Touch of Class

Do you remember the Minnesota State Fair? And how you could get just about anything on a stick? Well I think they have gone a little too far with this one.

We decided to take a short trip home for Christmas. Our daughter had already been vaccinated and she keep her house germ free for 2 weeks before our visit.

We got a friend to watch over little Smokey

DISCLAIMER – I can’t spell worth a dime and this website had an upgrade since the last time I used it. Guess what they got rid of? The spell checker! I’m not the only one complaining. So if you can’t figure out what I am trying to say, just guess.

The whole Christmas season was different. The kids couldn’t have a face to face with Santa this year, but at least they could vist him in comfortable clothes.

Baking cookies was pretty much the same, even the dog helped this year.

Decorating the tree was the same….and so were the pile of presents

Christmas family dinner was a little different, some of us wore masks.

And some of us didn’t

Of course the best part of Christmas is opening the gifts.

And when the gifts are all opened, you just need to find nice table to put your tablet on and relax a little

We take a picture every Christmas morning, this year two of our family members couldn’t be there so we had them visit us remotely. (BTW, I have no idea what the little one is looking at LOL) The Christmas of 2020 was different but still filled with love and joy.

Hopefully soon, we’ll be able to have a nice long visit full of lots of hugs.

It has been a little over a year since my last post. What have we been doing besides staying home and wiping down everything that comes into the house, including Gary?

Well our gym closed so we had to take our walks outside which wasn’t too bad until it got so hot you could fry an egg on the sidewalk….and that is at 7:00 AM.

At least there were some intertaining things to look at while we walked.

We also saw some unusual down spots that we discovered on our walks. But I don’t know, just think of the junk that will get stuck in those little tiny pineapples, sounds like more work than they are worth.

Anyone remember the norfork pine we had in our house? Gary cut it back when it hit our ceiling. The ones here are amazing. The first picture is of the whole tree, the second picture is the top half of the tree that is COVERED in vines.

We did see beautiful sun rises.

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We took our strolls at about 6:00, 6:15 each morning. We were trying to avoid the extreame heat, especially as we rolled thru summer. Sometimes we’d only get to the end of our block and we were both so hot and sweaty,

we had to turn around and go back home. That sucked. You’d think we’d remember to bring some water with us, wouldn’t ya?

We did see some other cool things. A private Beach

A new kind of palm tree…it has pom poms

Some other kind of bush with blooms

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And we found some wild life while we did our walking. This is one of their feeding stations

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We only saw it a few times, and luckily it didn’t attack us ;).

There was a home in our neighborhood that was a rental. The owner got rid of the renters and then put the house on the market. It was on the market so long, a homeless person and his bog moved in for a while. Shortly after they kicked him out, someone bought the place. It was going to be a teardown. Here is what it looked like in April of last year.

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Here is what it looks like today

Yah, here in Florida nothing moves very fast. We have a house across the canel, same thing. Everything moves slower in the south they say. I’m just glad I don’t plan on building a new anything anytime soon.

We did do some other fun stuff while we quarantined at home, we got to see SpaceX take off

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A friend of ours here went out fishing and caught this baby. Needless to say he cut that sucker loose.

So ya know we have to keep our distance from people and any door to door sales people are SOL during all this but those Jehovah Witness, well they still got you covered. Instead of visiting door to door, they send you a hand written letter along with a pamphlet. They are still getting the word out, pandamic or no pandamic

Well that about covers our year of isolation. I’ll leave you with this fine picture of me as I go out into the cruel world and forage for food.

This year Easter was a little different.  Our friends who usually ask us over to Easter dinner couldn’t because of the social distancing.  So I was trying to figure out what to cook for Easter dinner when I received an Email from Mel’s Diner.  They are a restaurant that is located not too far from us.  They serve very good food, big portions at a good price.  They offered free deliver or curb side pick up for Easter dinner which included turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, vegetables, soup and a salad, all for $40.  I figured I help with the economy and get an Easter meal to boot, so I gave them a call.  It turns out we lived to far away from them for the free delivery but we could do the curb side pick up.  Great!  I gave them our credit card info, the color, the brand and make of our car and she said 2:00 would be a less busy time time to pick up our meal.  Got any pie?  “We can sell you a whole one”  I’ll take it!  Wonderful, Easter dinner all ordered!  Mind you, this order was placed about 1 1/2 weeks before Easter Sunday.

So, Easter finally came.  We got in our car and left home about 1:15, figuring if we got there a little early we could just sit in the parking lot and wait a few minutes before driving up to the door.  This restaurant is located on a road similar to Hwy 36.  There is a little strip mall in the same area as Mel’s so there was a long turn lane to pull into before you pulled into the parking lot.

So we pulled into the turn lane to head into the restaurant at 1:50 for our 2:00 pick up.  There were 4 cars in front of us in the turn lane.  OMG!  The place is packed and there is a que line of cars that snake around the back of the restaurant to the front door.  Hopefully the line will move pretty fast.  Once we turned the corner and were actually in the parking lot, this is what the turn lane looked like behind us

There were also cars that were making left turns into the parking lot.  They had to squirrel themselves around and hope someone let them into the que.

After we got into the parking lot, they made all the cars go around behind the restaurant and then around to the front door.

 

 

We see other people parking their cars and going up to the door.  Crap!  Oh well, no way am I going into that restaurant.  We’re in the line now, it can’t take that long, can it?

We are finally on the final turn before we get to the door.  Look!  People are coming up to the car doors and asking them questions.  Oooooo, they are bringing food out in bags.  Good, that will make it easier to carry into the house.

It is now 3:10,  we have been sitting in this stupid line for  1 hour and 40 minutes.  A guy comes out, takes our name, what we ordered and we told him we ordered a pie too.  “A whole pie?”  They wouldn’t just give us a few pieces so I ordered a whole pie.  So I wait outside of the car by all the people that have decided to come up to the door in their masks and get their order.  “What time were you supposed to pick up?”  they ask some old guy, “3:00.” he answers.  She looks over at me, “What time was your pick up?”  I hold up my two fingers…..”OH!”  she says, but I tell her a guy is getting our order.  He finally comes out, empty handed, what’s your name again?  I spell my name for him.  He goes back inside.  A while later he comes out with all our food on a tray.  On a TRAY mind you, no bag for us!  He places everything, which is in tin containers, except the hot gravy and hot soup

This is what the soup and gravy looked like.  How the heck is the gravy and soup going to stay in one place while we are driving home….going around corners….stopping/going…..going over bumps….the only way I know how is if I hold these two HOT items in my lap.  Now, mind you, I wasn’t too irradiate through out this whole process, I was even trying to cheer Gary up, but when he didn’t even put our food in bags, well…that was just the straw that broke the Irish girl’s back.  I kind of laid into him, told him how we waited for 1 hour and 20 minutes to pick up the food.  He apologized and said they got slammed, I told him that maybe if they had cut off the orders, they wouldn’t have gotten so slammed.

So I held onto the hot gravy and soup, shifting it around so I didn’t burn my skin until we finally got it home.  We opening everything up and guess what?  No Pie!  We’ll, maybe they didn’t have any, we’ll just wait to see what they charged us.  A few hours later, I get a notification on my phone that they charged us $58.58.  Huh, I bet that included the pie.  Well, I wasn’t going to call them today, I’ll wait for Monday.

I call on Monday and luckily I got the Manager.  I told him my story, he said he would give me a $15 credit by the end of the day.  That day there was a charge from Mel’s for $41.63.  What???? So they couldn’t just credit me the $15.00 they probably had to credit back the full $58.58 and charge me just for the meal plus tax or $41.63.  Ok, I’ll wait to see if I get a credit of $58.58.  The next day there is a credit for $15.00!  Ok you stupid so and so!  Again, I wait a few days to see if a credit comes thru.  Nothing appears so I call again.  This time the Manager is out and he’ll call me back on Friday.  He finally calls me Friday.  I again explain the whole thing.  I could tell by the way he is talking to me that he doesn’t believe me.  He says he will check his statements and let me know.  Now today is Wednesday.  The Manager never gets back to me and there is still no credit on my credit card.  I’ll have to call him again Grrrrrr!  I call him again, give him a refresher course on who I am and what I want.  Oh yes, he remembers me, where is my note, here it is.  Sorry, I got behind, you had a big credit coming didn’t you, lets see.  I ask him if I should just dispute it with my credit card company.  No, no!  Don’t do that!  They have made it real easy to issue credits now.  Hold on, ok, now I found everything.  Let’s see, you’re to get a $41.63 credit?  I will get it done today.

So here it is Saturday, and still nothing.  Guess I’ll be calling them again Monday.  What a bunch of dough heads!

But I hope YOU had a fabulous and Glorious Easter day.

So, as I’ve mentioned before, our gym is closed until further notice.  We have no exercise equipment in our place, but we still have to maintain some kind of exercise program.  So we have been forced to take walks outside…..like the common folk..  The weather here is unusually hot and humid for April, which is an added benefit because I get my sauna in at the same time as my walk.

So we decided to just walk where ever we could by just leaving from home.  We saw a few people out walking but not many.  We did make sure to maintain our social distancing.  We met one woman who didn’t speak English but she made a lot of hand gestures at us.  I hope she wasn’t calling us names.

We take our walks at 6:45 in the morning trying to dodge the heat and the peope.  As we were walking we saw many interesting things and homes.  We did see this tree that had pom poms on it.

Here is a smaller one

This is the first time I’ve seen this type of palm tree.  I wonder if they have them at schools to cheer on the kids.

Then we came upon someone with a mask on

People….they always keep their sense of humor, even in a crisis.

We also saw these

If I go on an Easter Egg hunt, these are the kind of eggs I want to hunting for.  Just think of the stash they would have in them!  Oh Boy!

After we tuckered ourselves out and sweated off a few pounds, we headed home to a beautiful sunrise.

And we get to do it all over again tomorrow.

Our daughter, her husband and their two boys visited us right before this Corona thing blew up.  I told them to be sure and sanitize their hands and stuff after they got off their plane.  So they made it here in one piece and no one got sick from the plane ride.

While they were here, we did go to the Yacht Club for pancake breakfast before it was closed

and we were able to get out and about and visit a few parks

Aren’t these just the cutest owls you’ve ever seen?

 

We did see this very interesting and different spider while we were on one of our walks.

And we were able to do a little shopping

We took a few boat rides

Otherwise, the activities we did were pretty close to home.  Like

I was surprised at the number of different fish they were able to catch right from the dock.  Gary got his finger bit by one fish while he was trying to take it off the hook.  It drew blood and everything.  Good thing the First Mate came to the rescue with a band-aide and some Neosporin.

 

 

Everyone seemed to have a good time.  But eventually it was time to leave and head back to reality.  Probably a good thing they left when they did….

The pool was closed for the following week.  We are getting a new roof

But they’ll be back next year and we’ll have even more fun!

Our boat club has taken a couple of trips recently.  One was a trip to a marina on Fort Myers Beach.  Once you turn off the gulf and come in behind Fort Myers Beach, it is a long way down a channel to the maria.  It is a long ride in a no wake zone.  It gives you plenty of opportunity to check out homes and boats.

While on that ride I found these troubled boats

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another trip was on the island of Captiva.  Once we got to that marina, there was this cute little manatee there

 

And what is with all the bubbles?

Yup…he was farting!  I had a good laugh over that.  That is the first time I’ve seen a manatee up close in a long time.  And the first time I have seen a one fart

Each morning, as I made my trek to hit the land head early, I’d see this beautiful sun rise.

I am so grateful I can live here and see this.

On just about every one of our boats, Gary has had to do some kind of work on the heads or “toilets” as you land lubbers call them. .  On our 1969 Aquahome , Gary installed a new toilet, transfer pump and holding tank.  My brother bravely offered to help him.  They completed the job in the springtime, hoping that what ever was left in the tank from previous years would still be slightly frozen and wouldn’t smell too much.  Unfortunately, they waited too long and the holding tank was too old.  It had been seeping a little each year and the board it rested on was saturated with….with….you know what.    They held their breath as best they could and got the smelly board out and tossed it into the dumpster at the marina.  They were then able to install a new board that smelled fresh and clean plus a new holding tank and head.  Such brave soldiers.  Now me and my kids had a place to go

Our next toilet project was on the Pearson.  I volunteered to help with that one, silly me.  Our son invited one of his friends down to spend the night.  Little did we know that the child had such waste issues.  We did have a Raratan head on that boat which is similar to a garbage disposal and it is reportedly able to take down a small cat.  Unfortunately, our little visitor must have eaten a dog because his little present was stuck half way thru the hose and wouldn’t come out.  After several attempts to clear the hose, Gary decided we were going to need to remove the hose from the head to the holding tank and replace it with a new one.

So, we both went down into the “tank” room.  Luckily you could at least crouch down there so we weren’t crawling around on our bellies.  I held the hose as Gary unscrewed the clamps.  “Keep it up!  Don’t let those ends droop!”  The hose was pretty old and pretty stiff so I didn’t have to worry to much about it drooping but we also couldn’t just hold each end of the hose like a garden hose and carry it out.  We had to carefully, and I mean carefully, get the hose out of the tank room.  We tried not to tip the hose to much to cause any of the disgusting stuff to drip on the carpet in the boat.  Once we got the hose out of the boat, we walked it down the dock and toss it into the dumpster at the marina.  All without getting any of it on ourselves.  Of course after two kids and countless times of picking up after someone barfed, I have mastered the art of breathing thru my mouth so I barely smelled the nasty odor coming from the hose.  But poor Gary, not so much LOL.  Well, we got a new hose installed and Pat’s friend has been banned for life from visiting the boat……any boat.

Side note: you definitely want to keep a good distance between you and the dumpsters at the marinas.  So far we have thrown two smelly head related items into the dumpsters.  I bet we are not the only people dumping disgusting, smelly stuff into them  .

Our next toilet project was on the Navigator.  And if you have been following this blog at all, I wrote all about that and the job Gary had fixing that one.  Now we are on to our 4th boat, and yes, it had a toilet problem.

The thing never really worked right from the beginning.  The first time out, I had to use the head and ended up getting my shorts all wet.  Luckily it wasn’t the yellow stuff, just the water from the tank.  Gary figured the band around the bowl connecting the toilet bowl to the pipe was loose so he tightened that up.  That worked for a while but didn’t really solve the problem.  So…..time to disassemble and fix the toilet.

Hopefully the neighbors aren’t to mad that Gary cleaned the head on the community dock.  Sorry guys

Well, lets hope that is the last head the Captain will have to fix, although there is one in the house that needs replacement…..more on that to follow…..at a much later date.

I found this bug on our car

Interesting huh?  White on white, I almost didn’t see it.  What do you think it is?

We saw this tree on a walkabout in Fort Myers last November

Doesn’t look too impressive, it maybe looks like it is pregnant, until you get up close

Here is the trunk.  Dang, don’t accidentally fall against that!

Here is a branch

And another branch.  See how big those thorns get!  It looks almost pre-historic.

And yet it has pretty flowers on it.  They call it a Silk Floss Tree or the more complicated name is Chorisia speciosa.    Who would even plant this in their yard.  Can you imagine trying to get your mower around it without puncturing yourself?  I think I’ll stick with palm trees

We did go up North to visit the family for the Holidays.  On the way up, as it got colder and colder, we tried this feature in our car   Dang!  Nice and warm butt now .  Then we saw this on our dash.    What the heck is that all about?  Is there ice on road?  Is the engine freezing up?  Should we pull over and check our engine?  Out come our phones so we can ask Google.  Ohhhh, it is telling us the road surface is cold.  Aren’t these smart cars smart and what would we do without Google?  (This little thing didn’t shut off until we were back in the warmer climate, I sort of missed the little snow flake when it was gone   )

When we first got there, there was enough snow to build a snowman

Here is what he looked like a few days later

I’m melting…..melting!  Poor sad little Snowman.  What is that droopy thing on his face?  They didn’t have a carrot so they figured a cucumber would do.  Not gunna say what that looks like now LOL.  Ouch!  Don’t make me laugh!

One of the things we did while we were there was our annual trip to visit Santa.  One of the little Santa visitors was a little crabby and uncooperative so I got a cart to haul him in.  Too bad it was only a one kid cart.  So crabby got to ride it on the trip to see Santa, and fair is fair, the older one got to ride in it on the way back from Santa

We made the little one walk back and he cried the entire walk back.  Nap time for someone when we got home.

While we were there we also did fun things like shovel off the car

Gary so appreciated this job LOL.

Take a nap under the Christmas tree

Watch TV while sitting in a box

See, why spend all your money on nice furniture, a couple of boxes, some blankets and there you go!

We wrapped gifts with a little help from our furry friends

He is so helpful all the time. I just don’t know what I’d do without him.

We did get a chance to visit my bro further up north.  We went and saw a movie while we were there.  This was in the lobby

Can you spot the Jumanji impostor?

Then while my daughter and her husband had a date night, this happened

Yes, he lost his first tooth!  And who is there to witness it?  The person who hates anything to do with teeth….yours truly.  He was sitting by me all night wiggling it.  I told him to stop wiggling it cause it would come out and it would bleed.  “No, it won’t bleed!” he told me.  Well guess what?  It did bleed and he was none to happy.  Good thing Gary was there to take care of it, and NO, I did NOT touch the tooth.  EWU!  I left that for the Tooth Fairy.

Our trip was a little shorter this year, a little snowier and a little colder.  Always a pleasure to see the family and enjoy the time together but we are awful glad to not have to use our seat warmers anymore .