The two Floridas

In my head, there are two Floridas. One, rarely seen, is vacation-land, a comfortable tropical paradise with a little bit of magic to it. It's flowers around every corner, armadillos and alligators and the occasional fox, boat rides at dusk across a quiet lagoon, feeling the slight prickle of a little too much sun, but never the burn. It's the smell of chlorine and french fries, the sound of roller coasters and happy screams but also cicadas and summer music. It's drinking Corona with lime on a quiet porch when it's so hot that just sitting still starts a little sweat.

And then there's the other Florida. It's the one where nobody knows how to drive in traffic, and the only nearby sit-down restaurants are Perkins and Chilis. It's the Florida of shopping malls and too much air-conditioning, grocery stores with aisles of junk food but not a single half gallon of organic milk. It's the Florida where people actually live, the land of dental visits and bug spray.

Only magic Florida and reality Florida seem to have merged.

I forgot to take out the trash last night, so at 5AM I was hauling garbage bags to the curb. But the sounds that early were amazing; not just cicadas, but an entire orchestra of frogs, so loud they could have been percussion instruments. I came back in and put the water on to boil, then let the dog out into the backyard. While I waited for my tea, I followed her out, and sat down to listen. I could see stars in the sky above me--Orion's belt, to be exact. And while I sat there, wondering how long it had been since I'd seen Orion's belt and trying to remember if I'd ever seen it in Florida before, a shooting star flew past. It was gone in a heartbeat, so fast that it was almost as if I'd imagined it. But I didn't. It was real, and just like every shooting star it was magic.

But magic in my very own backyard.

What is not perfect?

The answer is bugs! Zelda's picking up ticks and fleas, the porch has wasps, fire ants are actually building their nests in the walls, and R and I are both getting phobic about the random stray bug bites that keep appearing on our skin. Oh, and let's not even mention the mosquitoes. But all else is absolutely glorious.

In other news, the bird is chewing up my credit card bill, making little pieces with which she will pretend to build a nest. I like this use for a credit card bill better than any other I could have imagined.

Pool ball

The new water game uses the basketball. People get points every time we successfully throw the ball out of the pool and manage to get it to roll under the patio table. The dog tries to block it, of course. We lose points every time Zelda jumps into the water to retrieve the ball because we haven't passed it back out to her quickly enough.

Rory pointed out that if the dog understood the rules she could kill us on this game, but she doesn't really like the water enough to jump in if she doesn't have to. On the other hand, about thirty seconds is all she can stand before she starts to think we might not give the ball back, so we do have to move pretty promptly. She was definitely the big winner in our first game!

I wanted to post a picture of her drooling on her ball, but it appears the only ones we took were when her ball was hidden inside the barbecue. (My desperate move to get a break.) She has the tennis ball instead and she only plays with that when the basketball is well-hidden.

Sunshine on my bed

It doesn't make sense in Florida to love sunny rooms. It's so insanely hot during the summer that it makes sense to hide from the sun, to keep rooms dark and shady and cool. I know that. But I love having sun on my bed. I love lying across the bed at 8AM feeling the sunshine on my closed eyes, and reveling in the sense that there's an entire day ahead of me and it's going to be good, good, good. Sunshine does that for me. Shade does not.

Tree mice

I posted this as a comment at a blog I read, but I liked it enough that I decided I should save it for myself. So here's the tree mouse story:

...So several days ago, my son, all excited, tells me that we have a tree mouse. A tree mouse? I'm thinking, chipmunk? Maybe ground squirrel? We live in central Florida and haven't lived here long, so I don't really know much about the native wildlife. Tree mouse sounds plausible and my boy (13) knows a lot about animals, so okay, we have a tree mouse.

A quick backtrack, we have a huge tree in our backyard and a happy squirrel population. Also cows across the road, chickens nearby enough to hear, lizards continually, and occasionally some other oddity, like once a gopher tortoise got trapped in the backyard while on its commute to the mating grounds (no idea where those were, it's just what the books say gopher tortoises do) and once, extremely oddly, some guinea fowl had to be lifted over the fence. It had been a windy night so apparently they got blown in? The question mark is because honestly, it made no sense to me, but my point is that strange wildlife in the backyard is not an anomaly. A tree mouse sounded plausible.

So the boy sees the tree mouse a few times and reports it to me every time but somehow I always miss it. Then yesterday, he calls me, and I come running. Tree mouse? It's a rat! A RAT! In my backyard!! Climbing the tree!!!

He still thinks its a tree mouse however, so we go online and look at pictures, and confirm that no, it's a rat. A real rat. Apparently Florida has rats called roof rats. And they can climb. And there's at least one, probably many more, living in my tree--or possibly my roof. Ack. I am completely creeped out.

But then, I go off with my boyo to visit my sister and her kids. And as we drive, the boy says, Look, look, mom, there's a feathered tree mouse!

It's a bird.

And then five minutes later, it's look, look, Mom, there's a predatory feathered tree mouse.

It's a hawk.

And ten minutes later, it's look, look, Mom, there are some GIGANTIC tree mice.

Deer, three of them.

And the tree mouse being a rat, okay, that was funny. But my boy being able to laugh at himself like that, that was priceless. It turns out that 13 actually does have a good side.

***

In other news, nothing about the house. Monday is the day I was originally going to give up, so we're going off to look at rentals on Sunday. I've got another two weeks where it exists in a maybe zone, but after that, I give up. C'est la vie.

House or no house

I'm really, really tired of waiting for house news. It's been well over two months now, and still the bank hasn't bothered to get back to me. I can't imagine how frustrating it must be for the realtors: if my income was dependent on this, I'd be going insane.

As it is, it's been a busy few months, what with illness, injuries, emergency room visits and trips to Texas, California, and next week Seattle. And, of course, the interminable teeth appointments. (Implants finally done, braces close to over. Six months from now, I might have working front teeth again.)

So it's probably just as well that we haven't had to move yet. But the closer we get to true Florida summer, the more afraid I get. I don't like it here when it's too hot to move. I'm dismayed that I have no escapes planned, and yet, it's hard to plan for an escape when I don't know when or if we'll be moving. And the longer nothing is final, the more I agonize over the decisions. To buy or not to buy. To have a pool or not. To send R. to Walden or back to Center. I hate it when my brain starts to travel in circles around questions that I can't answer.

Susan Boyle

I just watched the Susan Boyle video for about the 75th time. In my defense, I've been quite sick, so watching the same four minutes over and over has been just about my speed. But this was the first time in a few days and it was lovely to have the same experience again, namely goose bumps and a tear or two--this, despite the absolutely horrible news coverage that has left me feeling as if I am from a different planet than the rest of the people who inhabit this world. Apparently, at least if one reads the people who write for major newspapers, the important thing about the clip is how it shows that we all judge based on appearances. What? That's...an interesting point, of course, but who gets goose bumps from that??

There are three moments that I love in the video, that I've gone back to again and again. The first is when she smiles her cheeky grin. There's a moment, right before the music starts, when she almost smirks at the audience. It's as if she's saying, "I know something you don't." Her confidence radiates. And it's confidence despite the forgotten word, the awkward stripper's hip roll, the skepticism she must have already seen the judges show--it's confidence in the face of adversity and it's thrilling.

And then there's the moment in the song when she so gracefully hits and holds the high notes on the word "shame," the five steps that reach the ceiling. The audience is on its feet, screaming, Amanda is on her feet, the judge to the right is laughing, and even the cynic is leaning back, smiling. It's almost possible to feel, just from the video, the joy and the energy that is filling that room. That's a goose-bump moment. It has nothing to do with Susan Boyle's eyebrows: it's about the feeling of being part of a crowd that is witnessing something miraculous. Oh, maybe part of the miracle is that a frumpy woman with funny eyebrows is creating the joy, but it's the joy that's amazing, not the woman singing.

Finally, I love when she finishes her song and starts walking off stage. The judges are calling her back, Simon beckoning with the patronizing single finger of a man who knows his power, and she's just walking. She did what she came there for; she sang in front of a large audience and she made that audience rock. And now she's done.

Now that I've picked three moments, I have to admit there are others. There's how she seems so surprised, almost babbling when Amanda says yes; and there's the almost shy kiss she blows the audience as she's walking off stage after having pumped the air like a footballer; and there's the lovely woman in the audience bouncing in her seat with happiness; (and I do have to wonder what it feels like for those audience members who have now been seen by something like 50 million people; it must be horrible to be one of those in the beginning whose most famous moment in life might be as an example of what not to do as an audience member.) All of which brings me to my final thought, which is that the film editor is brilliant. Yes, maybe he or she had good material to work with, but it was still an incredible job. A real person picked each of those seconds of reaction shots, each angle onstage, and he or she created a seven-minute masterpiece. Compare it to the Paul Potts video and you'll see what I mean.

And now, having posted for the first time on months on something that is completely unrelated to saving my own memories (which is what I think this blog is for, really), I'm going to go watch it again. If I'd known that I'd watch it this many times, I would have counted because I expect someday to hit 100!