Tropical Storm Bonnie On the Horizon
Yesterday Little Diamond and I headed out to Fort Pickens, a long spit of land out on Pensacola Beach where there are old forts and batteries, campgrounds and hiking trails. The campgrounds looked heavily occupied, and there was a heavy surf – not to far from the road. In fact, although I am usually courageous, I felt uncomfortable about how close the surf was to the road. Out on this long, isolated spit, the land isn’t that much above sea level. It wouldn’t take much to wash right over the spit, and were that to happen, there is no place to run.
Personal security sort of becomes a way of life. It becomes second nature; you don’t even know you are constantly surveying your surroundings, looking for escape routes, keeping your back to the wall, facing the door, watching cars around you, etc. You don’t even know you are doing it, until you get that sort of choking sensation, knowing there is one way out and if that way is compromised, you might be sunk – in this case, literally.
On our way out and back, we saw mysterious activity, involving tents, lots of workers, surveyors and GPS systems. We speculated it might be movement of turtle eggs to avoid contamination from the oil spill, but we didn’t stop and ask – they seemed very intent and focused on their task.
We quickly toured and left for a nice lunch at Crabs – We Got ‘Em. DELICIOUS! We had the crab and spinach dip – oh Yummm. I had the crab cake sliders, which were so big I could only eat the crab cakes. Little Diamond had the Crab Ceasar. All in all, we were greatly pleased. Although yesterday was another hot hot hot and humid day, we ate outside in the shaded area, fanned by fans and Gulf breezes. Another day in Paradise. 🙂
(For those of you in the area, here is our review of our first visit to Crabs – We Got ‘Em several months ago.)
This morning, looking at the front page, we had confirmation of our fears – under the headline Bonnie Flies Over the Sea is a sub-headline “Ft. Pickens evacuates campers as storm enters Gulf, regains steam.”
A second article, above the line, is Sea Turtles Changing Shores and you can see a photo of a sea turtle nest full of eggs being moved to avoid damage from the oil spill.
Pensacola is actually just outside the projected path of Bonnie, but those storms are often known to veer from the projections. I have water and candles and matches and blankets, peanut butter and crackers stored in the closet of what Little Diamond calls the Fantasy Guest Suite. She is, as has become tradition, our first visitor. 🙂
Mediterranean Plus in Pensacola, ReVisit
“It’s hard to believe there are so many people in Pensacola who like Middle Eastern food,” my friend whispered, as we waited for our meals to arrive at Mediterranean Plus.
The restaurant was not packed, but it is a large restaurant, and most of the tables were taken.
The Mediterranean appetizer platter arrived and we all dug in, conversation flowing fast and furious. We slowed down when the main course arrived – holy smokes, all that food . . .
At the end of the meal, she said “Wow. I’ll be back here for sure!”
Pensacola has been a surprise – all the ethnic restaurants, and the food is not dumbed down.
Love of our Lives
AdventureMan and I often discuss with wonder the odds of our finding and marrying one another – and God’s great goodness in our life together.
Here is one of the most amazing things to ever happen – they call him the Happy Baby:
We love to be able to spend time with our sweet son and his wife and their son. 🙂 They ask us to babysit, and they think we are doing them a favor. Little do they know how we cherish our time with the Happy Baby!
Gushing Oil Stopped
This is what the latest live feed of the Gulf Oil gusher looks like:
It is not totally stopped. It has already spewed millions of gallons of life-killing petroleum into the Gulf. No one knows how well it will hold, or if it will hold. No one knows what the long term effects of this gaffe will be.
We’re just all glad it is tamed for now.
Blue Angels Show Today in Pensacola
You can hear those engines roaring throughout the area – and I love that sound. Today the Blue Angels are strutting their stuff in Pensacola, their home ground, where they train and where they have a huge and loyal audience. People will head to the beach early, and spend the day. It’s a crowd that loves the Angels.
Butler’s Pantry
This room is kind of an LOL; it is called the Butler’s Pantry, but we don’t have a butler. It has a dual wine refrigerator, one held at 47°F for white wine and one at 61°F for red wine. We do have wine in them, but we are not great collectors of wine. The cupboards have come in handy for all the beer and wine glasses we collected during our years of living in Germany. The white wine refrigerator also holds beer, which is tasty in hot hot weather and with Mexican food.
This is a room we are in and out of all the time – on our way to the garden, on our way to the laundry, and on our way out the door to the garage. The photographs are by AdventureMan:
Pensacola, Tuesday, Rain and Sunrise
Sometimes I have trouble sleeping, so what a difference it makes when I have a good night’s sleep! Last night, for the first time, I tried the ceiling fan – what a difference! This morning, I was awake, rested, and ready to get up before six.
For a minute, I thought I was in Kuwait, it was all fuzzy and dusty outside, but I realized it was just the fog on my windows, and it was raining.
I grabbed my camera; you know me, I love sunrises, and this was a beauty, pink and rainy:
Turned around, and there was a sparkling rainbow. Pardon the fuzziness, but my camera keeps fogging due to the change from inside to outside:
All the peppers I have planted seem to be flourishing, and I am wondering what I am going to do with all these peppers? Maybe I can make some kind of relish? I could make something like stuffed jalepenos, chili rellenos, except I don’t think I have enough peppers ripe at one time to make a real dish. Maybe later in the season . . .
Lots of tomatoes, all the Black Krim. My other tomatoes have flowers, but I can’t spot any tomatoes on them yet. I am loving the Black Krim! Fresh tomatoes, tasty tomatoes, every day, oh what luxury!
This house used to have a swimming pool, but long ago, they filled it in and made a garden. I love what they did – their plant selections attract all kinds of birds and butterflies:
Margaritaville on Pensacola Beach
The weather was beautiful in Pensacola, all 4th of July weekend to the fireworks. Early Monday morning, all hell broke loose, the heavens opened and it poured rain.
In spite of the good weather leading up to the Fourth, the droves that usually invade the beaches to celebrate didn’t materialize. One restaurant owner said his business was down 80% from last year at this time. We decided, in spite of the rain, to head over to the beach for lunch, do our small part for the Pensacola Beach economy.
LLLOOOLLLL! The first place we tried, Peg Leg Pete’s, (“Our Latitude Will Change Your Attitude”) had such a crowd that the wait was 25 – 30 minutes, standing out in the rain, so we passed. Our second choice, Crabs – We Got ‘Em was closed until 4 pm. Oh AAARRGH,, but there is still the brand new Jimmy Buffet hotel, Margaritaville and we’ve been eager to take a look so in we go.
Bad news is that you can’t use the underground parking lot, even on a rainy day, unless you are a hotel guest. Good news is that if you are dining in the restaurant, valet parking is free, and when you have a baby and car seat with you, valet parking is very very good. 🙂
Margaritaville is beautiful, and fun. As soon as you walk in, it is beachy; beautiful sand and sea colors, a faux straw mat floor and comfy beach-home furniture. Beach music, too.
The view of Pensacola beach, even on a rainy day, is glorious. Please note that the beaches are CLEAN. Come to Pensacola! Save the economy!
Our original plans had been to find one of the beachy restaurants, you know, family restaurants, full of kids, one more little baby wouldn’t even be noticed. The main demographic in the Margaritaville restaurant was couples, mostly 50-ish, women in sundresses they were a little too big for, and men in big bright flowered shirts, drinking fancy beach drinks (There is a whole page of them 🙂 ). There was one baby, and few other children.
We only had to wait about 15 minutes to get in, and there was a nice lounge where we could wait. We had the popcorn shrimp for starters, and we liked it. The bacon cheeseburger was good, according to my son, and the crab cake sandwich disappeared in a heartbeat. Baby Q was good as gold and had is first taste of dill pickle. He liked it! My seafood salad had macaroni in it. Aargh. Service was good, unobtrusive and friendly.
It’s a nice place. I would stay there. I love the clean lines and the sea colors. There are other places I would rather eat.
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.’
Master BR and Guest Suite
Here is where AdventureMan and I and the Qatteri Cat sleep:
It’s the smallest bedroom we have ever had, but we like the privacy of being upstairs, and we each like having our own bathroom, and we like having our offices upstairs – we actually like spending time together. 🙂
I’ve discovered I don’t like drawers; I put things in drawers and never see them again. I am experimenting with shelves and baskets for my non-hanging clothes, too. I always need lots of shelf space for the books I intend to read – you can see there are a few of those. One of my treasures – not an expensive treasure, I found it at an Arts fest in Seattle’s University District – is a hand carved oak earring tree, that keeps all my favorite earrings where I can see them and find what I need quickly.
While the closets are large, the doors don’t open as far as the closets go, so in the dead space at one end, I put shoe storage organizers, and now I can also see where all my shoes are. 🙂 At the other end are clothes I wear less often. We might have to get rid of these closets, and open this space up using the ‘grandkids’ room to enlarge the space and create a walk-in closet where we can see what we have. . .
No, none of this looks like House Beautiful; that’s because we really life here, and life can get a little messy. 😉
We are expecting company. We are ready for you! The guest suite is the largest bedroom in the house, downstairs. We slept there while we were waiting for our household goods to arrive, and I can assure you, it is very comfortable, with the best closet in the house. 🙂
We haven’t made up the bed yet, because the Qatteri Cat watches birds sometimes from this room, and we want everything to be fresh when you arrive. 🙂 Hmmm. Guess I’ll switch out that turquoise wastecan, LOL, it is really jarring now that I see it in a photo. . .
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