Sadly Hilarious
Peaches, sweet, juicy peaches are coming into season, and I couldn’t resist making up a peach crisp for a lunch I am giving today. Since I was making one, I made several, some smaller ones to give away. Dropped one off with a friend, then went by to see our son and his wife and Baby Q, the Happy Baby.
As I walked in, Happy Baby came running, screeching happy sounds, so happy to see . . . me? No, he ran right by me, did not want my hug, he was looking for AdventureMan. As I stood with my arms open to hug him, he was desperately looking out the window, looking for the fun guy who really matters. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry; I wanted that hug all for myself, but it is truly hilarious how much he loves AdventureMan, and how he watched and watched and watched out the window, hoping he was coming, too. The longer he watched, the funnier it got.
Later in the evening, we both went by, so Happy Baby got some time with his “Ga Ga”and then, guess what, I also got my hug once he had had his special time with his Grandpa. 🙂
Dancing and Drinks
Yesterday was our 38 year wedding anniversary, and it was a great day. Last night, we went for dancing and drinks.
LOL.
Our dance class at the YMCA . . . and this month we started the waltz, which we already know how to do, but now we are learning some extras, like turns. It is barely air conditioned in the gym, if at all, so dancing is EXERCISE in the heat we are experiencing – record highs – this year.
And drinks – don’t McDonald’s smoothies count? I totally love the Wild Berry, and I try to tell myself it might even be healthy, it might even have berries, and I try not to think about the sugar. It is only now and then I have one, AdventureMan too, so our anniversary was celebrated in style. Our style, LOL, not exactly the high life, but it works for us.
Meds
I’m going to be one of those cantankerous people who gripe about their medications. I have one friend, God bless her, who when I was feeling depressed because I was going to have to take a daily medication said “You’ve managed to put it off this long??” She always knows just what to say. Somehow, I guess I had hoped for a miracle, I was going to be a person who never had to take anything. It hurt my pride more than anything else to be told that I might live as long, but the quality of my life could be dramatically effected. That made an impression on me.
As retired military, we can get some medications for ‘free.’ So last week, when my prescription had about five pills left, I called in for a refill. It was all automated, so there was no one I could talk with, and the automated voice told me my refill would be ready for pick-up today. Meanwhile, I had five pills, and seven nights to get through.
The next day I went to the Navy Hospital, where the clerk told me that they gave me seven days worth of my medication to get me through to when I could pick up.
This morning, we got there early, 8:30, and it wasn’t open until nine, so we did some commissary shopping, then went back – only forty minutes later, but the line was 19 people long, people older than me, standing in line outside in temperatures in the 90’s (F) and steamy. Almost every other person had a problem. “Sir, we don’t even see your name in the system” they say to one. “Sir, your medication just came in; there was a shortage and we won’t have it ready for you for another couple hours.” “Sir, that medication isn’t available, can you come back in two weeks?”
When my turn came, they told me my prescription had already been refilled, and I could not get another refill until the end of the month. Indeed, when I looked at the bottle the hospital had given me, it was a full refill, but I didn’t know that.
To get this free medication is a lot of work. For only a small amount more, we can have it mailed to our home address. I am thinking that might work better for me.
Listmaker
“Why are you smiling?” AdventureMan asked as he read the Sunday paper on our bed, the ceiling fan whirling madly to cool him down after his post-Church yard work – feeding the birds, shoveling up all the birdseed hulls, putting recycle materials into the compost bin.
I was doing something I do only rarely, changing purses. At the last minute, all in navy, I decided to do the navy purse instead of the tan. Now, back home, I was re-transfering all the important things, and checking pockets for stuff that accumulates and needs to be thrown away.
“I found a list,” I began. “It says:
fruit cake
kick board
book
peanut brittle
photos in frames
calendar
soap”
He laughed. “I know exactly what that was, “he remembered, “my Christmas box.”
More specifically, my tag on the outside of the box reminding me of what was inside when I had to affix a customs tag to send the box to hubby in Kuwait. These days, as I send boxes, I (mostly) no longer have to fiddle with customs tags or leaving the box open until I get to the post office so that customs officers can affirm what I included in the box. Every time I send a box, still, I think of those customs tags and give thanks not to have to do those irksome little steps.
I keep my lists now, in a folder marked, predictably,
-
To Do Lists
This one goes in there. On days when I feel bad about myself, or overwhelmed, I can look at my to-do lists and have a record that my time was not mis-spent. I can see all the little chores and fix-it projects we have finished, all the dinners we have done, house guests we have had . . . These little to-do lists keep track of the little things you do that take up so much time, and then at the end of the year, you ask yourself “where did the time go.” These help me know that I didn’t waste the time, I used the time, a little here, a little there, to bring order out of chaos in our daily existence, to brighten a life, maybe to help others, or to meet a goal I have already forgotten.
Some of the lists, like the moving lists, remind me of God’s gracious hand in helping me to do the things I’ve had to do, and could never have managed without his help. When I read some of them, I almost laugh out loud thinking “I did all that??”
It also reminds me how very happy I am to have AdventureMan back home with me, not far away at Christmas time. 🙂
Nutcase in Pensacola
This is from today’s Pensacola News Journal following up on a story yesterday where a man in a truck shot up a seafood vendor with an AK-47 because the seafood vendor was out of crawfish. Now, the guy claims the laws don’t apply to him; he is a ‘sovereign citizen’.
It’s humbling. I used to read the Kuwait and Qatar papers, and found all kinds of strange behaviors I thought were hilarious, people who didn’t think the laws applied to them.
In Kuwait, they say “Kaifee Kuwaiti”. I think it’s pretty much the same thing; I’m special and I don’t have to obey the conventions and rules and laws.
But most people in Kuwait aren’t carrying AK-47’s . . . .
A manic shooter peppered a busy Ensley retail strip with assault rifle fire Sunday evening because a local seafood market ran out of crawfish, investigators said. (From yesterday’s PNJ)
Suspect’s beef goes beyond lack of crawfish;
Suspect in shooting claims sovereignty
Written by
Travis Griggs
Today’s PNJ Follow-up story:
Larry Wayne Kelly, the man arrested for blasting an Ensley seafood market with an AK-47 assault rifle fire Sunday, had ties to the anti-government “sovereign citizen” movement, Sheriff David Morgan said.
He also has filed dozens of bizarre lawsuits typically associated with the movement’s followers in the local court system.
“As best we can tell, they’re a fringe group — to put it kindly — and they don’t recognize the authority of the federal government,” Morgan said.
“This is the first time they’ve popped up on our radar. You want to write them off as an oddball fringe group, but when weapons and drive-by shootings are involved, you need to set up and take notice.”
Kelly, 42, is accused of speeding through Ensley, opening fire on a seafood restaurant and leading deputies on a car chase before crashing and being arrested. He’s jailed under $575,000 bond.
He is accused of calling the L&T Seafood Market on Pensacola Boulevard 11 times and becoming “incredibly irate” when an employee said the store didn’t have crawfish. At one point, he got out of his truck and fired numerous shots at the storefront.
After the rampage, Kelly told deputies he was a sovereign citizen and did not have to follow the law or obey law enforcement officers.
According to an FBI report, the sovereign citizen movement is composed of extremists who believe that even though they live in the United States, they are separate, or sovereign, entities.
They believe they can declare independence through an obscure legal process, after which they don’t have to pay taxes and are not subject to U.S. laws or courts.
They often refuse to obtain Social Security cards or register their vehicles, and they won’t carry driver’s licenses or use ZIP codes.
Kelly’s truck had a homemade license plate when he was arrested.
Followers attempt to claim their sovereignty by filing a blizzard of specifically worded legal paperwork with various government agencies and courts. Kelly has filed numerous such documents.
At first glance, the paperwork looks routine, but closer inspection reveals bizarre legal language and obscure references to outdated maritime law.
Followers place particular emphasis on capitalization and punctuation of names in the belief that the variations refer to separate legal entities.
In 2009, Kelly filed a 30-page document with Escambia Circuit Court, claiming that “Larry Wayne Kelly, a real man,” “LARRY WAYNE KELLY, a corporate entity,” and “Larry-Wayne: Kelly, Personam Sojourn and People of Posterity” are different things.
Kelly’s paperwork went on to claim hundreds of items as personal property, including fuel tanks and farm machinery. It also claimed intangible concepts, such as “all rights to exercise dominion over the earth,” as property.
One page titled “Attention and Warning” outlined penalties for government agencies violating Kelly’s supposed property rights. Penalties he cited included $2 million for denial or abuse of due process, $2 million for placing an improper garnishment on bank accounts, and numerous others.
The documents appeared to have been generated with a prepackaged “tool kit,” which can be downloaded from various websites, or copied from books written by supporters of the movement.
Scott Schneider, a special agent with the IRS, said such schemes have no legal basis and are common attempts to avoid paying taxes.
“The bottom line is the courts have regularly held that the movement, and those that participate in it, are wrong and there is no legal basis,” hesaid.
Schneider said he’s made serious attempts to decipher the legal language and references in the paperwork but hasn’t been able to do so.
“Besides the fact that some of the words exist in the English language, there is nothing legitimate about the schemes,” he said.
A God of Infinite Mercy
This morning, Father Neal Goldsborough of Christ Church Pensacola gave a sermon that held us all totally spellbound. It had to do with the fundamentalist preacher who – once again – forecast the coming rapture, which he says was scheduled for yesterday. (I wonder what he has to say today? He was wrong once before, in 1994. Or maybe people were raptured yesterday, but all the folk I know are, like me, sinners who didn’t make the cut.)
Father Neal talked about his service in the chaplain corp overseas, and faiths which exclude based on narrow rules, specific rules, churches and religions who say ‘this is the only way and all the rest of you are damned to everlasting fire” whether they use those words or paraphrases. He pointed to Jesus, who broke the rules of his time and flagrantly spent time with sinners, and the unclean, and showed them by his love and by his actions what the infinite love and mercy and forgiveness of Almighty God looks like.
It couldn’t have come at a better time for me.
Soon, I will be meeting up with three women who are particularly dear to me, friends for many years in Qatar, friends who worshipped at the Church of the Epiphany in Doha, Qatar. The new Anglican Church of the Epiphany is being built on land dedicated to church use by His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, and will be used by many denominations.
My friends and I all returned to the USA within months of one another, and have been sending e-mails with “reply to all” as we struggle with our re-entry into our old church communities. We struggle with the hatreds and prejudices and ignorance about our Moslem brothers and sisters, and we struggle with the narrow strictures imposed by our churches and study groups. I thank God to have these wonderful women among whom we can share our dismay and our hurting hearts, and re-inforce the lessons we learned living in a very exotic, and sometimes alien culture, but which had so many wonderful and mighty lessons to teach us. I often joke that in my life, God kept sending me back to the Middle East (Tunisia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait) until he saw that I finally got it. My sisters-in-faith were quicker studies than I was. 🙂
It was a breath of the Holy Spirit I felt this morning, as Father Neal spoke about God’s mercy, his plan to redeem ALL of his creation, God’s desire for our love and our service. I couldn’t help it, it made me weep with relief to know my church is a church that serves God by including, rather than excluding, and which mercifully welcomes sinners like me.
Here is the really cool part. Christ Church Pensacola has recently begun putting the sermons online. If there is one thing Christ Church has, it is great sermons – and if you want to hear Father Neal’s sermon, you can click HERE, in a few days and you can hear his sermon for yourself. 🙂 Look for the May 22 sermon by Father Neal Goldsborough.
Perfect Pensacola Evening
After weeks of early and sultry heat, Pensacola has had a spell of cooler weather, nights down into the 50’s and even high 40’s, and days in the mid 70’s – and not humid. Great weather for working in the garden or going to a park, weather that just makes you want to be outside.
Last night we went to a meeting of the Gulf Coast Diplomatic Council at a beautiful home out in Gulf Breeze, with a view of the water that goes forever. As you walk in, you can smell wood – or at least I can. I grew up with houses that used a lot of wood, and I love the smell. The heart of the house was a kitchen – dining room – sitting area with that forever view.
It was a lively group. The group only gets together a couple times a year, but what a fun group – all people who are willing to host foreign visitors when they come to Pensacola. I am guessing one of the reasons that Pensacola gets so many groups (besides those glorious sugar-white sand beaches, and the multicolors of the Gulf, and all the seafood and palms and balmy weather) is that the GCDC has developed a sterling reputation with visitors, and the Department of State is happy to send them to a place where they will get such a warm reception.
Attending also were some delegates from other countries. We spent some time with a Namibian farmer, who wants to find market outlets for poor rural women in Namibia. We spent two weeks in Namibia – it seems a lifetime ago – and loved our time there. We made a circuit of the country, from the farms in the east to the great Etosha game park, to the Demaraland, and down the Skeleton coast to Sossossvlei, where we climbed the mountainous sand dunes. It was a great adventure for us, and we have such happy memories of Namibia, and our delegate was so happy to meet people who had spent time in her country, We had a great visit with her and a great time altogether.
There were mountains of food available, but you know how awkward it is to be talking with people and they ask you a question just as you have taken a bite of something that needs to be chewed and swallowed before you can answer? We passed on the food so we could focus on the conversations. In the back of our minds, too, we knew we were close to one of our favorite places, Flounders, so we popped over there for a bowl of chowder, grilled grouper po’ boy (AdventureMan) and grilled shrimp Ceasar (me). The evening was perfect – no humidity, temperature perfect, slight breeze but not too hot or too cold – perfect.
This weekend we are taking care of Happy Baby while our son and his wife head off to a family wedding. Happy Baby is fifteen months old, and a live wire. So much energy and no inhibitions! You have to watch him every minute. He loves climbing, but he has no sense of danger. It takes both of us to keep up with him! He is so much fun to be around, that although it will be exhausting, it will also be a lot of fun.
Did you Tell Him We’re Going Dancing?
I was laughing as I heard AdventureMan talking with his Saudi friend, making a time when they could get together. I knew he had called about tonight.
“Did you tell him we were going dancing?” I laughed as I asked him.
“Uhhh . . . no,” he said.
This is new to us. We are taking dancing lessons, ballroom dancing, at the YMCA. We both had those lessons you take in eighth grade, but we’ve forgotten most of what we learned. I don’t care about going dancing, or fancy dresses, or competitions. I don’t even watch dance stuff on TV; I just don’t care that much. These classes are something we’ve wanted to do for a long time, and it really takes us out of our comfort zones.
We really are having fun. The first lesson – not so much. It is hard work! It doesn’t come naturally, it comes with PRACTICE! Lots of PRACTICE! It’s like fencing lessons, or horseback riding, or karate, or gymnastics – After a while, your body knows what to do, but at the beginning, it can be a little excruciating. As for AdventureMan and I, we mess up a lot, but we laugh a lot too. We are getting better, but best of all we are having a lot of fun. These kinds of things rewire your brains; it may not be easy, but it is good for us.
And I am still laughing, thinking of AdventureMan not telling his friend that he was going dancing with his wife, LOL!
Yelling For Help
I don’t often have bad dreams, and this one was a doozy. I was in my house – or office – and it was a large, clear white space. I noticed a lot of fine black dust in places on the white carpet, like toner from copy machines, and then it gathered and swirled, but sometimes it was white. Then I saw a man – or something with a skull – sitting on a white slab couch like my Mom used to have in turquoise back a long time ago.
I kept looking – sort of like a cat does when he sees something he is not sure of, looking for motion or some sign of threat, very alert. When the skull creature started to move, I started to yell.
(Lithograph by Munch)
It’s hard to yell when you are scared, but I kept at it. “Help!” It sounded weak and tentative. “HELP!” “HELP!”
AdventureMan was there to help, calling my name, asking if I was OK. “I thought it was the Qatteri Cat,” he told me, “It sounded kind of strangled and yowly.”
I just laughed. I felt good. The skull man didn’t get me, AdventureMan was right here, my trusted knight, and I had broken through my fear – or the sleep barrier – and yelled really loud. I don’t know why, but it made me feel powerful and like I had survived something and that made me feel good. 🙂
(It could also be related to the series I am reading, on which the current HBO series Game of Thrones is based, and maybe it disturbs me on some deep level.)
The Crab Trap – Pensacola
We’ve talked about stopping by the Crab Trap forever – but usually, we are on our way home from Joe Patti’s with fresh fish, shrimp, oysters, etc and can’t stop. 🙂
So we made a plan. And we finally got there. We were extra hungry, so we got there early, but not TOO early. Although it was not even 11:30, many of the outside tables were already taken. They have a great view, and a great outdoor eating area to capture the view:
AdventureMan won the first round with his fresh Apalachicola oysters. He ordered a half dozen, and 7 arrived, fresh and sweet:
My crab cake had a fabulous sauce, but the crab cake itself was only ho-hum. On the other hand, I am very hard on crab cakes, I like them to be mostly crab, and TASTY crab, not tasteless crab, and horrors, not crab with a K, that fake stuff that is really some anonymous fish with crab flavoring, oh no, oh no!
We were both underwhelmed with our main courses. AdventureMan ordered the Mate’s Plate, grilled shrimp, oysters and fish. When it arrived, we looked at it in dismay – it looked like something you pull out of the freezer and microwave:
My St. Joe’s Seafood Salad sounded really good, with fresh shrimp, scallops, crab and oysters on top, and it looked really good, but only the shrimp had any taste. The fried oysters were tasteless, as was the crab. Even the tomatoes had little taste. Their bacon vinaigrette was just OK.
I sneaked this photo of a neighbor’s Jambalaya – that Jambalaya looked REALLY good, and came with two sides. The people having Jambalaya were really chowing down – and looking like they were having a good time. If we ever go back, we know what we will try:
The place was packed. We may have just chosen the wrong things on the menu. I have to guess that most of the people were there for the outside dining and the view. It looks like they also have live music some evenings.
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