restaurants – The Hermits' Rest

Hugs All Around

It’s a hard day in the USA, so I’m sending hugs it to all. Let’s send peaceful energy out to our country even if we disagree with what happens. We’re still all family.

Love is what we need, and what I experienced today. I found a little clump of trees chock full of beautiful birds this morning. The woodpeckers were everywhere.

Maybe my best bird photo ever. Red-bellied Woodpecker.

I’m not going to go on and on about birds. It’s killing my blog stats, but they do bring me comfort. There were lots of them today, in between doing things to distract myself. Thank goodness for my relatives and their willingness to drive me all over the place! At our late lunch at Hudson’s I had a divine crab cake and the best potato salad ever. I saw lovely herons and of course, gulls.

Then we went to the nature preserve I love to visit. They’ve done a lot there since last year, but the rugged beauty was also there. I got lots of ideas for the Wild Wings Bird Sanctuary to share with our committee. And it was beautiful near sunset.

We went to “second dinner” because we didn’t want to go back to our rooms. This was at the Fish Camp restaurant next to the beautiful dock overlooking the Broad Creek. We got Old Fashioneds, appetizers and bread pudding. I, of course, went to the beautiful dock and looked for birds, the best of which was a very vocal Clapper Rail. I do love a good marsh at low tide!

Mostly, though the three of us women enjoyed each other’s company, telling stories about our parents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. We are resilient, we determined. It was a beautiful night, and that just added to the fun.

I’m gonna read magazines and check the news later. I feel safe and grounded for now, because I feel the love of my family and friends.

Still Here!

I didn’t blog yesterday because I had no deep thoughts, but I’m still here and taking care of all the animals and myself.

I haven’t been able to do much with the horses, because my saddles are in south Texas. I loaned my trailer out for a weekend while I was in Colorado, but it’s still there thanks to the Covid. We probably should have road tripped this weekend to fetch it, but there’s a chance it might be back before my next lesson. You really can’t predict who’s gonna get sick at any time in our family, so you just roll with the changes.

Instead of road tripping, we sat in the porch all morning, watched some college football until the streaming got wonky (our satellite went out when I was gone and should get fixed Monday), and had dinner with our friend Martha.

Not what I ate, but I’m impressed with how neatly Apache eats. He had a pie slice shape left when I went to open his gate. On the other hand, Mabel immediately overturns her dish and eats off the ground.

We’re hoping the new restaurant lasts a while. They tend not to in the old 50s Cafe building. I had liver and onions, and there was enough left to feed Goldie her medicine in for a couple of days. Win!

The dogs are no worse so far. They both seem cheerful enough, though Goldie was off her feed for a while. Fingers are crossed.

Coping is what we need to practice now, and we are doing that around here. I need to go out and enjoy the morning now. It looks like the gale winds of yesterday have died down. Enjoy your Sunday.

Enjoy my new nails. They are more red with pink highlights in person.

Beep Beep Time

I’m into alliteration in my blog post titles. But yup, I finally saw a roadrunner in Arizona. Beep beep! It literally ran across the road in front of us, as roadrunners do. I’m sure fond of these cuckoos.

Okay, so you can barely see it. But, yay.

Today was hard, so the roadrunner and its pals were a great reward. After work we had to do our penance for a nice visit by attending yet another condo sales presentation. They just take so long, and we simply don’t want anything. We escaped, though! And off we went to the Sedona Wetlands Preserve.

This place was so cool. They take waste water and turn it into habitat for native birds. That’s so encouraging, because we need more wetlands everywhere.

We heard lots and lots of birds, mostly Great-tailed Grackles and Red-winged Blackbirds. I was extra charmed to see a family of American Coots swimming around and honking away.

We enjoyed seeing the facility, where lots of ducks also congregated, plus a bonus bunny. We had a good time!

By the way, I ALSO saw that roadrunner’s nemesis, the coyote, earlier today on my walk. A beautiful one, too. We looked at each other for a while and went on our separate ways. It pleases me to see them thriving. They are important pieces of the ecosystem! Crows may disagree, though. Later in the walk I heard a crow ruckus and realized at least three crows were yelling at a young coyote and sending it out of their territory. Drama!

It’s bigger than it looks (the one the crows chased)

I got a great couple of pictures of a Scrub Jay intent on catching a bug, and a sort of recognizable Gila Woodpecker. They make a great noise!

After all the sales pitching, beep beeping, and yip yipping, we were hungry. I finally got to watch Lee enjoy a meal. It was at an out-of-the-way restaurant, bar, and local grocery called Brewha in Cornville. The food was so fresh, and everything was made there, even the pickles. I also had an Old Fashioned made properly with simple but high-quality ingredients. Heaven.

Our visit to the Sedona area is winding down, but there’s still more fun to come. Stay tuned.

Looks like June is heating up back home.

Too Much Contemplation, Maybe

I didn’t write a blog yesterday, because as hard as I tried to distract myself, I just pondered and pondered the highs and lows of life. It started because the morning was spent at the funeral service for a friend’s husband, who died at 86. It was a surprise to all, since he’d planned to do stuff that day and was also planning to live to be 100.

Not a native plant here, but I still love the red yucca.

I’m glad so many members of our extended community were there to support my friend, because it’s always hard when your life’s story takes a hard turn into a new direction. And that’s what got me thinking of how many others I know who’ve recently lost their partners and how long it takes to get back into a groove again while dealing with a big hole in their lives.

Life is short, but new life is all around. Look, a skipper caterpillar is emerging!

It seems to me that sometimes it’s hard for folks to go out and have fun again. I know many are helped by sharing memories and talking about how much the departed loved one would love to see them doing well. As the minister hinted at the funeral, you’ve not really lost your partner, just physically separated. I could see how the Christian beliefs of my friend and her family were comforting in that respect.

I’m comforted by my experiences that thanks to memories, I feel the presence of my loved ones, like my dad, especially. I always find myself “telling” him things.

Dad also liked moss roses and disliked annoying nutsedge.

Anyway, to take my mind our of thinking about how lives change suddenly, I convinced Lee to take me to lunch at a fun place we’d never eaten at before, the Oscar Store, which is the only thing in Oscar, a settlement just outside of Temple, Texas. We drive by it often, because it’s on our favorite shortcut to Tractor Supply and Lowe’s.

It’s really cute inside and outside of the restaurant, and the food is great. I had liver and onions with fantastic lima beans and fried okra. Yes, lima beans. They were in a yummy sauce. I was full well past dinner time from that! Lee had a beautiful cheeseburger.

After the fine lunch we went to look at outdoor furniture at Lowe’s, because we need stuff that’s heavier and won’t blow into the pool repeatedly. The stuff we replace can go on the back porch at the Red House, since we don’t have stairs there yet.

So, that helped. But, I still sorta dwelt on things the whole day. What else helped was that I spent much of my pondering time listening to birds, of which I keep identifying more and more. Plus, I got to plant the flowers I showed you above. I finally found portulaca or moss roses so I could plant them by the pool.

These will grow and grow, blooming until there’s a hard frost.

That overheated me like crazy, so I had to jump in the pool, even though it has a lot of grass in it from the mower going the wrong way by it, and there were also flying ants. Yuck. But the water was refreshing!

Time with the horses also helped, of course, They are doing darned well, and yesterday I even figured out that Apache had to pee and moved off his kidneys for ease of pee. He was full of opinions and also informed me when it was time to stop riding. He makes me laugh. Drew is way more cooperative, though he was really muddy this morning!

The rest of the weekend is for relaxing. I bought a whole bunch of stuff to make sandwiches for Sunday Dinner. The things I’ll do so I don’t have to cook…the sandwich ingredients probably cost more than making something to cook.

Nothing’s wrong with pondering your and your loved ones’ mortality occasionally. It helps you remember to treasure every single day.

Super Fun Nature Time at Mother Neff Park

I’ve been sorta down about nature and her ways, so I haven’t been writing much (I’ll talk about it eventually). But today’s Master Naturalist field trip to Mother Neff State Park gave me so many hours of fun that I must share!

Some of our group at the park headquarters.

We carpooled, and I was impressed to fit five people in my new car successfully. It’s hard to feel down with my Master Naturalist lady friends. I just love all the stories about Cameron, Rockdale, and people I never heard of before but wish I could have known. We ended up with a good sized group for a walk on the trails with a nice young intern.

I have to admit that I was not a very good participant in the guided walk. My partner in crime, Linda Jo, and I could not keep ourselves from stopping every few steps to look at plants or insects. That was way more interesting to us than the history of the Civilian Conservation Corps, or whatever. When you are with the iNaturalist Queen, you make observations, so I did!

Linda Jo and I had an absolute BLAST looking at all the plants we found. Between the two of us, we found interesting new-to-us plants and some rare things. It’s so much better doing this stuff with others, as I learned on that warbler walk a couple of weeks ago. Linda Jo said I made a great spotter.

We did enjoy some of the interesting spots along the trail, of course. There was a lovely pond, a big cave, and a tower built by the CCC. A lot of climbing up and down was involved, so we got tired, but it was “a good kind of tired.” I’m glad to have gone, since we missed all this part of the park when Lee and I were there before.

I did want to see the trail we walked last time, around Christmas, but everyone was tired. So, Linda Jo and I just walked a little bit of it. We didn’t need to go far to find all sorts of interesting plants. We were like little kids at Christmas, just about giddy with all our findings. I found a most gorgeous milkweed that neither of us had ever seen before, star milkweed. Then we found some phlox I’d never seen before, golden-eyed phlox. and there was yet another kind of paintbrush!

And there was more. The other folks said they could hear us calling out to each other when we found something. I can’t imagine having a better time doing something I love!

After I reluctantly let the others leave, we had even more fun at lunch, when we went to a very good restaurant on Lake Belton (Dead Fish Grill?). It was quite big, and we were able to eat outside but under cover. All the food looked good, as was my rainbow trout.

There were a few little incidents, but for the most part, everyone had a blast and learned a great deal. My only complaint is I got home too late to ride horses. That’s really not the end of the world, because tomorrow will be another beautiful day, just like today was.

That’s a yellow crescent blister beetle.

I’m so glad to have a community of like-minded folks to hang out with on occasion!

Why Yes, We Can Have Fun in Cameron!

I just got home from a genuinely fun and satisfying evening out in our little town. It’s so great to have options for hanging out with your friends and neighbors in downtown!

I don’t get into town much, but Anita invited me to join her for coffee, so I headed over to the Farmers to Market Coffee Shop for some of their delicious coffee and cozy decor (plus friendly staff and friends to chat with). I’m thrilled we have TWO coffee shops to choose from. It’s getting better here!

Then we took the opportunity to see how the work Railfan is doing on downtown buildings is coming along. The Venue is getting even more beautiful. The mezzanine now has a beautiful wood wall and the floor is so shiny. What great work!

Next we wandered across the street to the old JC Penney building and its neighbors, where my son was painting walls and sealing bricks. It fascinates me to see the bones that were hiding in the former bland county offices.

Next we checked out the Penney building, which I’d seen before, but not cleaned out. Wow. I’d love to live in a loft on the third floor! Being able to look out the windows was a fun surprise. And the old elevator is something that needs to somehow be preserved. Being able to watch these renovations gives me a real sense of the hard work and creativity it takes to achieve a downtown revitalization.

Enough with the old buildings! Anita and I next went over to another building that was vacated when the county offices moved, the former tax office. Now it’s the Cameron Beer Market, with pizza, beer, pool, and so many fun people.

There were opening night glitches, like the credit card machine not working, so we had to pay cash. I never have cash. Still, we had fun conversation with so many folks we know, plus I got to enjoy Lee, Anita, and Declan talking about music. That’s always interesting.

This was before it got crowded. I like the grass on the wall.

Dang! Another fun night here, and soon we can do stuff like this all the time. And hey, some of the people were planning to go to another downtown spot, our beloved Central Avenue Bistro, after their beer, so wow, options!

Thanks to everyone who supports local businesses here, including the established ones, so I’m not forgetting Ginno’s Italian and the great Mexican restaurants here. Or further out, Bob’s! There’s stuff to do in our little town.

Plus we have a scenic old jail and cabin. Rural fun, yep.

Not Too Bleak Midwinter

Ooh doggies, it was nippy today. It wasn’t that cold, really, but the wind was fierce. And it kept drizzling all day. What a great day for horse lessons, right?

That’s a big NO from both Apache and super-bundled Tarrin.

It hadn’t felt too bad in the morning, but it got worse and worse. By the time Tarrin got to my house, I think she was glad to go in the tack room and warm up a bit. I needed to defrost from scraping the layers of mud off Apache. He literally had mud balls hanging from his mane and scattered across his coat.

But look, I’m a magnificent steed, he says. There is still mud on him; don’t be fooled.

That was the least pleasant grooming session I can remember. And he was not a happy guy at first. As you can see, he was physically great. But mentally he appeared to be elsewhere.

Magnificent steed, magnificent steed, going where I please…

It was pretty hilarious when I rode him. The wind was whipping through my layers and my teeth were chattering, but I soldiered on asking him to walk briskly then stop, a thing he is normally fine with. Nope.

No one said it would always be fun. Here he’s backing up. Again.

He got to do it a lot until he deigned to stop like he should. Then he got to do something else. Hooray. Funny boy.

Drew would like it to be his turn. Note that I, too, am bundled. The wind whipped through even my heat-reflecting layer.

That’s Drew in his new fancy rope hackamore that Tarrin re-tied after I botched it. Knots are not either of our strong suits. It’s pretty, though! I now know how to loop it and stuff. What a cowgirl.

It was not ideal to learn to use the new bridle and two pairs of reins with frozen hands, but now I figure it will feel great when it’s nicer outside. Drew was very patient getting his chin strap put on (it came from my surplus collection from when I got the trailer, so it doesn’t match yet), then with me putting the bridle on and off repeatedly.

I’m tired of the fiddling, says Drew. I’m jealous of those mittens, says Suna.

Drew was way more cooperative than Apache, since he’s used to riding in bad weather. We even side passed better. I’m working on reins, but getting there. It’s fun learning with him. He tries and so do I!

The picture of endurance. Thanks for the photographic proof, Tarrin!

After Tarrin got to go home, we took a road trip to look at yet another potential mobile office for Lee. The weather was spooky. That’s what got “In the Bleak Midwinter” going through my mind. It was gray on gray.

Nonetheless the day was saved by the treat of going to dinner at the famous German restaurant in Wahlberg. We hadn’t been in years. I sure enjoyed my Hefeweizen and the sauerkraut. Ahh.

The place wasn’t too crowded, so it didn’t feel all germy and they had a huge fire in the fireplace. I even enjoyed the Wahlberg Band, which featured much excellent yodeling. No, honest, it was good! What a pleasant change of pace.

Tomorrow should be sunny, so it won’t be so bad riding and exercising. Maybe Apache will act like his mature self! If not, I’ve always got crochet and football.

PS: hi to my step-sister and spouse. Loved your card.

The Flower Fairy Goes Art Walking

What a pleasant Saturday! I started the day fairly early for me, so I could go work with the horses before it got over 100° F. I ended up hanging horse signs up in the tack room, rearranging my horse playground and round pen, working with Drew (who now wants to nip me while we trot right, so that got dealt with) and working with Apache, who rode all the way over to the edge of the woods today. He is now comfortable in most of the front pasture.

As a reward, I gave him a nice cool bath with my new horse bathing attachment. We finally have the hose available to where that works out. Apache was displeased that I made him stand around to dry while I cleaned his saddle and bridle, but they look good now.

My clean tack. Hard to see but it’s there.

Then, since Apache’s bath had cooled me off, I took pictures of how nice things are looking around here.

After all that I was too hot to do much, so I swam in the pool while it was still cool. I think that thing is my lifesaver.

After I rested a bit, Lee said he wanted to go to the first Art Walk in Cameron, which was held in the remodeled building that used to be Bea’s Kitchen. Wow, they’ve done a great job with the place. Here’s the restored signage.

The interior is gorgeous, and they made really cool light fixtures that allow you to see the ceiling tiles. And upstairs, there are beautiful new windows. It’s gonna be so cool.

The Art Walk was so much fun. Anita, Lee and I all had a great time meeting old friends and making new ones. the artists were all very interesting people, too. One woman lives in Maysfield, down the road from us and makes interesting jewelry. The rest were painters. Each was different in focus, ranging from sweet watercolors to cleverly subtle social commentary. I got a watercolor and was happy to learn the artist gives classes!

Lee and I both really liked the work of one of the artists, Randy Robinson. We learned he only started painting not that long ago. His work had movement and great light, because he studied Rembrandt’s style in Europe. I got to talking to his daughter and learned they live in nearby Milano and have lots in common with our family. All the stuff you usually don’t think you’ll find. What luck!

Then, when I was off with Anita, Lee secretly got the painting I loved the most, which was of a horse in the night, spooked (says the brochure) by finding a human lying in her field. It really captures the wildness and bemusement. And you just want to pet that muzzle.

I love that it’s off center, too, from the viewpoint of someone on the ground. Yeah. I wore a flower fairy dress. It has pansies with faces, and Alice in Wonderland.

We talked more later, and I kept thinking he seemed familiar. We started talking about plants, and then it all became clear. He’d joined the Master Naturalist group during my presidency and come to a few online meetings. I introduced him to Carolyn Henderson, our current president, and we hope he starts coming to meetings.

Well what a coincidence! We are all friends now. I’m so happy to keep meeting like-minded folks out here. Like anywhere, diversity’s out there and it makes for a stronger community.

In addition to the Art Walk, the model railroad across the street was open one last time before it moves elsewhere. All the tiny buildings were set out where you could really look at them, and there were folks explaining which modern places the models of 1930s life depicted.

Anita looks at the back of St Monica’s church

The details on the buildings are quite charming. There are prisoners at the jail, a wedding at one church, and a nun at the Catholic Church. My favorite is a woman hanging laundry.

It will be fun to see the rebuilt model of old Cameron!

As if this wasn’t enough fun, we even tried a new restaurant. Yes, it’s Mexican but it’s different Mexican! I had chicken in Mole sauce. I hope Veracruz lasts.

Fed the horses of course. Look at the moon!

Look at that Suna Shack

It’s not done, but the tack room alas she shed has all the horse stuff in it now. The saddle racks are back up, pegs to hang bridles and halters are up, and it all looks good.

Feeding will be real easy because both Kathleen and I can access the food bins at the same time, and all supplements are easy to get to, thanks to the cool old storage unit.

I like how much of the stuff is recycled. It makes the place feel homey. Another cool aspect of the tack area is that we have a rack to store the trailer’s covers for the ventilation areas. Those things are hard to store.

Convenient. this is before the storage stuff went up.

I’m also happy that now I can see all the stored items in the lofts. That will make organized storage easier to achieve.

What about the Suna shed? Well, they put down my outdoor rug for fanciness, but that’s it for now. They don’t want to bring in furniture until the air conditioner is installed. The electrician isn’t scheduled yet but it should be soon. That will be good, since we don’t want the leather molding.

I didn’t get to feed tonight, but I’m sure Kathleen enjoyed it. I was off taking my son and his partner out for dinner at the Nearly Empty Bistro, which was nice. No band so we could talk.

Forgot to show the finished windows yesterday. They will look good trimmed out!

We then walked around the completely empty town. It’s graduation night. Very few people don’t have a friend or relative graduating! Small town living.

Must sleep. Tomorrow we are filming a virtual horse show with Drew and Sully the mare.

I CAN Try New Things!

When I finally get a day off, I can cram a lot of fun into it, that’s for sure, and yesterday I even stepped outside my comfort zone successfully, more than once. I’m so proud.

One thing I’m happy with myself for doing is finding my own fun by myself. As Lee has gotten more and more into the Hermit Life, I’ve found myself slipping into it as well (and COVID helped form the habit of being solo). Since I wake up ridiculously early here, I usually have five hours or so to kill before Lee is able to do anything. I sit on the balcony, read, or knit, but I’m so used to getting up and doing a bunch of chores that I’ve taken to just leaving and finding stuff to do outside.

Pretty kites, and look, way out there is a BOAT! You don’t see many boats here.

Admittedly, some of the stuff I do involves fruity drinks and beach chairs, but I wander around, take pictures, and talk to folks. I swear I’m turning into my dad with all this talking to folks stuff. Not very hermit-like.

I got to have the first pineapple slice of the day.

When Lee was awake, he suggested we go take advantage of the free putt-putt golf we get as part of our stay. I think the hotel chain bought this sorta run-down course, since it’s right across from one of the properties and counts as an amenity. Here’s an admission. I had NEVER played putt-putt before, or any other golf-like activity.

A Chapter for My Memoirs

Backstory: In my horrible only year at Plantation Middle School, some person without much forethought had the great idea of having a bunch of young girls, many from backgrounds that didn’t include elitist sports like golf (back then, well-to-do white people played golf), learn the sport in physical education. Golf includes golf balls and golf clubs, both things that needed to be treated with respect. There were rules, like only swinging your club behind a certain line, not swinging without checking your surroundings, and not driving the ball while people were out retrieving their shots. Good rules. Who can guess what happened?

Golf has rules for good reasons. Photo by *@Thaninee via Twenty20*

Yep. I had finally hit my ball far enough to get an extra point (a thing I needed because PE was my worst class) and was about to pick it up when WHAM, one of the little darlings in class swung her club onto my head. I was so focused on getting my extra point that I simply went back to the teacher to report my success. She asked me what was on my gym outfit. That would be blood. I had to go to the nurse’s office, which was hard to do when you had no idea where that was in the crazy building and you were dripping. I was so angry that I smeared blood on the exterior wall of the school, quite an act of rebellion for the rule-follower I was at the time.

I can’t believe I found a picture of the wall. The school is now the home of the Patriots and being renovated. Much different demographics, too.

The nurse washed me up and called my mom to come get me. Mom was in the middle of her nervous breakdown from having to move away from Gainesville, so she was not happy to have to drive down Sunrise Boulevard (she didn’t like four-lane roads) to come get me. She looked at the hole in my head and declared something like it was just a flesh wound and took me home with no doctor visit or anything. Mom was frugal and didn’t want to waste health care dollars on us kids when she needed so much (thus, we had no trips to the dentist until our teens, my brother’s lazy eye was not addressed until too late to fix it, etc.).

My nightmare: a child with a giant golf club. Image by *@Moondrop via Twenty20*

The results were that I had headaches for years and sharp pains if I moved a certain way. I have avoided golf entirely. I wasn’t the only one permanently damaged by middle school golf. Another classmate had a chunk of her chin removed by someone who didn’t check her surroundings, and as far as I know, still has a nasty scar. I believe that was the end of the golf program at Plantation Middle School.

Back to Put-Putt

Anyway, Lee likes golf and used to be really good at mini-golf, so I agreed to go. I’m so glad I did. It was great fun, and I was nowhere near as horrible at it as I feared I would be. In fact, I was even under par on one hole, and made par on a couple more. The first hole was pretty bad, since I had to figure out how hard to hit the ball to make it do what I wanted it to do, but after that, I found it most amusing to see where the ball would go and what it would do.

I declare that I would do it again, perhaps at a nicer course. But, we got a lot of laughs out of the outing and it was great to see Lee actually enjoying an activity on a trip.

Off to Calabash

We decided we wanted some good seafood, so we motored off to North Carolina (barely) to the beautiful little town of Calabash, where we’d had a great meal last year. Once again, I knitted a lot. I am trying to get that baby blanket finished before that baby is born. We tried the restaurant next door to the one where we ate last year, and were not disappointed.

We were at the far left corner. Isn’t it pretty?

I got a huge amount of food in my platter, unlike the small serving we had in Murrell’s Inlet a couple of days ago. And it was fried so beautifully that my grandmother would have approved (the great connoisseur of Florida seafood). The oysters were immense and the scallops delicate and tender. The shrimp were local (from right next door!) and the fish was glorious.

While the service was a little slow, I could not complain, since there was quite a show among the local bird population for me to enjoy. Grackles were mating and building nests, so they were in great form (and loud, being grackles).

Lady grackles unimpressed by display of male grackles

The seagulls were also in squabbling mode, so there was lots of action. Plus, there were pelicans zooming around and catching fish. They are so beautiful to me.

After the meal, I went for a walk on the little boardwalk and boat docks, where I got to enjoy pelicans having some kind of bird party next to a party boat, which cracked me up (easily amused).

I also realized why all the birds are so dang happy right there in Calabash. The water was literally teeming with little fish. No shore bird could go hungry with all those fishies everywhere they looked!

Future dinner for birds or people if they live long enough

While I was gone, Lee was paying the check, and since he was alone with our leftovers, the laughing gulls got bolder. He got a great shot of a laughing gull taking one of my shrimp.

Once we got home, I needed to burn off that fried food, so I walked on the boardwalk until I got all my steps in, then decided to enjoy an Old Fashioned and knit a table at the upstairs bar (I had been outside until a loud family arrived). A lady said I shouldn’t be sitting alone and invited me to the bar to sit with them. I ended up talking to them and another couple for a long time. Lee even came down for a while.

And in talking to the staff, I discovered that Kevin the bartender is also a history professor who specialized in my very own ancestors in Florida! His family is also from north Florida with deep roots there. Who would have guessed? This condo has the best staff, that’s for sure.

Beautiful ending to a fun day, even if I overindulged.

I ended up meeting another couple and stayed too long and had three drinks, so I was not at my best when I got home. Lee said I was cuddly, so I must have been out of my mind, ha ha. It was worth it, though. I truly enjoy hearing the stories of all the people I run into and finding our commonalities without ruining things by getting into politics or religion. Granted, anyone I meet here fits certain criteria or they wouldn’t be here. Hilton sure does check your credit scores and incomes. But I’ve met people from many places and backgrounds, and that’s what I like and have missed so much the past few years.

While I’m still primarily doing outdoor things (we’ve been eating on patios), at least I’m no longer scared to talk to people. I’m back to having a nice balance of being alone and in peace and interacting with others.