the boat. It's intimidating to pass by it, like the boat might just jerk in that direction and we'd slam into it (we won't though, I know this ferry).

-There's high water coming. The 10 day river forcast shows the river level jumping to at least 16 feet. That'll be really interesting, actually. This summer, we re-graded the banks, with the goal of making it much easier to land in high water. I'm pretty confident that we can operate until 16 feet river levels or so. Last year we closed between 12 and 14 feet.

-I'm so much more confident on the boat this fall. 16 feet river levels don't terrify me, though I know I'll be rather anxious trying to navigate through it. Last year I wanted to close as soon as we hit 12 feet, I was just scared of the river and of the boat. I know this boat, I know this river, and I can control this boat extremely well. Funny to have gained all these skills, most of which I'll probably never utilize once I get a different job.