This and That

Squalls out on the gulf stream

Big storms coming soon

I passed out in my hammock

God, I slept way past noon

Stood up and tried to focus

I hoped I wouldn't have to look far

I knew I could use a Bloody Mary

So I stumbled next door to the bar

And now I must confess

I could use some rest

I can't run at this pace very long

Yes, it's quite insane

I think it hurts my brain

But it cleans me out and then I can go on

=Jimmy Buffett, Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season

I can't believe it's 12:23 and I'm just now getting to this.

I slept a little later than usual after yet another night spent mostly awake and sitting upright with an epic case of heartburn. At some point I need to start paying attention to this, I guess.

Then coffee, then hot tub, then breakfast, then my daily quick sweep through the Perry Wal-Mart for sundries (I'm starting to recognize the staff there, which isn't a great sign). From there I drove down to the gas station to fill three cans with offroad diesel. Peg likes to mow when we're here, and god knows this place needs constant mowing from May through about now. And all that means we're constantly in need of ever more expensive diesel.

We drove over here on Thursday evening, just ahead of that latest hurricane I can't pronounce, which came ashore in Destin as a Cat 2. We spent from midday Friday through late Saturday night getting whipped with rain bands at Wyldswood, which served to fill the pond back up after a summer of drought.

In between rain bands on Saturday Peg decided it was dry enough to mow one of the pastures, resulting in the tractor getting stuck in the saturated sand and Clinton riding over to help us pull it out. Note the missing door on the big tractor, the result of another mishap. Something like this happens pretty much every year. Thankfully, the John Deere emerged unscathed.

Saturday night we watched the Dawgs squeak one past the Crimson Tide, in part as the result of a terrible pass interference non-call by the refs that would have put Alabama on the cusp of a touchdown with only a couple minutes left to play. Having seen my team on the other side of that sort of setback in the past, I just remember that no one wins or loses an entire game based on one bad call or botched play. The Alabama faithful didn't see it that way, however, and they basically attacked the Georgia players as they approached the tunnel after time expired, pummeling them with bottles and assorted trash and even reaching out and slapping one player on the side of the head. I thought that one was especially cheeky--a paunchy white desk jockey trying to start a physical altercation with a six-foot-two, 250 pound black kid with zero percent body fat who can probably bench 350 and knows how to inflict physical punishment. Of course, this being Alabama, if the Georgia player had slapped back, he'd spend the rest of his life in jail, or find himself lynched.

So there was that.

Sunday morning we brooded on how nothing is fun anymore, how this pallor of civil war hangs over everything and saps the pleasure out of life. After I worked in this lovely farm office for a few hours, then, we decided to go seek out some of the old Florida that lies all around us here in the Big Bend. I've heard it said that Taylor County has the longest shoreline in Florida--not true, as it turns out. That distinction belongs to Monroe County, down in the Keys. But TayCo does in fact have the longest undeveloped shoreline in the entire lower 48--miles and miles of pines and live oaks leading down to estuaries where there's no sign of human life as far as the eye can see over an endless expanse of seagrass.

We thought it would be a morale raiser to spend a little time there. It was.

We drove from Adams Beach to Jabo, from Dekle Beach to Keeton Beach and finally to Steinhatchee, where we stopped at Fiddlers for a glass of wine. Peg lamented the poor, pale, extremely pregnant barmaid whose teeth were rotting out of her head at 25 or so. But we have the money for billion dollar football stadiums, and to shoot billionaires into space. Priorities, eh?

At the end of all that, we took a vote and elected to stay here today rather than flying back to Corning. Peg doesn't work until Wednesday, and the weather's supposed to be just fine tomorrow as well.

Care to guess where Peg is right now? Yep, out on the tractor, mowing the grass path down to the fancy Golf Course Road gate. Meanwhile, I need to get a couple things edited and filed here in the next little bit. Lucky someone still wants to pay me to do that.