What’s Up?

I’m home, that’s what. And I haven’t been posting like I’ve wanted to. The problem is, I went on a vacation, then came back, and of course the price for all that nice relaxation and stuff was the predictable reckoning when I came home: Work, work, work.

The truly hot Missouri summertime weather finally hit while we were out of town. The yard has transformed into a jungle, complete with mosquitoes and chiggers. Even the grass has been pretty much out of hand, since it’s been raining so often.

To make things even nuttier around here, we’ve had some interior finishing experts at our house to destroy and then rebuild our sunporch ceiling. So all the stuff from the sunporch had to be moved; the second floor is a maze of furniture. You might remember me talking about the sunporch ceiling, and all that mess before . . . it got a lot worse before it got better.




But I’ve been up to some fun things, too, since I’ve been back. I’ve even taken some pictures to share with y’all, but I just haven’t found the time to, you know, simply write about any of it.

Anyway, I won’t bore you with all my snapshots of Florida, but here are a few, so you can get an idea of what the vacation was all about. We stayed on Captiva Island. (No, there was no oil washing up yet when we were there, though all the folks there were getting ready for it.)




Yeah, it was an excellent trip. We had perfect weather, and we spent most of the time on the beach or in restaurants or museums or sight-seeing.




The last two days of the trip, we traveled east to visit the Seminole reservation and then to Everglades National Park.




Alligators, dolphins, manatees were seen. Sea turtles were seen, too, and one night, a sea turtle laid her eggs on the beach not far from where we were staying.




And I had forgotten how, even though you may not move from the same beach location over a period of several days, the ocean gives you new things every day. One day, it’s calm and warm; another, it’s cool and choppy. Or one day, the ocean’s full of weird little jellylike hydromedusae; the next, it’s throwing all kinds of seaweed up on the beach, and another day there’s a large amount of some particular kind of shell being washed up.




And I had forgotten how the ocean reaches out from its depths and hands its objects out onto the beach, and then a few hours later reaches along the slant of the beach and drags it all back.

If you live near a coast, you are truly lucky, and you should visit the beach as much as possible, I mean it. Even if it’s a cold, windy place with a lot of rocks instead of sugar-white sand. Just do it.




Anyway, it was a good vacation, and now I’m back, struggling to retain some of that relaxation, the joy of discovery, the broadened mind, the readjusted notion of what is “important.” Alas, it’s fading fast.




So much to do . . .