September: birthday month
Choosing between two pictures this morning, I like this one because it's the mama cloud with her chick clouds gathered round her, and two following along right behind her, as little chicks do.
Today is Day One of my birthday month, and I mean to make it count thirty full days, nomesane? It's not one of those special birthdays because of ending in 0. Rather, it's one of those special birthdays because, as I said in yesterday's blogpost, "Hey! I showed up again today!" and at this age and stage of life it's apt every morning, every Time it happens, every single day.
When you get here you'll see that I was right, wishing you long years.
++++++++
This is the other picture.
I like this one because it reflects everything about Linda's porch here in 7H, its ongoing cheerfulness. There are always colorful plants in some stage of blooming, or heading toward a bloom, or fading from a bloom, this summer including zinnias, which, after weeks of flourishing out here, are cut and in water glasses on the dining room table. There's jasmine in bloom across from me, and caladiums in the baker's rack. Above, the red vinca. WinterTime we have Christmas cactus, poinsettias, and amaryllis. Those are our out of doors flowers, inside Linda has orchids, for which we finally got bark instead of dirt, and the right kind of pot with slits for the roots to wander.
Yesterday's morning adventure to close out August was a drive to the downtown Post Office to get mail that we'd not collected in more than a week (we had to take a post office box after Hurricane Michael when Harbour Village was declared a construction zone and the Postal Service stopped delivering mail here - - and we've kept the box to make sure no more major hurricanes come our way, and it's working so far - - knock knock. From the post office we drove out to Lynn Haven to order a coconut cake from the Velvet bakery that's located in the little mall at the northeast corner of the intersection of Ohio Avenue Route 77 and 13th Street. We ordered the cake, identical to the one that dear friends brought Linda for her birthday cake in July; plus we brought home a slice of their strawberry cake and a slice of their German's chocolate cake.
Noon dinner of a hamburger and nibbles of the two cakes. With mine, which was a cheeseburger, Bubba cooks when we have hamburgers, and the cake with a touch of vanilla ice cream. With my cheeseburger I like a beer, this one was a Heineken 0.0, which is satisfactory but by no means superb. A late afternoon nap, four o'clock to five o'clock, then late to bed and late to rise. Five AM is late for me, club coffee out here on 7H porch watching what the sunrise does to the clouds and smelling the flowers.
++++++++
Our POD for Tuesday 1 September includes driving out to visit Malinda at Pruitt Health, then the three of us coming back to St Andrews for supper at the new restaurant, Basil Asian Cuisine. The initial announcement says they'll be open seven days a week, we'll see how that goes. I certainly hope they'll be successful. This now gives us an oriental restaurant - -
the menu looks mostly Japanese - -
as well as our several seafood restaurants, a pizza place, a Mexican or Tex-Mex place, and a few specialty type restaurants and sports bar types.
In my young years St Andrews was still the fishing village that it was in my grandparents' day, in my day with three fish-houses, a barbershop, a drugstore, Mom's Cafe, a filling station, Mrs West's Printing Plant (Lillian West was a character), a hardware store, Mattie's Tavern,
and an ice plant. Oh, and Kelley's Super Market (We Doze But Never Close). Another oh: the old train depot that by then was decrepit and used by Mr Kelley to store surplus mattresses and other things for sale - - it was located behind our fish-house, behind the drugstore, is now a designated parking lot, with several long places where folks can park their pickup truck and boat trailer after launching.
Next to our property and Mom's Cafe was Red Baum's property, with his plumbing business and he built an apartment house, two story, with doors that opened right out onto the street - - it hasn't been long since the building was torn down. Mr Baum had a 1947 DeSoto suburban with a vise attached to the right rear fender for his plumbing trade, and he had a bright red, brass era Rolls Royce touring car that, when I was a little boy nine or ten years old, he once told me, "Boy, don't touch that car."
On the corner of our lot those years was a little dark blue travel trailer in which lived a blind man, his wife, and their son George. I've remembered this story here before. George had the run of St Andrews (had or took), he was the original urchin, and when dinner was ready his mother would come out of the trailer and start shouting, "Jaw-WIDGE. Jaw-WIDGE, come to dinner. Jaw-WIDGE!!!" She could be heard all over St Andrews, and eventually George would come running home for his dinner. I remember George as perpetually seven or eight or nine years old.
Ours, my father's business was one of the fish-houses, where I worked from age nine through age seventeen, wore rubber boots to my knees, and always had to turn them upside down and knock the huge spiders out before putting them on. A fish-house attracts flies, and wherever there are flies there are spiders.
Jeepers, now I've ruined my beautiful day.
+++++++
No, I'm still here
RSF&PTL
T90