Anniversary and Punch List
It’s been a year since we bought the house. We had to have it entirely rewired before we moved in, and now, we are so glad we took that time and spent that money; the insurance companies have gotten more and more finicky about insuring houses in Florida. One of the newest causes for non-renewal is aluminum wiring, which is what we had taken out and replaced with copper wiring, not cheap, we can tell you.
We are so glad our contractor made that recommendation. For one thing, we sleep well at night, knowing the wiring is new and well-installed. For another thing, it was good to get it done while we had nothing in the house, and the workers had easy access to everywhere they needed to tear out walls, rewire, put back walls, etc.
Do you make lists? I have a list I made in November, and today I finished off the list. It had unfinished tasks going back to the move-in. You prioritize, you know? Even when you have accomplished the most important things, sometimes it is just too overwhelming to tackle the next thing so you take a break . . . and that break can stretch.
The little plumbing things are all done. Every single one. Wooo HOOOO. The final light fixtures are all up. Woooo HOOOOO! The outside watering system is working, woooo HOOO, and we have a guy helping us restart our lawn – wooo HOOOO!
It’s kind of like having a baby. If you think about all the things that need to be done before you do it, you might have second thoughts. It’s all-consuming, and it can be exhausting, emotionally and physically and financially. Just like having a baby!
And, now that I have come to the end of my punch-list, I would celebrate, except that new things are cropping up – the gutters, the drainage, the driveway, the air conditioning . . . nothing that needs to be done, no emergencies, but all which need some attention, some fine tuning, so that we are not dealing with an unexpected disaster.
It’s not like Trust Towers in Kuwait, where we lived in Fintas, or Al Fardan Gardens in Qatar, where we could just call the management if anything went wrong, and someone would show up to fix it. Now, we have to think about what we want, how much we are willing to pay, and we have to make decisions.
We are waiting for the air conditioning man to come. The electricians have told us that the inside and outside units (the expensive pieces) are fine; it is the thermostat that needs replacing, so we have to have the A/C people replace that. Meanwhile, I think I will sit back and enjoy our new light fixture.
Here is what I love. AdventureMan and I are so often on the same track. We wanted traditional – a crystal chandelier – but we didn’t want elaborate, we wanted simple lines, not a lot of embellishment. When we found this, we both knew it at once – welcome home, new light fixture!
And here is one other thing we love. Through our contractor, we met the best people. The plumber is good, and thorough, and honest. The electricians are good, and hard working, and serious. They are all knowledgeable professionals, people we can trust.
The electrician didn’t want to charge us. He said these were leftover tasks from last year. We insisted – a year later, this is on us, not on them. We fiddled around a whole year looking for what we wanted; it’s not fair to not pay after a whole year.
Sometimes we just feel so blessed, having come to this broad and spacious place, Pensacola.
UWF Festival on the Green
Thank you, EnviroGirl! I would go to this festival just because the poster for it is so gorgeous!
Celebrate spring with a visit to the University of West Florida campus during the 11th Annual Festival on the Green on Friday and Saturday, April 1 and 2. Come be a part of Pensacola’s rich history and diverse culture by experiencing a fine arts show, hand-made crafts, music, live performances, a book sale, food and Saturday’s children’s craft festival from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. This year’s festival will include a Run with the Dogs 5K and 1 mile fun run and the grand opening of UWF’s Olympic-size swimming pool. Festival on the Green is a FREE and FUN way to spend the weekend. For more information, view the Festival Schedule.
There is a wonderful schedule, which you can read for yourself by clicking here. It includes food, arts, crafts, a book sale, a senior fest and more!
Jaco’s on the Pensacola Waterfront
“Where do you want to go for lunch?” asks AdventureMan.
Sometimes I tell him “you choose!” but not today. “Jaco’s” I reply.
“Where is Jaco’s?” he asks, and I tell him it is down by the Pensacola pier. I have seen it, I have wondered about it, and every now and then I hear it mentioned in passing by some friend or another. I want to give it a try.
The minute we walk in, we love it.
First, there is this great place to sit outside, and if it is a little cool, they have these heaters, like they use in Kuwait and Qatar in cool weather, so people can still sit outside. Outside is beautiful, because you are right on the Marina, right on the water.
We got there just in time. Following us, the teeming hoards decended, and we were glad we had ordered and been served while it was still relatively quiet. Jaco’s has definitely been discovered.
The food is great. What? You thought we only ate barbecue? No, we love barbecue, and we seek it out mostly because for lo, these many years, we have been seriously barbecue deprived, it’s not so common in the Arabian Gulf countries to find good ol’ American barbecue.
Nor is it common to find food this good, this well prepared, in Pensacola. Everything we ordered, we loved.
We started with the spinach soup:
And then I had Antipasto platter, and AdventureMan had a ‘flatbread pizza’, which we found is a whole lot like an Alsatian ‘flammekeuchen.’ Oh Yummmmmmm.
I forgot to take photos of dessert – I had a berry dessert and AdventureMan had a cobbler, again, both yummmmmm.
We love this place. We plan to go there frequently.
We had been recently to another restaurant I will not be reviewing. It thinks a lot of itself. They start you off with ‘the water service.’ I had the ‘most adventuresome’ meal on the menu, the terrine, and it wasn’t all that great. It was just OK. Others at my table had similar experiences, except for the one who ordered the common hamburger, who said it was a really, really good hamburger. It means well; the first time I ate there I had a delicious risotto, but the dessert was only so-so, not worth the hyped up description. We won’t go back.
We will be going back to Jaco’s. Jaco’s is fun, unpretentious, with great, fresh tasty food, a view to die for, good service and a lot of happy patrons.
AdventureMan’s New Talents
This has been a great month for AdventureMan.
He knew what he wanted. He thought about it, planned it, sought out resources. He now has three photo shelves in his office, where he can display a changing round of photographs. He bought the lumber, tacked on the trim and mounted them on the wall, all by himself.
All these years he has worked so hard – he has never had the time for a fun project like this, and he just sits there and grins that something he was able to do himself can give him so much satisfaction and happiness. Retired, maybe, but still learning new skills, scaling new mountains.
Last night, he baked his first pork tenderloin, and then roasted up some asparagus with an olive vinaigrette sauce. Oh, yummmmm. Still growing, still developing new skills, it is so much fun.
Today, he is going out to explore what kind of kayak he wants to buy. 🙂
You Can’t Take it With You
I awoke this morning from the most horrible dream, and it’s a dream I have had often, but this time, there is no reason. I am packing boxes. I have a deadline. I have a lot to pack, I am feeling very anxious, and I keep getting distracted from my packing. Soon I will have to go, and I haven’t accomplished what I meant to accomplish.
This dream is a very common dream for someone who has moved 31 times in her life, who had packed boxes and suitcases and never missed a deadline. Never once have I left a box with someone else to mail for me. I’ve had these anxiety dreams so many times, but never when I am not facing a move.
So I felt depressed, and I felt anxious this morning, wondering what my dream means. Does it mean that I am thinking about my mortality, and distracted by my attachment to things? Does it mean that I need to be clearing up and organizing my life so I can depart? Or is it just a remnant anxiety, like those leftover dreams about having to take a college exam you haven’t prepared for?
For me, the cure for depression, anxiety and morbidity is action. We hit the water aerobics class this morning and she worked us so hard we both fell asleep this afternoon. I got some tomatoes (not the Black Krim, which I have not yet found) and basil potted, and some weeding done. Depression gone. Anxiety gone. Inklings drift across my consciousness, but I sweep them away like cobwebs.
You Must Not Be From Around Here
When I got back to Kuwait, I had to regain my driving courage all over again. I remember growing up, when we would go to fairs and carnivals, where I loved to ride the bumper cars. We were all aggressive; we wanted to win. It never occurred to me that there would be countries where people would drive real cars that way. Touch wood, I never had an accident in Kuwait, and I learned how to drive aggressively but somehow stayed safe.
Driving in Pensacola is a piece of cake – most of the time. Suddenly, we have some TRAFFIC. There are cars on the road from all over, never fewer than two or three in every car, usually dressed in beach gear, and full of high spirits. It is Spring Break. People are flocking to the gorgeous white beaches of Pensacola, spilling out of the lively beach restaurants, and even some of the restaurants in downtown Pensacola. College students, families (local schools are also on spring break) and the snow birds are filling our roads, not entirely sure where they are going.
In one of our favorite nearby restaurants, we saw some college age kids come in, and then another group, all greeted familiarly by the owners, and then their tables were joined so they could all sit together – locals, back home from university for Spring Break.
It’s a sweet time of the year. The weather is in the high 70’s, cooling down at night. We have the a/c off, we keep it off as long as we can.
Arlane Williams BBQ
We were on our way back home from the commissary, and the smell overwhelmed us. It was lunchtime, and we were ravenous. And here was Arlane Williams, famous Pensacola barbecue – heaven sent, and heavenly scent. 🙂
On the outside:
There is parking back near the BBQ area; see that smoke? You cannot resist:
Inside, it is take out only. The woman in the booth is on the phone writing down a large order, we have to wait our turn. The inside has a big menu on a chalkboard, and is papered with photos of Arlane Williams BBQ fans:
I am sorry to tell you, I didn’t get any photos of the food. We rushed home with our pulled-pork sandwiches, our sides of beans, potato salad, baked potato salad, sweet potato casserole and blackberry cobbler and peach cobbler (all the sides and desserts are in small containers, so it isn’t as much food as it sounds like.) I had to get all the cold stuff put away, and by then we were starving and half-crazed from the delicious smells, and we just ate our lunches without any photos, LOL. Now, we can’t stop thinking about Arlane Williams BBQ; it is GOOD!
“You Seem Happy Here – Are You?”
The landscape designer and I met last year as she toured our garden and helped us identify the plants we have in our garden. She had great ideas, and gave us a lot of help caring for a mature garden. She suggested we live with our yard for a year, and then decide how we want to move forward.
It was the best advice. What looked like a wreck of a garden after last year’s very cold winter came back back with a vengeance. We had fabulous plants, plants the birds and bees and butterflies and hummingbirds all loved to visit. We had a chance to visit other gardens and to see what we like. This year, we have more of a plan, and this lovely lady who has been gardening in Pensacola all her life, helps us fine tune our plans.
We’ve been going around the yard, figuring out where to put a pomegranate tree, a lime tree, a couple hydrangea bushes.
“You seem happy here,” she starts, “Are you?”
“You sound surprised!” I laughed, thinking how many moves I’ve made, and how I really like living near our son, his wife and son. We’ve been here a year now. I make friends slowly, but I actually have a few now.
“I wasn’t sure you would be able to handle the heat,” she confided.
I laughed. “I can’t. There is this wonderful thing called air conditioning. When it gets too hot, I don’t spent much time outside. I’m doing fine.”
It’s been almost a year since we bought the house here. It seems like so much longer, so much has happened. Last night, AdventureMan made a fabulous Bermuda Fish Chowder. Our son’s wife and little Baby Q came by for dinner while our son waited in line at Best Buy for a new iPad2, wooo hooo. He came by as soon as finished the purchase. Life is sweet, and yes, I think I am happy.
Ash Wednesday in Pensacola 2011
Luke 18:9-14
9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax-collector. 11The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector. 12I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” 13But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” 14I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.’
(From the Lectionary readings for today)
“I forgot to set my alarm” AdventureMan said, coming down the stairs, “we missed the first service.”
Today is Ash Wednesday, the day Lent begins for Christians. We go to church, the priest puts a cross on our forehead in ash, to remind us “ashes to ashes, dust to dust”, that our life here on earth is only temporary, and that our true home is heaven.
It’s easier to believe that in your gut when you are an expat.
My cousin wrote to me, and in his email, he wrote that I write about my own culture the same way I wrote about Germany, about Qatar, about Kuwait – as an expat, as an outside observer. Pensacola is like my foreign assignments; I could live here for twenty years (God willing) and I will never be a native, I will always be from somewhere else, the kind of person about whom others will say “she must not be from around here.” I am guessing I will get more comfortable, more confident, but I will always be not-quite-right among the natives.
And that is how we are supposed to be living here on earth – as people not-quite-right, as people eager to return to our true heavenly home.
Lent in my own country is odd to me, now. In a foreign country, you are accustomed to thinking of yourself as a minority; your differentness makes you more aware or who you are, and what you value. There is a part of me that thinks Lent would be a lot easier if, like Qatar, and like Kuwait, and like Saudi Arabia, religious practices were state enforced, like everyone in the USA fasted at the same time, maybe nobody would sell meat or chocolate or alcohol. And then, I think “but what is the point?” The point is our own sacrifice. Is it a sacrifice if it is enforced from the outside?
I can’t sacrifice cussing in traffic this year. Pensacola traffic, by the grace of God, is nearly non-existent, and it is mellow. I’m not even tempted. I’m trying to figure out what I will sacrifice.
Father Neal Goldsborough at Christ Church Episcopal told us on Sunday how all the children come in from the Episcopal Day School to have the ashes imposed, and how poignant it is for him, and I can’t help but think of all the soldiers he has been with at their death, mere children, children of God, and how he must see the faces of these soldiers in the faces of these tiny children. My heart would weep, even knowing they are on their way home.
Chamber Music Concerts at Old Christ Church
AdventureMan and I have discovered a concert series we really like. The University of West Florida Music Department has a chamber music series, giving students a chance to play publicly, and offering chamber music lovers (moi) a chance to see and hear them perform in a delightfully intimate setting, old Christ Church in downtown Pensacola. It’s so far downtown that it’s almost on the waterfront.
The concerts take place once a month, Wednesdays at noon, and are FREE. There is a donation container in the entry at Christ Church but there is no one shaking it or looking at you meaningfully. If you can’t make a donation, the donation police are not going to hunt you down.
Meanwhile, if you show up for these concerts, you are in for a treat. The Director of the chamber music program, Hedi Salanki-Rubardt, gives her students a lot of leeway, and a lot of inspiration, and you can see they truly love what they are doing, and enjoy being a part of the program.
Giustino Carrano – tuba
Matthew DeDowell – trombone
Allison Gilliard- soprano Marshall Corzette – baritone
Lynsey Boothe – steel drum
You don’t usually think of a steel drum as a traditional chamber music instrument, but Hedi Salanki played the harpsichord, and Lynsey Boothe played the steel drum and they rocked Vivaldi. It was a lot of fun.
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