Florida

On a recent trip to Florida I was taken back in time. And back to old friends. And memories. After dinner one night I took a stroll through the palm fronds of reminiscence, capturing the moment before it could dissipate into the atmosphere. What follows is that walk down memory lane. I had already forgotten I'd written it, but upon finding it, I'd like to share it.
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Almost 40 years ago, my husband dragged me from Ohio to my new life in Florida. (The ruts from where my heels dug into the ground can still be viewed in some places.) I didn't want to be here. At. All.

Tonight, we had dinner in Jesse's in Brandon. It is one of my favorite places and brings back memories of a life here. (If you're ever in the area, their crab legs are awesome, but their prime rib cannot be beat anywhere! Add a glass of wine. It's worth it. They're known for steaks and burgers but I've never bothered with that stuff. You can get those things anywhere!)

It has been a remarkable few days. As I drove down 92 in Mango, I remembered my first trip down that road. We had come from 301 to Macintosh to 92 and then took Parsons to our new home in Seffner. It was a little house on a sand lot, not at all like my lovely tri-level in Ohio with the big tree in the back yard, and the wonderful neighbors. I hated it at first sight.

It was a difficult adjustment, and it took time, but when we left here in 2007 we had accumulated a Santa Claus sized sack of wonderful memories.

It was here that my children grew up, and went scalloping in Anclote Bay in Tarpon Springs.
It was here that we watched the Shuttle take its first voyage into the great unknown. I mean, we watched it from our back yard 200 miles away. You could watch the shuttle from almost anywhere in the state. We never missed a blast off. We even got up for the 4am ones.
It was here that I heard the first twin sonic booms as the shuttle landed in Canaveral for the first time.
It was here that I saw the contrails from the Challenger lingering in the sky hours after it blew up.
It was here that I swam with manatees.... manatees that found me swimming in the intercoastal waterway! How cool is that!

It was here that we found our wonderful church; St. Andrews UMC that would become our home and would help us raise our children; where we would make wonderful friends that greeted us with waves and hugs when we walked into church last Sunday morning for the first time in years.

It was here where we built our beautiful home in Valrico, with the horse pasture behind us; where Janice learned to ride and we made life-long friends....that we almost never see but still love.

It was here where I worked as a media specialist in 4 different schools....and discovered later that I had left an indelible mark. Where I found out people had looked up to me, even though I never realized it....until much later.

It was here that the sky is bluer and the sun is sunnier and on beautiful days, the weather absolutely cannot be matched. And the sunsets are amazing. (I miss the sunsets and those blue skies.)

It hasn't all been peaches and cream. I have my share of bad memories of negative events. That's life, but that's not the part of life that will drive my story.  Florida is absolutely NOT the most beautiful place, or the nicest place, or the best place to live in the world. Florida is just Florida. Just like Pennsylvania is just Pennsylvania and Georgia is just Georgia.

Florida has its good and its bad points and the reasons why I never wanted to move here still exist (alligators, cockroaches, drugs). But every place has its bad points. And lets face it. Drugs are everywhere, so that reason doesn't even count.

The point is, I never wanted to live here, and I will be eternally grateful I did. Visiting here and seeing all of my old friends, visiting the old haunts, and eating at my favorite places has reminded me again of how much of who I am and what I've experienced is embedded in this state.

I may hate change, but every change I have experienced has brought wonderful blessings, even if there were negative experiences. My heels may have left ruts in the soil between Ohio and Florida but most of those ruts have filled in with wildflowers so its ok.

The biggest lesson I've learned in life is simple. When change comes, take a deep breath and exhale. Then embrace it. It all works out in the long run so make it work out for the best.

Weather: It's All Relative

I live in the North Georgia Mountains. At least, geographically. When I first moved here I met more people from Florida, than Georgia. One day I was getting a manicure and as the others in the salon and I were chatting I discovered we ALL were 'from Florida'. At first, the manicurist maintained she was from Georgia, but then she mentioned she was born in Plant City, FL and moved here when she was 4.

I have jokingly stated that Blairsville, GA is technically the northern most town in Florida, only Georgia thinks it belongs to them. Occasionally, I meet a 'local'; someone who was born and raised here. More often than not, when the conversation gets going, even someone who is from "Minnesota" will interject "when we lived in Florida" into the conversation. Once in a while I will discover that someone I considered a 'local' actually came from somewhere else, most often Florida. So, while I live in Georgia, sometimes it just doesn't seem that way.

I love this town. It is nestled in a beautiful part of the Appalachian Mountains. Summers get warm, but not as hot as Atlanta. Fall and Spring are lovely. We have four seasons. Snow makes an appearance, but it's not too serious. By that I simply mean we get inches, not feet. However, because we live in the south, a few inches can shut down this town as easily as 10 feet shuts down Buffalo. Maybe not. I'm not sure if anything shuts down Buffalo.

Truth be told, around here if there is snow in the mountains the people living there are stuck until it melts off. Sometimes that's in a few hours. When the weather is cold it can be several days. The 3 trucks with a plow are too busy keeping the main roads in town open to worry about anything more than a mile out of town. Salt? What is that? I'm pretty sure, Pittsburgh has cornered the market on salt. When we lived there I routinely found a bucket load of salt at every intersection. Here, we use gravel, (mixed with salt they say...).

The weather this week has separated us from Florida. The high one day was 29 degrees and that was at midnight. At 3:00 that afternoon we were sitting at 24 degrees. Then the cold front went through. The low was 9 degrees with a windchill of -1. That's right. I live in Georgia and we are expecting -1! Today the snow hit...and the town shut down. The predictions rolled in yesterday and by nightfall, schools were cancelled for today, along with everything else.

Our Winter Blizzard

Sorry Buffalo, but we here in the south, just don't put up with that stuff. We fold without a fight.

-1 is cold, but I give kudos to my daughter in Iowa. They finally decided to cancel church when the windchill was predicted to be -40!  I'm happy in the 20's. It's better than -40. But this is the one time of year I feel we separate ourselves from being a Florida town. If it ever hits -40 there we will know Hell is freezing over.

Wait! I didn't meant Florida is Hell!! I really didn't! I simply meant if it is that cold in Florida then Hell is probably freezing over too.

Day at the Park

Tuesday night I was enjoying a quiet evening of TV with my daughter and her family. It was especially exciting when Dave put on one of his favorite new shows of the year;" The Walking Dead". The title says is all. UGH! Jen wisely went for her shower. Maggie and I remained in the family room. I tried to read through it. Maggie began to talk to me.

Growlllll, grr, grrrrrrr!!!!!, owooolllll, grr.
Her vocabulary is limited but she puts lots of expression into it.

Unfortunately for her, after 12 years, I still don't speak DOG.
However,  I understood part of her message. "I am bored. Take me for a walk!!!!!!!!!!"
A couple of rainy days had kept us inside.

This morning Nicholas and I headed out for a bike ride/walk to the park.  I decided not to encumber myself with a camera. Dog and boy on bike would be sufficient entertainment. I was wrong.

As soon as we got to the park the first thing I saw was 2 Sandhill Cranes. Where's my camera? AT HOME!!! 

Sandhill Cranes are residents in this area. They are stately, regal birds that move slowly. They are year-round residents in Florida and are hesitant to relocate from their territory. As land is developed, they don't move on. They stay. This can put them at risk from traffic and pets and in some cases they can be aggressive. However, I've never seen their aggresive nature and for us it is a treat to watch them. They are beautiful. The only pictures I have of  them were taken on a foggy morning a couple of years ago, from my car window, as I was leaving Florida. (And those pictures are on my home computer of course.)  Thanks to Google, here is a photo of this gorgeous bird.

It was a beautiful day. Nicholas rolled his cars down the slides, and then rocketed them back up.

 Maggie enjoyed fresh air time in the shade and I angled for a little sun on my legs. (time to get rid of a little of that "winter white" we 'northerners' have.)

The mockingbirds sang non-stop through their entire repertoire, and then hit repeat. They serenaded us the entire time we were there. The trees were just about to burst into bloom, giving each branch a 'crested crane' kind of look.

Overhead falcons and hawks soared. At one point there were more than I could count. Some soared so high they were hard to see, while others ran shadows over me as I sat. At one point they were close enough I could identify different characteristics, but where was my bird book and my binoculars? AT HOME!!!!

Fresh air and grass for Maggie, Nature for Me, a Playground for Nicholas.
That is a perfect day at the park. But the next time I am going to be better prepared!

I love Summer!

I love summer. I like the heat. I like being outside. Summer months mean vacation and a change of pace. It means longer days and sunshine. I love seeing the hillside covered in green against that bright blue sky.

I like yardwork! Go figure. Yard work  may be a chore to some, but I like it (in small doses). It gives me an excuse to be outside and since I have no athletic ability it works better for me than tennis or golf. Compared to picking up around the house, a flower bed that's been freshly weeded looks good for days!

Of course there is a big difference between Florida summers and Pennsylvania summers. Temperatures in Pennsylvania can fluctuate quite a bit during June, July, and August. One day it can be 75 and the next 95. In Florida there is NO fluctuation. The weather man's job is easy.  "Tomorrow we will have highs in the mid-90's with a chance of showers in the afternoon". He can say that from May to October. Even so, because we had quite a bit of shade in Florida I was able to work outside in the yard a lot longer than I can at our present home where there is no shade. Here, the sun gets to me after an hour or two and I head inside to cool off before heading back out again.


There is a downside to summer, though. For one thing, unfortunately there is nothing pretty or cute about me when I am 'flushed with heat'. When I get hot my face gets beat red, my hair is dripping and consequently drooping. I'm envious of people who can look good no matter how hot it is!

Another downside is a hot summer night. It's not fun sleeping when it is hot so I am very grateful for air conditioning.  The nice thing about Pennnsylvania is that a lot of nights are cool enough that we can sleep with windows open and a fan going. And I can usually walk 2-3 miles in the morning if I get out early enough, before that sun starts beating down. In Florida, it was hard to get out early enough. I remember opening the door to let the dog out in the middle of the night and being hit with a wall of heavy hot air that I felt could swallow me up.

I made a promise not to moan about the winter last year. Our fall was so long and so beautiful, but winter took a long time leaving and I'm soaking up as much summer as I can. I won't begin to complain about the heat even if it gets to be very hot. After all, I know it will be short lived and in another week I'll be slipping on a hoodie on a cool morning. The truth is, for me, when the sky is blue, the trees are green and the air is warm (or just cool enough for a hoodie) all is right in my world!

A Warm Bed

Back in the 1980's my husband and I bought a water bed. We had it for many years and one of my very favorite things about it was that it was warm when I climbed in at night. Since the mattress is filled with water, it must remain heated. Otherwise it is about as comfortable as a thin sleeping bag on very cold ground. Just like an electric blanket there was a gauge so you could keep the mattress warmer in winter and cooler in the summer. Every night I would slide between the sheets and feel this warmth enveloping me. In winter it was especially wonderful.

We lived in Central Florida for many years. In winter the homeless population grew as people migrated to a warmer location for the winter months. It was distressing to see men huddled around 'burning barrel's under bridges in the winter. While we rarely had below freezing temperatures, it could get quite cold at night. On those few nights when the temperatures dipped below freezing shelters would open up to give the homeless a place to get in out of the elements.

On those nights I would slip between the sheets on my water bed. I would feel the cozy quilt on top, but underneath me the warmth of that bed would welcome me. And every night I would say a prayer of thanks to God that I had the security of a home, and a warm bed to sleep in. I would say a prayer for those who were cold that night that they would find a place to keep warm.

I still say that prayer every night. A warm bed is one thing I just don't take for granted. I am so grateful everytime I pull the covers around my head and snuggle into my pillow. If someone asked me what I was thankful for and I answered, "A warm bed", they might think I was being silly, but I know why I am so grateful for it. There are too many people these days who have no such thing.