Mardi Gras Legacy
We had almost a full week of grim, grey skies and little sunshine, during which I saw the sad reminders of Mardi Gras valiantly trying to sparkle in the trees:
Record High
Today the high temperature in Pensacola, FL was 87°F. It was a record high temperature for this date, March 2. The temperature yesterday was also a record high, 82°F.
It is also raining. So it is hot, and it is humid. And it is only the beginning of March. At the beginning of February, I celebrated. We didn’t have to use the heat or the air conditioning for the entire month, and our electric bill was a mere $100. You need lights. You need to use the oven now and then, and the washer and dryer, computers and TV’s. If you could see our other electric bills (the heat and air run on electricity) you would know why I celebrate $100. for January.
Earlier this week, it was in the 60°’s (F) in the mornings, and I weeded! It was foggy and cloudy, and it felt a whole lot like Seattle, where the temperatures are around 40 something this week. Give me cold any day. You can always put on more clothes when it gets cold, but when it is hot and humid, even with the AC, it is still hot and humid.
It is still raining, and humid. There is a tornado watch on until midnight. I was near a tornado once, living further south in Florida, and the sky turned green and it sounded like the biggest loudest freight train in the world, and it didn’t even hit in my neighborhood. You could hear it anyway. It is a terrifying sound.
Our pomegranate tree is leafing out, our blueberries have blossoms and it really is time for a spring clean up, if only we can have a few more cool days in March before the serious heat sets in.
Just a Little Less Alien
It’s great having friends who all returned to the USA after our years of living in Qatar (and Kuwait) so we can share our experiences, our frustrations, our challenges. It’s been two years for me since AdventureMan and I made the big decision to retire, and in Pensacola, not Edmonds, WA.
Pensacola is a pretty cool place to be retired. One of the best things, after living in Kuwait especially, is the traffic. People might complain, but the traffic here is laughable. It’s very calm. Traffic might be waiting two lights at a stoplight, but hey – people wait, don’t just drive right through. No one has ever pushed me into a round about, or anywhere else, unlike Qatar, when I got in some young man’s way, and he pushed me out of his way (!)
When you go to the symphony, or to church, or to aqua aerobics, in the worst traffic it might take ten minutes. There are restaurants everywhere, many of them pretty good. The worst restaurants are usually better, cleaner, faster than most of the restaurants in Kuwait and Qatar. The only cuisine we have not been able to find here is Ethiopian, and we can drive to Atlanta or New Orleans and get that.
It’s been two years . . . there is something in me that starts getting a little restless, starts looking at my household goods with an eye to getting rid of, giving away, cutting down on weight. At the very least I might have to paint something, or change the furniture around . . .
My friends are suffering many of the same challenges, the challenge of being an expat back in the USA. What was formerly comfortable is not such a good fit anymore; we have changed, and we are trying to cobble together lives that can accomodate the changes.
I had a minor triumph; I realized that after two years, I am starting to have people I can go sit with when I walk into a crowded venue. It may sound like a small thing, but the fear of having to sit alone in a crowd where everyone is visiting and sharing is a little daunting. Who wants to look pathetic?
But my expat friends and I laugh; in expat world two years makes you an old-timer. When new people come in, you are expected to show them around, show them where (and how) to shop for things, where to get things fixed, altered, where to go to pay your bills and how to pay them. Two years makes you and old hand, often with one foot out the door, getting ready for the next posting or contract.
Three of my friends went back to their home locations, only AdventureMan and I settled in a new place. While I am making some progress, two years in, I still wonder who my friends will be? Will I ever feel at home in Pensacola?
Pensacola Advisories from Weather Underground
Active Advisory: Tornado Warning, Tornado Watch, Severe Thunderstorm Warning, Flash Flood Warning, Areal Flood Watch, Wind Advisory (US Severe Weather)
Rainy Saturday at 5 Sisters in Pensacola
It’s been rainy and dark the entire day, and I know what I need – I need to go to Five Sisters. We had planned to go to the huge Pensacola Mardi Gras Parade, but as the rain came down, my spirits were also dampened. There was a time – and I could see in AdventureMan’s eyes, he was hoping this wasn’t one of those times – when I would have said “We HAVE to go, even if it is raining!”
He has a little cold and I drift in and out of allergies, and standing a couple hours out in the rain and hollering and catching beads is probably not what mature people like us should be doing. (A part of me is greatly depressed at being so ‘mature’.)
But I know just the thing. Five Sisters. As we drive up, a parking space becomes available, always a good omen, and as we walk to the door, we are greeted with divine fragrances of smoke and grilling meat and we are starting to feel better already.
On the menu board, one of the specials of the day is BBQ Shrimp. Ummmm, ummmmmm, doesn’t that sound good on a rainy day. I order the BBQ Shrimp with cheese grits and a salad, AdventureMan orders the Seafood Platter. Bluesy music, some old hits from the 60’s and 70’s, and our food comes.
My BBQ Shrimp was AWESOME. Today it was tangy, vinegar-y and Tabasco sauce, the essence of Louisiana. It came sizzling hot, but the shrimp still had the shells on, which AdventureMan tells me is the way it comes when it is BBQ Shrimp in the South. Oh well, it is a good thing that the shells are on and I have to work to get them off before I can eat each one, if I didn’t have to get those tails and shells off I would probably gobble them down in no time at all! As it was, I was able to bring about half of the shrimp home to savor later. 🙂
AdventureMan said on the way home “Oysters sure are rich, aren’t they?” I just laughed, I like oysters cooked, but mostly I like them steamed, and even then, they are so rich I can’t eat many of them. If you deep fry them, you just add rich on rich. His dish was fish, shrimp and oysters, deep fried, and some of 5 Sisters fabulous fries, which he didn’t eat, and didn’t need because there was so much seafood on the Seafood Platter:
As we left, it was still raining, one of those days that went from dark to dark grey to not-quite-so-dark grey to a couple moments of light grey and then back to dark grey and now it is almost dark once again. We don’t often have a day with no sunshine in Pensacola, and it is very very sad when that one day is the day of the Pensacola Mardi Gras Parade and it pours down rain just as the parade is starting. Sometimes life just isn’t fair. But Five Sisters puts a smile back on our faces every time.
Scanning Obituaries
Who knew? I certainly didn’t, and yet I find that I’m not alone. AdventureMan does it, too, and other friends. One friend says she thinks she scans the obituaries to celebrate the fact that she is still alive. That may be it for most of us, but in addition, I find that there are people living among us with amazing histories, and we don’t even know. Sometimes when you read an obit, you can tell that the person wrote it himself or herself, and what that person considered important in his/her life. Sometimes the obituary is not very loving.
Southern newspapers, in my experience, are much richer in extraordinary detail that newspapers in bigger cities, like Seattle. In bigger cities, only the rich and famous or notorious get much space; it may be that the space is far more expensive in the bigger cities, or that families are less willing to shell out from the estate for the bigger coverage. Southerners value family, and history; it’s a part of the culture.
Yesterday, when I took the Pensacola News Journal in to AdventureMan, I had circled something in one of the obituaries, knowing that he, like me, only reads them now and then. I didn’t want him to miss this line:
(Name) was a Past Mighty Chosen One of the Zelica Daughters of Mokanna, Ladies Auxiliary to the Grotto.
Holy smokes! I thought it might be one of the Mardi Gras Krewe things, but AdventureMan googled, and discovered that is a Masonic offshoot, and their larger groups are called Cauldrons. (!)
In America of the early 1900’s, social affiliation groups were important. People belonged to religious groups like Knights of Columbus, Ladies of the Church, etc, quasi-religious groups like Masons and Shriners, and social groups like the Elks and Moose and Lions Club. Some groups still exist, and are still going strong, like Rotary Club, and special interest groups. In Pensacola, there is a Tea Party AND a Coffee Party. There is a Philipino-American Republican Club. When people gather together regularly to share something in common, they can form a group. All of these groups help people be connected in their communities and in their lives, and help people to look after one another.
I belonged to a group once that called ourselves the Aqua-Babes. To be perfectly honest, we might not be total babes, but hey – it’s our group, we can call ourselves what we want, right?
But oh, my, to be a Mighty Chosen One . . .
Woman Hits Four Cars, One at a Time, in Pensacola
We love driving in Pensacola. Most of the time, traffic is laid back and courteous. Exceptions like this are rare – no license, no insurance, fleeing the scene of an accident, all her children suffering head injuries in the FOUR separate hits – this woman should not be on the road.. From today’s PNJ Online:
A woman’s alleged attempt at a hit-and-run backfired when she hit three other cars while trying to flee, said eyewitnesses Friday.
About 2:30 p.m., authorities responded to a four-car accident with injuries at Fairfield Drive and Palafox Street, but the number of people injured and the severity of those injuries has not been released.
The incident began at the turning lane at Davis Highway and Fairfield Drive when a woman in a minivan containing three small children bumped an Orkin Man’s truck, witnesses said.
The man, Scott Stricker, said the woman took a look at the truck, said it looked untouched and that she was going to leave. Stricker told her that his company has a policy to pull over and call in any kind of traffic incident.
He said the woman told him that she would pull over just a little ahead, but as he pulled over, she skirted around him and turned down Fairfield.
“She jetted around me,” Stricker said.
While driving down Fairfield, the woman ended up hitting three other cars.
“I heard a hit, I heard another hit and I heard a third hit, and I came flying out of the office,” said Jan Prentice, who works at an advertising agency on Fairfield Drive.
Prentice said the woman told her that she was afraid of going to jail because she wasn’t driving with a valid driver’s license, and she didn’t have insurance.
Prentice said the woman had injuries and that her three small children in the van appeared to have head injuries and were taken to a hospital. It is not clear how many people were injured in the accidents.
Trooper St. Clair of the Florida Highway Patrol said that the incident was a four-car pileup, but that more information will be confirmed by a release that should be sent out later today.
Winter Beach in Pensacola
We had great weather during the Doha reunion, great in that it was warm every day, and it only rained a little now and then. We had lots of sunshine, and they even got to experience a little bit of Pensacola sultriness.
The big thrill, for me, was the winter beach. I love good wave action, and a little drama in the sky. The Pensacola beach, with its gorgeous white sands, gave it to us in full:
Slow Moving Severe Weather
The last of my Doha friends left yesterday, not without moments of hilarity. We had a great time together, and all my concerns about visiting Pensacola in the coldest month of the year were for naught. The weather, every single day, was in the 70’s, and one of the days it almost hit 80. One friend was flying straight into severe weather, and I wonder how it affected her day – if she even got home.
We had one lovely evening when our son and his wife and little happy toddler came over, laughing and talking, and our sweet daughter in law introduced all my friends to a Pensacola specialty, Sin in a Tin. Our last stop on their last day was the market where they could stock up on it to take back with them!
I am keeping my own eye on this ‘slow moving weather front’ because it is headed our way. If you’ve seen the devastation in Dallas, you’ll know – hurricane level destruction, 90 mph winds – high winds and lots of rain, and flooding.
When I checked Weather Underground this morning, this is what it looks like heading towards Pensacola:
Scary looking, hmmm?
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