Ahhh, peace and quiet. I do treasure that. My friend and her family and dog and cat are headed back to Daytona Beach this morning. I think they are anxious to get home.

Their houses seem to be ok, because she has that video doorbell and interior cameras so she can tune in anytime and see what’s happening. A friend has told them that her block has power, even though all the streets around them do not. Lucky. Now begins the tedious process of taking down all the boards on the windows and doors, and putting everything back where it belongs. On top of cleaning up what I’m sure is a mess in the yards. But sure beats having no power and a ripped up house.

It was fun having them really. At first I think it was tedious for Dan, because Cathy loves to talk and tell stories, and they were usually about people he didn’t know, and places he didn’t know. It was very one-sided communication for the first 36 hours. But then, yesterday Cathy and I sat on the deck for the afternoon. Dan stayed up at his house til dinner, which was nice for him. She and I just talked and talked, looked up old classmates on FB, etc. I really enjoyed it and enjoyed sitting outside. (Today that wouldn’t happen. The “feels like” temp today is 109. Yikes.

Both my friend and her son run AirBnB’s on Daytona Beach. So if anyone ever needs a decent place to stay there, they are really nice spaces. An apartment, a 2^nd floor two bedrooms and a bath and a spare bedroom and bath in the main house. All very nice and close to the beach and nightlige on the beach. Just PM me at Livinglikewater@comcast.net and I can give you their info. We’re planning to drive over there sometime, maybe this fall. Would be a nice little break for us.

It’s sure nice to be back in my house, and my life. Hope there are no more hurricanes for many reasons! But it was fun to see my old friend of 55 years, and get to know her son and his partner.

Love and light, and I hope everyone is able to stay out of harm’s way as Dorian creeps up the coast.

I am patiently waiting for my east coast refugee contingent to get here. One of my best friends from high school lives on Daytona Beach, close to the water, which is a little too much in harms way from Dorian. It has presently stalled out, just spinning around, trying, it seems, to destroy the northern Bahama Islands. It is so sad, and so terrifying to watch the video that’s making it out of there. This friend is bringing her son and his partner, and their dog and her cat. It will be a housefull for my teeny 912 sq. ft. house, but it won’t be flooded nor will the wind be trying to rip it apart. I’m very happy to be in a position to help her and her family.

So, I made brownies for them. And brought over some fruit for the morning, and I have bacon, eggs, and bagels for the morning. I figured we can make a run to the grocery store tomorrow and get whatever else is needed. All the sheets are cleaned and towels changed, etc. I was a little worried about the dog, a boxer, in this little house, but my friend says he will calm right down as soon as he knows us.

I sure hope this storm turns soon, and heads north and that all these preparations end up being for naught. I am pretty sure that they will turn out to have been necessary though. It’s going to be fun to see my friend. I usually see her a couple times a year but haven’t seen her since January.   We’ve been friends for over 50 years. We will figure out how to have a little fun while she’s here.

Onward, with love and light.

“Couch” is our prompt for the SoCS today.

I have one couch. It’s a6 piece  sectional that I bought when I moved into my dream house up north. It has a recliner at either end. Not electric, but the manual lever kind, that you have to kick the footrest in to close them. I loved this couch when I bought it. Both my son and I sat in it at the store, and said “This is the one.” It’s a cream color, covered in microfiber, and is quite comfortable, at least I find it so. Now, 8 years later, one of the seats is a little depressed, because it has been sat in every day for those 8 years, unless I wasn’t home. Comfy to sleep on, to watch movies on, to just sit and talk with friends and share a glass of wine.

However, since I’ve come to Florida, it has deteriorated. Not from abuse, at least not abuse from me. But, some fruit rats apparently found the cloth tasty and chewed a bit of the cloth off a corner of the footrest where it folds to nearly the floor level.

We had a fruit rat problem here about 2 years ago, about the time Hurricane Irma shut down my power for 8 days. Fruit rats are common here. They live in the tops of palm trees and enter the house through the roof/attic/vents. I had the guy who maintains my house for bugs deal with them and he got rid of them in pretty short order. We occasionally see signs of one, and perpetually have rat poison in those little black cases stuck in the corners of cabinets. So that’s when they got so hungry they started eating my couch. Critters are just a problem down here, and bugs. Especially in a 92 year old house that sits on blocks without a cement pad under it. I love my house, but I am so sick of critters. (Though I haven’t seen a palmetto bug in a few weeks, and that’s a good thing. They creep me out as much as the rats. Well, not quite that much.)

So the problem with my couch, aside from the chewed up corner and seat that is worn is that Dan doesn’t like it.  The rats chewing on it creeped him out (and me but not as bad)  He’s much more of a minimalist than I. He is not crazy about big comfy furniture, or lots of stuff on the walls, or chachki etc. I guess when and if we get it together to sell our homes and combinne our households into one, it won’t be coming with me.

I will miss it. It is one of the first things I was able to buy for my own home without any noise from anyone. (Meaning my ex…) I picked out the house, and then went to the furniture store and picked out my couch and my bedroom set on my own, with, again, no noise. I love them both, but in the interest of combining households, I have chosen the bedroom set and let the couch go. Besides Dan has a nice leather couch, with recliners at each end as mine does, but his are electric, making it easier to get in and out of. He has a huge recliner too, so I would guess we would take his living room with us.

I had another two couches in that house. One was a couch and a seat and a half, also covered in microfiber, though it was gray green in color. Those were in my son’s space in the basement, but were bought when I lived in a condo, my transitional space that housed us while we waited for my epic divorce to make it’s way through the supreme court. Both of them pulled out into beds, so my son could have sleep overs, a treat he did not experience much of as a kid with the dysfunction in the house. Anyway, It worked out well. I woke up more than once to find the majority of the high school soccer team sleeping on the couches and/or the floor.

The other couch was in my formal living room. It was my favorite room in the house, with high vaulted ceilings and two skylights, and a big picture window looking out on the front yard. The plants loved that room, with the natural light from the skylights. It was strong and angular. The stairs were on one side, and at the top you could oversee the living room from the hallway which provided a platform with a rail on one side. I had a matching chair, and an old fashioned chaise lounge, padded and comfortable, perfect for reading in that bright sunny room. I rarely used the room for anything else. Sometimes my book club would meet in there, or other groups of friends. Usually it was my family room, and my big comfy sectional that hosted those get togethers.

All in all, a couch has always been where I hung out with the people I loved, at least, those 3 couches. Here in Florida, the sectional is the only one I have, but it is where my writer’s group meets, where my spirit girls meet, where my friends sit when Dan and I play the gongs for them. It’s where he sits in the night when he can’t sleep, it is where I fall asleep watching TV with him. It is where a lot of talking takes place, and laughter. It was a soft place to land a few times too.

A lot of good memories. I will miss that couch.

This was written as part of the Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt.  If you’d like to participate, please go to Linda G. Hills website for a list of the parameters, and other rules, at https://lindaghill.com/2019/08/30/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-31-19/

Another hurricane is slowly approaching. We’ve spent the last couple days preparing, making sure we had food and water and gas and whatever else we might need. Like phone chargers, candles, extension cords, etc. Ironically, we just pulled the generator out of the shed about 10 days ago just to run it, and what do you know, we now will need it to run next week. Most likely, anyway. We might get really lucky and not lose our power but I think that option weighs in “miracle happening” column.

The generator works fine, so we should be able to keep our food cold/frozen. I have a gas stove and oven, and we have a natural gas grill, so cooking is no problem. We will likely have Dan’s family here, his brother and mother, since they are in flood zone A, about a half-mile from the Tampa Bay as the crow flies, and the development is situated on a small lake that is part of the inland wetlands down here, designed to take up the slack on high storm tides. Still, 10’ above sea level is not much, as compared to my “towering” 22’ above in flood zone E. They are predicting a LOT of rain, 15” in 24 hours or so, for the Tampa Bay area, no matter which way the storm goes. So flooding will likely be a problem, which could cause our water supply and sewers to be affected. I sure hope not, but we have supplied ourselves with plenty of drinking water to get through the days to come.

Our boat is in my front yard. We have tied it down securely, removed all the canvas, and can’t do much more than that. My son asked me how we’ll protect it, and I told him if the wind is strong enough to pick up 9000 lbs, then we will let it blow over and take the insurance money, lol. But I doubt that is a worry.

Today, I’ve just been cleaning, doing laundry, trying to prepare for others to be here in the house for a few days. One of my friends came over in the middle of the day, and we shared some wine and talk, it was a nice relief from all the hurricane talk. All the news agencies report on the worst case scenarios for the dramatic effect, and usually nothing lives up to those. Witness the last one, Irma, which was dead-heading for Tampa and took a hard right, saving us from devastating storm tides and terrible winds. Though we still had Cat 1 or 2 winds, and lost our power for a week. And, the storm was so strong that it sucked the water out of Tampa Bay, leaving schools of thousands of fish laying in the sand and mud, unable to keep up with the speed at which the water was emptying out of the bay. The flooding was minimal for that storm, but we are guessing that it could be much worse with this one because the storm is moving so slowly and has so much rain with it.

Ah, the joys of living here. A lot of my close friends from up north have been calling and texting me today, reassuring themselves that we are out of harm’s way, and we are, as much as can be. Feel totally blessed by the awesome friends I have. The east coast, where I have some high school friends, is the one getting hard hit. Just hoping for them it is not as bad as they predict.

I’m heading over to Dan’s for a couple nights. I’m trying to keep this house clean until it fills with people. One bathroom with 4 people is a real pain. But we’ll manage. Love and light to all.

It’s raining. Again. For about the 100^th day in a row. Ok, not really 100 days, but a lot. It rains here in Florida almost every day in July and August. But the sun comes out too, for most of the day. Normally. But this past July, it rained 18 inches. And this week? I don’t know….only that we’ve been under flood watches all week.

It’s a little dreary, to say the least. However, it keeps the temps down so that’s a good thing. But if the sun manages to peek out for 5 minutes, it takes about 1 minute for the air to heat up and the humidity, already at about 82%, turns it into a sauna.

The roads here don’t drain well. Too low and flat, I guess. IDK. All I know is that walking across the street in the commercial district yesterday was tricky, because there were giant puddles in all the crosswalks, and I began sliding around in my flip-flops as I walked down the sidewalk.

I know, bitch bitch bitch. A little whine too. Maybe more than a little. But hey, I’m on a roll, so why stop here?

I usually read Apple News on my phone to get my news. Lately, everything I read, every single story, is chaotic. Some are ridiculously so. From one extreme to the other, so that the important ones, like the melting of all the polar ice caps, and the billions of ice that melted in Greenland in July alone, get lost. And I’m thinking, WTF?  Trump wanting to buy Greenland is a bigger story than the fact that the ice is melting, wildfires are raging in Alaska and Siberia? I mean, what am I missing here? I have to stop reading it every morning before my head explodes.

Bitch, whine, bitch, whine.

This morning I cleaned my coffee maker, because the little “clean” light came on, reminding me that it was time. So, I filled it with water and vinegar, changed the water filter, ran it through and then filled it again with plain water, to make sure the vinegar was all out of it. I pushed the start button and guess what? It wouldn’t go on. I kept pushing it, about 50 times, it finally went on. But this happened the other day too, and I ignored it, writing it off to something I did. This time I didn’t do that. I decided I needed a new coffee maker, before I found myself unable to make coffee in the morning. Because, that would be a disaster. I can’t even talk before I have a cup, except basic cursory words, like yes, no, ok. Poor Dan, who loves to talk and wakes up in conversation, and is telling me jokes as I pad into the kitchen on my arthritic legs and feet. Basically ignoring him until I get a cup. So tomorrow I will have a new coffee maker, for which I paid $71 plux tax on Amazon. It also has a separate thing on it to make hot water, which I think will entice me to make more teas and maybe even hot chocolate once in a while.

Ok, enough of the coffee maker. Boring.

We performed a sound healing on Tuesday. We were happy with our performance, but not the crowd size. Everyone who has come except 2 people have been our friends. The woman who owns the yoga studio where we hold the sound healing does not seem to be bringing in any of her yoga students, but maybe she doesn’t have many. Anyway, we are trying to come up with ways to generate more interest in what we do. It is heartening though, that there are a few people who really get it, and love it.

Well, maybe I’ll go bang on the gong now, and see if I can’t get out of this bitchy whiny mood. Packing up my stuff to head to Dan’s in a little while. Maybe it will stop raining at some point and we can go in the pool or the hot tub over there. Love and light to all.

Note:  I have chosen to write this as though it were fiction because I needed to write something for my writer’s group on Sunday.  But it’s a true story.  Enjoy.  

For a reason that defied her ability to figure it out, she was a little bit nervous about the plane ride home. They had good seats, 5 or 6 rows back. He was sitting next to her, dozing on and off. She had her nose buried in her Kindle, reading “Torch” by Cheryl Strayed.

Normal.

They had eaten before they boarded the plane for the 3 ½ hour flight home.  It would be a long time to sit still. At the last moment, he’d run back to the shopping area of the terminal and bought two inflatable neck pillows. After all, it was 6:30 in Denver, but it would be 12:30 by the time they got to Tampa, and anything that might help them to catch a few zz’s would be welcome.

They’d been to see their kids. His daughter had a new boyfriend. Her son had a not new girlfriend, but she had not met her yet, or her 7-year-old daughter. They had rented a car, and then had to deal with the stress of driving a car they were unfamiliar with, on roads and highways they were unfamiliar with. So, the trip had its stressors on top of the normal stress of traveling 2000 miles to see your only kid.

Now, sitting in their seats while the flight attendant gave the safety talk, she closed her eyes, with the kindle laying in her lap, and quietly let out a long deep sigh. It was done, this fact-finding mission out west, tempered with wanting to see their kids after many months. She talked to her son every day. She knew he was ok, she was part of his life. But, nothing beats a warm, smooky hug from your kid.

Well, almost nothing, she thought glancing at the man dozing next to her, the arm-rest raised between them. She squeezed his hand, he squeezed back, and fell back into his rhythmic half-sleep breathing, somewhere between a deep breath and a snore. The flight attendants sat down, and the plane began to roll. Behind her closed eyes, she was repeating whatever came into her head: Ho’oponopono, the Buddhist Metta Prayer, So Hum, Aham Brahmasmi….over and over until she heard the wheels retract and the plane leveled off  . It was just her way.

She finally opened her kindle, and as she did the lights in the cabin dimmed. Most of the side ports were closed, shades down. It was very dark in the plane, save the lights for the bathroom and up at the flight attendants station.

As she was reading, she became aware of some movement in the dark, in her peripheral vision. She looked up, but nothing there was moving. She went back to the book, and the movement, a formless shadow within the shadow, again edged into her peripheral vision. And again, and again. Everytime she went back to her kindle, she was aware of movements in the dark. What were these? Was she really that tired that she was seeing things? The flight attendants were not walking around, because when they did, the cabin lights were turned on again. But she swore that something was moving in the aisle, a row or two ahead of her.

She decided to close the kindle and focus on the energy of these movements in the dark. She was reminded of the time the 4 spirits came to her during a gong bath.  On the way to this gong bath, years ago, she’d been deep in thought about the 4 spirits, the subject of Sena Jeter Naslund’s book of that name. It was about the 4 little girls who died in the bombing of a Birmingham church in the 1960s. Deep in her meditation that night, she had been out of her body, above it, and had seen 4 formless entities hovering over her as she lay on the floor while the gongs and crystal bowls played. When she was brought out of the meditation, the conversation going on among other participants at the gong bath was about spirits in the room, and how the veil is thin in a church (the gong bath was in the Unity Church), making it easier for the spirits to cross over to this realm. Totally veryifying the experience she’d just had as she lay silently, trying to absorb it all.

This time, though, she was not in a meditative state. She was just reading, and anxious to get home. She didn’t sense anything sinister about these entities any more than she had about the 4 spirits. To the contrary, their energy was peaceful and relaxing. She wondered if maybe they were a response from that realm to her brief but sincere meditation as the plane took off. At least, she thought, she didn’t see anyone or anything wing-walking and waving to her! But she definitely felt there was something, some kind of entity, there, in the plane, hanging around. And she chose to believe it was there to watch out for her, for all the passengers on that plane. It calmed and reassured her.

She finally dozed off, leaning her head on her travel pillow, her hand loosely holding his hand as he continued to snore softly.

Eventually, the plane landed, a nice soft landing. No bouncing the full plane and shaking people in the dark. It was 12:30 in the morning, and they were home safe and sound.

Their bags took forever to come around on the belt, but they finally did. Then they managed to find the Uber driver who would take them home. She was taken aback by the smell of cigarettes in the car, which they would have to endure for the ride home. Luckily, it was only about a 20 minute ride from the airport. It was about 1:30 AM by now, and the streets of St. Pete were deserted.

It was good to be home.

Hey folks! I’ve not been around much, which seems to be the new normal for me. I still love writing but have tempered it. I think I have too many irons in the fire. Sound healing, the boat, writing, making jewelry (which I’m doing less of than writing). Tomorrow I will add some traveling to that, as Dan and I head to Denver to see our respective kids. His daughter lives 12 miles from my son. Very convenient.

It will be a short visit, 5 days. We’re staying at his daughter’s, who has the room. We’re renting a car and I’ll be spending most of the time with my son and Dan with his daughter, though we will have a couple dinners, etc with each others families.

I’m excited for the obvious reason that I haven’t seen my son in almost a year. He has had a gf for the last 2 years, with whom he lives and with her 7 year old daughter. He loves that little girl, who calls him Dad. The thing is, I have not met them. He’s come to visit me alone, and I haven’t been out there since I moved here. So, I’m very anxious to meet them. He’s very proud of this little family, and their home.

Dan’s daughter has a new boyfriend who Dan has not yet met. And she has his two grandsons, ages 7 and 9, and it’s always fun to spend time with them. Exhausting, but fun. She also has a new house (new to her) so he’s looking forward to seeing that as well.

We’re all packed, we have the Uber scheduled to pick us up early tomorrow morning and we will be off.

If we could just get there without flying.

We will have a sound healing to perform on August 13, which will be good timing. We found a great venue to use to do it once tourist season starts up in the fall. This little break will be good for us, we got a little saturated with gongs etc, in the 2 months we prepped.

We have done a little simplifying of our lives though. We’ve hauled the boat and brought it home, and have given up our slip at the marina. Seemed crazy to pay for a slip for it, since it’s too hard to go boating here in the summer. You can’t sit outside here in the summer it’s just ridiculously hot, or else it’s monsooning. And stuff grows on the boat so quickly, that we were paying a diver to clean it every 2 weeks. The boat is capable of doing 35 mph. After 2 weeks in the slip it barely breaks 10 mph. We are also a little disappointed that there is no social life down at the marina. It’s a different world than I experienced up north, and while the water here is beautiful, it isn’t what we expected. Boating is losing it’s glow for us down here. I imagine that wi

We’re seriously looking to consolidate our homes into one, watching the real estate market here, and beginning to get things done to make each of our houses salable. It will require a lot of planning and hassle, but is the only thing that makes sense right now. Not to be paying 2 electric bills, 2 cable bills, 2 property tax bills.

So life changes, things and circumstances change. Dan and I seem to weather the storms well. We enjoy each other’s company and pretty much feel the same about most things. Plus neither of us feels the need to demand much of the other. We both have our lives, they blend well. Life is good. I’m off to make final packing preparations. Love and light to all.