Sunday & Monday In Florida

I love Lisa’s family! I really do. Her parents are warm and welcoming and fun. And so are her sisters and brother-in-law. They make me feel like a part of the family and feed me well. Lisa’s father reminds me so much of my beloved father-in-law that it’s eerie. From his personality and mannerisms, right down to his touch of a Long Island accent, he is so similar to how I remember Dad. Or the Dad that he was before Alzheimer’s robbed him of so much of who he was. It's comfort, wistfulness and longing, all tangled up together, to have these reminders of Dad.

I drove from my hotel on Sunday afternoon, relying on Serena, my new GPS Servant, to get me to the Lisa Family Compound in one piece. It was a chilly, overcast February day (for Florida. In Chicago, this weather would be typical for May.) We celebrated all the holidays-in-one over a turkey dinner with the works, and finished it off with a homemade ice cream birthday cake.

I am enjoying my stay in this Palm Coast hotel! It’s in a brand new “hurricane” building, which means that this is the place to hide out should a Katrina-like disaster ever hit again. The walls are solid and sound-proof, which keeps everything wonderfully quiet, but makes getting cellular reception ad hoc. A sweet woman serves me breakfast every morning, made-to-order. She moved here from North Dakota after her apartment burned to the ground, destroying all her worldly possessions. She relocated to FL two years ago to be near her parents. But she doesn’t care for the consistently balmy temps and humidity. To me, a Chicagoan, consistently balmy temps and humidity sounds like a piece of Heaven!

On Monday we took the grand tour of the beautiful, historic St. Augustine. We walked along the beach and browsed shops. We engaged in a really enjoyable wine-tasting at a charming little wine shop. Lisa and I agree that The Magnun Opus of the wine-tasting medley was a cabernet-chocolate concoction. Oh, the angels will absolutely be serving this ambrosia in Heaven!

We at shrimp tacos at a Mayan restaurant, then drove to the San Sebastian Winery for a tour and participated in another wine-tasting. This made me realize how sympatico I am with this family! The tour guide was interesting and engaging, though the wines were a touch too sweet for my taste.

Our evening ended with a cocktail party at a beach side condo. The wrap-around-porch overlooked the intercoastal waterway, the ocean and pool. The view was lovely! How I’d love to host parties on that porch! (Please, God, find me a condo with a beach front view and I will host many parties for your Kingdom! I promise!) The owners are friends of Lisa’s parents, and I thoroughly enjoyed visiting with them. The woman wrote a book which is soon to be published, so we talked “writing” a bit.

Good times. Life is good here in Florida.

Airport Adventures

I am in Palm Coast, FL, sitting in the lobby next to a large aquarium. The fish look happy, which I’m interpreting as a positive omen for my vacation. And what’s not to be happy about being in FL? The palm trees...the ocean...the perpetual balminess. Ahhh....vacation. But we had a few interesting adventures in getting here.

I flew out, yesterday, from frigid 20 degree Chicago to Charlotte with my friend, Lisa. The flight was without incident, except that my tray table got jammed, and wouldn’t store upright for the landing. So I gave up trying because I didn’t want to break a nail. Those Flight Attendants are persistent in following FAA regulations, by golly, and that tray table needed to be stored upright for the landing! So it took two of them and the gentleman sitting behind me to fix it. I was relieved! With all the current FAA regulations, I was concerned that, because of my errant tray table, the plane might not allowed to land. I had visions of circling in the airspace above Charlotte for the rest of my life.

After a layover, we boarded a small Barbie plane to fly to Daytona Beach. I don’t care to fly in small Barbie planes, ever since I developed my fear of flying. You can feel every bit of turbulence in the tiny planes, and my hands gripped the arm rests with every bump. But we landed safely, collected our baggage, and headed over to Hertz.

At Hertz, I was handed keys and told I would be renting a Prius. I argued, saying I didn’t want a Prius, that I had reserved a not-a-Prius and didn’t appreciate the bait-and-switch. The woman said that I had no choice unless I wanted to upgrade to a Mercedes for an additional charge. So Lisa and I went out to the Prius with really bad instructions and a useless diagram, and spent 20 minutes in the dark trying to figure out how to turn on the engine. The engine may have turned on, we weren’t sure, but I couldn’t make it reverse, and it felt unsafe to me to try to drive a car that I was so unfamiliar with. I was too exhausted to try any harder. I was getting my Ticked-Off on, so I marched back to the Hertz lady and told her I just wanted to get to my hotel in a car I was able to drive; not some vehicle from The Jetsons cartoon. I returned the keys of the Jetson car, broke my contract, and rented a normal car from another agency. Thumbs down to Hertz!

We pulled out of the airport to a freeway of bumper-to-bumper traffic. Apparently a pre-Daytona 500 race had just ended, so we joined the crawling throng of cars filled with drunken race fans. Serena, my GPS, was frustrated as we had to keep re-routing due to the road-blocks from the race. “Re-calculating! Re-calculating!” she kept saying huffily in her upper-crust British accent. But she was faithful, and got us safely to my beautiful hotel. Whew!

A package greeted me as I checked in. My husband; wonderful Super Hubs whom I will adore forever, sent me a package! I headed to my room, and opened the box filled with little wine bottles and Recess peanut butter cups. My dinner. I indulged. Ahhh...the man knows me well. A lovely beginning to my Florida vacay!

Let Me At 'Em!

Nothing makes my blood boil faster than to know that someone is being mean to one of my kids. I go from Zero to Terminator in 10 seconds or less. Mothers everywhere know exactly what I’m talking about. Our protective instincts are innate.

I have never wanted to beat up a second-grader more than I did last Friday. I found out about “the incident” only because Little Squirt was telling me, while doing homework, about how he needed to forgive someone. After pumping him for information, he told me how a child from another class had punched him in the mouth during recess. He peeled back his lip to show me dried blood and a bit of swelling. He said this child, “Bob,” had punched him in the past.

I was ready to go nuclear and drive to “Bob’s” house, guns blazing. But Super Hubs, being the more even-keel one in the marriage, said he’d call the school on Monday to get to the bottom of this.

This morning he put a call in to the principal, who is a wise, together woman. She has very high standards for her school, which is why it is consistently ranked #1 in the whole district. She said that “Bob’s” behavior was unacceptable. Within 30 minutes she brought both boys to her office, corroborated Little Squirt’s story, made the other child apologize, and phoned his parents. (She gets the job done, this principal, and I really wish she’d run for public office! She could whip our country into shape in no time.)

So on we go. I’m glad that “Bob” was held responsible for his behavior, and hopefully will behave himself at recess from now on. And I’m glad that the principal reinforced the message that we wanted to give Little Squirt; that he matters. We are not okay with someone hurting him; and he shouldn’t be okay with it either. Forgiveness is good, but so are boundaries. Truth and grace, hand-in-hand.

But here’s what I’m learning more and more about Little Squirt: He has a heart of gold. When he got home, I debriefed with him, asking how he felt about going to the principal’s office with “Bob.” He said, “I just kept worrying about Bob, and how he’d feel about getting in trouble. I was sad for him.”

I don’t deserve the children I was given. Little Squirt was cut from a really special grain of cloth; pure kindness and empathy. He is one of my favorite teachers.

One Is Silver, The Other, Gold

I had a 3-hour coffee date yesterday with three friends. We had all been in a weekly Women’s Group together for four years or so, and ended our little group last year when various commitments were pulling us in different directions. Over lattes at a book store yesterday morning, we each took a turn and caught the others up on the events of our lives over the past year. The time flew by, and I was regretful that I had to leave to pick my boys up from school. I would love to have stayed all day!

Then, later that evening, Super Hubs and I went to dinner at another couple’s house; friends whom we have known for half a decade yet haven’t connected with in a while. We shared a meal of turkey chili, crusty bread and good wine, and talked and relaxed.

It was a Friendship-Filled Day. A very good day. It made me reflect on how lovely it is to have friendships with whom, no matter how much time has passed, you can pick up right where you left off.

Oh, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person; having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but to pour them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what’s worth keeping, and then, with the breath of kindness, blow the rest away. (George Eliot)

Just Do It For Me

There are not a whole lot of perks that come with Aging. But here is one, and I am going to use it: I proudly proclaim that my brain is too over-loaded to learn anything new unless I want to! And I ain’t apologizing.

I finally can use our DVD player after months of choosing not to understand how it works in conjunction with the TV. Having four other family member who could work the DVD player for me, why would I want to bother trying? I get easily bored and distracted when reading directions. But when this school year came along and I was home all day alone for the first time in years, I decided it was in my best interest to learn how to run it myself. (Just in case I feel the need to watch a marathon of “The Office” or something. For research purposes, of course.)

I learned to use my phone and my camera because I need them. When motivated, I can learn. When I’m not motivated, I refuse. There are just too many facts using up a finite amount of my brain space to continue cramming it with useless information. It’s called Simplifying, and Simplifying is all the rage right now. I am just keeping my brain trendy.

And while I’m on the topic, I have one more point: Any household gizmo that takes more than three steps to complete a function may be smashed with a hammer and drop-kicked out the window during a certain time of the month when the hubs keeps a low profile. Like our new thermostat, for example. I hate it. It’s all too confusing and was clearly designed by someone who once worked for NASA. I refuse to learn to work a gadget that requires 14 steps and a tutorial just to get me warm. I have no patience for that! Just keep it at 72 degrees, and I’ll be happy. And when The Mama’s happy, everybody’s happy.

Blast

I spent the weekend in at a camp with 900 high school students. Am I nuts? Quite possibly. But it was incredible! Where else can you eat a rubber omelette disguised as a pancake, “do your business” in a bathroom with ginormous spiders, function on 3 hours of sleep a night and still have a smashing time? Flexibility is a growth edge for me in my middling-ish age.

The weekend was a Christian retreat for the youth ministry in which I serve as coach to leaders. And our church group was housed in the Comfort Suites, which, compared with the Salvation Army campgrounds, is the miner’s equivalent of striking gold. It was fabulous, dahling. I got my own bed and a daily hot shower, so I was happy. Rock Star was also present on the weekend, but he did a believable job of pretending I was wearing an invisibility cloak. We had an understanding: If he went, I’d give him his space. It was all good.

The spectacularly evil camp food, snooping arachnids and sleepless exhaustion was all worth it as I watched beautiful teenagers raise their hands in worship. And surrender to Christ. And love on one another all weekend long.

It was all amazing and soul-filling, and I am so glad that I went.

A Little Cosmetic Wisdom

A friend gave me some makeup today, and a little lamanated card was in one of the bags. This is what it said:

1. Spread beauty.
2. Do what you love.
3. Love what you do.
4. Keep it simple.
5. Laugh out loud.
6. Go with the flow.
7. Be real.
8. Focus on the positive.
9. Do your best.
10. Just breathe.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.