VA CA TION!
I don't know exactly what I expected...swamps, everglades ~ maybe alligators. I did not expect it to feel like I was entering a forest, a modern forest, populated and scattered with suburb neighborhoods.
Florida!
As I looked out the window as the plane prepared for a landing, I saw a sea of green. Lush green. Here and there, a street, a neighborhood. But MOSTLY : trees. I got off the plane and just as I was warned hit a WALL of humidity and heat. It was 10ish in the morning, the sky was crystal blue and the air was wet with heat. It never stopped amusing me, making me giggle: I would walk outside and my glasses would fog up, like a mirror after a hot shower.
I never could get my bearings ~ there were no mountains, and I felt completely lost.
Time made me feel, much of the time, like one of those paddle and ball toys ~ the ones with a light wooden paddle with a ball attached to it by a string of elastic. My mind and psyche kept bouncing and snapping back and forth between CA and FL time: Midnight? = no, it felt like 9, which is not a bad time to learn to get tired and go to bed. In the morning my body woke at 6, but that is 3 a m in CA time. My mind had been waking up at 5:45 back in CA when I had taught summer school. Every morning by body and mind had a bickering match: (Mind) "The clock says 6:30 and I am AWAKE, cuz I 'know' that is when I am used to getting up!" (Body) "In my real world where I must go back and live, that is 3 in the MORNING!! I am not done resting!! I am closing my eyes again!!!" I tried to stay in bed until 9, and was usually up by 8, dressed and sitting with coffee by 8:30. Yeah, that is 5, 5:30 CA time, but it was the best compromise I could come to...and yes, my first morning back I was sipping coffee at my computer at CA-5:30 / FL-8:30.
But the mornings were a gift to me. I would get up and take my Bible and a cup of tea (coffee, if Jeff was up before me) and go out on the back patio to the porch swing and gaze out. Behind my friend's house is a lake -- yes, that IS what I said! A LAKE!!! Not 50 yards from their back door is a lake!!! Their patio, greengreengreengreen grass, a huge pine tree, then a lake! Yes, every once in a while God does spoil some of his children and the rest of us must simply deal with our envy. . .ok flat out jealousy! There is a flock of geese who live at the lake and play in the yards. They would be meandering on the grass either next door or under the pine tree. Suddenly they would begin to bicker and squawk and honk. By the way, I know we humans say that geese 'honk' but it did not sound like honking. I could not/can not make a word in my head for the sound, but it is raucous, and LOUD and intense. A knot of them would fly off and circle -- around the neighborhood, I guess -- and swoop back down and land on the water with a "WHOOOSH" -- yes, that sound: geese meeting water: whoooosssshhhhh! The lake was dark royal blue, the trees were crayon box green, the sky little boy blue -- clouds of fleecy white, or often gun metal to silver grey. . .and I, on the porch swing chatting with God, made memories of bliss!
Florida!
As I looked out the window as the plane prepared for a landing, I saw a sea of green. Lush green. Here and there, a street, a neighborhood. But MOSTLY : trees. I got off the plane and just as I was warned hit a WALL of humidity and heat. It was 10ish in the morning, the sky was crystal blue and the air was wet with heat. It never stopped amusing me, making me giggle: I would walk outside and my glasses would fog up, like a mirror after a hot shower.
I never could get my bearings ~ there were no mountains, and I felt completely lost.
Time made me feel, much of the time, like one of those paddle and ball toys ~ the ones with a light wooden paddle with a ball attached to it by a string of elastic. My mind and psyche kept bouncing and snapping back and forth between CA and FL time: Midnight? = no, it felt like 9, which is not a bad time to learn to get tired and go to bed. In the morning my body woke at 6, but that is 3 a m in CA time. My mind had been waking up at 5:45 back in CA when I had taught summer school. Every morning by body and mind had a bickering match: (Mind) "The clock says 6:30 and I am AWAKE, cuz I 'know' that is when I am used to getting up!" (Body) "In my real world where I must go back and live, that is 3 in the MORNING!! I am not done resting!! I am closing my eyes again!!!" I tried to stay in bed until 9, and was usually up by 8, dressed and sitting with coffee by 8:30. Yeah, that is 5, 5:30 CA time, but it was the best compromise I could come to...and yes, my first morning back I was sipping coffee at my computer at CA-5:30 / FL-8:30.
But the mornings were a gift to me. I would get up and take my Bible and a cup of tea (coffee, if Jeff was up before me) and go out on the back patio to the porch swing and gaze out. Behind my friend's house is a lake -- yes, that IS what I said! A LAKE!!! Not 50 yards from their back door is a lake!!! Their patio, greengreengreengreen grass, a huge pine tree, then a lake! Yes, every once in a while God does spoil some of his children and the rest of us must simply deal with our envy. . .ok flat out jealousy! There is a flock of geese who live at the lake and play in the yards. They would be meandering on the grass either next door or under the pine tree. Suddenly they would begin to bicker and squawk and honk. By the way, I know we humans say that geese 'honk' but it did not sound like honking. I could not/can not make a word in my head for the sound, but it is raucous, and LOUD and intense. A knot of them would fly off and circle -- around the neighborhood, I guess -- and swoop back down and land on the water with a "WHOOOSH" -- yes, that sound: geese meeting water: whoooosssshhhhh! The lake was dark royal blue, the trees were crayon box green, the sky little boy blue -- clouds of fleecy white, or often gun metal to silver grey. . .and I, on the porch swing chatting with God, made memories of bliss!
YAY a new POST!!! So glad you had a good time on vacation!
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