Just Enough of a Good Thing

We just returned from a week on the sunny gulf coast of Florida. And you know that when I say ‘we’ I mean my husband, the Center of the Universe (CoTU) and I. In contrast to previous Florida visits, this time the weather was perfect. Every day was warm and sunny. Even the days that began as cloudy and overcast became bright and beautiful by late morning.

Our trip was planned as a visit with our dear friends, snowbirds who we’ll call Fred and Nadine. Because those are their names. Kidding—they are not, and I’d like to protect them from any fame that might come their way as a result of this column. Also, I would not like for them to sue me for invasion of privacy, or for anything else for that matter. Moving on…

We walked on the beaches, we sought out several art fairs, we poked around numerous antique shops and we drank more than a little wine. Life was beautiful. There was much relaxing, reading, dining in, dining out, and the ever-popular collecting of sea shells. By the seashore. I’m done.

So this was a lovely vacation for us—we were able to spend lots of time with each other, and with Fred and Nadine, who are always gracious and generous hosts. They encourage us, dare I say they try to entice us to buy a condo nearby and join them there.

I see the appeal of wintering (that is now a verb, I believe) in the warm and sun-kissed clime that is Florida. I love the idea of spending a week wherein the biggest decision you make is “Soup or salad?” I just can’t see myself spending months at a time there. Too much happiness.

No that’s not it. Here’s the real reason: I’d miss my stuff. I don’t mean shoe collection, kitchenware or tchochkes. I mean the stuff I work on every day, like my sewing machine, my fabric stash, my yarn and my knitting books. I missed the computer and the internet a lot, and while it’s true that we could take a computer down there with us, I’d have to share it with CoTU, and ‘share’ is not a word that comes to mind when we speak of CoTU. He got his name for good reason. His “It’s All About Me” coffee mug suits him to perfection.

So I can relax with reckless abandon for a week, and I’d be willing to try two, but I’m pretty sure that into my third week on Fantasy Island I’d start to go a little crazy. Without the hobbies of golfing and boating that so many people enjoy in Florida, I think I’d be rather a lost soul. There are only so many online Scrabble games I can play at one time, and even those look a little fuzzy after a couple of glasses of Riesling.

The bottom line is that we will remain in St. Louis, probably forever. Winter is winter, summer is summer, even when they both occur in the same week. This is home, and we claim it. Besides, even if we decided to move tomorrow, it would still take us five years to clean out the basement. We have a lot of stuff, and just enough happiness.

Leaves, Snow, Pollen, Moles: The Four Seasons

Thanksgiving is behind us, and if the first snow has not fallen where you are by the time you read this, it cannot be far behind. We had a flurry here Monday morning. Happily, it didn’t amount to anything. We can only hope that we get the last of the leaves raked up and hauled away before the white stuff really descends.

I think it’s a sign of old age that we have begun to view the change of seasons only as they relate to dreaded household chores.

We have not yet put the leaf rakes and yes, I admit it, power leaf blower into that bleak section of the garage known as ‘off-season storage’, and we’ve begun to bemoan the prospect of winter and snow shoveling. As winter ends, we’ll start fretting about the spring pollen that clogs our screens and fills our deck. Just as that’s clearing away, we’ll be worrying about the lawn and the moles and the carpenter bees. And then, of course, we’re back to the leaves. Perhaps we’re ‘glass half-empty’ kind of people.

Now this would not be such a bad thing, but it does keep us from what life coaches and zen masters call ‘living in the moment’.

Today we should be enjoying the comfy temperatures that enable us to walk the neighborhood in just a sweater, instead of the heavy coats and caps that are soon to come. We should be enjoying the fact that it’s not yet dark at 4:30, as it surely will be a month from now. We should be enjoying the relative beauty of the brilliant reds still clinging to the row of burning bush shrubs that line our driveway, and the wonderful crunch of the dried leaves under our feet on the paths in Babler State Park. Are we doing this? Not so much. We’re changing furnace filters, fighting the woodpeckers opening knots in our cedar siding, and lamenting the impending ice age that is sure to come.

Have we learned nothing from the sixty-something winters we have survived? It’s as if we are embarking on new and unseen territory as fearsome and threatening as the surface of Jupiter. Is this why so many clear-thinking seniors have become ‘snowbirds’ and spend the harsh winter months in the balmy and temperate southern states?

Last year we spent Thanksgiving with our son and daughter-in-law in Washington, D.C. From there we drove to Englewood, Florida at the generous invitation of friends. We spent five delightful days there, but I believe that in some deep-seated way it altered my ability to experience winter.

We ran into some very cold and blustery weather en route home, and it was as if I had no winter coat and gloves. I believe that somehow my body had decided that Florida was right, and anything else was wrong. And while I’m not a Florida person in general, by the time we returned to St. Louis on December 8^th, my body was inexorably altered. I endured last winter with incredible disdain for the cold and damp. Every 30° day felt like a 20° day; twenty felt like ten, and I pretty much felt like Sam McGee who needed to be ‘cremated’ just to defrost. I survived, without Sam McGee’s incineration, but my suffering was intensified by my newfound world view.

This year it will be different. We’re not visiting Florida till February, at which time it should feel like Paradise. By the time we come home, it will be time to put the snow shovels into dry dock and welcome the pollen. Meanwhile, I’m putting on a sweater and going out for a walk.

Headlines, Deadlines and Unbelievable Stuff

A couple of observations on the small and somewhat obscure items in the news, submitted for your amusement.


First, this tiny headline caught my eye in the newspaper recently: Wounded man dies in restaurant.

Nothing special, you think? Well, maybe, except for one thing. The article went on to say that the death actually took place in a White Castle. I’ve never heard anyone refer to White Castle as a ‘restaurant’ before.

Second, there’s a report that 54-year old Catherine Maria Pileggi was upset that her multi-millionaire boyfriend wanted to end their relationship. She stabbed the 70-year old Ronald Vinci several times in the chest, shot him in the head, cut his throat and fractured his skull, according to the police in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. She said he died in a fall.

Really? From what—the 104th floor balcony you pushed him out of? Shouldn’t you have thought of something just a touch more believable before you stabbed, shot and slashed him? What were the odds that the police (not to mention the undertaker) weren’t going to notice those nasty and bleeding wounds?

That’s all for today from FITNY—where funny is STILL the new young, and where you still can’t fix stupid.

Weaving Friendship

I have a friend who’s fortunate enough to spend the winter months with her husband in Naples, Florida. Wait—that came out wrong. They live together all year, it’s just that they travel to the warm and sunny gulf coast of Florida to escape the relatively harsh winters we have here. You know, they’re called ‘Snowbirds’.


Anyway, because my friend is witty and clever, she refers to this sojourn as “Adult Winter Camp”. They rent a condo, and have made friends with many other couples who reside there. There is a clubhouse, and there are activities sufficient to keep anyone from even thinking of becoming bored.

When my friend posted on Facebook that she was at Adult Winter Camp, I asked her to make me a lanyard. That is what I think of as a good camp activity. I suppose I could have asked her to make me an ashtray, but I’m pretty certain that ashtrays are completely passe.

Ashtrays and lanyards are all I know about summer camp, and I couldn’t think of any correlated winter equivalents. So I stuck with the lanyard.

I remember trying to weave those doggone strips of plastic into a cohesive length of consistent proportions during a summer of playground ‘day camp’ at our local school. I believe I was about seven years old. I failed miserably. Starting the thing was tough, but making it smooth and even was even tougher. My red and white pieces were so discombobulated I was afraid that the outcome would be pink. I hated pink. I hated failing. No lanyard resulted.

Meanwhile, my brother made a fine lanyard. Was he nearly three years older than I? Yep, but that did not assuage my feelings of total inadequacy. If they’d been grading at the playground, they’d have given me a D-, just to keep me from having to repeat Lanyard 101. My brother? I’d say he’d have gotten an A. Okay, more like an A+. Not that I’m bitter.

So my friend returned from Naples a few days ago, just in time to come to the April meeting of our stellar book club, The Bookees. I was the host, and when the very tan and smiling woman in question arrived, she presented me with a lanyard! Blue and yellow, it is ten inches of sheer loveliness! I laughed so hard I almost cried—she took my joke and ran with it! Now I’ve got a cool gift from a sweet friend, and if they gave grades at Adult Winter Camp, she’d have gotten an A. Okay, an A+.

I was so touched by her thoughtfulness that I ran upstairs to get my copy of Billy Collins’ “The Trouble With Poetry”. I read his amazing and insightful poem “The Lanyard” to the assembled Bookees before we began our discussion of our featured book. I maintain that this simple work is the single best summation of the mother/child relationship in all of literature. Yes, all. Read it here, you won’t be sorry. Billy Collins is a former poet-laureate of the United States, and I recommend all of his books. Yes, all. Again.

Official thanks to my friend, the lanyard-maker. Next month the Bookees meet at her house. I’m making her an ashtray.