My Newest Friends
Welcome! Welcome!
We ordered the washer and dryer almost a month ago, but because of a huge energy star promotion, there was a backlog, and it took forever to get them.
In the meantime, our household goods from storage – 12 years of storage – arrived, and almost everything we are keeping needs to be cleaned.
We had two old featherbeds from the former East Germany that had a little mildew on them. I almost threw them away, but I thought since I am going to throw them away, I might as well see if they could be saved. I put them in (one at a time; they are each too big to be put in together) on a cycle called “sanitize” and then dried them on high and . . . they came out perfect! Wooo HOOOO!
As you can see, even though I have done many loads, I still have a ways to go:
No, not the brass pot; it is not going in the washer. It needs to have a handle put back on, so it is waiting there with other low-priority projects for me to get around to it. 🙂 Isn’t this a great laundry room?
Stamping Our Hunger
We are still getting used to a lot of things about living once again in our own country, but one thing we know we love is the open hearted spirit of giving in the USA. Every week people are raising funds to help those in need, or to raise awareness of a health issue, etc.
This week, on Saturday, the mail carriers sponsored a food drive for the local food pantry. Early in the week, they delivered flyers and a sack to each house on their route, asking us for donations of food to be placed on the doorsteps on Saturday. They even mentioned foods and items most needed, so it was easy.
What I cannot imagine is how they got all the donations into one mail truck. I can imagine it was enormously successful. When I worked in fund raising, the first thing I learned is that people will give generously if you make it easy for them – that’s why when you get a request for donations, you get a form, a self-addressed envelope, and sometimes it even has a stamp on it.
So how much easier does it get than having a bag provided and just filling it? Putting it outside your own door, knowing it will be collected? God bless the men and women who had to trundle all those sacks out to the trucks, and then from the trucks to the food pantry! God bless the work of their hands!
By the way, when you are asked to give, here are some things that people who use food pantries often need:
rice
peanut butter
tuna fish
canned or powdered milk
disposable diapers
canned meats
And something most people don’t think of: dog food, cat food for the family pet
Unexpected and Delightful – Dancing Outbreak
My Kuwait friend sent me this – it delighted my day! I hope you love it as much as I do – wouldn’t you love to be there when one of these events happen?
I told her I would love to see this in Kuwait! A group who dances, unexpectedly, here and there . . . even at a traffic light. Can you see the look on people’s faces? Some would get it, and share the joy. Some would think that men and women dancing together is the end of the moral world as we know it, LLLOOOLLL! A little outbreak of high spirits might be a good thing now and then . . . 😉
Oil Spill Moving Towards Land
You can follow the oil spill movement on this interactive map from usatoday.com
There are lots of meetings. The answer to most questions is the same “I don’t know.” “We don’t know.” Fishing has been banned in the Gulf areas where the oil spill may have effect.
The Shrimp Basket
Even though The Shrimp Basket has specials like 25 cent oysters all day on Tuesdays, and even though the first time, I really did order the steamed shrimp, it is hard to walk into the Shrimp Basket and not to order something fried.
I can go for years most of the time and never eat anything deep fried. It just isn’t that important to me. I can see that living in Pensacola, it is going to be a serious challenge, because so much is deep fried, and holy tomole, it all smells so good. Fried onion rings. Fried fish. Fried shrimp. Fried seafood platters. Fried grouper sandwiches. Stop! Stop! You’re killing me!
Pensacola is a real military town, and loves their Blue Angels, the Navy stunt flying team. The Blue Angels practice on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, and have autograph signings after the practice and anyone in Pensacola can go and it’s FREE!
There is often a waiting line to get into the Shrimp Basket because of their specials. On Fridays, the special is all you can eat Fried Fish for $7.99.
When you finish the first batch, you just tell the waitress you want some more. We ordered it, but we could only eat the first batch, there was so much fish. They also have very cool and colorful T-shirts for Shrimp Basket fans:
A Normal, Wonderful Day
Yesterday, Friday, AdventureMan and I had our first “normal” day in Pensacola, a day where we are living in our normal house doing very normal things. Normally, I find normal kind of boring, but after the last month, I find normal very comforting. I was beginning to wonder if life would ever be normal again, and what normal would look like.
Here is what normal looked like: We got up and went to our water aerobics class, which was really HARD (hard is good; we want to be living healthier lives, it was hard in the way that it was challenging, not hard in the way that is discouraging.) On our way home we saw a coffee shop we had heard about, and on an impulse, we decided to have breakfast on the way home.
I had an egg sandwich on a biscuit, and AdventureMan had biscuits and gravy. We were in and out in about 20 minutes, eating food that was probably not good for us, but it gave us all the energy we needed for what came next.
We cleaned house.
That may not sound like a fun normal day to you, and no, we don’t get a lot of joy out of cleaning house, but when you have lived in a chaos of boxes, and everything is put away, but it is all messy and disorderly still, you can see how dirty the floors have gotten. AdventureMan took the upstairs vacuum and he READ THE MANUAL (I know, I know, I am still in shock) and he vacuumed upstairs AND mopped the bathroom floors. (!) (!) (!)
I finished getting most things put away downstairs and then vacuumed and mopped all the tile and wood floors, and holy smokes, that is hard work. And when you finish, it feels so good!
AdventureMan worked in his office. I read the newspaper.
Our son and grandson came by for a few minutes to drop off some tickets to the Chocolate Fest Benefit for the Gulf Coast Kids House, a local facility that helps kids who have been abused, investigating and prosecuting offenders and helping provide children with a safe place to tell their experience. We got to see Baby Q grin at us. It’s for these moments that we moved here; we don’t need to be living in their pockets, but a few minutes now and then is heaven.
Then we headed off for Date Night. We went to dinner and a movie – a Swedish movie called The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo which was playing in Gulf Breeze. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is based on a book by Stieg Larsson, and is a very unusual mystery book with deeply flawed characters. I’ve now read the follow-up, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and I am hooked. There is only one more, and I am waiting for it to come out in paperback.
The movie was exceptional. Although it was in color, because so much of it was Sweden in winter, it seemed very black and white, very documentary. Even when spring came, the colors were muted. Somehow it made it more real, more gritty. The movie was very true to the book. There were things left out, but not things that impacted greatly on the sense of the movie. All in all, it was a very satisfying, if disturbing, movie, which leaves you itching for a follow-up. Isn’t that the sign of a good movie?
We stopped for dinner at Billy Bob’s BBQ, and I will write that up next.
That’s it. That’s our wonderfully normal day. It may not sound like much to you, but for a normal day, it wasn’t bad, in fact, it was a pretty good day.
We’ve had two weekends of stormy winds and heavy rains. My rosebushes were sparse, and all of a sudden, there are buds – and petals – everywhere!
And here, just for you, is a view of the sunset through the heavy thunderclouds over Pensacola on a Friday night:
Señor Driving
You get a reduction on your insurance rates if you take the safe driving classes for seniors. AdventureMan still isn’t all that comfortable with being a senior, so he calls himself “señor,” which is ‘Mister’ in Spanish. He tells people we are taking “señor” driving classes, and everyone looks at him like he is a little nuts.
Well. . . he is, actually. More than just a little. And now he has the time and energy to be a full time nut, and more power to him.
The “señor” driving classes were actually all right. We learned some things we didn’t know, and we met some interesting people, one, a retired New York fireman, and his wife, a retired nurse. They invited us to go eat seafood after class, and we learned all kinds of things.
On our way back from the ladies room, his wife leaned over to me and whispered “Is he helping you?” I laughed. I knew what she meant. “Yes!” I whispered back, “So far, so good!”
Living in Kuwait and in Qatar, most of the people were younger than us. Countries with all kinds of imported labor put upper limits on workers, so they don’t have a lot of old guys kicking the bucket in their countries. You can get exceptions to the rules in certain jobs, and we had a lot of good friends around our ages, thank God, but here in Pensacola, we feel like YOUNG older people – there are so many older people, and so much to learn. They are all really good about sharing their tricks for survival, and we find that keeping our ears open is a good thing.
The Last Box
Today, as the Cox Cable man was setting up our TV, Internet and Phone bundle, we were unpacking the last box.
“Where are you going to put the phones?” the Stan-the-cable-guy asked.
We looked blank.
It has been so long since we have relied on a land-line. We hadn’t even thought about it. We carry our mobile phones with us, or at least I do. Now that AdventureMan has semi-retired, he has his people (me) carry the phone, LOL!
We actually do have a phone; we put in out in the box to send to the Jr. League big sale our daughter in law works with. It’s an old princess phone. I don’t even remember using it, it’s so old. I don’t know where the other phones have gone, but that’s phones . . .
Guess we have to go out and buy some phones, LOL!
After all our moaning and groaning, we think we have everything. Only some weird things are missing. Like we have ONE cushion for our outdoor seating area; two identical benches that used to have two identical cushions.
Now that we have internet again, I will share some photos of the last week. The first photos are from the day the movers are arriving – two days before we expected them. Notice the nice peach/rose on the walls, please. 🙂
We are lucky to have this room, although we didn’t care that much about it when we bought the house. It is a butler’s pantry, with lighted glassed shelves for glassware, and two wine refrigerators, one to keep white wine chilled, and the other to keep red wine at cellar temperature. Actually, it is good for water, and beer, too. 🙂 But since our major china cabinet has a broken foot, I really needed a place I could put things away, and this turned out to be a Godsend.
Butler's Pantry
Above is my bathroom; I love the little orange trees painted on my cabinet, and the little step that pulls out to make me taller.
LOL, here is where we were really camping out, in the guest room, while we waited for our storage goods to come. Yes, it’s a mess. There is actually a chair in the room, too, but aside from the bed and the chair, we had no furniture. We had thought we would cook, but who wants to eat standing up? Or sitting on a bed?
The moving truck arrives, some things are packed, some things are loose. It’s not all our goods; the driver tells us he has four different loads on the same truck. Aarrgh.
One of the first things off the truck was my dressing table mirror – broken. The driver said off the top that he had broken it when he was packing the truck. His honesty took away any anger we might have felt, and I know we can get a new mirror cut. It was the only major damage we had, and it wasn’t that bad.
Some of our pieces had some mildew on them, but it came of with just a little vinegar. We had to toss two old featherbeds and some of my clothing, which also seemed to have been in some area which had moisture problems while in storage.
This is the family room after the delivery.
The living room – we love these little loveseat/couches and were astonished at how well they weathered 12 years of storage without a mark – they still look new, and they are twenty something years old, but reupholstered. No, not by me, I didn’t know how yet.
First, we created an area of sanity. You have to have a place you can go where there is no mess. You create one, and then . . . you start widening the area. We started with this outside area, then the living room, then the family room. The kitchen is still a little bit chaotic, but that is because I have to wash all the dishes and china and crystal before they can go back on shelves. It isn’t that hard, it is just numbingly boring unwrapping each piece.
I think I told you about each spoon being wrapped separately:
Each piece has to be unwrapped . . . horrors!
That was the last box. 🙂
No, not everything is in place yet, but our areas of sanity, of order, are larger now. We have moved upstairs to our bedroom and study area; we have another bedroom next door to ours for visiting grandchildren or overflow guests for larger family gatherings. Our clothes are unpacked and put away, and we still have some empty places on shelves and in closets for the final wave – the Doha shipment – which won’t arrive until late June or July, we are guessing.
We still don’t have any phones. That goes on our “To Do” list, which is monstrous, no matter how we keep nibbling away at it. And the Qatteri cat is happy; the fuller the house is, the happier he is.
Whew!
Music Banned in Somalia
We are in our own world these days, boxes needing unpacking, deliveries interrupting tasks, and no connection – no TV, no internet, no land line phone. We do have a cell phone, and Friday night our son called to ask us if we have heard about the weather.
Nope.
Heavy rains, strong winds, possibility of tornados. It was lively!
I hadn’t heard about Somalia, either.
This is really scary to me. This is the kind of thing I worry about in my own country – who makes the rules? Who gets to say what music I listen to, what movies I watch? Who gets to restrict my access to information?
Who gets to tell me that as a woman, I can’t have a checking account in my name? Or that I have to wear a burqa? Or that I am not allowed to wear a niqab (if that’s what I want?)
Somalia Radicals Declare Music ‘Un-Islamic,’ and Radio Goes Tuneless
POSTED: 04/25/10
If, as my colleague Sarah Wildman reports, the Francophonic world is intent on curbing expressions of fundamentalist Islam belief, then the radical Muslim world is taking no prisoners with the West, either. Last week, the Somalian fundamentalist Islamic group Hizbul Islam announced that music of any kind is “un-Islamic,” warning of “serious consequences” for those who dare to violate their decree. In response, radio stations all over the country, including those run by the moderate Muslim transitional government, cut all music from their broadcasts. Even intro music for news reports was scrapped. In its place? “We are using sounds such as gunfire, the noise of vehicles and the sound of birds to link up our programmes and news,” said one Somalian head of radio programming.
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Somalia has been wracked with inter-tribal violence for nearly two decades. In the last few years, increasingly radical Muslim militants, including the dominant Shabab group, have taken over large parts of the country and become closely affiliated with al-Qaeda. A moderate Muslim transitional government, helmed by a former teacher named Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, controls a small part of the country. His government is largely propped up by African Union peacekeepers, with United Nations’ and U.S. support.
In the meantime, Islamic radicals like Shabab have gone on a campaign the New York Times described as “a quest to turn Somalia into a seventh century style Islamic state.”
The music decree follows a string of fundamentalist decrees, including prohibitions on wearing bras (also “un-Islamic”), the banning of modern movies and news channels, including the BBC and Voice of America.
As evidence of a power struggle between the moderate Muslim government and the hard-line radicals who control many parts of the country, Sheik Ahmed’s government responded last Sunday by saying any radio stations that stopped playing music would face closure. In the government’s eyes, those radio stations that complied with the ban were colluding with the radicals.
In the meantime, the radio stations have been caught between a rock and a hard place. “The order and counter-order are very destructive,” radio director Abukar Hassan Kadaf said in the Times article. “Each group are issuing orders against us and we are the victims.”
In the escalating tug-of-war between Western and Islamic powers over freedom of expression, what remains to be seen is how much of a causal relationship exists between the two. Is a proposed burqa ban in Quebec a result of the shuttering of a radio station in Somalia? Does a call for prohibition of headscarves in Paris force a bra-burning in Mogadishu?
If Islamic decrees do, in fact, fuel the fire for legal actions in the West (and vice versa), then continued and increased prohibition seems inevitable. But if radical Islam and a skeptical West are destined to one-up each other in a battle of bans, the powers that be might remember the men and women caught in the crossfire. That is, the women in the West who wear niqabs by choice, or the men and women in Somalia who just want to listen to music. What is perhaps most strikingly absent in all the brouhaha surrounding sharia vs. Western law are the voices of the moderate Muslims themselves. In the end, perhaps the gulf between the two sides will prove too great to be bridged, but for the immediate future, we would do well to remember the ground we share in common. Before there’s nothing left to ban.
Hell
Hell is unwrapping household goods when every tiniest piece is wrapped in a whole sheet of moving paper. Every spoon. The stopper for a crystal decanter. Every single piece, individually wrapped. It is endless. . . .
It is also why I do so much of my own packing. That, and finding my muddy riding boots packed with my formal gowns.
An occasional mover cares.
Most movers are casual labor, insufficiently supervised. Things can disappear.
This move is in waves, and we are in the biggest wave right now, the goods that have been in storage for 12 years. It had gone well, but we think some things are missing. Also, some serious pieces of furniture are incapacitated. One in particular, a china cabinet, handles the gazillion pieces of china and crystal collected through years of Army wifedom, but lost a foot. You can’t store china in a very tipsy cabinet, and I don’t know how we are going to get it fixed. Meanwhile, how to store all these pieces???
Aarrgh.
We are just taking a break before we submerge into the world of putting things away again. Aarrgh.
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