The Secret

Our outing to St. George Island and Manatee Springs was soon followed up by a visit from Amy and Amelia.  This was their last opportunity to come before schools starts for Amelia on August 20.  The day before their arrival I baked Amy a chocolate cake with seven layers and the richest, fudgiest frosting I had ever tasted --- and it was thick between the layers and the layers did not slide off on the counter when I wasn't looking.  In short, it was a good-looking cake.  In fact, it looked so good that Bubba and I just had to try a slice.  Bubba immediately pronounced it "too sweet".  I agreed, but not really.  Then I made a pound cake so that we would have an alternative dessert to the "too sweet" chocolate cake.  Y'all let me tell you the truth, that cake was addictive.  Amy and I could not leave it alone.  We left the pound cake for Bubba and stuck with the chocolate cake.  Amelia chose the white powdered sugar doughnuts for her sweet treat and really worked on them.

She was very pleased with the beds and immediately put her dolls, "Amelia" and "Lily" to bed in them.

When Bubba and I were pulling the beds out of the junk packed closet, I mentioned that there was a ladder that went with them.  Bubba didn't think we still had the ladder so we didn't pull everything out of the closet to look for it.  When Amelia talked to her dad on the phone, she told him about the beds and said, "I got bunk beds, but there is no ladder."  We were all surprised that she even thought about a ladder.  I mean, after all, it is not like the doll actually has to climb up on the bed.  Later that evening, I whispered a "secret" in her ear.  I told her that when Paw-Paw went to work on Monday, we would pull everything out of that junk closet and try to find the ladder.  She loved the idea of keeping a secret from Paw-Paw.  And on Monday we went to the closet to start the big secret search and after I had pulled out only two boxes, I looked over on a shelf and there was the ladder just lying there in plain sight.  I was relieved and Amelia was thrilled.  Now her bunk beds are complete

Although Amy probably doesn't believe this, we look forward to seeing her as well.  I try to fix some of her favorite "Momma" meals while she is with us.  In addition to the cake, I fixed Fried Chicken for one meal and Fried Shrimp for another.

We had several ideas about what we might do for entertainment.  We thought about going to Apalachicola for seafood, going to Shipwreck Island, or spending the night in the camper watching movies and eating popcorn.  Bubba voted thumbs down on most of these ideas.

In Bubba's defense, we really don't know a good seafood restaurant in Apalachicola, Shipwreck Island would be anticlimatic after Disneyland, and it was raining all the time which would have tracked a whole lot of mud into the camper.

Saturday night Amy, Amelia, and I went to Blountstown to eat at a new restaurant that I had been hearing good things about -- Tavern on the Hill.  Amy and I both ordered the rib-eye steak and it was seasoned well and was very tender.  Amelia had her usual grilled cheese.  There was a man playing acoustic guitar and that was a nice touch.

Amelia had spent the week before in California where she had been the center of attention as the only child with a group of Darryl's relatives who had gathered for his aunt's funeral.  While there she went to Disneyland and California Adventures.  By the time she made the trip to see us, she was tired.  I think she was happy to be just left alone to play.

On Tuesday before they left for home, Bubba wanted Amelia to go outside with him to look inside her tire swing.  A mama bird had built a nest there and Bubba had heard the little ones chirping when he went outside.

Amelia was so excited to see the little baby birds.  They were just little balls of down.  

This reminds me of a book I had when I was a little girl about Amelia's age.  I think the name of it was "Stepladder Babies".  I still remember the little poem that was on the first page of the book.                                     

                                                    We have a secret, just we three,
                                                       The robin, and I, and the sweet cherry-tree;
                                                         The bird told the tree, and the tree told me,
                                                            And nobody knows it but just us three.

This is a picture of the birds a week later. I wish Amelia was here to watch them grow.

I guess their visit mark the end of "summer". It is still raining and it is still hot. I'm back at work and things are back to normal for now. We have a couple of camping trips planned over the next month or so. We're hoping the weather will cooperate.

For those of you who thought my last blog was a little strange, I have to defend myself. I was attempting a different style of writing. I read a lot of books with two or three different things going on at the same so I was trying to be more creative. I guess I had better just stick to telling it like it is.

Can't Quit Thinking & Summer Vacation

I’m counting down.  I thought I had a realistic retirement date of November 1.  Now I’m not so sure.  Around the middle of July I called the Florida Retirement System for some information.  I wanted to find out exactly how much my pension would be each month if I retired on October 31.  They told me that they would send me that information in 4-6 weeks.  Can you believe that in this day of modern technology that it will take 4-6 weeks to get that information?  Of course I’ve already figured it myself based on a yearly statement I get, but I just wanted to get my figures confirmed.

Earlier in the summer we planned a vacation for the first week in August when we will celebrate our 47^th anniversary.  The first part of the week would be spent camping at St. George Island for three nights and then we planned to go down to Manatee Springs for three nights.  We invited Joe and Judy to join us, but they were only available for the time at St. George Island.  When we arrived, they were already there and we had lunch together.  Later that evening we went into East Point and had supper at The Hut Restaurant.

That evening Joe and Bubba planned to surf fish and Judy and I went along to watch.  The plan was to catch some minnows to fish with, but then Bubba began to catch some fish in his bait net including three mullet.  That gave Joe the fever so they both spent the rest of the time trying to catch mullet.

After calling about my state retirement, I decided to call the Social Security Administration to check on that as well as when would be my effective date for Medicare coverage.  That involved a phone system of pressing “1” for this and “3” for that, etc.  Finally I got a real person, but I’m pretty sure I got a dud.  Now I’m all confused about Medicare.  I’m reading that it will be effective on November 1 if my birthday is December 1.  I’m reading that, but he is not saying that.

On Saturday Bubba and Joe head out to do some fishing from their kayaks.  I sleep late and had just started getting dressed when I hear someone knocking on my door.  It is Judy.  Her hair dryer has caused a breaker to go out and when she went outside to check on it, she locked herself out.  Joe doesn’t have his phone with him and we all know that Bubba only turns his on when he wants to talk.  We sit and visit for a couple of hours waiting on the guys to return.  When they do, Bubba has caught a nice flounder so now our Alabama relatives have a good seafood supper in their future when they return home.

Early Sunday morning, Bubba and I head out for Manatee Springs.  We were supposed to stay at St. George Island another night, but apparently I got confused when making the reservations.  Luckily we were able to check into the spot we had already reserved at Manatee Springs a day early.  It was an uneventful trip.  Soon after getting everything set up at our site, Bubba headed for the springs for a dip.  He loves cold water.  I consider it painful, but I promise to go with him the next day.  

Our anniversary supper was at Bar-B-Q Bill’s in Chiefland.  I had googled restaurants before we left home and this one had many positive comments.  It was a good meal and we enjoyed it very much.

The following morning, I help Bubba launch the kayak and he paddles toward the Suwanee River.  It turns out that it is not that far so he returns and I take a turn with the kayak.  This was a good strategy because I got so hot paddling that I was even ready to get in the ice cold water of the spring.

After our morning at/in the spring, we returned to the camp site where Bubba grilled hot dogs for lunch and a ham steak for another meal.

Although my state retirement figures my service time right up to my last day, it appears that Social Security doesn’t work that way.  If I wait until December to draw my social security, I’ll get an extra $27 per month which doesn’t sound like much, but to me it sounds like a pedicure a month for the rest of my life.  (I believe I’ve mentioned before that I love my pedicures.)  Now what am I going to do?

On our earlier excursion into Chiefland, we saw a sign for Cedar Key.  Bubba said that he would be interested in going there.  We were expecting a little fishing town about like Apalachicola.  It was not.  It had some condos and some really old, old motels, but not the tourist type things we were expecting.  There was definitely a shortage of places to eat.  Bubba stopped at a convenience store for a recommendation on where we could find lunch.  We were directed to Annie’s Café.

It was a tin building without air conditioning.  I still can’t believe I ate there.  The lunch special was a Fried Pork Chop, Rice/Gravy, Cabbage, and a Roll.  Seafood was also on the menu, but it was expensive especially for a place without air conditioning.  Lunch was good and I was seated so I could keep an eye on the cook and she seemed to know her business.

I guess Bubba’s favorite thing about Manatee Springs is the cold water, but my favorite thing was the deer.  At one point, we had eight of them at our site.  You could walk around outside and they would just keep on standing there.  We were told upon checking into the park to not feed the deer so we didn’t, but I really wanted to so badly.  They are such beautiful animals.

Well, as usual, we got ready to come home before our time was up.  While we were eating breakfast Wednesday morning I asked Bubba if he was ready to go home.  I knew I was.  The heavy rain had pretty much messed up our camp site so it was no longer enjoyable to sit outside and we had spent as much time as we wanted swimming so we packed up and headed for home.  We camped five nights in a row which is our longest time ever.  It was a good time, but I’ve about decided that summer is just not the best time to camp.  It’s too hot outside to do much except swim and this year the mosquitoes are terrible.  I think the cooler months make the best camping trips.  We are already talking about some trips in the future.

I’ve got to quit worrying about a retirement date.  We’ll go to the Social Security office early in September and maybe I’ll get someone who can answer all the questions to my satisfaction.  I still enjoy my job so it’s not like I’m miserable.  I just have to be patient a little longer.

Question:  My little blog has over 2,000 page views.  There has to be more than just a few friends and relatives reading this.  I would love for you to comment and let me know how you came across my blog.  It is something that I started as a way of recording some of my experiences.  I enjoy writing it and I hope you enjoy it as well.

A Stitch in Time

It started raining right after we took Amelia home and it hasn’t stopped since.  I don’t believe we have had more than one or two days without rain since July 1.  There is water everywhere and the mosquitoes are out in full force.  And those one or two days occurred in the middle of the week not on the weekend so that has made the summer weekends pretty boring.  When I sit around and watch TV or read, I feel guilty like I should be doing something productive which has resulted in my floor being mopped more this summer than ever before.  It seemed futile to plan a camping trip in the midst of all this bad weather.

So you can imagine how quickly I moved to action when Amy casually asked me if I still had the doll bunk beds that she played with when she was a little girl.  Of course I have them!  I’ve saved them for the past 30 years just waiting for the day when she would ask for them.  Immediately I began to think about dragging out my 1975 sewing machine and making new mattresses, blankets, and pillows for the bed.  I used to sew a lot.  In fact I made Amy many outfits as well as clothing for myself.  I even made an ET costume that won a prize, but the sad truth is that I don’t consider myself much of a seamstress.  It always took me forever to make something and never came easily to me.  But I remember when I was a little girl, my Papa J. made me a doll cradle and my Granny made the mattress, pillow, and blankets for it.  They had three little granddaughters who were about the same age and this was our Christmas present from Papa and Granny.  It was special to me so I wanted to make these beds of Amy’s special for Amelia.

I surfed the internet until I found some simple directions.  Then I went to Hobby Lobby where I discovered that the 75 cent thread, I used to buy was now $2.39 per spool.  I chose the materials and went to work.

I cut the pieces for the mattress as directed – no problem.  Then I stitched the pieces together – no problem.  I stitched across each corner giving it a box look – no problem.  Then I stuffed it – no problem.  Then I realized that the internet directions were not going to work for these beds.  The mattresses were too thick so I had to pull out the stuffing and re-cut each piece; however, I must say that this did not take too much longer.

The next Saturday we returned to Hobby Lobby when I realized that the board that the mattress sits on needed to be pink since its original covering was red.  Thankfully, Paw-Paw handled this part of the project since it required measuring and gluing neither of which is my strong suit.

I took apart an old baby blanket, cut it in half and edged it with the same material I used on the mattresses.  It turned out pretty cute.  Pillows were made for each bed and finally it was done.  

The scraps were put away, the sewing machine went into the closet, and the floor was swept.  Project complete!  I was feeling pretty good and could hardly wait for Amelia to see it.  Then the call came….Amelia’s doll has a cat.  Could I make a bed for the cat also?  Oh my, here we go again!