Tag: florida

A Place in the World

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Our grandchildren, all three of them, came to visit! We have two sons and our younger has one child (a boy) and our oldest has a boy and a girl. The cousins don’t live anywhere close to the same state so it’s a thrill for them to see each other. The boys instantly click like best friends no matter how much time has gone by (Covid!) since they saw each other last, maybe because they are only about a year apart. “Our” little girl is the youngest and she is very sweet. Her favorite color is pink and she asks me to read to her and sit by her as she paints pictures and likes to keep her hands clean. She’s brave, too, and follows the boys in their adventures. They all put on wetsuits and snorkels and swam with manatees the other day.

It was a lovely time. If we all had lived in Michigan, Al and I never would have moved to Florida. As it is, we’ll visit them and they’ll visit us. As it is, I have found my place in the world. Just lucky it clicked for Al too. And the kids come here to Florida where most of their grandparents are snowbirds. We all like to travel. Everyone is excited for the new house…they have seen pictures. They missed seeing the real thing by less than a month. Still waiting on the deal to close. I’ll say more then.

I have been so happy. As I’ve said before, it’s always felt like home when I’m in Florida. I thought of it longingly all my years in Michigan. But my children were born and raised in the north and for that matter so was I, thus I didn’t dwell on what I couldn’t have. Palm trees! Sunsets! Flowers full of vibrant color and large as dinner plates! Then, as I got older, it started to seem that maybe after all I would have that dream of my heart. But I could never entirely believe it. It seemed like too much. Yet…the kids had moved far away. Al was cautiously game. We found ourselves making a plan and taking steps. Slowwww steps.

I think I can stop asking him if he’s really sure he wants to live here…because we already are. We found our place in the world. Yes, we had to wait until Al retired…but it is never too late to do what your heart has always longed for.

Story Hunting

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We’ve been house hunting since we came to Florida. Wow, prices have sky-rocketed. But you probably knew that. It didn’t help us out as St Pete seems to be a new favorite of millionaires. So we ventured south even though my dad says “the further south you go, the more the prices rise.” I don’t know. Sarasota was a little less pricey and the homes were a bit newer. Not new enough. Al wants something built in this century. We’d been looking a couple months when we hit the jackpot. Everything (almost) on our long wish list. Right price. Ditto square footage.

Also, the neighborhood comes with a story. I just finished Vanderbilt by Anderson Cooper and when I looked up the area online I found that the first rich Vanderbilt, first American millionaire in fact, had left a vast fortune to his heirs. His two sons bought a piece of land in Florida and fixed it up as a cattle ranch. They were the last Vanderbilts to add to the fortune of their father without squandering it all. I’m not sure what happened to the cattle ranch but it’s now a lovely little town laid out like Detroit (a wheel) and when someone digs for a new home, you can still smell the cow dung.

I’ve been worrying about Jane. When I move from St Pete, what does Jane do? I have sprung a wealth of ideas from that one question and none of them have to do with changing my website or Jane’s address. This is the first time in a long time my mind is forming book 3 before book 2 is done. This is a good sign. I’m relieved. It’s good to see the shadows of new work down the road. I may even have found a new writing room in which to get it done.

I’ll keep you posted!

Blogging Blues

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Ain’t Got No Home

We do have a little condo in Florida, but this stuff won’t fit into it. So it’s in storage until we find our forever dream home. As usual, Al loaded more boxes than me. I have 7 boxes of books, all the rest are things like wires and plugs and stereo/electroic stuff. It’s fine, I am looking forward to having a turntable and records again. In the first Jane in St Pete book, she decides to buy herself a turntable and vinyl records. So far in Jane 2.0 (100+ pages) she has not mentioned music once. Back to Al, he has decided, with my encouragement, not to sell his motorcycle, but it’s stored elsewhere. He needs to work on it. A lot. And I’ll work on my book.

This should be a happy exciting time for us but I am too keyed up and Al is not at his best when he is planning two vacations at once. We finished booking the short trip to Traverse City, but the long one to Seattle is half done. The internet, at least the part of it that run hotels and Airbnb, is having issues this morning. So we have our plane tickets and our main place booked (Jimi Hendrix House–or something Jimi Hendrix). Did you know Jimi was born and raised in Seattle? So we will pay tribute while there. We plan to stay on Bainbridge Island for a few days but that’s when the internet went boom. Or the travel parts of it. I called the island on the phone, someone took my number, told me their internet is down, and they’d call me back. Al was having the same problem.

Eventually, Al and I had words and I took a pill. I had the Bainbridge Island place all set and he wouldn’t like me press “book” because he is a control freak and also says I get things wrong sometimes. Both those things are true but I have booked lots of vacations. Saw my final doctor yesterday and I asked if I might need to see a therapist of some sort because I have a new phobia (walking down stairs) and it is accompanied by a vision of me lying crumpled at the bottom step, she immediately said YES. And she changed around my meds meanwhile, as I have no time to find a shrink in Michigan. I will find someone in Florida or maybe this new pill she gave me will be the magic one. I will be fine. I have my trusty Xanax, it’s just got side effects I’m not fond of, but it works really well for panic attacks and even everyday anxiety.

We are mostly done here. The storage area is set except Al’s giant toolbox. The things we are taking in car to Florida are mostly packed. And we almost have our second leg of the Grandchildren Tour booked. We are not staying for any length of time in Florida in August. 1. Go see Ben 2. Close on house 3. Drive to Florida 4. Fly to Seattle 5. Have a fun relaxing time. That’s the entire plan. Except I will bring a pen and notebook and write when I can. I’ll have my laptop too for blogging which I feel I’m neglecting horribly. I used to do a faithful #MondayBlogs and if not Monday I’d hit up #TuesdayBookBlog. I have no hashtag for this thwarted Thursday.

Starting Over

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In writing and in life, I am ready for what’s next. Our Michigan house is shiny clean and ready to be sold. Since leaving Florida, we have been non-stop cleaning, inside and out. We have hired a realtor and an estate sale team because…we are not taking much. I am taking about 100 of my thousand or so books, some art, family photos, and my granny’s hope chest. Also everything to do with the WIP. I have what may well be my last writers’ meeting (in Michigan) tomorrow. I have ideas for the book, so I have a fresh writing pad and of course all my electronics go wherever I do.

We have our Florida condo, and it’s small, but we love almost everything about it. So we have a place to land once we sell this place. We’re hoping for a final summer in Michigan, and I’m hoping most of it will be in Traverse City. I’d also like to visit Seattle before we head down to Florida, because hugs are officially okay again. I did see my grandson Ben and yes I hugged him! But we have not seen our Seattle family except on FaceTime in 19 months! Our community here in Michigan had the first summer gazebo party this week, maybe 20 people, no masks, and I hugged with abandon! I caught up with a neighbor here who has a place right where we want to be in Florida!!! I knew that, but I forgot.

Covid turned the lights off, but they’re back on and I’m feeling so much better. Some weird things were going on inside me at the end of the lockdown, like I didn’t want to engage on social media. I’ve never been one for phone calls, and am amazed when friends will say they talk to their mom every day at least once on the phone. Or they call their kids every day. I am always worried that I’ll be interrupting somebody. Especially my sons because when I was their age with kids, work, spouse, and friends, my time was planned down to the minute. I lost a few people who might have become friends because I had to cut conversations short. It was dinner time, I was late for class, or writing. And I thought, you know what, if they don’t understand, we shouldn’t be friends anyway.

I have not been blogging as much as I used to…I believe I’ve said it all before. But this next chapter is new, so maybe I’ll soon have fresh gossip or news or both. Getting together with friends again feels like a warm bath after being caught out in the snow. During Covid, all I did was read and write. And shop on Amazon. I want a few things, for example all my tech is old. I’m trying to wait until the computer industry finds a way to banish the foreign hackers. Not that I’m keeping any state secrets, just moving on, literally.

Writing on the Run

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This is just one of the many positions I found my new writing desk in as we tried to figure out where we could put it while the kids were here. They’re coming tonight! I’m excited! When we bought the desk, we didn’t expect anyone would come down this year because of Covid. But everybody got shots in arms quicker than we knew and they are not afraid to fly! (I will wait to fly myself until full bar service is restored.) My six year old grandson is bringing his parents and we have a fold out twin bed for him plus the queen-sized bed. The room is small and it just fits those beds, a night table and a suitcase stand. There’s a corner television.

We’re leaving for Michigan soon after they leave, so I had already packed my current work in progress and other files until we’re back in Michigan. We just needed to move the desk from the guest room as it was in the only spot I could fold out my grandson’s bed. So first we tried to put it in our bedroom. But it was a little too long for the wall. I knew at least one of us would run into the sticking out sharp corner in the middle of the night. So Al positioned it like this until we could move a few things around in the living room. We decided it would stay in the living room, because it’s really heavy, and also I really loved that desk because of the large work surface.

Loved, past tense. Al had moved it within a few feet of the space I’d cleared for the now empty desk. My grandson could do his drawing there! I had all the supplies he needed: art paper, markers, stickers…then one of the sides cracked. It was a pretty sturdy desk, especially the expansive wood top. Had a nice subtle curve to it. It would have looked nice. But the sides weren’t super strong. Al could have fixed it but we had ten million things to do before the kids came in and also he just didn’t feel like it. We’d bought it for $100 at our favorite consignment shop, so it was not a great loss. It was one of those pieces of furniture you can break down pretty easily and that’s what he did.

I moved Ben’s art supplies to the coffee table:) But we probably won’t be home much. He can’t wait to go to the beach. And also the dinosaur park in Plant City, where they have over a hundred life-sized and realistically painted dinosaurs, which are his favorite. I’m so excited for my family to be here and then when they leave I can’t wait to get home to Michigan, where I can bring out my book-in-process again. It still needs a lot of work.

We have another big project waiting for us back in Michigan, so I’m not sure how many pages I’ll stack upon the hundred or so already finished. Although I do have an intact desk in Michigan, in fact, a very nice writing room I really love, there. If I could bring it to Florida, I would.