All's Quiet on the Home Front

Summer is one month under our belt, and it's not going at all the way I thought it would. I shouldn't be surprised - life rarely goes the way I think it should or the way I plan it. Luckily, I'm pretty good at rolling with it.

We re-upped our membership at the Tallahassee Museum. I really should investigate whether or not there's a lifetime membership rather than doing this renewing thing every year. That way I could do it once and not worry about it anymore. ZBoy went to camp there last year and had a marvelous time. We couldn't do camp this year (our "spare" money was required elsewhere), but we can still visit as often as we want. Z developed a special relationship with Carmella the Cow last year, and so we went to visit her.

I love cows, but you really need to be able to shower afterwards. Cows like to lick salt and humans are FULL of salt in the summer. Their tongues are large, muscular and rough - kind of like being licked by a gigantic cat. But they are also quite slobbery, like a lot of dogs. You walk away from the experience feeling like you've had dermabrasion and very wet. Ah... cow love!

We then walked the nature trail, checking out the red wolves, otters (though one seems to be missing), bobcats, skunks, white squirrels and Florida Panthers. The panther cracked me up - looked like it was sitting in the corner... actually, she was waiting for lunch, which was being served while we were there.



The nature trail features lots of boardwalk, since much of it is built in the swamp. After years of little or no water in the swamp, we were grateful for the boardwalks this year as the water was almost up to the underside! They also have these lovely benches built in where you can sit down, take a load off and enjoy the peace and quiet of being in the middle of the swamp.

At least you can try.


In other news, I had my first pedicure ever, courtesy of my friend Jennifer. I'd spent a day helping her get her house ready for a family visit, cleaning and painting. The kitchen was in the midst of renovation, and there wasn't much we could do about that, but the family would understand about renovations... but the dust that comes from it can wreak havoc on a father with allergies. So we concentrated on cleaning and painted the hallway for fun. And she gave me pampered feet a week or so later.

I don't recall ever having polish on my toes before, so I went with a fairly neutral color. But the polish wasn't the thing for me... it was having my feet washed, buffed and massaged. I don't pay much attention to my feet. They are not pretty so I look at them as a rather utilitarian appendage. But I have to tell you, they really appreciated the love.


After much hemming and hawing, Darling Man decided he wanted to revive the pool. After watching one of our co-workers struggle with putting his own above-ground pool together, we decided (since we don't know much about it) to hire a couple of pool guys to do it for us. They ordered the liner and when it came in, made short work of removing the old, regrading the bottom, and installing the new one. Two days afterwards, we had a pool full of water (THAT took the most time) and a delicious way to cool off.

We are lovin' it!


Doesn't she look all innocent? This is Tottie - the embodiment of "dumb blonde". She has suddenly (after nearly three years) decided that she is our cat. She snuggles up to you, asks for pets, sits on your lap... and turns the bedroom into a circus tent after the lights go out. She's jumping on chairs and racing around under the bed. It does disrupt the sleep a little, but after she wears herself out, she's a lovely sleeping companion.

On the nights she decides to stay outside overnight, I get marvelous sleep. When she decides to stay in, it takes a while to get there.


I do have a few gardening projects in the works. The pool revival changed some of my plans, but as I've said before, I'm flexible. I will take pictures of what I've been doing gardening-wise and share later.

We are also going to redo ZBoy's room. It's a dark hunter green at the moment, and honestly, it's just too dark. He says he just doesn't know what he was thinking when he picked that color. He then decided he wanted a yellow room. Yesterday, when we were buying him some new sheets, he admitted that he wanted to recreate his room from Wakulla County. That's going to take a little more effort, but will be well worth it when it's all done. Again, will share more later!

In between all of this, I still need to get 40 hours of work done. I'm working at home in the mornings and in the office in the afternoons. It's a great compromise for summer, but difficult in a way - because when I'm home, I think about work constantly. I feel like I'm never off the clock. This holiday weekend will be a bit of a challenge for me. I will try very hard to NOT work or even think about work. We have family coming into town for the fourth, so I'll be otherwise engaged for at least one day!!!

Hope you're all having a great summer!

Fun Monday - My Life in a Bag

Today's Fun Monday is hosted by the Church Lady. She is one nosy woman because she wants to see our purses and what's inside. If I didn't know she lived in Pennsylvania, I might thing she was checking us out to see which one of us to rob. Don't let that "Church Lady" title fool you. I hear John Dillinger used that alias too.

Being an adventurer who likes to live on the wild side, I did decide to participate - and hope that Dillinger/Church Lady wasn't setting me up:

Post a photo of your purse and if you care to share, describe what's inside your purse. Do you carry everything but the kitchen sink? Or, do you prefer to go light and carry only the necessities, such as your money and cell phone.

I have to be honest here. I am not a fashion maven. Especially when it comes to handbags. If I see one and like it, I will buy it and use it until it falls apart. Literally. And I find my bags in unusual places. Like this one.

This is actually a pool/beach tote. Just big enough to fit a swimsuit, bottle of sunscreen and a really thread-bare towel into. But I really liked the design embroidered onto it and the colors jumped out at me, screaming SUMMER!!! So I bought it. For $5.00. At Walgreens.

See? It's just a big, gaping hole with a zipper across the top.

I used to have bags with lots of compartments and thought that would keep me organized. Well, let me tell you, it apparently takes a whole lot more than handbag compartments to do that! I would kind of toss things into whichever compartment my fingers first landed on and then when I needed to find something, it would take me 5 minutes of delicate searching through each one or five seconds of to-hell-with-it dumping everything out. Still, I had my reservations when I go this bag. I mean, aren't I just ASKING for trouble carrying around a zippered black hole?

Actually, the answer to that is no. Because it was a purple hole (not black as previously mentioned), I pared down the stuff that I usually carry around with me. There's a wallet with all the financial necessities in it. Two calculators (to help me keep track of my financial necessities). A little notebook for whatever notes I need to make. Four pens that actually work. A $5 gift card to Barnes and Noble (from my son), two pairs of glasses and sometimes three plus my sunglasses, which are downstairs at the moment. My MP3 player that I keep telling myself I'll learn how to use, my cell phone, pen-shaped hand sanitizer, loose change, a pull-tab (I collect them for my son's school) and various receipts - Lowe's and Publix and Barnes and Noble at the moment.

I have a tendency to toss things in there, but I've gotten pretty good at cleaning it out because I can't find anything if I don't do that on a regular basis. The other thing I love about this bag? It's big enough to carry a paperback and/or my camera in as well.

If this assignment has been a couple of weeks earlier, there would have been a red golf ball to show as well. I have no idea where it came from or how it wound up in my purse, but there it was.

Now go visit the Church Lady and see what everyone else carries around in their bags!

Separation Anxiety

My friend Margaret had a baby a little over six months ago. And this weekend will be the first that he's spent the night away from his mommy (other than a necessary surgery).

Margaret is a mess. Judging from her FaceBook entries, the very idea of her baby not being under her roof freaks her out. Never mind that he'll be sleeping at Grandma's, a woman who presumably knows what to do since she successfully raised one of the parents. Forget that since he's been born, Margaret hasn't had a decent night's sleep and really, really needs one. She feels guilty about not being there.

It is still early enough in the game for her that she doesn't realize that birth is just the first separation of many to come.

I relinquished the computer to my son after logging out of FaceBook and watched him sign into and start playing one of the games he plays online.

As I sat there watching him, my big strong 10-year old, leaving me to join his online community, I thought about all the ways our children separate from us.

If you work, daycare/preschool is the first major trauma - for mom. Baby may scream and scream as Mommy tries to leave. She will return for final hugs and kisses and reassurances several times before wrenching herself away to cry in her car. It took me two weeks to get past that, and when I was finally able to walk away, I felt bad because I was no longer distraught. And honestly, he wasn't either. ZBoy put on a good show, but the second I walked out the door, he stopped hollering and started playing.

Then there's the first spend-the-night. It's easier when it's grandparents. They're people you know and trust. Still, you call to check in. You call to say goodnight.

But then there's the first spend-the-night with friends. You maybe don't know the parents very well, but gauge your trust based on how well their kids are doing and what the interaction is like between that parent and child. You still call to check on your kid. And tell them to call you to say goodnight.

ZBoy was always really good about this. He had a friend, Jesse, that he liked to spend the night with. Jesse's mom fed them pizza, let them play video games and didn't monitor when they actually went to bed or even tell them to do it. Once my son stayed up until 4am and was so exhausted when he came home that I sent him to bed right after dinner and he fell asleep promptly. I wasn't sure if this was good or not. But he always called. Until the last time, when I didn't hear from him at all. He felt secure enough without me to not feel the need for contact. And honestly, I knew he was okay so I didn't worry.

He's only 10. There will be many, many more separations. First camping trip with the guys. First dates. The first time he leaves home alone in a car.

Will I worry? You bet. It's in my job description. But all of these separations are part of growing up and are necessary whether you like it or not.

I'd been ruminating on this stuff all day. Finally, I called my own mom and asked her about her first night after I moved out of the house.

She said she couldn't remember. That the idea of her baby moving out was so threatening that she'd blocked it out. I know she worried. She probably cried. I also know it was different from when she moved out of her own mother's house. There was lots of anger and fighting about her independence.

There was none of that with me. She even helped me fix up the apartment before I moved into it. But still, it must have been a shock to the mommy-system when baby number one declared her independence. It happened much sooner than she expected. Some of the plans she'd made would have been different if she'd realized it would happen so soon. And she felt hurt. Like I was pushing her aside and saying I didn't need her anymore.

Honestly, I didn't think about her feelings when it happened. I was so proud to be on my own. I knew I could make my own way and be an adult. I had to work three jobs, go to school and pay the rent on my own. And I did! Sometimes Dad would show up with a bag of groceries, or Grandma would slip me a $20 from time to time. And Mom was supportive in every way she could think of. But I was on my own, living away from her and being fairly successful at it.

And as wrenching as that whole process was, isn't that the way it's supposed to be? The sole purpose of parenting is to produce a happy, healthy, self-sufficient adult. My parents did an excellent job, and I try to emulate them as I face the whole process with my own son.

So far, so good. But Margaret... the first thing you have to be able to do - is let go.

The people that you meet each day

I opened up my paper on this overly-warm Thursday morning and found this article about a phenomenon I've never seen in person, but is rapidly growing as a symbol of this strange city I live in.

I was first introduced to the Bikini Cyclist by my brother Andy. He'd been using a picture of this guy as his avatar on Facebook. The picture was from behind (yes, there is crack involved) and for a while I thought it actually WAS Andy - given that they share the bald head and the picture wasn't very good. Why on earth would my brother have a picture of himself taken like that? I finally asked him about it, and he explained about the Bikini Cyclist.

He is worthy of notice and notice people do. He even has his own fan page on Facebook, though he'd never heard of it until the reporter from the paper asked him about it. From the article, it seems he's a little slow in the head - perhaps from having suffered some brain damage in a car accident several years ago. And he rides this bike everywhere.

Tallahassee has had no shortage of locally colorful people.

Years ago, we had a character on the streets called King Love. He was a local fixture, a victim of untreated bipolar disorder. Once a brilliant doctor, he roamed the streets dressed as a king, urging people to love each other.

This video is rather disjointed and rambling - but the voice you hear is his.

His ending was a sad one - alone in his room in a public housing facility.

We had a runner that dressed up in costumes for his daily workout. He was Superman the time I spotted him running down College Avenue towards the University.

Another local personality cut down before his time - this time the foe was cancer.

Please take a moment and click on the links associated with each person. It is amazing the things you can learn about people if you just listen or pay attention.

Every person on this planet has a story. And each one is worth hearing.

Fun Monday - "Free" Food!

Ah, Monday again! This week, Margaret the Misanthrope has set for this delicious challenge:
If you could choose one “main course” item and one dessert item that would, just for you, contain zero calories for the rest of your life (or zero cholesterol, zero points, or whatever your most important dietary measure is)…what would you choose?

There are so many ways I am supposed to be limiting my food. Calories, carbs, fats, sugars... you name it and it seems like I should be on a diet consisting of air and water. I must confess that giving up sugar wasn't as hard for me as I would have thought (oh, Queen of the Sweet Iced Tea), but limiting my intake of all things pasta has been sheer torture.

Were it possible, I'd probably have some form of spaghetti with smooth sauce, lots of meat and parmesan cheese most every night. On the nights I didn't eat spaghetti, it would be lasagne or maybe chicken alfredo or even pasta salad. I love pasta! And I can't seem to cut it out entirely. I do compromise a little with whole wheat pasta and I try to keep it to once a week. But if I could have a "free" food, pasta would be it. Closely followed by cheese.

And for dessert? Tiramisu!!! What's not to like? Cake? Creamy filling? Coffee flavor? Chocolate? I could follow my pasta with this anytime!

Now go visit Margaret and see what foods the other participants wish were "free"!

The Rocks in My Head

The temperatures here have been hovering around the 100 degree mark (plus or minus a couple of degrees), so getting anything done outside is pretty much regulated to the morning or evening hours.

This morning, I decided to weed our front garden, which has been ignored for a long, long time.

Luckily, Darling Man and I aren't known for our green thumbs and our garden consists of mostly aloe plants, which do quite well with benign neglect.

As I was working, I looked at the rocks that I also have in my garden. Every rock has meaning. The long, rectangular rock came from North Carolina and my honeymoon near Linville Falls. We'd gone down this little road accidently and came upon a roadside waterfall. We got out to explore and as we were leaving, Darling Man spotted this amazing rock. It came home with us.

The large one toward the back of the picture is from Hueco Tanks in Texas. We used to go there for vacations a lot back in our climbing days. The nights were cold, but the rocks warmed up quickly and nothing felt better on a chilly morning than to sit on a warm rock drinking camp stove coffee.

The octagonal piece in the back was made by ZBoy for his grandmother for Christmas one year. When they moved to a nursing home, we got it back. The bear was a birthday gift years ago from Darling Man for my rose garden in Wakulla County. I never could grow roses down there, but I tried every year to make that work. And the pot with the orange daisy... That daisy was a housewarming gift from my late grandmother when we moved into our place in Wakulla County back in the summer of 1995. We kept it on the front deck, where it apparently died. Darling Man tossed it in the woods and several years later, he and the boy were cutting a trail and came across it, alive and blooming. He dug it up, put it in that container and it blooms several times a year.

In the corner of the bed is a whole bunch of aloes - and in amongst them is a fossilized piece of coral. That one was Darling Man's find and it's traveled with us to every house. Our late betta Lava is buried under that rock. The circle of friends statue was a Christmas gift from DM's son Kurt the first year we lived in Wakulla. Next to that is a heart stone that granddaughter Kylee made for Father's Day last year for her "Pappy".

This last picture... You have to look really hard to see the rosebush Darling Man gave me back in Feburary. It's been slowly dying in it's pot, but I've managed to revive it several times already. It's a knockout rose, which is almost impossible to kill through neglect, so I'm counting on it to come back now that it's been properly planted. I had to prune it back pretty severely, which means it might not bloom again this year, but next year I'm looking forward to some outstanding flowers.

As I stood back and looked at my handiwork, I realized that I had been working amongst memories all day. In a small pile of rocks are a few I got as a teenager in North Carolina. I used to go up there every summer with my grandmother to join the St. Pete family in Nantahala. And our favorite pasttime was wading around in the icy creeks, picking up rocks and looking at them. We put most of them back, but the special ones we kept. As I looked at my little pile of rocks sweltering in the 100 degree heat, I felt the icy water swirling around my calves and heard the laughter of two older generations, delighted to find another lovely, striated rock in the stream.

These rocks represent memories. And I will continue to carry them with me wherever I call home.

Fun Monday - My Day

Lil'Mouse Jill is hosting this week and she wants to know what happened in the world the day we were born!

March 25, 1962 must have been a pretty quiet day. Not much was going on.

If you were my parents, and not busy with me and the hospital, you might have had a day like this:

JFK was president and other than still dealing with the fallout of okaying the resumption of above-ground nuclear testing, he probably had his feet up much of the day.

If they were reading the newspaper, they might have read a column written by Eleanor Roosevelt entitled "My Day" about her encounter with an elderly Korean gentleman.

Perhaps they were getting ready to do their taxes - the median family income was $6000 a year. A new house cost $15,000. The car? $2,500. (Of course, being newlyweds, my parents were actually renting an apartment above someone's house.)

Driving home from work, the number one song on the radio that day was Connie Francis' Don't Break the Heart that Loves You.

In the evening, they may have settled down with your TV dinner to watch their brand new $400 color TV set. First, Lassie (Lassie and the Eagle) followed by the Bob Hope Show - with Dorothy Lamour, Janis Page, and Frank Sinatra as guests.

After a glass of warm milk, bed and a book. From the NYTimes Bestseller list, they could have chosen Franny & Zooey by JD Salinger, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Chairman of the Bored by Edward Streeter or maybe The Carpetbaggers by Harold Robbins.

Of course, none of that really happened. They were driving into town to have me instead!

Lunchtime Entertainment

I hate to admit this, but I've been a little lax in making sure there's actually food in my house. As a result, we've been eating out a bit more than usual.

Today, ZBoy and I went to the bank to get some money for the weekend, and on our way back home stopped at Brooma's for lunch. It was quite the crowd, so we sat outside on the porch. It was warm, with a nice breeze and we were in the shade, so it wasn't bad.

But we were out there all alone, so we started playing hangman on the little pad of paper I keep in my bag. Four games later, we switched to tic-tac-toe. After two games, we decided that no one would ever win. ZBoy took the pad away from me and drew eyeballs in the "O"s and added a snake's mouth. Only it looked more like a duck. A really angry duck. He slid it back over to me and I added an outline for a head and neck.

Meet Cramb.

Well, that was fun. So much fun, we didn't stop. Z drew a couple of heads - Dr. Cheddar.

Then Dr. Cheddar eating cheese (with a straw, I guess). I took the pad away from him and drew a Mrs. Cheddar - a little irked that Dr. Cheddar was spending all his time in the lab eating cheese.

Then we started on other characters. The pig started out pretty well. Then I added what was supposed to be a body of a pig sitting down and trying to scratch its ears. Only it looked like he was looking with horror at a bad manicure and had droopy pig boobs. I really shouldn't be drawing bodies....

Yeah.

And finally, Princess Karaka - loosely modeled on Kida. Only with a really bulbous nose, evil eyes and a pointy backside. She looks like she's stalking something, but that's supposed to be her tongue sticking out

Maybe we should rethink this cartooning career...

Life cycle complete

I've had a cold/allergies for the last couple of weeks. Under normal circumstances, my nose is extremely keen. I can smell when dogs have walked on a carpet the day before. I can detect serious illness in an animal. And until today, I hadn't realized just how much I use my nose to determine how well my house is doing.

This morning, after blowing my nose, I went downstairs for a second cup of coffee and was greeted at the bottom of the stairs by an incredible stench. "Great," I thought to myself. "Someone's tracked more dog shit into the house."

Except it didn't really smell like that. It DID smell like shit, but not doggie, not kitty, and not human. What the hell was it?

The closer I got to the kitchen, the worse it got, until I came face to face with the compost bowl. It was piled high with coffee grounds, watermelon rinds, bits and bobs of other vegetable matter - and fruit flies. Flies EVERYWHERE.

And their children.

I nearly lost my first cup of coffee right there. Why didn't I smell this the first time I came down for coffee? Had I not blown my nose enough? Had the pile not been disturbed by the latest round of coffee grounds yet? Or had there suddenly been an explosion of maggot gas that finally caught my attention. It wasn't like that last night.

Today is garbage day (thank God), so I dumped the mess into a garbage bag (very un-pc, I know, but this was an emergency!) and I ran it out to the road as fast as I could. The bowl may need to join the trash - I'm soaking it in oxy-palmolive and lemon juice right now but it could be a lost cause.

I also tossed sponges and sprayed the counter down with spic-n-span, let it sit a bit, then used paper towels (disposable!!!) to start wiping up the bodies.

Maggots are quite beneficial, actually. They clean up the world and we'd be in a real pickle without them. They eat dead matter but not anything living - which makes them an ideal, if gross, choice for cleaning dead skin out of wounds and such. There are some cultures that eat them (fried), and of course they are a prized delicacy if you happen to be a chicken.

But I'd rather not have them in my kitchen.