Pretty in pink, and I'm no southerner

We had an adventure in southern culture on Monday.

We live near the main road that goes west into Fort Myers. Much of the land along the road is full of cows and waiting to be developed. Since it is in the works to be developed someday, the smart road workers created turnoffs to be used someday to go somewhere. For now these turnoffs are about 50 long, like little driveways off the main road that go to nowhere. On weekends you can find all sorts of goodies for sale on these turnoffs-- in the winter you can find plants, trees, bushes, etc., since the winter is planting season. No one asks where the seller got his goods- for all I know he horked them from a jobsite and is making some side cash. Or you can buy Florida strawberries-- they're beautiful, bright red, and beckon as you drive down the road. But they're really tart. Lately I've seen the Jerky man around quite a bit, advertising a selection of THE...WORLD'S...BEST...JERKY, as each sign says. Since it has gotten warmer I've seen nearly complete farmer's markets offering watermelons, "lopes", and Georgia peaches. All of these things tempt my Farmer's Market loving self to stop and give a dollar to the grassroots guy instead of The Man at super-chain-grocer. But none has tempted me more than Todd the Boiled Peanuts Man. Todd the Boiled Peanuts Man has his own truck. Todd the Boiled Peanuts Man has his own trailer, with a real printed sign (not hand painted!) that reads, "Boiled Peanuts Hand Made By Todd." Now up until Monday I've passed Todd without stopping, but Monday I was in an adventurous mood. Heck, I thought, I don't know what Boiled Peanuts are, but if they're $3 or two for $5, they must be good. How could you mess up peanuts?

So we stopped and parted with $5 (because two for $5, what a deal!) Todd reached into the big vats (he had two large kettle looking things on the trailer) and scooped out enough boiled peanuts to fill two 32-oz styrofoam cups. Hmph, I thought. Usually peanuts come in a bag or something. As he handed the bag to us he was careful to twist the top quite a few times, perhaps to seal in the peanutty goodness. I could see some drips in the bag. Hmph, I thought. Peanuts are usually dry. Hmph, I thought a second later as the twisted bag began to un-twist. Peanuts don't usually smell like stewed vegetables. I quickly twisted the top again to stop the gagging.

We decided in the two-minute trip home that the peanuts would not be coming into the house. Brad wasn't so keen on smelling up the garage, either, but since it was raining he conceded. I went inside to do some quick internet research on How To Eat Boiled Peanuts. What I found didn't encourage me. Boiled peanuts are green peanuts boiled in salt water for a while. Various comments online taught me that some people break open the shell and slurp the peanut and salt water out, while other people put the whole peanut in their mouth, break it open and then spit out the shell. Hmph. I've never slurped peanuts before. One other comment, apparently from a fellow Yankee, said something like this. "Boiled peanuts are an acquired taste. People said once you try it, you'll like it. Well, I don't think trying things is the answer. I tried them. I also tried a serious car accident, a hysterectomy, and a divorce, but trying them didn't make me want to do them again."

So we tried them. First of all, the smell is unforgettable. Think ashtray-left-out-in-the-rain, mixed with stewed vegetables-- lots of eau de carrot, some brussel sprout, some broccoli. Then the visual. Seriously, they look like little poops.

I broke one open, not willing to slurp. I tried to pick up a peanut but I squeezed it too hard and it split and fell on the floor. Brad and I both made a face and looked at each other, wondering if we were actually going to go through with it. Then, all of a sudden, Brad picked up the other peanut and popped it in his mouth. And then made a really bad face. "Oh, this is just bad," he said. "You have to try it." I have to try it? With that glowing review how could I refuse? I tried it, and then we ran inside to get a frozen mini Twix to get the taste out of our mouth. And a second Twix.


After we recovered from the vileness, we decided that the poops were not going to sit in our garage for two days until trash day. Instead they were going to live in our Secondary Storage Facility, otherwise known as the vacant lot across the street. That's me giving them a little flying lesson.


On a happier note, later last night I finally made a purse! The stiffener worked great, but I couldn't get the zipper to work out. Since I don't have a pattern I'm just making it up as I go along, and unlike this fine computer, I can't easily go back and insert a step without undoing a lot of tedious stitches. So the first purse went in El Garbagio. I felt wasteful until Mom reminded me that it was a $7 lesson, not $7 wasted. Here is my little pink wonder. The print reminds me of the peonies that I love so dearly.


I even lined it in pink fabric-- so cute-- and put in two pockets. One for sunglasses and keys, one for a cell phone. I need to work on the location of the pockets, though. They're a little too far down.



That's all for now! Tomorrow is our first small group meeting at our house. I'm excited!

We're your biggest fan

It's the weekend again, and again we've been busy. Friday night was family night and it was little Chase's fourth birthday party! We brought the grill over to Jeff and Shelley's and grilled burgers and hot dogs and had a great dinner that Shelley arranged. The neighborhood kids came over shortly after dinner-- the three kids from next door 13 years old, 9, and 6, the triplets from down the street - 6 i think, and a little girl who has just moved in and doesn't speak a lot of English. These in addition to Bethany (6), Chase (4), and Kena (almost 2) made for a riotous time. It was fantastic impetus to refill my birth control prescription. Sorry Mom.

The neighborhood kids were relatively well behaved except for one little manipulative triplet who kept trying to talk Chase into letting him play with the awesome remote control car we gave Chase. He threatened not to be his friend anymore if Chase didn't hand it over. Argh. Where do kids learn to be so mean? Chase has a really giving, sweet spirit and would share if it wasn't the first three minutes of owning the thing on his own birthday!!! Brad promptly took the car away while Ralph whispered to Chase that they'll get it back out when the other kids are gone.

And speaking of the car, the thing is sweet. Brad got a great deal on it-- so good that he bought one for himself. And we got to play with it for a bit on Friday night before heading to the party. It has blue lights underneath, headlights and everything. You can make it go forward and backward and turn right and left. Brad worked out a few tricks with it to make it spin around, etc., so he taught me how to do that and we had more fun than it sounds like on paper.

Below is the reason we had to leave Jeff and Shelley's. They have a sweet dog, Lucy, who loves to get her fur in my eyes somehow. The other day I was wearing shorts and had to leave because my legs got welts from sitting on the couch. I am so dang allergic to pets it's ridiculous. And Shelley and Jeff keep the house superduper clean. I don't fault them in the least. If it's an allergen, it WILL find my eyes.


Saturday was work day over at Beth and Rico's new house!!! They finally got to close and move in!!! It was supposed to be finished in January, so actually getting to move in was cause for celebration. We spent Saturday installing SIX ceiling fans and three sets of blinds. We're pros at ceiling fans now and we really enjoy working together and have no conflict except when Brad refuses to turn off the electricity. He claims he's impervious to it, but when he says "That was a good one!" I know better and get scared. Men and their Superman ideas. :)

Before we went to the new house we stopped to pick up some breakfast for the gang. We wanted to go to Dunkin Donuts or something like that-- there's a new Dunkin opening near the Walmart, but it wasn't open yet. So we stopped at the only other bakery Google Local found for us-- a Cuban bakery next door to Papa John's that I'd been wanting to try out anyway. So we stopped in there and picked up a few pastries. It's a cute mom and pop place where seldom is heard an English word, but the workers are friendly all day. Our choices were puffed pastry with red guava jelly, puffed pastry with guave and cheese, puffed pastry with cheese, puffed pastry with coconut, or puffed pastry with "meat". We got a few of the first three (no meat for us) and a coconut one and then stopped by Publix grocery to get some standard glazed donuts for the less, ahem, adventurous among us. Turns out the glazed were a big hit as guava is just kind of weird. Pretty tasty, but still weird. It was fun to try a new place, though.

Saturday night we went to PF Changs down in Naples where we met up with Kubby and Karina. Kubby (Jacob) is the drummer in the band at church and he and Brad have hit it off (and have received numerous compliments about how good they sound together!). We had Kubby and Karina over to our house for dinner a few months back when they were dating, and now they're engaged! They're a great couple with God's fingerprints all over them, and we loved going out with them to celebrate their engagement. Afterward we went over and saw their new apartment which Kubby will live in until the wedding in October. It was fun to remember our first place and the exciting firsts surrounding it-- first shopping trip, first purchases, decorating decisions, etc.

Today we went to the early service as we knew our neighbors would be going as well. One really great thing about Summit is its outreach focus-- that's been a good nudge for us. Brad invited our neighbor a few weeks back and he said he was interested, that there are many names for the same god, and he's interested in pursuing it. We weren't sure if we'd see him and the family at church any time, but he came by yesterday to let us know he'd be there today! And there all five of them were! He and his wife have three very well-behaved and respectful kids-- 3rd grade, 4th grade, and 5th grade. They're really nice people and we're glad to get to know them. Anyhow, wouldn't you know, the first week they come to a new church, the sermon is on the wickedness of the heart. Oh dear, I thought. This is definitely NOT unchurched-person-friendly. But I was wrong! Not only did Jordan do an amazing job with the topic, God showed up and touched our neighbor's heart! Afterward we got to talk with them, and Andy said he was moved to tears during worship, that he really liked it and that they'd be back! And next Sunday is Porn Sunday, said Jordan, where we'll talk about the roots and fruit of a lustful heart. I'm thrilled they're talking about it, especially after the Dateline Child Pornography stings here in Fort Myers in the last few weeks. I'm glad that they're catching people who need to be accountable for their actions, but the shaming that goes on is just dreadful and counterproductive. We watched one week of Dateline and it was all I could handle! I kept thinking, these poor men need God's love and grace to heal their hearts, not the world's shame and guilt! Don't get me started on that one. Anyway, I'm just thrilled that God's working in the heart of our neighbors and that we get to be used in that work.

This afternoon we went back over to the new house to finish the blinds and then we came home and had leftovers (when making taco salad make sure you heat the taco meat all the way up past lukewarm before adding it to the lettuce, because there's no going back) that were eh and watched meaningful, er, stupid television about the most shocking celebrity breakups. Then we went outside to scrub down the metal table we sanded a few weeks back. While we were out there we saw a bit of lightning off in the distance. The clouds this morning looked like summer skies here-- the winter skies are clear and blue with scant clouds, but the summer skies have lots of clouds and are dramatic and just breathtaking all day long. We had a summer sky this morning, with one little raincloud off in the distance dropping a bunch of rain. Tonight the sky was still cloudy here and there, and the lightning began around 8:30 p.m. Brad and I pulled out our camp chairs and sat on the driveway watching the show for about two hours. It was beyond magnificent. The temperature was about 75 with not much breeze, and there was lightning going off about 3/4 of the way around us-- in front, on the east, on the south, and a little on the south west. About 15 minutes ago it started sprinkling so we came in. What an amazing time we had out there watching the power of the lightning bolts-- the calm of living in a slightly rural area with no light or sound pollution, perfect temperature-- it was the perfect ending to the weekend.

And we get a bonus day! Tomorrow we're going to Sears to use some gift cards Brad has stashed from birthday and Christmas. We also hope to paint that table and get it done so I can have a desk in the office.

Here's a picture of a sunset we took the other day from our driveway. The summer skies here are just unbeatable. Come see for yourself someday.


Hope your Memorial Day is restful and fun!

One hour later...

Just got cleaned up. LOVE the new maid in the shower-- we bought one of those gadgets they're marketing now, where you hang the thing from the showerhead and hit the button, and it sprays the whole shower with cleaning mist. LOVE it. I scrubbed that shower down-- it's like 5 by 5 feet!-- two Sundays ago and was exhausted the rest of the day. Call me a sucker, but the marketing worked for me. And the thing works! The shower is still sparkly clean!

I promised some pictures a while ago, and I'm behind. Here are some pix. This first two are of the Mother's Day dinner table.



Being the aunt and uncle we are, we keep an eye out for fun things for the nieces and nephew. We found these fun plastic trays and sippy cups at Walmart for about a dollar apiece. Each kid has his or her own color of tray and bug sippy cup thing. SO fun.


And here are two shots of the purse I made. The lighting is bad on one of the shots, but you can see the pocket inside. :)




It took a lot of rigging to get it to stand up straight. I haven't had a chance to make one with the new really stiff interfacing. Hopefully tonight unless I get the urge to paint the guest room.

And now for some really old pix-- a few weeks ago we went on a sunset cruise on our weekly date night. The cruises are about an hour and a half long, with free champagne and dolphin sightings. It was a wonderful way to spend an evening-- sooo relaxing.

We do more before noon than most people do all day...?

It's 11:20 a.m. on Saturday and already we've accomplished a fair bit. I woke up with some drive, feeling bad about all those peppers and onions I bought a week ago with the intention to cut up and freeze... they were still sitting in the fridge this morning, un-cut-up. It makes mealtime so much easier when I can reach in and get a handful of onion slices or pepper chunks instead of hauling out the knife and cutting board, etc. I also bought a pound of ground turkey with the intention to make breakfast sausage out of it... still sitting in the fridge. It had been in the freezed until Weds or so, so I know it's still good.

So I woke up, found a recipe for sausage patties, made nine of them from the pound of turkey while cutting up six peppers and ten onions! The peppers are sitting in the freezer on a cookie sheet, and the onions were cut up-- five diced, five sliced-- and are in freezer bags freezing. The sausage was made and all cooked up-- one pound of ground turkey, some sage, some ginger, salt, pepper, paprika, maybe some cayenne next time-- and all but two patties are in the fridge. I also made some pancakes and had me a really nice breakfast! The sausage came out well-- better than my last attempt a few years ago which turned out rather bland. The ginger really makes a big difference. I also cleaned up the kitchen, scoured the cooktop, and tried to get the smudges off the stainless steel fridge, to little avail. Not bad for 11:20 a.m.

But Brad wins the prize. Not only did he go out to the Hess station to get some milk after realizing that ours was bad, but he has mowed the yard and is presently trimming it all up. That's all well and good, but his greatest accomplishment was hitting a snake with the mower, protecting our home from the horrid slithery things. He came in for a quick sip between mowing and trimming to tell me about it-- said it was blue, black, and greenish, but couldn't tell me how big it had been. I guess the mower made quick work of chopping it up. Sorry to be vulgar, but oh, how I love chopped snakes over live ones. My husband, my hero.

Last night we were treated to a fantastic event-- a marathon of That 70's Show. We had thought about renting a movie but went home to see what was on the tube-- maybe a good Modern Marvels episode? Maybe some Mythbusters? Oh, imagine our joy as we found That 70's Show! This happened right about 7 p.m. Seven thirty brought another episode, which is normal-- it's always on from 7 to 8. But then at 8, another came one. And then another. And another. All episodes we hadn't seen before! (That's hard to find!) About 9:00 brother-in-law Jeff came over to borrow our ladder-- they're painting over there and need to reach the high places. He and Brad talked for a while about what we're going to do about a generator for the 3 families (ours, Jeff and Shelley, Beth and Rico) for the hurricane season. Tax-free week begins tomorrow morning-- no tax on hurricane supplies up to $1000. Turns out a decent sized one costs somewhere around $2500, including a proper connection and the ability to run an air conditioner. We might all pitch in, as much as I'd rather buy a new sofa or rug. I'll get over it, and I appreciate the guys' thoughtfulness.

We turned off the tv around 11 when the episodes started repeating themselves. Today we plan to head down to Bonita and drop off Brad's mother's day present to Chris (a shelf for their tv that he made), maybe some Gatsby's pizza, we're going to pick up some paint for the guest room and maybe prep for it tonight.

That's all for now. Hope your Saturday is just great.

Back o' my neck gettin' dirt and gritty...

Yes, it's hot in Florida, but what else is new? It has been in the high 80's to 90's for the past few weeks, and we're ok with that. But the Hot Time, Summer in the City moment of the week comes to us courtesy of Lennox, the manufacturer of the broken air conditioner outside my place of work. It went out yesterday around noon and the part isn't going to be here for 3 to 5 days. By the end of the day yesterday it was about 85 inside, and today it's just muggy. We're thankful to have this day of rain, which is soooo necessary, and it's also bringing down the temperature. But I pretty much need a full scuba setup to breathe in here. It's almost 1 p.m. and I'm leaving around 1. Everyone else has gone, and I'm just waiting for Brad to pick me up-- his car is being worked on for a strange noise it makes when the wheel is turned all the way. Still under warranty, thankfully, so I think our bank account hemorrage that we had with the Mercedes is over.

In other news, we had a smashing weekend. I've been making purses as I think I've mentioned before. Sewing and creating is just so darn satisfying for me! I've had a break from it (not voluntarily, just busy and cramped for space) since living in Baltimore, almost 4 years, and I'm loving having time to nurture this side of me. I'm looking up pictures of purses online, creating my own patterns, and then creating the bag from some cute chic fabric I got at Joann Fabrics. The first bag is much too floppy, so I took it in to the store and they introduced me to the world of interfacing-- stiffer fabric you iron onto other fabric to stiffen it. The first grade of stiffener didn't cut it, so I went back on Saturday to get the highest grade you can get, short of makeshift solutions (I did entertain the idea of inserting pieces of 3-ring-binder, cutting off the covers and using parts of those to keep the thing from flopping over.) I promise to post the picture I took of the floppy purse. I have it at home.

So on Saturday we got the stiffer interfacing, took care of some things around the house, and planned for Mothers Day at our house. We were all going to go out to brunch but there was some confusion as to who was going to spearhead that, so with no reservations made we volunteered to host. And it was magnificent. The menu was super easy-- roast in the crock pot with onion soup mix and cream of mushroom soup and carrot, mashed potatoes from the (gasp!) box with butter, garlic, sour cream, and cream cheese thrown in, spread into a 9 by 13 and sprinkled with paprika for eye-appeal, and green bean casserole with the mushrooms strained out! I love that casserole, but I hate mushrooms, so I did my best to pluck them out of the soup I put in with the roast. Did a decent job, but then I got smart and diluted the soup with the milk and strained it for the green bean casserole. Voila! Yummy taste, no fungus! We also had rolls and salad and Beth and Rico brought two delish pies for dessert. It was relatively easy, especially the potatoes from the box, and compliments abounded.

But the food wasn't all of the fun. We also set up the tables to be one long table in our living room, so everyone could sit together. When we all get together there are 8 adults and 3 kids-- who has a table big enough? So we all end up eating all over-- at the kitchen table, on the lanai, on the couch on tv trays, etc. Totally well and good, but for a special occasion, I really wanted us all to be at the table. So Brad scoured the big table and got the layers of dirt and dust off of it, brought it in, and then also brought over the kitchen table. We got out linen table cloths and napkins, two forks even, stemmed glasses, etc., and it was just a ball. I wanted Chris to feel honored and I think she did. It was a blast. And when everyone left Brad and I crashed for a long winter's nap.

On Saturday night we ran a marathon of errands-- to Joann to get the interfacing, also to Ada's, a natural grocery like Whole Foods that has a waterfall inside and coi pond, and on Saturdays has lots of things set out to try-- samples, I guess you'd call them. And a big ROOM of bulk foods- 25 kinds of granola, lots of rices, flours, nuts, sugars, coffees, you name it. And you can sample stuff in there, too! We'll be back. We also went to Bed Bath and Beyond and got some fun brown velvet pillows to go on the church pew we have in the living room. The pew is from my early days-- Mom and Dad got that when I was a wee one and it has been in their house ever since. Dad gave it to us when we moved down here and we love it. But it doesn't love our be-hinds. It's not so comfy, so we were thrilled to find perfectly sized cushions on sale for $10 apiece.

So that was our weekend, pretty much. Went to early church in order to get ready for lunch, and then napped for the afternoon. We ended the evening with some meaninful reflective time where we mulled over the problems of the world and solved most of them. Er, actually we watched the E! True Hollywood Story of Simon Cowell's life (judge from American Idol).

And one last thing- happy news from Jamie of Room In Roppongi- Jamie delivered a baby girl early Saturday morning! See a picture of squeezable Izumi on her blog!

What's My Caption, Round 2

Caption me, and take me in your arms, Caption me, I want your tender charms, 'Cause I'm lonely and I'm blue, I need you and your love too, come on and caption me!

(Click on it for better detail.)

Safe, but a little shaken and stirred

I'm sorry to say I don't have energy to tell more of the story, but the short version is that there were brushfires in Lehigh Acres this weekend, the worst ever. We were about 3 miles from the closest edge and had no damage whatsoever. Here are pictures we took as we drove around town on Saturday and Sunday. As of Monday morning 80% of the fires are out.

I came home from shopping on Saturday afternoon around 4:30 p.m. As I got closer to Lehigh I saw a huge cloud of smoke rising from the center of town. Here is the shot from our driveway. Brad and I decided to go get a better look.


We went about three miles east and stopped just short of the canal by Sunshine Boulevard. The smoke was thick and we saw flames across the street. If you look just below and to the left of the flagpole you can see some flames. But there were more fires, as was evident by the much larger cloud of smoke. We decided to head east to get to the other side of the fire.


As we headed east we came upon a restaurant that backs up to a canal. We saw active smoke behind the restaurant and checked it out. Behind the restaurant was about 50 feet of dry grass (we've been in a drought), then a 15 foot deep canal about 30 feet wide, then more grass, then a forest area. The trees in the forest were burning, and then the fire came forward toward us. The grass across the canal caught fire.


As the grass burned out the bushes behind became on fire and flared up. This is the view from the front seat of the car.


Shortly after, the fire jumped the canal and began burning the grass on our side. Within a few minutes the cops came and shooed us out of the parking lot.

I'll tell more later-- here are the rest of my pics for now.