Elvis Karaoke

Elvis Karaoke
Originally uploaded by Herschell Hershey

This made my day.

o. hai.

We moved to Big Pine, & i got a different (much, much better) job on Bird Island, i even had a truck for a couple of weeks. These are things that happened while i was away. They would have been great to blog about (if by great i mean fun for me & likely boring for you,) but i did not have a computer, & i was just too damned lazy to type anything up on my mobile browser.
Big Pine was great, & my new job was great. But, all great things must come to an end, & now i am living back in Kansas. If you must know (which i guess everyone must, since it is all i am ever asked,) it is freezing. Duh. No joke. Holy cow it is effing freezing. Aside from that, it is really wierd to be back. There is a nice young man who lives in the part of the apartment that was formerly our office, & all of my furniture is still at my parent's house, so it's strange to be both in my own house, & also kind of in someone else's house.
I have been home for about a week now, but haven't actually done anything. I've left the house a couple of times, but haven't looked for a job yet, & haven't unpacked at all. Except for my kitchen.
I suppose it makes me a little old lady, but it was amazing to cook with my own appliances & accoutrement. Who knew how much you would miss a knife? Or vegetable peeler? Oh! To have pots & pans again!! Yep. Nerd.
So overjoyed was i, that last night, i made (what is hopefully) all my dinners for this week. Maybe even a couple of lunches! After prepping five heads of garlic, six onions, four carrots, four potatoes, & six beets, i compiled a pot roast & a beet-pear casserole while making a pot of chicken stock (which also results in a whole cooked chicken!)
Tonight is yoga, so i started the pot roast a couple of hours ago, to be enjoyed in a few more. Hooray!

granma gifts

My family has been flipping their lid because my granma shipped me a package using [GASP] the USPS!  They were certain that it would never arrive, as if you can't send anything across the country without utilizing UPS or FedEx.

Of course, like every other package i've sent or received, it got here within a week.  Obviously, i've been desperately curious: what could she be sending me?!  Especially something that my mom is so concerned that i get? Clothes!!  Which might seem a bit sarcastic, because frankly, who gets excited about clothes from their granma?  Me.  I do, that's who.  Especially when they're clothes that you could not afford to buy for your new job with a 'conservative' dress code.

My granma is awesome.  She's almost seventy, & when she isn't busy raising my youngest set of cousins or keeping an immaculate house, she gardens & paints.  When i was small, & my both of my parents worked in the factory, it was our grandparents house (not that of a strange sitter) where the deep soft memories of my childhood were born.  Green shag carpeting for plastic horses to graze on, grand spirea architecture arching against the pink quartzite fence, yellow wallpaper in my mother's old room.  She taught me to paint, how to use which brushes & the importance of patient diligence.  I remember canning tomatoes, picking wildflowers, harvesting rosehips, elderberries, morels.  I will always know the names of every plant that grows in Kansas, as well as the best way to make a pie crust.  And it was that same voice singing lyrical nursery rhymes, which also cursed like a sailor.  

It was a perfect life, & i'm thankful for it all the time.

on being a stereotype

In the Keys, everyone else, like me, is from another place.  It makes it interesting: unlike Kansas, where everyone has the same easy, unaffected manner of speaking, each person you meet has a unique accent.  Working at a resort employing three hundred people, i like to listen to the different dialects against one another.  In the HR office, is a young Texan & a middle-aged Bostonian.  My department, answering phones & manning the radios, is headed by a mother from Delaware & staffed with a grandmother from Michigan & a girl from Jamaica (among others, whom i rarely work with.)  Early in the morning, as the sun rises, i ride to work with men from the maintenance department who are from South Carolina, Tennessee, & New Jersey.

It's also great for conversation.  Asking where a person's from can easily segue into why they left, & what they're doing here.  You can learn a lot about a person very quickly.  Which is good, given that, for the first time in decades, i do not know everybody.  Quite contrarily: i know no one, & have little in common with anyone.  So i like being able to eat up minutes of small talk with that one question, & it's nice to get to know someone without needing to do much of the talking.

Obviously, this line of questioning usually veers next to where i am from.  The love of Kansas is deep in my heart, & i am not embarrassed by my newness to this place.  However, it's still awkward.  I think the main weirdness stems from the fact that i seem to be the only Kansan anyone has ever met.  Clearly, everyone has heard of the mythological state - Oz, evolution, tornadoes - but as far as i can tell, they assume nothing ventures to or from this bible-belt bread-bowl but wheat & beef.  I go suddenly from feeling like everyone else - transplanted like a seed in the island breeze - to feeling like an overwhelming stereotype - Kansas farm-girl with a boyfriend back home.  

Of course, no one knows about Lawrence.  About Thai/Vietnamese/Indian food, or gourmet coffee.  No one knows about my lip piercings, or that i break dress code with my 'extreme style' earrings: no one has seen me out of the 'island elegance' business-casual dress composed of all the clothes i own that could fit into the required category of 'conservative'.  It is a strange feeling, knowing no one, & being unknown to everyone.  To no longer be the girl back home, missing a few far away friends, but to now be the far away friend, missing everyone back home.

satisfied

Today, i feel as though i accomplished a lot.

After waking up early (a feat in & of itself) i thoroughly cleaned the condo.  Degreasing the oven knobs, scouring the formica, hand-mopping the floor.. the deeply satisfying type of clean.

After dipping myself into the industrial-sized vat of spf55, i rode Roomie's bicycle to the supermarket.  It's not terribly far - 4.5 miles - & considering that there aren't any hills at sea-level, it's a pleasant trip.  Biking over bridges, under palm trees, dodging iguana.  Satisfying.

Supermarket choices are: Winn-Dixie or Publix.  We shop at Publix, which seems comparable to the newly remodeled Dillons back home.  I can't complain, because they do have booze, & there is a smallish health-food section.  They also stock a few organic options in the produce, & best of all, they have the best yogurt selection i've ever seen!  Thankfully, since i'd say that these days, an easy 90% of my diet consists of yogurt & organic produce.  However, the last decade in a college-wonderland, i have grown accustomed to some particular eating habits.  Great Harvest bread, Vanilla-Blueberry granola from the Casbah (all within walking distance.)  A luxurious life indeed.  I found a granola that i thought would be good - anything with freeze dried berries can't be bad - but really, it was too crunchy & hurt my teeth.  

So, if you're reading this, i sure would like some bread & cereal from back home!

floridian day

Last night roomie tells me, 'Oh yea, you're goin with me to work in the mornin'.' I just go with it, & she tells me to bring my swimsuit. Which, seeing as how she works with dolphins, can really only mean so many things.
What it meant, was that i got to swim with a dolphin!!!
Roomie has worked at the research center for two years now (with an internship prior to that,) so i've been fortunate enough to squeeze in some dolphin interactions whenever i visit. In addition to a couple of 'meets' (a program where you stay pretty dry on the dock,) i've also been able to participate in a 'play' session, & i also had a 'paint' program, where a dolphin paints you a tee-shirt!! But never, have i been lucky enough to be in the water with a dolphin. Best birthday present ever.

I want to write this elaborate entry about the incredible experience, but, there's too many amazing things to write, & it's really a blog i'd rather leave to roomie.

But, almost as exciting, after she was off work, roomie & i played tennis!  Now.  To clarify, i have never played tennis.  I was really concerned that i would just frusterate Roomie, with my lack of racquet-eye coordination, & inability to keep the ball in play.  Turns out, she & i are equally great at tennis.  And, to clarify again, by tennis, i mean, 'jogging at stoplights'.  Realizing we weren't getting much of an aerobic work out, standing still while the other chases your serve, we just started 'keepin' up the hustle'.  It was great.

So, i'm a real Floridian!

pigeon shenanagains

Yesterday morning, there was a third pigeon on the balcony!!  This one was smaller than Burt, sort of a white & brown mottled bird.  However, like the other pigeon stranger, this one is also without tags. 

This morning, both of the strange birds showed up together!!  Well.  A line had to be drawn somewhere, & this is where Roomie & i decided to draw it.  No colonies of pigeons.  It's one thing to feed one lost pigeon (since that's what these professional pigeon persons said to do when emailed,) & it's one thing to clean up one bird's poop from your balcony.  It's an entirely different thing to be attracting random pigeons & surrendering your $800 view to the pecking & pooping of an ever-increasing flock.  And besides, Burt doesn't even do anything!  All day, he lounges around the balcony, pooping.  Doesn't he have bird things to do?  Get a job, jerk!!  (The only advantage i have over Burt is that i don't poop in the apartment.. so at least there's that.)

And so, the bird battle began.

It took both of us five minutes just to shoo him off the balcony at all, & even then he would just fly back to the other side.  Eventually, we wised up, putting on shoes & pushing all the furniture against the building, allowing us to run freely along the rail, shooing at him with our feet that no longer gingerly tiptoed around pigeon poopy traps.  Finally, we started scrubbing this week's bird turds off the balcony (& table & chairs & chaise lounge) while Burt watches, concerned from nearby balconies & fire escapes.  When he isn't cooing curiously from just outside of our reach, he's circling the building after his failed attempts to perch outside our rail.

Realizing that mere shooing would be unsuccessful in reclaiming our balcony, Roomie & i weigh our options:  Adopt a Cuban homing pigeon, or relocate said pigeon.

We open the screen door, & he just saunters right in.  Luckily, we thought to close said door, as our attempts to corral him into a box using tennis racquets failed & i snatched him up in a towel as he was fluttering against the screen.  As nonchalantly as we could manage, we carried this pigeon in a box into the elevator & through the lobby.  We drove a few islands away, maybe fifteen miles from our landmark of a building.  When we opened the box he hopped around for a few moments before taking off.  He flew in 5 or 6 increasing circles before disappearing.  Now all we can do is wait.