Qatari Cat’s Happy Place
Winter in Pensacola is mercurial, one minute the temperatures are in the seventies, and the next minute we are covering our more fragile plantings and hoping they make it through the freeze. This year we had hibiscus blooming that has suffered from the winter two winters ago, a very cold winter, and we weren’t sure they would survive – for two years!
When the temperatures go down, the Qatari Cat begs to go out into the garage (he remembers it is a very warm place) but two minutes later he is saying “I made a big mistake! Let me in!”
Last year we bought an electric bed for him. It doesn’t get really warm, not as warm as a heating pad, but it gets warm enough that he thinks it is heaven. He could stay in the bed just about all day, rolling around so that every part of him gets some of the warmth some of the time. He doesn’t leave it much except to eat.
I keep it in my office, at my feet. He dreams, snorts, shudders, moans and growls, and nothing I do bothers him in the least. He has found his happy place. 🙂
Christmas Time in Pensacola
Christmas in Pensacola starts just after Thanksgiving, for most people. I saw a very few decorations go up around Veteran’s Day (11 November) but very few. Most started going up around Thanksgiving. Because we are having some work continuing on our house, I couldn’t do the same decorations I did last year, so I did something new; my goal in the week before I left was to get SOME Christmas up, inside and out.
This year, AdventureMan is here, too, and it makes all the difference. Last year, he left for Kuwait just before Christmas, and I was so sad that it was hard to put a lot of effort into decorating. I did it, mostly because I am too proud not to. (No. I will not let adversity get me down!) But mostly, it takes a lot of energy to fight depression, so this year, I am appreciating just how good it is to have a ‘normal’ Christmas, i.e. my husband is on the same continent as me, in the same country, even the same state, same city, and same residence. It’s all good. 🙂
Our tree this year is smaller – and higher – that other years, and all the ornaments on it are unbreakable. Yes. Happy Baby, now Happy Toddler, will be coming by and I want to protect him – and the tree. Over the years we have collected so many wonderful ornaments that I have a lot to work with, and still manage to have a nice tree; the angel on the top is a traditional angel from Nurnberg, and we bought it the first year we were married. It’s nice to have her high on the top of the tree once more.
Under the tree, covering the table, is a special wool sefsari we bought when we lived in Tunisia, bright red with bands of gold trim. These were everywhere when we lived there, especially in the cold winters, but when we visited, I no longer saw them in any stores. Covering the tree stand, I have one of my smaller Damascus tablecloths; I treasure these coverings, and beads, Pensacola parade beads.
“Beads!” we shouted to Happy Toddler as we put them over his head.
“Beads!” the crowd shouted as the floats went by at the Pensacola Christmas Parade last night.
Last year, even as a Happy Baby, the parade was an enthralling event. What baby wouldn’t love a parade that starts with flashing lights, and motorcycles, and a loudly wailing, lights fashing FIRE TRUCK?? What Happy Toddler wouldn’t love the bands with the throbbing drums, and trumpets, and tubas, and trombones? And the dancing girls, and oh yes – the BEADS! Life is sweet at the Pensacola Christmas Parade.
The parade starts at 5:15 and we get there about 5:14. Here is what I love about Pensacola; you can get there at 5:14 and get a place to park only about 1/2 a block from the parade and be there when the spectacle begins. It is a laid back kind of parade, still a community parade, you see your friends there. It is sort of a Christmas parade, you see some Santas, and some reindeer, and snowmen, and there is usually at least one float with angels, but it is also sort of Mardi Gras, with all the Krewes (local social groups focused on Mardi Gras) on floats with their buds throwing beads, coins, toys and candy out into the waiting, dancing crowd.
Technically, I know this isn’t a great photo because you can’t even really tell what it is, but it is the beginning of the parade, and I love the motion of it all:
As it turned out, we were in a pretty good spot for catching beads, and we loaded down the Happy Toddler, put a few on each of us, and shared the bounty with some of the babies standing behind us. There were some people in front of us who caught a LOT of beads, and as soon as they caught them, they stashed them in a bag; they caught LOTS. Maybe they sell them back or something.
Last week, we took Happy Toddler to Boats on the Bayou, where boats decorated with Christmas lights gather near the bridge and then come parading to the park, and people gathered there sing Christmas Carols. Happy Toddler loves going to the park; the boats were interesting for about five seconds, and then he got to swing and play on the playground, which mattered a whole lot more to him:
It was just a really fun, community thing, and it was pretty, too.
Lunch at the Fish House, always a treat, and their tree is BLUE!
The Pensacola Christmas Parade attracts around 50,000 people every year. Imagine! It is so much fun. What I love about it is that there are so many floats, so many bands, so many civic heroes – you know how I feel about giving back to your community. These people are doing it. On one of the coldest nights of the year, they are on the Krewe floats throwing beads, they are patrolling behind the dog clubs, cleaning up, they are making sure the floats make the turn at Wright and Palafox, they are marching with bare legs in the cold, windy night – and it is so much fun.
Who would think that 50,000 people gathered in one place, competing for beads, would keep it all so civil? There is no place for ‘special people;’ we are all Pensacola citizens, there to enjoy a family evening, and it is just that, it is a great Pensacola evening, one of my favorite of the year.
Best of all was watching the Happy Toddler take it all in. The lights! The sirens! The beads, and the scrambling to catch them! The loud music, the pounding drums! It was all so much fun, and that fun was doubled watching him try to figure it all out. I can hardly wait ’till next year. 🙂
In the Garden
The temperatures have fallen, and even ten degrees make all the difference. You feel like going outside again. The heat doesn’t slap you in the face.
Sure, with temperatures still up in the 80’s most days you still work up a sweat if you are digging, planting and weeding, but being outside on the cooler days – and there have been a couple – is sheer joy.
We’ve done some work in the garden, and had some work done with Garden Gate, who are such a delight to work with. They have a landscaper, Carole Simpson, who when we first moved here advised us to do nothing big for a year, but to live with our gardens and see what was working and what we wanted to change.
As it turned out, we have one garden that is nearly perfect – save for the weeding, but even the weeding in that bed is not that hard. We knew we wanted a native plant and grass area, and we had an area where we were concerned about erosion, so we asked for some help with that. I wanted to try some hydrangeas near our back fence. Carole had a couple other ideas, and we liked them, and added them in.
This is our new herb garden, designed to help the area not to erode – and for the sheer joy of the herbs and flowers. 🙂 Two kinds of rosemary! Sage, thyme and oregano!
These are the new hydrangeas; the center back one is an oakleaf hydrangea and the three surrounding it are more compact. I am hoping they will grow into big sprawling shrubs like I had in Seattle.
This is the grassy area, which will take a while to establish and fill out. Years! But we have the time . . . 🙂
This is a vine in its second year in out backyard; it is so happy. The flowers are white. We like it so much we have planted a second one to keep it company on the fence.
AdventureMan has his own project – a butterfly garden. He found all the right plants at Garden Gate and planted them in an old wheelbarrow we found at a yard sale. The very next day, we watched a butterfly come and lay eggs in the milkweed. Since then, AdventureMan has checked the results daily (sometimes hourly, depending on the stage.) We have watched the eggs develop into hungry, hungry caterpillars, and are now watching the caterpillers attach to the underside of the wheelbarrow to become chrysalis, and we hope to be able to see one (or more) become full Monarch butterflies.
When we planted the pomegranate tree in the Spring, we never dreamed it would put forth a fruit the first year, but we are watching our pomegranates (we have two on our small tree) with the same joy we are watching for the butterflies.
Today we awoke to clouds and drizzle – perfect weather for helping our new additions settle in comfortably, establish their roots, get comfortable. We need a good spell of moderate weather before the colder weather sets in.
In The Middle of the Storm
When you’re in the middle of the storm, it is hard to imagine just how BIG it is. It isn’t a hurricane, because the winds are not high enough, but oh man, the rain. Poor Pensacola has been about 10 – 15 inches short of its annual average, and I think we are getting all caught up this weekend.
AdventureMan is outside, picking up dead tree branches that came down last night. On our way to church, early this morning, we saw the electrical crews out trying to fix a line that went down. God bless these heroes who get out of bed on a national long weekend, early in the morning, so that people might have lights, and power, and air conditioning. We take them for granted, and yet they are everyday heroes.
A Different Perspective
“It’s going to be a great weekend! We’re expecting sun and temperatures of 85°F!” my Mom enthused, from Seattle.
“We’re expecting a great weekend, too,” I enthused right back, “the temperature will be down to about 85°F and it’s going to RAIN!”
We laughed. It’s all a matter of perspective.
“We’re staying in this weekend,” said one of my co-mother-in-laws. “When it gets like this, we just hunker down.”
“We went out to the beach!” I crowed! I wanted to see the waves, and when the temperatures go down and it rains, I feel re-energied!”
We laughed. She’s married to a man from the Pacific Northwest, so this perspective is not new to her.
What was not funny was when I had just started a load of laundry, and the electricity went out. Electricity goes out all the time, or from time to time, with frequent thunder and lightning storms, but this time it went out and stayed out. Without the ceiling fans going, it wasn’t hot, but it got stuffy. We have a covered and protected area outside, so we went outside and sat and watched the gusting winds and the flying rain beating down our tomato plants. Mostly, the rain has been drizzling down, but for an hour or so, it really battered and flew about. It’s just a normal small storm, though, nothing like it could be, nothing like Hurricane Irene, which devastated the East Coast last weekend.
And it was a good thing. We have hurricane preparations, but . . . sometimes we rob the Hurricane supplies, or borrow them, and forget to put them back. While it was still daylight, I wanted to check on candles, matches, etc. and I discovered the matches had been MISPLACED. I finally found them. I gathered candles, and checked the weather station on my radio that you wind up during electrical outages (it worked fine) and started a list of additional things I want to gather to have on hand in case the electricity goes out for any length of time. It’s good to be prepared. 🙂
Electricity is back on now, adventure over.
“Feels Like . . . “
AdventureMan is at a meeting, and I had been thinking lunch at the beach later today when he gets home. At “feels like 120°F,” I think maybe not the beach today.
Oddly, while the temperatures are high, it hasn’t felt like the worst days of summer. I have tomatoes growing again, so some of our nights must be going below 70°F, and with the recent rains, the roses are blooming again and the lantana in the former pool area (not our doing, the original owner) is going bananas. The bees are busy, and I am hoping they will fertilize the eggplant, so the plant I have been nursing all summer will not have been for nothing. It FEELS like Fall is coming, in spite of the temperatures.
On my Weather Underground home page, I have temperatures for Doha and Kuwait also listed. Doha, nine hours ahead, has almost the same exact temperature at 6 pm that Pensacola has at 9 am. God’s mercy is showing in Doha, cooling the evening for the Ramadan celebrations. 🙂
Lightning Strikes
It’s thunderstorm time in Pensacola, and what surprises me is how the sky can look relatively clear and blue, and then a big bolt of lightning strikes.
This is from today’s Bottom Line Health News:
WHEN LIGHTNING STRIKES
The weather outside is frightful, inside it’s so delightful… it’s awfully early in the year to sing this song, but it’s what came to mind as I was researching this story on a particular hazard of summertime weather — lightning. It’s far more “frightful” than snow or ice — lightning can kill you instantly. While some of us may already know exactly what to do when there’s lightning around, it’s remarkable how many people don’t know or simple don’t take lightning seriously enough. I decided to seek out the latest information on staying safe.
A BOLT FROM THE BLUE
In the summer months, lightning is predictably unpredictable — there’s lots of it and you don’t always see it coming. You’ve heard the term “a bolt from the blue”… it derives from the fact that lightning has been known to light up a bright blue sky (though not so often as a dark and stormy one), and it can travel as far as 10 miles, not only vertically but horizontally as well. Hot summer weather raises the likelihood of thunderstorms, which always bring lightning (whether you see it or not).
According to the National Weather Service, lightning strikes ground some 25 million times a year here in the US, hitting an estimated 400 people and killing about 40, who typically die from severe burns, cardiac arrest and/or respiratory arrest. While 90% of those who have been hit by lightning survive, they often suffer serious side effects that can include paralysis, internal and external burns, deafness, ringing in ears, amnesia and/or confusion, personality change, depression, sleep disturbances, memory dysfunction, headache, fatigue, joint stiffness and muscle spasms.
To learn how to stay safe and what to do if you’re ever with someone struck by lightning, I consulted our contributing medical editor Richard O’Brien, MD, an emergency physician in Scranton, Pennsylvania, who told me he sees lightning victims every summer.
While everyone seems to understand that lightning is dangerous, many are unclear on what they need to do to protect themselves. So, one by one, we went through the facts that are most important to know…
ARE YOU GROUNDED?
The most important thing to understand about lightning, said Dr. O’Brien, is that it wants to find a way to get into the earth — it’s called “grounding.” The human body, water and metal all are excellent conductors of electricity and will get it to ground very effectively. Rubber, concrete and wood, on the other hand, are protective.
“When thunder roars, go indoors.” This is the catchy phrase that the National Weather Service uses to educate people on the most important thing you can do to stay safe from lightning — get out of its way. Get inside a safe building (one that is fully enclosed with a roof, walls, electricity and plumbing) or seek shelter in a car with a metal roof and the windows up (not a convertible, even with the roof up). “There is no such thing as being safe outdoors in a thunderstorm,” said Dr. O’Brien. Even if you are inside, remember that lightning has been known to strike through glass. Stay as far away as possible from windows and skylights. Lightning also has been known to strike through electrical outlets. If it hits an outside wire (phone/cable/electric), it can conduct into the jacks in the house, Dr. O’Brien explains.
Stay dry and disconnected. You can use a cell or cordless phone safely during a thunderstorm as long as the handset is not plugged in or attached to the base. Note that by using a cordless phone you still risk drawing an electrical surge to the base and destroying it. Under no circumstances should you talk on a landline. Any electrical device, handheld or otherwise including an electric stove, is a magnet for lightning, especially when it is using power. Stay out of the shower or bath and don’t use the sinks. “Lightning can come through the plumbing,” notes Dr. O’Brien. “If it hits the house, it looks for ground (your metal pipes) and if you’re in the shower, naked and wet, you’ve had it.” If you must go outdoors, remember there is no such thing as safe phone use — even a cell or cordless.
Be patient. Wait to go outdoors until you’ve heard no thunder for 30 minutes.
IF LIGHTNING STRIKES …
If you or someone near to you is struck by lightning, get help immediately. Call 9-1-1 (from a safe location if there is one!). If the person is unconscious and without a pulse, perform CPR. The 911 operator can help with advice as well. As a quick guide to CPR, the American Heart Association says to use both hands and push on the chest “hard and fast” to the tempo of the old Bee Gees song Stayin’ Alive.
There’s no need to fear being electrocuted yourself if you touch a person who has been struck by lightning, said Dr. O’Brien — but you do need to protect yourself from another bolt of lightning. Take whatever measures you can to get yourself and the victim out of danger as fast as possible.
During these summer months, it’s important to be aware that lightning is a clear and present danger — take it seriously!
Source(s):
Richard O’Brien, MD, attending emergency physician at Moses Taylor Hospital, and associate professor of emergency medicine at The Commonwealth Medical College of Pennsylvania, both in Scranton.
Monday Night Blues at Five Sisters Blues Cafe in Pensacola
We kept wanting to go to Five Sisters Blues Cafe – everyone tells us it is a really fun place with great food – but it takes us a while to find it. I’m printing the Google map for you; it is at the corner of Belmont and DeVilliers. Not that hard to find if you know Pensacola, but we are still learning Pensacola.
Five Sisters exterior:
“Where’ve you been?” our waitress, Lisa, asked as we were seated. We must have looked goofy, we’ve never been there before, so we said, “this is our first time” and she laughed and said “I know that! I haven’t seen you before! We’ve been open a year! Where’ve you been?”
We just laughed, she had really caught us off guard. The place was packed, on a Wednesday afternoon, people all around us eating giant salads, plates heaped with fried chicken, everything we saw coming out to the tables looked delicious. Lisa brought us iced-tea, and I lost my heart, look, REAL mint in the tea, just like home . . .
We were overwhelmed. There is a lot going on in the restaurant, people laughing, art works on the walls, a new menu to peruse and we don’t know what we want. We finally decide to share the sampler platter with two fried green tomatoes, 4 crab cakes and 4 shrimp, which came with three very tasty sauces – WOW. Wowed right off the top:
AdventureMan even said, in wonder “This crab cake really tastes like crab with a C!” and it was. You know, the other kind, that calls itself crab, but is really flavored Alaskan pollock, and not crab at all? This was real crab, and it tasted crabby. Yummm.
AdventureMan had a vegetable platter. Now this is Southern cooking at it’s best, so don’t expect ‘vegetable’ to be Vegan. Even Mac and Cheese qualifies as a vegetable, and beans usually have some pork to flavor them, etc. He said the entire plate was delicious.
I tried something I had never had before, catish over grits. I never thought I liked grits until our daughter-in-laws stepmother (I know, I know, it sounds complicated, and it is another thing we have in common with people all over the world; we all have complicated relationships) made Smoked Gouda Grits one night with her Barbecued Shrimp and a whole new world opened up to me. Wooo HOOO. Anyway, I didn’t eat all the grits; the catfish was filling, but this dish knocked my socks off and I don’t think I could duplicate it, so I’m just going to have to go back to Five Sisters every time I get a craving for it:
If we are what we eat, we are becoming very Southern. 🙂
Lisa, the waitress, was a lot of fun, helpful in making recommendations, quick when we asked for anything, and she told us about an upcoming special jazz night that we really needed to attend. OK. That sounded like fun.
Lisa was right. It was really fun. We walked in, early, and every table was taken. There was a Jazz Society of Pensacola membership table at the entrance, and the lady just laughed and said “Look! There are lots of chairs empty, just go to a table and ask if you can join them.”
Hmm. We’re actually used to that, living in Germany all those years, but I didn’t know you could do that here. 🙂 We ended up at a table with another couple, and as we chatted, we had a really good time with them. They were so gracious and welcoming to people they had never met and who aren’t even members (yet) of the Jazz Society. We laughed a lot. He told us that they didn’t have a lot of rules, but that when things got lively, no oxygen machines were allowed on the dance floor because they might explode, LLOOLLL!
This place was ROCKIN’. People were dancing between the tables, people from young to old, just having a great time listening to some very very good music. Within an hour, there were no empty seats at all, some people were standing, and others were eating out on the covered patio. It was raining (rain in Pensacola during a drought is a good thing) and the evening was called Monday Night Blues. How cool is that? The atmosphere was perfect.
Of course we had dinner. AdventureMan had BBQ on Red Beans and Rice and I had the Shrimp Basket. No Mom, I did not eat the French Fries.
I did eat ONE of the hushpuppies. I could not resist. 😉
Five Sisters Blues Cafe is just a really fun place, immaculately clean, great food and great service. We can’t wait to go back again.
Sorry, Mom
“We’ve had a record number of days under 70°F” Mom says, and as I check today’s weather in Seattle, this is what I see:
You COULD be in Pensacola, Mom:
Did you notice the ‘feels like” temperature?
116?
It’s hot. It’s humid. I think I’ll go take a nap.
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.
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