Happy Photos Safari Report Day!  

Joy and I hit good old Myakka State Park one more time. As we impatiently await the final healing of my stupid foot, we did another mostly drive with a little walking photo session and had a predictably wonderful time!  

There were more visitors than we are accustomed to so we did have to work around other people but it's a big park. We can share  :)  

The day started out a little cool but wisely we dressed in light layers so we could peel off outer layers as it warmed up. The weather was nearly perfect.  Great light too!  Not a great deal of wildlife, unfortunately, but there was just enough to cobble together the Safari Report.  Therefore, I am calling this one the "Just Enough Hike".  

That said,  I'll start with the birdies.  There were a lot of the same few kinds so I'll  try to not duplicate very much. Here are the best shots:

Then there is the non bird wildlife, which in this case means alligators. Lots and lots of them. There were literal piles of them!  We kept our distance and were grateful for telescopic camera lenses. Here's some of those guys;

As always the park itself was gorgeous. Can you bear some pretty scenery photos for a few minutes?  Thanks!

And now it's done.  As I predicted, I had Just Enough photos for the Photo Safari Report.  Thanks for coming along :)  Hope you enjoyed

Happy Weekend!

Howdy do to all of you!  Happy Tuesday!

Yesterday, Monday, I was knee deep in laundry.  I do laundry every Monday. No sure why it ended up that way, but it has. And, as I have observed on many an occasion, either Tim and I are exceedingly dirty people or extremely clean people because Laundry Day at our house is a full day event.

​How on earth do just two people create enough laundry to make Laundry Day, well, an entire day?  Truth is, I'm not absolutely certain.  

I am rather particular about sorting.  Delicates are only ever washed with other delicates, dark clothes and light clothes are strictly segregated (the only time I ever approve of segregation) and even the towels are divided into whites and colours and washed separately.  Luckily the utility room is good sized so as to hold all of the many piles of laundry waiting their turn.

I've been accused before of being a Clean Freak when it was learned that I change sheets every week. To be perfectly honest, I would change them more often if it wasn't so time consuming!  I adore clean sheet night!  Also love using clean towels and I even throw the sink sponge into the laundry pile at the end of every day.  And by the way, I wear clean pajamas each night!  Yeah, I guess I am kind of a wierdo.

We also seem to go through a great number of towels each week. To be fair, we use tea towels (sometimes called dish wipers or kitchen towels) for things other than drying dishes!  I put one down on the counter for the clean hand washed dishes,  I sometimes use them a trivets for hot pots and pans while dishing up a  meal, or under a cutting board to soak up any spillage.  We use them as napkins, as blotters, as place mats and hand towels.  Somtimes I even dry dishes with them! Shocking I know.  

Clearly each of those uses (whether you agree with how we do it or not) means the towels is now dirty and off it goes to the dirty towel pile in the utility room, replaced by a seemingly endless pile of kitchen towels.

This time of year when it's chilly, we wear multiple layers of clothes, meaning bigger piles of dirty clothes and in the summer when it's hot and humid and we get sweaty just thinking about moving around, we sometimes change clothes during the day as what we were wearing has become sweaty and gross. Again, creating bigger piles of clothes.

I think we've solved the mystery of why it takes me all day Monday to do the laundry each week. Heh.  I honestly don't mind Laundry Day. It's not as if I have to haul it all down to the river and beat it on a rock after all. Once it's sorted, it's just a matter of putting things in one machine, pushing a button then transferring it to another machine and pushing a different button.   However, because I want to keep these endless loads moving forward in as timely as fashion as possible, I never allow loads, wet or dry, to just sit.  As soon as the load is finished, it's moving on to the next part.  Wet things into the dryer and dry things either immediately hung up, folded and put away or stacked in a neat pile and set aside for ironing later.  This means setting a timer and then, trickier part, listening for the timer to go off.

Sometimes I simply do not hear the timer. Which means that poor beleaguered Tim, who hears everything, even when he doesn't want to, has to endure listening to the repeated buzzing until it has driven him half mad whereupon he comes out, turns off the timer and tells me, "machine is done" before returning to his office. Poor Tim :(  I try very hard to not have that happen but hey it's not as if I'm just standing aroundm twiddling my thumbs,  waiting for each load to be done.  Heck no!  I'm doing other stuff between loads. It's called Multi-Tasking and we women are exceptionally good at it ;)

The first washing machine that I remember in my life was probably 60 something years ago?   Something like that. It was a wringer washer which was, at the time, quite the amazing machine!  We lived in California then and the washer lived in the garage. It looked a little like this:

As I understand it,  Mother would fill the tub of the machine with water and laundry soap of some sort, add the clothes and then plug the machine in.  At that point it would shimmy and shake, undulate and shiver until it had reached it's limit.  Then Mother would Unplug the machine, pull the drain plug to let the water out.  Then,  one item at a time, each piece would be fed through the wringer to squeeze out as much water as possible.  The first wringer machine was hand cranked, the second, wildly modern, was cranked electronically.  Mother was terrified by that electric wringer and cautioned Joy and I to keep our distance so that it did not pull our arms in and crush them! (coz you know we were definitely planning to feed our own arms in, fingers tips first).

Next up would be hanging the clothes on the clothes line. I cannot recall when Mother got a machine dryer but I know she was very excited about it AND the invention of dryer sheets. She used so many dryer sheets for each load that our clothes nearly oozed out of our hands when we tried to fold them. HAHAHAHA

I never owned a wringer washer myself, but I did have to hang clothes on a clothesline as a regular thing in my farm days when the boys were young.  I know my mother didn't enjoy it but quite honestly, I did.   I know that makes me sound even weirder than you already believe me to be (and I probably am) but I honestly enjoyed hanging clothes on the line with wooden pegs that squeaked a little each time I pushed them down onto the combo of fabric and clothes line. I can still hear it.

The first few items taken out of the clothes basket weren't just wet, they steamed in the morning air and they smelled delightful.  It didn't really take all that long to hang out a basket's worth at a time and it was peaceful outside time for me in the sun.  Later, in reverse, I would remove each item, give it a shake to snap some of the stiffness out of it, fold it carefully and place it in the basket. Every single tee shirt, each towel, smelled of sunshine and pine trees and whatever flowers were blooming that day.  And the fragrance stayed, it clung on even after it was hung up or tucked into a drawer. The aroma lingered even after being ironed.  I miss it.

Basically, of all of many myriad household chores, daily, weekly, monthly etc, one of the ones I truly do not mind is doing laundry. Even nowadays without the excitement of possibly crushing my arm in a wringer washer and without the scent of clothes hung on the line.

When someone says Happy Monday to me, I agree :)

Valentine's Day just happened!  And on the weekend too!  How nice :)

In our typical low key fashion, Tim and I had a lovely quiet Valentine's Day.  We've celebrated lots of different ways over the years but one thing has always stayed the same.  It is, by now, a long standing tradition of exchanging cards.  (Which we do for pretty much every occasion.)  From the very beginning,  since before we were married, without even discussing it ahead of time, we each gave the other two cards, one funny, one serious.  It just cracked us up that we both did the exact same thing . What are the odds?  

As the years have gone by,     we have continued to exchange cards, always at the end of the day, always with no distractions (TV off or at least muted) always together, always reading each card with comments and laughter, appreciation and kisses. (awwwwww) The cards are always displayed for a few weeks on the tabletop afterwards. The only thing that has changed is some times instead of just two cards, every once in awhile it's 3.  

Why 3?  Well one card nowadays is usually from the kittyboys.  The cats, strangely,  are not welcome in stores to choose their own cards so we have to do it for them.  Besides they cannot drive and have no pockets for wallets. Brysco and Wyatt trust our judgement, implicitly.   So 3 cards each, right?  If you count the cards on the table above, it turned out to be more than 3 each because, according to Tim,  Hallmark was doing a BOGO on cards and he wasn't going to waste a perfectly good BOGO! Gotta do the extra card now too.  4 cards !!!  Frugal and standard logic don't always go together in this family.  Sooo That's 4 to me from Tim, Brysco and Wyatt.  And two to Tim from the kittyboys and me because I am a slacker, didn't notice the sale and am a cheapskate.

(I may have only done two cards to Tim compared to his 4 to me BUT I made him a lovely batch of brownies and that might help to even it out a bit?)

If you are counting, even with the explanation, it still doesn't work out right, does it?  Well that adorable little puppy card came to me from an old friend back in Colorado.   Now the numbers work even though it's a little crazy.  

You might also notice that two cards are identical.  Yup. We did it again. It has happened so often now that it's almost expected.  We gave each other the same card..................again!  Cue even more laughter!  Clearly we are two people who were meant to be together! We can shop in completely different stores on different days, at different times of day and still end up giving each other the same card!  LOLOL  We are ridiculous.

So that's kind of how we spent our Valentine's Day, together.  We ran errands and did chores for most of the day, I made a very nice meal for dinner, we did our annual card exchange, laughed a lot, smooched a bit and enjoyed a really nice brownie (or two). It was a perfect day.  oh   Tim also contributed a short stack of boxes of Whoppers and Milk Duds, perfect for snuggling up to watch a movie together. Yum~

I know that Valentine's Day is a "made-up" holiday (aren't they all ultimately) and people feel a  lot of pressure to properly express to their life partner how much they care, how important the other person is to them and the extent of their love !   Commercials and movies and "reality TV" make it feel so very serious, very emotionally precarious, teetering your relationship on the brink balanced on this one day of the year! (not to say expensive!)

  I cannot say that either Tim or I feel pressure leading up to Valentine's day.  We both know how we feel and how the other one feels but we like that it is a sweet day  where we make it a point to express how we feel,  tangibly.  With something you can hold in your hands, as well as your heart.  We've done it bigger with flowers, and heart shaped boxes of chocolate and nice dinners out, we've done it smaller with phone calls and delayed celebration but we've always done it with cards. And we've often done it with duplicate cards.  Because we are weird.

Some traditions are a little stranger than other's I suppose but as long as we are good with it, that's all that really matters.

Hope your Valentine's Day was exactly what you wished it to be.

This is the first sunset over the water photo I've shared in quite some time.   Naturally, the reason being my stupid foot.  It continues to heal, very slowly, but progress is progress no matter how pokey it may be. I make it a point to do a little more walking each day and now I'm branching out into walking on different surfaces.

Perhaps you never had occasion to really think about it,  but in truth, walking on actual ground is completely different than walking on concrete which is different, in turn, to walking on sand.  I've been mostly walking on smooth flat surfaces:  wood, concrete, asphalt, tile but I've started branching out occasionally to wandering aimlessly around the backyard, carefully. I don't want a set back for heaven's sakes. This has gone on quite long enough!

But I've been doing so well that the other night after dinner, spontaneously (which is unusual for me) I suggested to Tim that we head over to the beach to watch the sunset.  It's something we used to do regularly but haven't been able to do in quite some time so I think we were both surprised by the words coming out of my mouth.  It's almost criminal to not take advantage of being as close to the beach as we are!

I took off my socks and put on my sandals (socks and sand sounds like a bad mix), Tim grabbed his wallet and keys and at the last second, I snagged my camera.  Once we arrived and I was faced with actually walking on the sand I hesitated.  I even remember thinking, "this could be a really great idea or a really bad one."  I shrugged,  "over the top!" I thought to myself and there we went.

There were far fewer people out there than I expected, this being peak season right now.  (February and March bring guests in droves) but that was probably due to the fact that it was more than a little chilly and very windy.  We did not care one single bit.  

It smelled the same as I remembered and all the elements were still there:  the sun, the birds, the boats, the sand and the water. The beach didn't care that I wasn't around for awhile, it did not hold a grudge, just welcomed me back.

All of the peace contentment, beauty and simplicity was still right there.  And as shuffled cautiously out across the shifting and uneven sand spotted with broken shells and seaweed and the occasional bits of this'n'that  I immediately decided that it was totally worth the risk.

I took a few photos, of course I did:

 We didn't stay long, but I'm so glad went. Now I know I can tackle a careful walk on the sand safely and therefore will return. Probably soon.  The siren call of the beach is just too strong to resist.  Or perhaps I just don't care to resist any longer.

Like the beach I send you wishes for serenity and peace!  I know I am a day early but Happy Weekend to you!

The above picture of the weather map of the  US's most recent winter storm.  Yikes!  Looks like a serious booger doesn't it?   That's because it was!  The green bits are suppose to be rain and cooler temps , the blue parts suggest snow and cold temps and the purple parts indicate ice and freakin' freezing temps!  Talking to friends and family all over the country and seeing photos and video footage, especially traffic cams just about had me shaking in my sneakers.

And usually, that's where it ends, when these sorts of things happen.  While the rest of the country is shoveling out and huddling together to stay warm, wearing 32 layers of clothes and drinking medicinal Toddies, normally us Florians are wearing shorts and sandals, squinting into the sun and relaxing on the beach, right?  That's what all the cartoons indicate so it must be true!  

We in point of fact, sometimes it is true which is why people vacation in Florida during the winter.  But this past weekend was winter weather insanity everywhere, including Florida. We were not spared.  This past Saturday and Sunday, New England experienced what we used to call a real N'or Easter which is to say, extremely cold temperatures, high winds and ice and snow pelting down with no remorse.  While that was going on up there, down here was a what could only be called a South Easter!  

Unusual for us, we had Cold (for us) temps in the 20's and 30's, Extremely high winds and rain hammering down.  The wind was so fierce that Tim took down the sail shades in the courtyard and brought in the windchime so that we didn't lose it.  Trees dropped all sorts of branches and fronds and leaves, anything not strapped down rolled, flapped or flew away and some places even saw snow.

Yes, I said that.  Snow in Florida. In THIS part of Florida. Which is shocking.  Not all that long ago I, stupidly, said that this part of Florida NEVER sees snow.  In fact, I think I had the hubris to declare that not only had we never seen it, but we never would. tsktsktsk.  Pride goeth and all that.   At 4:15 am Sunday morning, just a few miles from here, on the East side of Venice Ave (we are the west side) somebody was up recording snow flurries in their yard. Insane!  What is going on?

I saw other videos and accompanying reports of flurries just south of us in Englewood and North Port Florida so we weren't the southest point of the flurries. In fact, in Englewood there was snow on the ground. On The Ground, folks!  Not a lot of snow granted, but still officially snow on the ground. don't believe me?  Well here's a photo Joy sent to me:

That's not sand, it' s freakin' snow in Englewood Florida on Manasota Key.  What???  The world has gone mad.

And while there was no snow on the ground at our house, the water in the birdie water dish partially froze so it was that kind of cold.  I went outside with the intention of cleaning the water dish and refilling it only to find:

Yes, yes, I do understand that our little piddly windy cold day and tiny bit of flurrysnow was nothing compared to the untraversable roads and massive piles of snow and cars doors frozen shut and power outages and various winter storm related nightmares that people suffered in other parts of the country and my heart goes out to them. I've been there done that!  What I'm saying isn't that this is worse, or even the same. What I'm saying is that it's unusual for us. Crazy for us. Unprecedented for us. And it's a little hard to wrap our brains around.

Also, I had forgotten how much extra laundry is involved in winter weather.  All those layers!  Thicker fabrics! Long sleeves and long pants!  Just an observation and isn't it funny how I had forgotten.  After a little trial and error, I finally remembered how to properly layers clothes for warmth without bulk, thank goodness.  And once again, so happy that we brought our down comforter with us here to Florida from Colorado even though everybody else thought we were crazy.  Well, we are crazy but also smart enough to have defied everyone else's advice and shipped it on down here. Thank goodness!

I don't know if we'll ever see snow down here again but I'm glad I was around to see it this time!  Hope the rest of you have your power restored, your cars dug out and your roads cleared!  Looks like winter isn't letting up anytime soon.

Thinking of Spring!

Hugs all 'round