My Seaside Life

Living by the sea is a new experience for me, one that I enjoy - most of the time anyway. :) The tides never cease to amaze me. Right now it's high tide and I'm looking out my window at water rushing furiously out of the inlet, sparkling in the sun. The water comes almost to the top rung of our makeshift ladder now, and at low tide it will not even reach the bottom of said ladder. The Lake of the Ozarks varies in height, sure, but as much in a year as the water here can do in a day!

I've started getting restless in my sleep - I haven't been doing enough is why. I've been trying to remedy that a bit in the last few days - riding my bike, etc. I rode to the library one day and did some research on Scotland and Japan, and afterwards Mary from my writing club invited me over, so I biked to her house and we ate tuna sandwiches, and she showed me her scrapbooks from when she sailed around the world, and took me into her garden and made me take cuttings from all her plants... they were so lovely, one hung upside down and looked like a delicate Japanese lantern, another was called Bleeding Heart. I found out Mary's husband died in WWII... that makes her older than I thought. A sad story, too, his plane went down and he and his crew floated on a raft for a while, until they were captured by the enemy and all of them taken as prisoners, save the pilot, her husband, who was set back adrift and never heard of again.

Yesterday dad and I went biking in the morning and explored our neighborhood. It's an enormous neighborhood with streets heading into the inter-coastal again and again. Some of the houses we found look like old Florida, interested architecture that made me want to come back with my camera. There were also occasional empty lots which we wondered about, including one that was too full of trees to have held a house, has a small and flooded boat moored to it by the water, was filled with birds, and, in a corner tucked away and hidden from the street, a little firepit, something that may have been the remains of a long abandoned garden, and the frame of a swingset. It's a big lot for the neighborhood, and I'm sure it has a story.

Last night Melissa, dad and I went to the beach for the first time since we moved here. We go there and walk for sunset, but this was the first time we spent some time there during the day. We played frisbee on the sandbar - an interesting experience because you're quite a few meters from shore, but still in knee deep water! The water was warm - no, actually hot... perhaps 90 degrees. I'm eager to take Liisa there, how strange it must seem to her, if it surprises me! :) It's even warmer than the water was in Curacao, but then, we always went to Curacao in winter...

I finally bought my ticket to Spain, and I've looked into bus fares to Valencia and then up to Pamplona, and I think I'm going to try to book those tonight. Everything's falling nicely into place for the summer trips! :) Liisa and I have done a bare minimum of preparation, but that's probably alright... still I'd like to talk to her and make sure there's nothing we need to do ahead of time yet.

Summer Begins

We got done with Reslife relatively early - 10pm on Saturday. Tina and I ate my last frozen curry meal in the kitchen and she took a black sharpie and wrote my name on her stomach, and then I took it and did the same, using a little mole for the i. And we were sad, a little bit. The whole weekend when I was moving out it was wet and cool for May. I went to the lake with mom and dad and I sorted some of my crap out, helped dad with dry-wall, went on a canoe ride or two, and worked on my papers. On Tuesday I said goodbye to a misty Missouri morning, drove to Columbia, dumped off my last library books and said goodbye to Monica (^^), and then flew into Florida where I instantly became 'a northerner' in my long pants and plaid shirt. Whatever. I've never been tropical and I don't claim or wish to be.

But Florida does have its charms. Dad bought a boat here. It's a small fishing boat and a bit rickety and makes me nervous when we're going at top speed and hit a wake, especially when I'm holding onto Tidbit. I could just go into jetski mentality and hold on and enjoy the ride, but I'm not 100% confident in any part of the boat's construction, and so I have little images going through my head of the entire front seat snapping off when we hit some wave and sending me, Tidbit, and the chair into the water. Still, it's nice to feel the wind on my face. I've always liked boats for that.

It's good to be back home with Tidbit. Mom's always lamenting that Tidbit's growing old, but other than the white face I don't really see if. She's become more of a beggar which can be annoying, thanks to mom feeding her the occasional piece of salmon skin, popcorn, tortilla chip, etc. Mom just wants to spoil her in her old age but I don't necessarily like the effect it's had on her personality. Still, she runs when she wants to, that funny, off-center sort of run she has where her body rolls a little bit with every stride. And her tail seems to always be wagging. I've missed her.

The next month I'll spend cooking, getting ready for Liisa and the road trip, getting ready for Scotland and study abroad. I have bags to pack, cds to burn, airfare and hotels to book, cameras to buy, and a lot of Skyping to do. The next month, though, is mostly lazy - along with a few celebrations in Melissa's behalf. She's graduating from high school, having her party, turning 18, and starting college at the University of South Florida - St. Petersburg. So that'll all be nice.

Last Night in Florida

I'm leaving tomorrow and I don't know how I feel about it. I'll miss Tidbit and I'll miss my family during good times. :) Like tonight, when we went out to eat and to the Dali museum, and there was a lot of laughter and knowing each other well in a good way. At the same time I'm ready to be back on my own, and I'm incredibly excited about Japan, and even about hanging out with Laura in Clinton. :D I'm thinking now that I have about 10 minutes of packing left, and I'd love to finish reading Turning Japanese tonight, although I really should save it for the plane, and I have to get up at 6 so I can shower and leave and get to the Tampa airport on time. But I'm in the living room, having just saved the pictures from the memory cards that will stay here onto my computer, and the green lights that Kris and Kai have in the sea beside their dock are swarming with fish, as always, their shape looking suspiciously like Koi. And in case you were wondering, the light of the full moon on the water really is like liquid silver.

My Beach

I Googled my beach so I could show it off. :)

This picture came up first...

Erm, lil' awkward. Such a spot may exist in the general area (perhaps within a half hour's drive?), but it's definitely not /Redington/ beach. I would have found it. Now I'm quite curious, it looks gorgeous! All those rocks - we don't have those.


This one claims to be in North Redington, which I haven't extensively explored, so I can't rule it out. It looks a lot more like my beach, with the right lack-of-rocks and sea oat combination. But my beach has more distance between the water and the sea oats, and of course, has more people on it.

Okay Google, I give up. The reason I was Googling to start with is that for some reason I haven't taken hardly any pictures of the beach that we walk to every night, other than the sunset itself. Here's one my sister took, with me in it. It should do for now - I'm planning a post with lots of Florida Pictures later.

Homesick

It rarely happens to me that I wake up in the night, unsure of my surroundings. But it's happened here, in the darkest hours of the night, when I'm woken by rain on tile roofs and the swishing of palms on my windowpane. I stretch, am surprised by the cool metal of the home gym as my arm hits the weight machine, which comes right up to the edge of my mattress. I don't know where I expected to find myself - at home on Burgundy Lane, or back in Laws.

Laws, Mizzou, last year, is an awkward memory for me. There are moments, especially in the waking day, arguing with my family, that it's hard to believe I ever went away, and lived for a year alone, with a bunch of loveable and crazy foreigners (and even crazier Americans) in the huge concrete monstrosity of Laws hall. Mayumi, Mitsuki, Ben, Clint, Mimi, Laurence, Tomomi... Timur, Santi, Pat and Maria... even Laura, Tabi, and Jorge to a lesser extent - is it really possible that we met, lived together for a long year, and then, now, it is over? And Mayumi, having been my roommate, that is the strangest.

When I wake up at night I don't wonder about having lived there - the whole environment is absolutely present in my mind, less as a memory than as a reality. Without my eyes, I could climb out of my bed, make my way out of my room, and to the bathroom, or perhaps down the stairs. I might even get as far as Dobbs.

But no, I am here in Florida. And that's strange indeed. My family is here and all of my things. The furniture and paintings that surrounded me throughout my childhood have been transplanted to a new climate, almost a new nation. It feels like a crossover fanfiction or something, strange.

I am vaguely aware that this is one of those magical places people leave their own homes and spend loads and loads of money to come to and go to the beach rain or shine and take pictures and bring home memories. And that's strange. I've never lived in such a place before, and I always thought that if I did I should appreciate it a bit more. But the beach isn't really my scene, at least not yet.

When I walk on the beach I feel old. I feel like walking slowly and watching clouds and sunsets and seagulls and thinking about my life, maybe even writing about it. Except that I haven't hardly lived my life. It is a peaceful place - no place for me now. I am not ready for peace.

Being transplanted has had another effect on me - one that raises questions and may have long term implications. Or it may mean nothing. I am homesick for Missouri. It happens a little bit with silly things, like longing to hear "Dierbergs" and "Schnucks" instead of "Winn Dixie". And it happens more with bigger things, like Winter.

I miss it for myself, a bit. I watched a few minutes of Greys Anatomy and Meridith walked outside in a coat, the whole world grey and her breath coming out in a mist, and I felt it in my chest. I am so grateful that I am going back to Missouri in the fall - I'm not sure I could manage without the winter. Go ahead and tell me it makes no sense, I already know it.

But it gets more complex than a longing for snow - I was playing Rosetta Stone, and some of the pictures show late fall, and early winter... and in no exotic way whatsoever, but perhaps a little girl in a little coat, smiling shyly and standing in front of a suburban street with bare trees and pale grass behind, the last few leaves of fall dancing on the lawn. That street could be in my old neighborhood, that coat could come from Wal Mart or Target, that child could be my own -

I understand suddenly, this want to have your children grow up in the same way you did. It gives me a certain feeling to imagine my children growing up in colourful warm parkas, playing with scattered leaves, feeling their cheeks and ears and nose turn bright red in the cold, going door to door on halloween, going off to the woods because they know thick winter clothing makes the thorns more bearable, cracking frozen puddles with their feet, watching sleet hit the windows as they snuggle under blankets indoors...

A lot of images go through my mind. I don't require my future children to experience each and every one of them, but each one of them makes me smile and think of them. Not that we need be in Missouri - almost all of these things could happen, for example, in New England, and most of them (swapping out Wal Mart and giving up Halloween) could happen in Scandinavia (if I went far enough north I would lose the leaves, and they won't be exactly the same anywhere else).

Just some thoughts and feelings, is all. And even if I were to move off to some exotic land, there's nothing saying that I might not be able to take my kids home for a year or two for them to understand America. I am planning on shipping or accompanying them back to the states for a month most summers anyway. Still, it's imperfect - there's a difference between having Trick or Treated, and growing up doing it every year, from being carried by mommy dressed up as a pumpkin to being a little witch whose daddy follows her around holding pounds of candy to going to high school costume parties dressed as a... bunny?

And I've avoided mentioning deep winter and Christmas and New Years altogether! I've avoiding thinking about them, if you want to know the truth. If leaves falling and winter coats make me so lonesome, what will the thought of Christmas without snow or Santa do to me? :P But I'm sure I'll give it all due thought before I make any of that sort of life decision.

And one can't have everything. Even people who never leave their own small town grumble about "when I was your age", and I know my children won't have Pokemon or Pottermania as part of their childhood. So, I dunno. :)

I'm just thinking onto paper.

Alligator Man

Melissa and I took a walk, making all lefts so that we came to the sea wall across the bay from our own house. When the tide is high it's fun to walk along the concrete edge, seeing the water lap against the side and, here and there, where the old wall is beginning to crumble, swirl into the land and fill tiny rushing pools.

Melissa won't stop talking about Alligator Man. Debbie has told her that there is a man with a pet alligator in the neighborhood - he lives in the tall grey house, she said, with an alligator mailbox. It was a bit further than Tidbit and I usually walked, but we agreed to help her investigate. So it was a left at the end of the seawall, and then a long street, and then left again into a little cul-de-sac.

The tall grey house had no Alligator mailbox. Or so we thought at first - a second glance revealed that it was green, with a slight attempt at scaly texturing, and when seen from straight on, the unmistakable tail of a gator on the back of it. It was like finding a giant red X on the ground. We looked at each other, and then slowly at the house, as if we would hear the Alligator roar and gnash it's teeth from the side of the road.

Rediculous, of course. But there was an enclosure there, where someone else might have a screen porch. It didn't look big enough for a gator, or strong enough to hold one. But then again, there was the mailbox to consider, and why would Debbie lie to us? We didn't want to be creepers, so we walked on.

"After all," I said. "Just because there is an alligator on the mailbox and an enclosure in the front yard doesn't mean he has an alligator. After all, here's a mailbox with a giant seahorse on it, does that mean they have a giant seahorse in their front yard?"

We turned and looked at this house, in a mockery of searching for a giant seahorse. And I kid you not - they had a giant aquarium in the side of their house, just visible from the road. This was all getting to be a bit too weird. We circled the cul-de-sac in mock hysterics, Mel screaming, "Look here, palm trees on the mail box... and palm trees in the yard!!"

We came back around to Alligator Man's house. Still no gators, but there was a very large grey dog there, who was free and roaming around a bit too much for our liking. We had Tidbit to think of, after all. I picked her up and I think she knew better than to make any noises. We tried to make our retreat as quickly and quietly as possible. We were almost to the corner when a man on a large and loud motorcycle came around and towards us. Moving out of the way we saw him stop at Alligator Man's house and talk to the dog.

We thought we were saved. And then we heard the man calling the dog, and revving up his motorcycle again.

"He's going to run with the dog!"

"No, surely not!"

But just the same, we were on a narrow street with no sidewalks and no public areas, just the long (and lengthening) avenue of houses before the right turn back to the seawall and safety. We heard the motorcycle behind us, the man calling the dog again. We ran.

Melissa was in flip flops and I in sandles, and carrying 16 pounds of Dachshund besides. We were halfway there when the man on the motorcycle turned the corner. I was still thinking to myself, 'surely not'. Melissa, who without Tidbit had a bit more mobility, risked a quick look back.

"The dog is following!" she confirmed. We ran as though the man was leading a team of gators on our tails. The motorcycle grew louder and louder in our ears, deafening. We reached the seawall with seconds to spare, through ourselves to the right and onto the public grass, and the motorcycle raced by, the grey dog running alongside it at top speed.

I was a bit high on Rosetta Stone, and Japanese words came tumbling out of my mouth at that.

"Inu wa hashitte imasu," I whispered.

Breathing hard, we watched in amazement as the two sped to the end of the seawall, then rushed back at us, and again. We clung to the concrete edge by the sea once more, working our way back home.

I do believe that was Alligator Man. And I do believe that he is capable of owning an Alligator.

Tidbit and I won't be going past the seawall for a while.

The Florida State Fairgrounds

It had been on the calendar for months. We were going to the Florida State Fair Grounds to see Trace Atkins and Toby Keith.... mostly Trace Atkins. We've lived on our island for almost a month now and had unbelievable weather. We've had rain twice - hard rain with wind, too - but short lasting, and this during the worst season in Florida. It seems the winds around here blow storms inland, or out to sea - they miss the island. But we went into the interior for the concert, far enough that the palms thinned and turned into trees draped in Spanish moss. And as we sat on the highway, stuck in Tampa traffic, the skies darkened and it began to rain.

We had planned to go to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner first, but it seemed as though the rest of the concertgoers had the same idea. The parking garage nearby was full - absolutely full. We went up five stories of wet dripping concrete only to find every spot full and dozens of cars circling. Madness. We cut out losses and headed to Steak and Shake. Twice during dinner the power went out and we heard the generators buzz as it flickered back on. But the worst was when it came time to pay. They sent me to the register with the money, and I waited. And waited. The rest of the family joined me and we waited. No one came to help us. There was a crowd of employers there who stared at us blankly.

"Can we pay?" my dad asked, again and again.

One woman just kept staring at us with an absolutely blank expression, shaking her head slowly. My dad was ready to just walk out, but my mom was sure we'd be arrested. So I reached into my purse, found exact change, and laid it out on the counter. Then we left. What that was all about, we had no earthly idea.

The sight of the fairgrounds looked like it had been taken out of some horror movie. Everything was grey-blue and threatening, wet with rivulets of running rainwater and lit up by flashes of lightening. Here and there revelers waved the Confederate Flag proudly over impromptu wet shirt contests and tailgating parties.

We parked the car and started the long walk, through marshy, swampy areas. We were in sandles, my sister in high heels, and the mud and water came up over our feet with almost every step. We dodged the deep puddles, but even the shallow ones put sand under our toes and set frothy foam coming up out of the soles of my mom's sandles. And she kept muttering about snakes and gators. Gators was rediculous, unimaginable in the crowded parking lot, even with the wilder areas surrounding it. Snakes seemed unlikely as well, but at least possible. I kept telling her that there wouldn't be any snakes there, it would be a snakes' worst nightmare, etc.

There were cowboy boots and hats and American flags everywhere. Women hard before their time. The ubiquitous beer belly. The smell of cigarettes. Harsh voices. All excited. This was a big night. We got our tickets, walked a little further. We had reserved seats, so we were part of the half of the audience with a tarp over their heads to keep the rain off.

Trace was good. He was a huge man, just as described. My mom kept shrieking that he was an absolute monster. He's about 6'6'' and filling every inch with muscle, anyway. The screens sometimes showed him from the pack, a profile, topped with that big cowboy hat. He looked almost rediculous, like a giant shuddering snowman as he moved to the beat. It was just the angle, though. Straight on, he was the picture of masculinity - traditional, arrogant, muscle-bound masculinity.

The young boys in the row in front of us were rather interested in my sister and I. I sat on the far end from them, so my sister got the worst of it. Between Trace and Toby, the older one came over to sit by me and started flirting rather shamelessly with me. I replied only when absolutely necessary to be polite. I felt a bit sorry for him, after all. It's not as if he knew. He told me he was 15, and I sort of gave a smile and a laugh, and thought I'd finally end it.

"I'm nineteen," I told him.

Well, he was surprised, and seemed to acknowledge at first that he was way out of his league, but then he pressed on at a slightly different angle, admitting that he could at least brag to his friends about 'impressing' a college girl or something like that. He didn't know. Didn't know that the youngest boy I'd ever kissed was six years older than this boy was, that all I kept thinking was, "Boys and Men, Boys and Men." And it was a little bit too bad. We had a few things in common, and he was cute enough. If only he had been five years older. ;)

Toby Keith came on. He's who the rest of the crowd had been waiting for, and they exploded. Out came the American Flags. The show started with a Ford Commercial on the big screen, admittedly an absolutely hilarious one. I looked for it on Youtube but I couldn't find it. :( It was called, "America's Toughest", and was a contest between different fake celebrities, and Toby Keith. The rappers tried to meet every challenge with cursewords and shooting, the pop group was made up of absolute pansies, there was a new age woodwind player who tried to chant and magick his way to victory, and best of all a heavy metal group who tried to be scary and ended up just looking stupid and rediculous in the hot sun, with their high heels breaking as they tried to run, and failing utterly to lift weights or do anything other than scream and hiss. And then Toby Keith, confident, smiling mockingly at the other contestants, easily winning each contest singlehandedly and by a huge margin, as teams of sexy blonde midwestern girls cheered him on. It truly was amusing.

Then he sang a few songs. It was just hard to care much about him after Trace, so we packed up after the third or fourth song and thought we'd head on out before the herds followed us and filled the concert grounds with traffic again. We waved goodbye to the flirting high schoolers, went down to the concession stand area, and my sister bought a shirt.

Then we ventured back onto the grounds, the swampy, swollen parking areas. We walked and walked. My sister couldn't decide whether it was more painful to walk with or without her high heels on, my mom was still petrified of snakes. Slowly it became apparent that we didn't know where we had parked.

Abandoned ticket counters, mossy trees, groups of latrines... each one began to look the same as those we had passed a thousand times. Were we going in circles? It was eerie to be walking around in the rain and flashing lightening, with water up to our ankles, our sandles soaked and slimy, through the rows and rows of shiny parked cars, all alone. We searched together. We split up. We shouted at each other from reasonable distances when we had gone a while without seeing the others. Each time we shouted, the other group responded hopefully, thinking we'd found the car. We hadn't.

Finally mom and sis parked themselves by a group of latrines and a tree labled "H" and my dad and I set off again, just the two of us. My dad kept clicking the alarm button on his keys to no avail. The fear that we would continue searching until the herd poured out, all found their cars and drove off, leaving only our G35, grew in us and suddenly felt very real. We found a G35, but it had Florida plates. We kept looking. Finally I found it, gave a screech... we all assembled and piled in, my sister and I wet and exhausted in the tiny back seat, pulling off wet shoes and revealing slimy dirty feet that were beginning to itch mightily. We tried to sleep on the long drive back.

Heat Waves

BBC informs me that the U.K. is about to be hit with a heatwave. My grandfather, who never curses, says that it's 'hot as hell' back in Cape, and our old neighbors in St. Louis say that there's a heat warning and they're supposed to stay inside as much as possible. A Finnish friend says it's 30 degrees in the shade - the Faroese are having trouble coping with 20. And where am I during all of this?

That's right. Florida.

Update on My New Floridian Life

We moved out of the hotel and into the new home. Dad returned from Paris. The house is full of our furniture and the number of boxes obstructing our passage is quickly diminishing. The music and several T.V.s are up and running, and the large black dachshunds next door have discovered Tidbit and vice versa, so it's goodbye to the quiet we had before!

The dock is very different from the one we have at Lake of the Ozarks - it's on piles, instead of floating, so it doesn't go up and down with the tides, and doesn't rock in the wake of boats or dolphins. When the tide is low it's several feet under the dock, and reveals a mass of white-grey-green barnacle/shellfish-stuff encrusting the wooden pilings. I need to catch up on my vocabulary to describe such things - I've just spent too much of my life far from the sea. I am nearly as surprised as Tidbit by the salty taste of the water.

Yesterday we worked. I pulled the tape off of so many boxes that the tips of my fingers ached and felt carpet burned. I also set up the home computer and everything, and it's all running very well now! The house begins to feel a bit like a home. Our furniture is all here and some rooms, such as the Master Bedroom, are even respectably nice. Both bathrooms and the kitchen, however, are still miserable - probably will be until we make some fundamental changes to the house. But ah well. The big piles of book boxes from my room and the office are gone, as are most of the random boxes in the family/dining room and my parents' closet.

Last night while we were trying to set up the home gym, the weight machine fell over on me. It only fell about forty five degrees, and while it hurt, I knew right away I wasn't seriously injured. Took a while to convince my parents of that, though, and they ran over and started patting me everywhere and asking what hurt. I was more worried about my laptop, which was also involved in the accident - it has a good scratch in the screen, almost penetrating. But it doesn't affect how it works at all, so I'm grateful for that.

Immediately following this incident Teddy and Maxine arrived. They are, or Teddy is, if you want to be specific, our only blood relatives in Florida. Teddy is my grandmother's brother, and Maxine is his wife. We visited them in Florida once growing up, and of course we've seen them at numerous family functions across the States (okay, so overwhelmingly in Missouri), so they are a slice of home, family, normality, if those can be associated.

They are very Floridian. Maxine is from Tennessee and speaks and cooks with a decidedly southern style. I volunteered to help her cook for Thanksgiving, as we'll be spending this Thanksgiving with them, and I've heard she makes cornbread stuffing and sometimes deep-fries the turkey. Teddy has such a strong something accent that he can be difficult to understand at times. He is bald and almost a caricature of himself, but very nice, underneath the bravado ;), and a 'hoot', as my mom puts it. He goes freshwater fishing on a fast motorboat in gator infested, inland waters.

We went out with them to a restaurant in John's Pass called Gators. I had this massive appetite, I dunno where from. I helped with the peel and eat shrimp and gator appetizers, and then ate every bite of my blackened Mahi Mahi with yellow rice, and then got a dessert - Key Lime Pie - to split with my sister. It was all good, especially the Key Lime Pie. What's very strange is that I never, ever order dessert - I'm usually so full that I bring half my entree home and still feel abused. And afterward I was contented, but not so full as I usually am - I could have helped out with another few desserts, or another round of appetizers, had there been more to come!

The sunset was unbearably lovely. Pictures later, I'm planning to post a few from the move.

My 'room' consists of a bookshelf filled with books, two crates with clothes, one crate of debris, one crate labeled sentimental, an alarm clock, and an air bed, all in the home gym. It's cozy. No, really. Well, there's nowhere to sit down on, or anything to eat. (/tolkienfandom) Tidbit and I slept there last night and it worked out pretty well. This house is wired really poorly, and all the light switches and knobs are on the outsides of the rooms they belong to, meaning that I have to decide whether I want my light on or off /before/ I go into my room and shut the door. Luckily my closet has it's own light, and a pretty nice one, which I have been reading by.

Today I woke up when Tidbit wanted to go outside. It was about half an hour earlier than I would have liked. She went out and hunted for geckos and I got out Liebe Total and read about five pages, underlining, but not looking up, the words I didn't know. I can never decide whether it is better to read, ignoring or figuring out from context the words I don't know, or go through making a notice of them, maybe looking them up if I have the computer handy, and that's it, or to go through and study every new word. It's hard to say, so I sort of play it by ear each day. Liebe Total is pretty easy, and from the subject matter I think it's written for teenagers, which would explain that. German prose, such as in a newspaper, can be very difficult - making it one of the few languages that I'm almost as confident listening in as reading it! But Liebe Total (actually, Immer Cool Bleiben, the first novel of two in the book) is very reasonable.

Then we did a bit more work, and then I went to the grocery store, Winn Dixie. At first I worried because they didn't seem to have anything I sought. Organic 1% milk, for example. I found the ordinary milk, a small enough section, and beside it saw several organic varieties. There were three kinds each of organic whole, and skim milk, and two kinds of organic 2%, and one kind of organic 1% chocolate milk! Finally I asked someone and it turns out they keep it in a different area of the store. ?? Similar thing happened with the feta cheese, all the flavoured and low fat kinds are at one end, and the ordinary varieties at the other.

I've been attempting to cook with the new kitchen and sometimes it has me pining for my 'kitchen' in the dorm. The drawers don't pull out well, the stove and oven are old and hardly trustworthy, we have no microwave, etc... but we brought the knives and pans, etc, from home, and they are quite nice. :D I can cut through onion and garlic like butter! Right now the smell of Greek chicken and jasmine rice are permeating the room.

My main complaint here is the sun. It takes me down. I was sensitive enough to the heat in St. Louis, but I dunno... here it's a drier heat, which most people prefer, but not me, for some reason. A wet heat exhausts, sure, and may even feel hotter in the mouth and nose, but this dry heat makes my skin burn and itch. Or maybe it's that the sun's rays are so much stronger closer to the equator? It's thoroughly unpleasant and I can't even describe it in a way that does it justice. I realize suddenly that before this I never really went to Florida in summer, usually in Winter, and found it balmy enough then! I'm just not built to survive this climate, or this latitude, or somethign!

The Education of the Swedes

Hei alle sammen!

Jeg håper at dere liker dere her i Florida! For en søt familie dere er! :)

Jeg tenkte bare at dere ville kanskje vite at her tar vi av bordet etter frokost.

Ha det kjempefint!


It didn't take us long to notice the Swedes. When you stay in a hotel for more than a week, and particularly when you attend the breakfast every morning, you begin to become acquainted in a distant, 'stalkerish' way with several of the more interesting families who are following the same patterns.

The most interesting, most obvious family this week has been a family of Swedes. Loud father, quiet mother, two singing blonde children with bright blue eyes. They dominate the room with their loudness, their foreignness, the singsong quality of their speech... the way they never clear their table after they eat, leaving the busboys, who are only supposed to replenish food and empty trash cans, a mountain of china and rubbish.

So I played a little trick, or taught them a little something, or did the busboys a bit of a favour, depending on how you want to look at it. I wrote them a note, last night, and stuck it under their door. You can see the note in it's original above - the translation would be,

Hello everyone!
I hope you like it here in Florida! What a sweet/cute family you are!
I just thought you might want to know that here we clear the table after breakfast.
Have a great time!

This morning, inconspicuous as always, we watched. And if they didn't clear the table, every bit, admirably so! We were a safe distance off, but could hardly contain our giggles as mamma and pappa walked to the trash cans again and again with the piles of dishes.

Florida - First Impressions

We are staying at a beach hotel, overlooking the gentle surf of the Gulf of Mexico and listening to the sound of the gulls. Those who have lived their whole lives by the sea, I know, regard them as pests, but they are still something marvelous for us - part of a vacation. We are still vacationing, in a way, since we're staying in the hotel instead of our new home. It's a fixer upper. We knew that, but we didn't really understand it until we arrived. The yard is smaller than we thought, the colour schemes uglier, the kitchen thirty years old. We've decided we must gut the house, and not only eventually but soon. It was supposed to be clean when we got here, but instead the whole thing is filthy. My mom's losing it. Well, part of that is just what you get for putting something, anything, on a pedestal.

We got up early today for the movers, but both the car mover and the furniture movers have delayed until tomorrow, so the only reason for waiting was the cable hookup. The hours dragged by. Melissa and I took a short trip to Winn Dixie, the southern grocery store. It's the closest one to our new house, so we familiarized ourselves a bit. They were very nice and we got a loyalty card. Quite near Winn Dixie is a little used and new bookstore and a library - the only one on the island, I think. We have to go to the mainland for Wal-Mart but it looks as though most of our other basic needs can be taken care of here.

I snuck a quick visit to the little bookstore. They had all the major categories, although even the new books (what few there were) looked used. They have a rare book section. The signage is bad so it took me a while and a lucky angle to find the foreign language section, but I was in for a nice surprise there. They had a reasonable collection of Swedish and Norwegian instruction books, the Norwegian ones predictably and unfortunately below my level, and most of the moderately sized shelf was German. In this part of the world I would have expected something more like the Borders back home - two shelves of Spanish, a handful of books in French, and, if you are lucky, one or two in German or Italian. As I was scanning the shelves, aware that I needed to get back home, I found a book in Finnish. Imagine! I bought it right away, even though it's a romance of some sort and I probably won't like it. Finnish! And for 3$! I spoke to the lady and she says if I come back later this week she'll give/sell me a stack of Norwegian magazines that her Norwegian friend gave her. If I'm incredibly lucky, I figure there's even a chance I'll run into one of her Norwegian friends. Wouldn't that be marvellous?

Yesterday at Wal-Mart I picked up a three dollar copy of Wuthering Heights. I'm enjoying it so far - reading about the wild, rugged, dark moors from the comfort of our little wooden dock. My skin is starting to colour already, although I try to keep in the shade. It's not burnt yet, but already glowing, and I can't allow it to get a bit worse. I'll be the strange northern girl who hides her lily white skin inside with her books if I have to be. For the moment, though, I notice the tides coming in. We have tides! The water was a foot or two under the dock when I looked out this morning, and it's near noon now and there are little waves and the waters almost up to the bottom of the sea wall. I see glinting in the water - little silvery fish are darting to and fro.

I could live here - just relax, live simply. Not worry about the ages old dirt under the stove. Cook in my rice cooker, sit on the floor, even, if I didn't have any proper furniture. Amazing how far some snacks, a few good books, and a computer will take you. And the location, if I needed more than that! But that's my age speaking, I guess. Tidbit snoozes on the sunbaked wood at my feet. My mother hollers and I go in to see what's bothered her.

We see something strange. While trying to clean out the refrigerator shelf in the sink, it collapsed and broke - the glass shattered. Little fragments cover the counters and the basin of the sink, falling down into the disposal. A giant mess. But what's really odd is that the glass continues to crack, splinter, fall apart. For long minutes it continues to crackle - a fragment of glass, lying in the sink, suddenly develops a long hairline crack along the middle, and then snaps along that line with a sharp sound. The sink full of glass crackles and glistens.

Tidbit loves to hunt geckos. They are her new squirrels and she doesn't yet know whether or not they are possible to catch. She catches them sunning themselves on the walks and runs at them. They remain still until the last moment, and then dart away, quick as lightening, into the lattice or bushes or lime trees. One evening she goes at one with such vehemence that the force of her impact throws her onto her back. For a moment she looks like a ladybug flipped over, running her little feet ineffectually in the air.

I've enjoyed almost all the food I've had on the island, and I'm eager to explore all the nooks and crannies, the variety of restaurants. Besides all the marvellous seafood there is more Thai food than I've ever seen before, and there seem to be a thousand places selling fresh fruit. Other surprises - a mariachi band beside one of these fruit stands, in a sort of alley on the way to Wal Mart, singing and playing for all they were worth, and hardly anyone to listen... a European Grocery next to the post office - I went in, and was a bit disappointed to find mostly Slavic products which I couldn't read and had no special attachment to. I did buy Nutella and have gotten my sister hooked on the stuff.

I've ordered a library card. On Wednesday they have a writer's group. I think I'll attend, for the few weeks I'm here. I'm hoping it'll be a casual sort of thing I can pop into on breaks.