Opposite World
At one time I was doing a Christian weight-loss program (it really worked!) and on the tape I was listening to, the leader was talking about opposite world – how the world we live in operates by different rules than the ones we are supposed to be living by.
In many ways, I find myself in Opposite World now.
In the Gulf, the abaya isn’t something a woman is forced to wear, it is a cover, and a tradition. Women who wear the abaya have mostly chosen to wear it because that’s what is done. It has less to do with religion and more to do with customs.
So in Florida, I am having to rethink how I operate.
After my water aerobics class the other day, one woman was asking what the biggest changes are that I face being back here.
I laughed and told her that I was off to buy cat food, and that it made me laugh that I could go out with wet hair and shorts and a t-shirt, and because it’s Florida, that’s the way to avoid attention, to look like everyone else. If I am wearing a skirt and have my hair fixed, people notice me. The way to fly under the radar is to look like everyone else – I don’t even need to wear makeup. No one is going to notice, no one is going to care. It is very freeing, and at the same time. very weird for me.
When women wear abayas, it is like saying ‘look away’ or look somewhere else; I am modest. If I were to wear an abaya in Pensacola – and, LOL, sometimes I do, like to run out and get my morning paper or to run out and pull in the garbage can late at night – people would look, people would notice. Here, it doesn’t say ‘look away.’
Family Room
This is where most of you will come. We are hoping you will plop down, maybe go to the pantry for a beer or wine, sit and talk, head for the refrigerator – we want you to feel at home. 🙂 I’m still working on this room, trying to get the right pieces in it, and take out those that don’t enhance.
Taming Chaos
My daughter-in-law has a genius for taming chaos, and I learn a lot from her just by being in her house. One idea has helped me a lot – baskets.
Quilters use a lot of equipment, and it can really get messy. I have baskets of scraps that I mean to cut into usable pieces, baskets of tools, baskets of my office supplies, and now – a basket of rulers.
Before:
After:
The Quilt Room is ready for me. It may look messy to you, but this is the clutter of creativity, the clutter of works in progress, not the clutter of chaos. Right now, I know where all my tools are, I know where to find all my blue fabrics, I can put my hands on just the ruler I need, the iron is up and ready to take care of straying seams and the sewing machine is plugged in. Wooo HOOOO on me!
Double Rainbow
Last night, heading towards the house of good friends about an hour down the highway, I saw this glorious double rainbow. Actually, it showed up a lot better through my sunglasses, but I was uncomfortable enough taking a photo while driving, much less, removing my sunglasses and trying to keep them over the camera lens to take the photo, while driving, LOL. No! No! I didn’t!
Pensacola Oil Spill Editorial Cartoon
The editorial underneath, Death of a Fisherman, refers to the suicide of a charter boat fisherman. His business tanked, he joined the BP clean-up. After an early morning meeting, he killed himself. All he ever wanted to do was fish. His heart was broken.
Lost in Space
Did you think I might have dropped off the face of the earth? The truth is so much more mundane, I am just up to my neck in boxes, and the tedious task of unloading those boxes and trying to find the right place for each of the myriad objects is frustrating and totally not worth sharing with you.
It was only a year ago I did this same move, on a smaller scale, the move from Kuwait to Doha. Only one year ago this month. This move is more complicated, with another whole household coming in, and now all our Doha goods have arrived, and I get to put everything away.
I decided to do things differently, and it worked for me. Normally, I am methodical. I choose a box, empty the box, put everything away, break down the box and move to the next box.
This time, I opened the box, and if I just wasn’t ready to deal with that box, I moved on to the next box. I would put away what could be more easily put away. Occasionally, I have had to run to the local Target store and buy some more put-it-together storage organization pieces, and that slows me down a little, but helps me store things for effectively and efficiently – I like to know where things are. If you have to go looking for things, and you can’t find them, then they are useless, no?
And, last and most freeing of all, now that I am working upstairs – when I finished with a box, I just tossed it over the landing, down into the entryway! LLLOOOLLLL! You cannot imagine the joy it gave me! Just toss, and it’s gone, and it makes a satisfying racket when it hits the floor, or the other boxes!
I also had a collection of boxes in what was called ‘the butler’s pantry’ in the house brochure. It is a room between the guest suite, laundry and garage, where there are two wine refrigerators – one for white and one for red – and more glass fronted cupboards, where AdventureMan stored all our wine and beer glasses. He also keeps beer in the white wine refrigerator, as we don’t drink that much wine.
Yesterday morning, once I had finished the last box, I broke down all the boxes at once. When you do it all at once, it takes like less than one minute per box. I had all the boxes broken down and into the garage in about 40 minutes. Wooo HOOO on me!
I still have chaos in two rooms, the room we call the Grandchildren’s Room, next to ours, upstairs. I have piles of things I haven’t used for years, but I keep hanging on to because I might want to use them sometime. Hmmmm. Actually, I love this room. It has the best light of all the rooms in the house, with a Southern window and a Western window. Lots of light.
And then, there is my quilt room. Quilters collect fabric, and being mildly obsessive compulsive, I like to have my fabric in order, by color, by type (floral? checked? baby quilt? Batik? Christmas?) and sometimes by nationality (African? French? Dutch?) or project (blocks from Germany? blocks from Doha?). Quilters often also have a lot of equipment, including more than one sewing machine and cutting tools, patterns, books, embellishments, etc. It is a real mess to put away:
You can see the chair in this room – to the right of that chair are two large bookcases, and in the lower part near the chair is also my “office.” That chair is where I do my morning Bible readings and where I write many of these posts, while AdventureMan is still snoozing. When I am working, AdventureMan comes in and sits in that chair to talk to me. There is an identical one in his office, where I sit when I am talking with him, and where I sit when we are watching the upstairs TV. AdventureMan jokes that we are wearing a hole in the carpet as we go back and forth to each other’s offices. 🙂
My kitchen has a couple clear counters, now, although there are still things I am trying to find places for. There are two ‘areas of sanity’ – the living room and the family room. I don’t have a lot up on the walls yet, but a few little things. Putting things up is fun for me, so I save that to encourage myself to get everything away – once I have everything put away, I can have a little fun. 🙂
As you can see, I still have work to do, but I wanted to take a minute to bring you up to date. 🙂
Chaos Once Again in Pensacola
I believe the word that will ultimately characterize this year is chaos, and the struggle to bring order out of chaos. You might have noticed I have not been able to blog. Once again, chaos has hit Pensacola, this time in the form of our Doha shipment.
Good news for all my expat friends, concerned about packing out of Doha, or Kuwait. This has been the very best move, ever, and the second best move was the move from Kuwait to Qatar. I rate this one higher only because it was so much longer, and across a sea, and there is so much potential for damage – humidity, being left out on the pier in a storm, a leaky container, theft, lack of careful packing . . . not a single element was wrong with this shipment. Not a thing missing. Not a single thing damaged.
For your information, we were packed by GAC. We marvel at how carefully they packed even the most humble drinking glass. 🙂
So here is what we look like right now:
Chaos in the entry – we have all our artworks stored here, except for the really large pieces, and most of the large ones we already know where they will go . . .
It seemed like we had a lot of cupboard space, until this shipment arrived. I had left room, but . . . not enough. More donations to the Pensacola Junior League Sale coming up!
Most of this is my stuff, a tiny bit of winter and evening clothing and . . . a lot of fabric which will move to the quilt room when there is room . . . My quilt room used to look so big!
Now, for AdventureMan’s chaos – we are heading to his office:
Yes! Yes! Hide your face, AdventureMan! All these boxes . . .
I can see the end in sight. Once I have all this put away, there is just one more shipment, all my strays from Seattle. I have a storage locker there, and things left at my mother’s, and a whole underbed area at my sister’s house. Who knew they would be inconvenienced this long? We are going to drive up and haul all this stuff back, and at that point – the move is complete.
Lunch at the Tuscan Oven
We took a road we don’t usually take, and suddenly, there it was – The Tuscan Oven! I had eaten there before, and loved it, but had not seen it and had assumed it had disappeared. Restaurants do that, even good ones, it takes so much work and so much effort to run a restaurant, and they run on such a slim margin that we have often been disappointed to see good restaurants close.
We were joyful to see the Tuscan Oven!
The place is packed. People who love good food are here. 🙂 You can tell that many of them are friends with the owner, and they come here often. The menu has too many good things!
We ordered the Antipasta Plate, with delicious cheeses and sausages, tasty olives and a stuffed artichoke heart. Unfortunately, we dug in before I remembered to take photos 😦
We each also ordered a small pizza, but even small was too big after the antipasta plate, so we ended up bringing more than a full pizza home.
I love the decor – an artist has painted food ingredients for the meals – this is my favorite, the artichoke:
We look forward to coming back here often!
Checking Out Pensacola Beach
After our water aerobics class this morning, AdventureMan and I drove out to the beautiful sugar-white sandy beaches of Pensacola to check the damage. The clean up crews have been busy, and the beaches look gorgeous. People are sunning, swimming, and sharing the beaches with the clean up crews.
A big huge electronic sign announces that the road to the beach will be closed all day tomorrow. How can you close a major road? Is this Kuwait, or Qatar, where the will of the Amir says “Make it so!” and it is so? Oh. Wait. President Obama is coming, so the road will be his and his alone to go out to the beaches and see what we saw today.
The huge, gigantic glob of oil has only sent tendrils, so far, to the pristine white beaches, but doom impends as storms and winds blow the thick oily sludge toward the shores. God willing, President Obama will find a way to encourage British Petroleum to work with a little more conviction and energy to find a long term solution to this unthinkable TWO MONTHS and hundreds of thousands of gallons spewing into the Gulf.
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