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. . .
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.
The Living Room
The Living Room is almost finished. We still have carpets to gather from Seattle, carpets we bought in Damascus way back a long time ago, stored by my gracious sister Sparkle, under the guest room bed, lo, these many years. I grumble and complain as I unpack boxes, putting things away, but the carrot is always dangling before my eyes – figuring out how to use old friends in a new environment, a challenge that can keep me busy for a long time.
Just as with paint, sometimes you have to try something out in a space for a while to see if it ‘wants’ to be there.
In America, we never think of objects as having feelings. The world is full of people who understand the ‘fung shui’ of things, that putting things in some places is better than putting them in other places, that energy has a flow. I don’t believe in it like a religious belief, but I have come to accept that sometimes you have an idea about something going someplace, and then it just doesn’t feel right, and to trust those feelings. So I have stuck a few things in places where I think they belong in this room – and I thought long and hard about where these things would go. I will live with it for a while and if something is where it shouldn’t be, it just won’t feel right.
Light has to be taken into account, and bringing light into dark spaces, and protecting vulnerable textiles from too much damaging light.
For me, conversation is important, so I want people to be able to sit closely enough to be able to share their innermost thought, but far enough away from one another to feel comfortable and relaxed, not crowded or invaded.
We have extra chairs, so the number of people who can comfortably sit in here is expandable:
We created a small study area, with a good light, where we can look things up, or read something that requires concentration:
I wish I had more shelf top space in my kitchen for all my baskets, but I don’t, so the bookshelves and cupboards will have to do for now:
The room beyond is the dining room, but I don’t think we will ever use it as a dining room, so I am trying to think through how it may be used . . . it might be a play room for grandchildren . . . 🙂
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!
Before You Leave Doha – No Regrets
I was neither the first nor the last of my group to leave Doha. Well, yes, actually, I was the first, I left Doha for Kuwait, but it doesn’t count because I came back and then was no longer the first to leave. The next to leave are leaving soon, so I want to share something with you.
All my visitors from Kuwait bought these at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha. I didn’t get it. It just doesn’t rain that much in Kuwait, but the umbrellas are only 100 QR, and that is a reasonable price for a big umbrella, well made.
My last visit to the Museum of Islamic Art, just before leaving, I broke down and bought one, too, and packed it immediately for moving to Pensacola. I was with a good friend, she bought one too. I kind of wondered if I would ever use it.
We are getting some serious rain in Pensacola, related to Hurricane Alex. Do you have any idea how BIG hurricanes are, even smaller ones? They whoosh around in a huge counter-clockwise circle, and if you look at a satellite photo, you will see that the circular whoosh can cover hundreds of miles – thus, pouring rain in Pensacola.
I had put my umbrella in the car, as a just in case. Yesterday, I had an opportunity to unfurl it for the first time.
It is gorgeous.
Some things don’t translate well. Some things you buy, you look at and wonder ‘Why did I buy this?” It looks so good in Doha, but you get it back to the USA and . . . sometimes, it doesn’t look so good.
This umbrella looks GREAT. It is so classic, in the ivory, and I love the silver and gold pattern; it is subtle and beautiful. It really covers well, too, and keeps the rain off you and one other. 🙂 This is a very good buy!
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.
Heartache in Pensacola
It’s a beautiful full moon over the oil soaked beaches of Pensacola. There is a beach advisory against children on the beach, against pregnant women or people with weak immune systems being on the beach. The surf is contaminated with oil and VOC, which is volatile organic compounds, whatever that means, it is bad.
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