Tales from Florida

We went swimming in the ocean. My dad got in first, as I ran to get into my swimsuit. When I came back out, my dad was drifting out in the intercoastal.

"Dad?" I called.

"Yeah?"

"How are we going to get back out?"

He turned for that, looking over at the dock, some feet above the water at mid-tide. Then he slumped back down onto the raft. "We'll figure it out."

We did. He tried to leap from the raft to the dock, fell halfway and hit his knee on the razor sharp barnacles that grow on every wooden piling and rope here. He hissed as the water turned red around him.

We ended up going over towards the seawall, where we found an area with fewer barnacles and shallower water, and were able to clamber out without further injury. My dad's knee looked terrible, with three deep curved cuts that bled profusely for some minutes.

But his biggest concern was getting the bleeding to stop in time to walk to the beach for sunset. My mom, laughing at the three of us on foot, drove past in the armada. As we had expected, she never made it to the beach. She had been unable to find parking, and returned home, the joke on her.

We walked instead, and it wasn't a bad walk. That time of day, even crossing the road wasn't too bad. Sunsets here are nothing short of incredible. There were hermit crabs scuttling across the beach. Melissa found a coconut and declared that she would bring it home, giving me flashbacks to the coconut that Tom, Prompong, and I had cut open back in Laws. She gave up halfway and 'accidentally dropped it'.

Every Sunday in our neighborhood there is a floating raft party. It seems to center around our dock, although we may never take part in it. (Melissa and Mom have sworn never to enter the ocean water) Some people have their dogs out there on the rafts with them - and not all small dogs, either! I saw a golden retriever relaxing, his paws hanging out over the edge of his sagging raft.

My appetite here continues to swing. Some days I feel as if I could go for hours and hours without eating, other days I can't get enough. I can't explain this.

Yesterday was Father's Day and my dad bought a new grill, and used it for the first time. :)

The night before we celebrated Melissa's 17th birthday on a dinner cruise, the Calypso. There was a buffet and dancing during a sunset in the bay. Melissa dances better than anyone, especially my own little sister, has a right to. I took quick shutter pictures of it for what will soon be an amusing facebook album. The sunset too was breathtaking! As a special request, I asked the DJ to play Dancing Queen. (Young and Sweet, only 17!) She was the star of the dance floor.

The best part was Cotton Eyed Joe, the last song before we disembarked. It's such a good old fashioned Country Song, and here we were, some Hillbilly refugees from the far off land of Missouri. We all knew the song, and Dad started doing the fake banjo thing, and my mom was dancing too, and Melissa was doing a bona fide 'Cotton Eyed Joe', kicking her legs up so high that people were turning and staring, wide eyed. A few other high school girls got behind her and tried to imitate her - their version was mediocre, at best, and they soon tired.

We are starting to meet a few people. There is a very nice lady in the neighborhood named Debbie, who has taken an especial interest in Melissa, and has introduced her to several kids, as well as the Indian Rocks Baptist Church, where I think we will all be going, at least for the summer. We went to the first service on Sunday, and I have to admit, I was impressed by the sermon. It was engaging, practical, and well rooted not only in the Bible, but in an unusual part of the Bible. It's a mega church, complete with a gift shop, but it would be wrong merely to judge it for it's size, right?