by Carollynn on 25 July 2007 Most people know of my love for my home state of Florida, including my overwhelming desire to move back. Three weeks after every visit home features a homesick/mourning period where I pine for all things Florida, even the bad stuff, like hurricanes, love bugs and real estate developers on steroids. Tim, who had not been to Florida in at least 2 decades, could not understand what the attraction was — until this past weekend. Our four day, long weekend began what I would call Tim’s Florida Education(Floridication for short).
Landing at the Tampa Bay International Airport, our visit was off to a good start when Tim discovered many tanned, attractive “natives” milling to and fro, an atmospheric décor that Florida is famous for: beautiful people.
Friday was hot – Florida hot, the kind that catches you unaware and brings on a drowsiness and lethargy that you don’t understand where it came from. But we persevered while doing the obligatory tourist thing; dining at Ballyhoo Grill for seafood gumbo in Tarpon Springs and a strolling the town’s big tourist destination: the sponge docks. We also visited Dunedin where we began our first of many purchases of Florida art at the Painted Fish Gallery and the coolest coffee shop ever, called the Walkabout Coffee Shop & Emporium. The owner of the coffee shop is an Aboriginal musician who specializes in didgeridoos. His 15 minutes of fame include the didigeridoo solo on the Outback Steakhouse theme song.
The rest of the weekend, we enjoyed cool gulf breezes that made time outside, exploring the area very comfortable. It also helped that we had a pool to dip in whenever we needed a pick me up. Sunday, we spent most of the day running around St. Pete, including a trip to the St. Pete art show where we purchased a boatload of art. We discovered another wonderful artist named Sandra Williams. We purchased a number of items from her including the one to the right called Coconut Courtship, which will be gorgeous over our fireplace.
Perhaps one of Tim’s favorite discoveries was a brochure detailing the many golf courses in the Tampa/St. Pete area. Can you guess how many golf courses there are? 83. Yes, that’s 83 golf courses/ranges in the Tampa/St. Pete area alone. Our friends kindly showed us two areas we might like to call home in the not too distant future – the historic Old Northeast section of St. Pete and a Clearwater/Safety Harbor neighborhood called Del Toro. If only we could move there NOW!
I can happily say that Tim’s Floridication is well underway. We’ve decided to make more frequent trips to Florida and have already booked a birthday trip for October. Perhaps my long held dream of going home will be realized in the near future.
Friday afternoon I received a message from my cousin Jeff that a reunion was to occur this weekend in Arlington, VA with cousins — many of whom I hadn’t seen in 30+ years. I can’t explain how excited I was to see my family who I thought was lost to me! Would this meeting finally assuage my feeling of being adrift in the world, of being alone? I’ve long felt as if I was missing a chunk of my identity. These cousins are a connection to who I am, to my Polish heritage and why I am who I am today. I’d missed the sense of being a part of something larger, a part of a family – my family. It was something I searched for and hoped to create through my facility for creating social communities. All in an attempt to recreate something that resembled a family. Yet something was always been missing; that true sense of belonging because I was blood, because I was someone’s daughter, with shared ancestors and shared memories.
Then the fear merged with the wanting and in most cases with fear, it was my ego doing the talking. Did they even remember me? Would they like me? Would they let me back in the family after so long an absence? I didn’t worry about whether or not I would like them – they were family – of course I would like them. I worried that I might not be enough. Strange that — me worrying about what others thought of me, because for the most part, I don’t worry about such things: either you like me or you don’t. And if you don’t , then that’s your problem, not mine. Thus illustrating how important this reunion was to me – I worried that I might not be liked.
Tim agreed to come with me to meet my family. He’s been my touchstone of what is real and good in my life and I was so pleased that he wanted to be a part of what was about to happen. My cousin and his partner thought it would be fun if I were a surprise guest at the first night’s dinner. To say that I was excited and scared at the prospect of reuniting with them is putting it mildly. Excited, because the memory of them had grown to mythic proportions and I wondered if they would be as grand as I recalled. Scared because my memories of them had grown to such proportions; how could anyone live up to the expectations I had of them?
Excitement won out over the fear, and as I walked into the dining room, I saw a lot of people first look confused and then mouths opening in surprise. Then I was quickly surrounded and hugged to pieces. And yes, I got very choked up. It seems they were as glad to see me as I was them.
I discovered over the course of the weekend that my family had grown and still they had kept the memory of my mom, dad and me alive. I was still and had always been family.
Special thanks to Kevin, who helped to make my dreams come true.
[continue reading…]
Ah… there’s nothing quite like the sound of a Sawzall in the morning, afternoon or early evening to get one’s remodeling juices flowing. And flowing they are. Just when the house was starting to look well, like a house one might want to live in, we pile all the furniture into the office and breakout the saws and start tearing down walls.
Yes, we really did do that this past weekend and now are living with some uncompleted construction, with drywall particles spewed everywhere until (she says with fingers crossed) this weekend. That is when the expanded kitchen doorway is framed and trimmed and the new 5′ opening between the living room and den is framed, the new French doors are installed and the doorway trimmed.
So what are you doing this weekend? Any thing constructive?
Sometimes I forget that prior to my life here and in Tennessee, I knew some pretty impressive and famous people. That tends to happen when you work in the entertainment and event industry. To impress you, I’ll throw some names around:
- My former boss Jay Clark (a.k.a. Captain Chaos or Papa Smurf) is the Executive VP of programming for Sirius Radio
- My teenage pal Nancy Robards Thompson is a popular romance novelist
- Former Florida Secretary of State and Orlando mayor Glenda Hood is an Orlando connection I worked with while helping to build downtown Orlando in the early 1990’s.
- Former Orlando Sentinel Columnist Bob Morris writes popular murder mysteries
- Pyrotechnic purveyor extraordinaire Lansden Hill is also a pal from the end of my event days in Tennessee.
Speaking of Bob Morris, he has a new novel coming out next month (Bermuda Schwartz) and will be at the Border’s at Bailey’s Crossroads, VA at 7pm on Feb. 15. for a book signing.
Saturday, almost 3 1/2 months since we first installed the kitchen cabinet, Tim installed the last 6 pieces of cabinet hardware. This is a big deal because when we bought the original hardware, we cleaned out their supply and it still wasn’t enough to finish the kitchen. So we had to alternately wait for the store to restock the last 6 pieces we needed and then go to Laurel to pick them up.
Other Saturday project of note: It’s always been a little drafty in the downstairs bathroom, but no more! We added weatherstrip to the only original window left in the house. This is just a temporary measure, as I think we’ll replace the darn thing with something new and much more energy efficient come this spring.
Sunday – just in time for the first snow of the season, our kitchen has heating vents – yes, that’s right, count ’em 2 heating vents (or A/C vents when it gets warm again.) Tim spent most of yesterday afternoon playing Troglodyte in the basement crawl space (including donning his very Troggy coveralls) to cut holes in the floor, installing the very cool looking grates and finally reconnecting the vents to make the space toasty warm.
Other projects also completed:
We now have a very nice dressing room
blinds and shades have been hung in the kitchen, living room and den…however, the window treatments that should have taken 2 hours or less to hang took 2 days because we had to structurally re-trim/insulate the new windows that the previous owners installed so poorly…
But the house is really starting to feel functional, and not just some place that needs a lot of work. Don’t get me wrong — it still needs a lot of work, but its so much better than when we moved in.
