Going Home, Going Home

We really are headed in the right direction .... up I- 75 from

Ft. Myers to Ohio. We had an hour and a half delay outside of Atlanta, because some poor (probably old) dude had turned over in his pickup truck while hauling his vacation home. It took up a four lane highway and thousands of cars and trucks waited for hours. It sure seems that the Highway Patrol would reroute traffic or at least direct the mayhem created by such bad accidents. Next, we were toddling on down the road when the local radio station started telling us that there was a tornado warning for Big Booger, Tennessee and hail in French Gulp County. We knew that Texas had been having really bad weather earlier in the week and that it was moving northeast. So, I pulled out the map and discovered that we were only about fifteen miles from Big Booger and doubted our ability to find a safe place before Knoxville. Happily, we discovered a Days Inn in Oak Ridge with Hi Speed Internet. Tomorrow, we will be going home early in the day before the storms start up again. My "Honey" is as happy as a pig in mud, because the motel has FOX News and he hasn't seen a nice conservative newscast for six months. See you in Ohio!

Here we come, ready or not!

It's that time again ... the move back to Ohio. Everyone there tells me that it is colder that a witch's t** and raining, too. I am packing a big dose of sunshine in my suitcases and will treat all those Ohio Valley people to some rays. I have lain in the sun in two hour increments for the last couple of weeks. Most of the people here have glistening skin about the color of a kiwi without the fuzz. I, on the other hand have a collection of brown, red and white spots that sort of mimic a tan. I figure that when they all run together, I will look just like George Hamilton. My teeth will look like a string of pearls next to my beautiful brown skin. When my perfect house guest, Lesley, was here , we went to the pool every day for two hours. She got a wonderful tan ---- I got sun poisoning by the third day and spent the rest of her time here waving goodbye as she blithely sauntered to the pool. Of course, I have been a raving maniac trying to remember what I brought down here six months ago and why in the world would anyone in their right mind even consider bringing a couple hundred dollars worth of quilt fabric 1200 miles and never opening a single quilt book?

Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that we are going to the land of civilization, where people actually wear appropriate clothes in public. No Capri's and backward ball caps for senior citizens there. Maybe, this is really more fun! See you in Ohio.

Home Sweet Home!

Spring Break in Ft. Myers

Springtime is beautiful in Ft. Myers. The weather is hot, hot, hot, the sand is white as talc and the water is warm. We wait all winter for these last few weeks in the tropics. Snowbirds tend to leave for home around the first of April and the college kids have been and gone by now. They leave in their wake locals who are underage and in jail for drinking and partying with the big time college kids. Our oldest daughter flew in the 30th of March for her Spring Break from school. She had been held hostage by a band of renegade third graders since last August. Here she was; free at last. If you really want to have a great house guest --- give birth to the perfect home companion. Her idea of a wonderful time was watching TV until the late news, reading until sleep grabs her by the eyelids, sleeping until she awakens of her own free will, more reading and a little counted cross-stitch, suntanning beside the pool, eating out and having her mom and dad sit and appreciate her presence. I insisted that we had to go out to Ft. Myers Beach, just for the sudden view as the crest of the bridge is reached and the Gulf of Mexico lies spread before us like a glittering jewel to be tucked away in the recesses of our memory until the next occasion to behold such beauty. We went after dinner and strolled along the beach as we awaited the sunset with many other romantics. Since I am an old lady, I plopped down on the sand --- it is so soft and white that it is a wonder that people don't try to bake bread with it. It is so fine and powdery --- it sticks to your bare feet, to your butt and hides in your pants pockets. I am not proud! In the presence of natural beauty, who cares if you get a little gritty?

As we walked around the end of the island through Bowditch Park, we came upon this image of family togetherness. Dad, Mom, one little girl with pink sandals and one tiny little girl with a white sandal at each end of the grouping left their shoes to wiggle their toes in the wonderful white sand. People scan the sand bars as the tide goes out and the sand dollars appear and occasional shells beg to be picked. Most people pick shells just to prove to themselves that they actually were here.

The daughter did her obligatory visit to the beach and crossed it off her list of things you have to do when in southern Florida. When you are the single mom to three grown sons, Spring Break means just that --- stop whatever you have been doing for so many months and flop until you are revived to go back and start all over again. I told this child when she was four or five and bored that once she learned to read, she would never be bored again. She took me at my word and has a Master's Degree+ in reading. She read three books while she was here, but I think she brought eleven or twelve. It's hard to believe that she is only a few years from retirement herself. After eight days of revitalizing sunshine, we took her back to the airport on Easter morning. She is back at her desk with her brood of nine year olds, but summer is only two months away and she will be able to recoup until next August.

Today, I made a zillion chocolate chip cookies to send to my grandson in the Air Force and I am starting to drag things out of their hiding places to pack for our return to Ohio. I just don't understand why we leave Florida when things are just getting really good here. I want a Spring Break!