Passing on Traditions or Forcing Them?

We have reached an impasse and I am not sure if it is the big deal that some others are making it out to be. I have been discussing Halloween with Macy for a month or so, trying to discover what she wanted to dress up as and explaining the baisc idea of trick-or-treating to her. We dressed her up when she was 5 months old and took her out, not that she had a clue what the deal was but she was adorable. We posed her in many costumes with props and took tons of pics. Last year, we found the cutest witch costume in Cracker Barrel and bought that knowing that with her coloring the costume would just "pop" and she would be beautiful. She was. Notice there are a lot of "we" terms in this? She didn't really have much interest in it either time but went along because WE bought the stuff, dressed her in it and drug her door to door. She never once uttered "Trick-or-Treat", she didn't hold the goody bag and most times she hid her face when the door opened. Even in Publix, where she routinely 'holds court' with all the sweet little old grandmothers and great grandmothers in there who cannot help but stop to say hello, she wouldn't participate and insisted Daddy carry her. So now here is my situation. I asked, prodded, suggested and got out of her that she would be a mermaid this Halloween. I scoured the entire south end of Sarasota county to find a mermaid costume for her. I contemplated a costume intended for a large Dog at one point because I could not find a people one. Then something told me to get to Target and do it fast. I went in and was even distracted by a few shiny objects as I made my way toward the Halloween area, but each time I stopped, I would hear that voice saying to get my butt to the costume area NOW! I walk back there, I find adult sizes, kids sizes, accessories, makeup - no toddler sizes. Okay voice, what was the big rush? They don't even have her size of anything! Keep looking, walk around. Once again I follow the urgent sounding voice in my head and - TA DA!!! I see ONE toddler costume, and it is a mermaid. To be fair, there were actually dozens of costumes, but I only saw the one and I could swear it had an ethereal glow to it. Maybe it was my tired foggy brain, relieved to have found it at the 5th store I stopped in that day. Anyway, I zoom over to it, size 4... she wears 3T but it will do, I have safety pins, needle and thread, duct tape - whatever it takes. No accessories, but I can improvise. I find silver glittery mary janes, perfect! The tail of the costume has silver glitter too - I am ecstatic! Grab and go home, savor the thrill of the hunt and finding exactly what I was looking for. A couple days later, I go get all sorts of sparkly shiny things to attach to the costume, just to make it really stand out. I am so excited about how this is going to look!! Again, notice there is a lot of use of the pronoun "I", not much about Macy. I bring it all home, gather it on the table to begin my masterpiece when I get a call from my Mom. She found the matching crown for the costume!! She is sending it right down! This is going to be the best mermaid costume ever and Macy will be so amazing in it, I can hardly wait. When the crown arrives, I carefully open the box, revealing the treasure inside. How beautiful this will be perched on her red curls!! I lay out all of the pieces, can't wait to show Macy how adorable she will be for Halloween! She comes over to look at it, takes it all in for maybe 5 seconds and says....... I don't want to be a mermaid. I want to be a puppy. Thinking on my feet, I say we don't have a puppy costume but we have this beautiful mermaid costume. Now she claims she doesn't want to be a puppy but a kitty. I said "How about a catfish?" which is going to look remarkably like a mermaid with whiskers of glitter. She agrees to be a catfish. I let it slide, knowing when to walk away from a battle. I find out that the Charlie Brown / Great Pumpkin special is coming on, figure this will be a great chance to pass on a tradition of watching holiday specials. Well, I wasn't allowed to watch them until I was almost in high school, but still. So I tell Macy after dinner, if she will pick up all her toys and put them away then she can get into jammies and come into Mommy and Daddy's room and lie on the big bed with all the pillows and watch a special show! She is hooked right away. She picks up toys like you never saw, gets into jammies so fast the show wasn't quite on! So I make a deal of talking up Halloween, how much fun it is, getting treats and being outside and seeing all the people and homes in full decor. I put aside my work and pile on the bed too, crank on the bigscreen, and here comes The Great Pumpkin. She watched about 8 minutes total and that was largely because I made her sit down and look at the TV. As it was about to go off, I asked her if now she was excited to go trick-or-treating? She said she doesn't want to go at all. I reminded her there will be candy..... chocolate candy, if she goes. Nope, don't wanna go trick or treating. I will just stay home and watch it on TV. Now comes the part where I am flipping a coin. My family tells me that she is getting too mouthy and I need to remember who is Mom and make her do what I say, period. I just don't know if forcing a child to participate in something "extra" like Halloween is really such a smart idea. When I look back over the preparations, it was 99% me and 1% her agreeing with me. Did I do all the searching and planning because I want to be that mermaid out there or did I do it because she should take part, like it or not? I kind of think her not wanting to dress up and go out to ask for treats is really not a big deal. Not like she will be scarred for life if she doesn't go, right? Halloween is 2 days away and I really wish I knew what the 'right' thing to do was.

Going Native, ch 2

Spot the Native Behavior There are things that happen in Florida which will cause many a faint hearted soul to gasp in amazement and flutter something to fan themselves. The ones who do this are not natives. We have seen it all, and yes I am a native, born in Gainesville and never moved out of the state. For that matter I have only even traveled outside these sandy, high priced shorelines for far-to-few vacations and no further north than Illinois, no further west than Texas. South and east treks were the ports of call for cruises – all two of them. I can’t imagine life better than here so why bother leaving? Back to the native behaviors, and amusedly, the non-native ones as well. It is assumed by those living in the middle states and maybe others that all Floridians live and breathe to go to the beach, Disney World and eat oranges picked right off our own trees. Disney is too expensive and when you’ve seen it, you’ve seen it. Fresh oranges and other citrus fruits are good, make great juice and for the first year it was cool to have it right outside your door and to send to people who think all juice comes from the freezer case. Then it becomes a chore to pick up the fruit that falls on the ground so you let it fall, kick it into the neighbor’s yard, and mow over it which does add a nice fragrance to the scent of fresh cut grass. Then that gets old and you just ignore it and let it rot. This takes about 4 days to start and you will know it has begun by the droning of the zillion or so flies that swarm to it. There is also the matter of fruit rats. No one ever told me about fruit rats but I know about them now. They love for you to let fruit rot on the ground, saves them having to climb the tree. They then also love to come into your attic or under your house and make all kinds of noise which causes the cats inside to stare intently at the walls, floor and ceiling making you wonder what they are looking at so you look at it too. Natives who know about the rats and flies and wonders of picking up mushy rotten fruit will not let on to anyone else, it amuses us to see the reactions. Non-natives will simply call a pest removal company. Natives just wait them out, and give seedling fruit trees as gifts. As for the beach, we can take it or leave it. I live less than ½ mile to the beach and I go there maybe twice a year. I know it’s there and sometimes that is all you want, to know its there. When I do go the beach, I see more non-natives than locals. You can spot them. Some could be mistaken for oversized footballs by the look of their skin which has been tanned, much like leather, and some of them are the exact shape as well. The other extreme would be the ladies who go to the beach in full makeup and wearing heels. Why anyone would do this is beyond me. Either you will sweat so much that your “face” will slide right off and scare the hell out of the men you were hoping to attract or you will find that the men are only looking at the girls who don’t have to pile it on with a trowel and can get away with teeny bikinis. I also cannot fathom why anyone would think wearing heels to the beach is a good look. Your shoes will sink down into the sand and either come off every other step or get so filled with sand that you have to stop and empty them constantly. By the time you make it to a prime spot on the sand from the car, the sun has set and now you have to get back to the car before dinner. Personally I can’t walk on the beach any way but barefoot. Sand gets into any type of shoes and makes walking a chore so I just kick them off as soon as I park. Natives will know that the beach is the place to see and not be seen. Suddenly it seems that people, women in particular, want to take tiny little dogs with them everywhere. I don’t like tiny dogs and I don’t much care for people who force me to deal with them in places dogs should never be. I love my pets as much as anyone but I can’t think of a single reason to take them to the grocery store, out to eat, or into clothing stores. I am not terribly fond of taking my kids to these places never mind my pets. Natives do not carry tiny dogs in oversized, overpriced purse-like bags. We may drape a snake around our neck and walk around with that, but not a dog. That’s just silly. Native Floridians don’t own “winter” clothing. We don’t own a lot of clothing for that matter, its hot as hell most of the time and the less you wear, the more comfy you are. We will walk around in bathing suit tops, shorts and flip flops. All the time. If it gets cool, maybe add a t-shirt to that ensemble. For me, if I get invited out to eat and the restaurant doesn’t allow tank tops and/or flip flops, I ain’t goin’. I have dressy versions of these articles of clothing and footwear and so long as I am not kicking off my flip flops and the tank top is not wet, I can see no reason for them to look down on my attire. My Dad wore a pair of cutoff Dickies brown work pants, a cutoff t-shirt and slip on loafers from K-Mart with black socks everywhere he went, year round. He didn’t think men should wear flip flops and wearing loafers without socks was not his thing. He was not native to Florida or he would have known better. This isn’t to say it does not get cold here, it does indeed. Not for very long and not as cold as most other places, but it gets cold enough to make me wear jeans and a light jacket. At least half the day. In north central Florida, where my family lives, we go up for visits and during the winter it is quite cold up there. Frost on the ground, frozen pipes and crank up the heat cold. We don’t visit much during the winter, it’s nicer at home. Natives do not pull off the road to point at and take pictures of wildlife. Alligators in particular, do not interest us. We also know better than to take our tiny dogs out for a walk along the edge of any body of fresh water. The best advice I can give for non-natives about the waters here, always assume any body of fresh water that is deeper than 2 feet will have at least one alligator in it at some point. Also be advised that alligators like tiny dogs, especially ones that smell like the inside of overpriced handbags. Natives will not enter a water hazard to retrieve an errant golf ball. Let’s face it; golf balls are not as expensive as Emergency Room visits or prosthetic limbs. As for the salt water, always assume there are sharks in it. They too like the taste of tiny dogs but will also snack on humans or anything else in their way. This is especially true if you are in the water, wearing a dive suit and swimming far enough from shore that you cannot make out anything clearly and at dawn and dusk which is when they feed. There are many other things in salt water that will bite, sting or generally cause you discomfort if you disturb them. These things get disturbed easily and hold grudges. Natives know how to walk in water doing the “stingray shuffle” to warn of their approach so the stingrays can relocate to avoid being stepped on, which disturbs them. Admittedly it would tick me off something fierce to be stepped on by something as big as a person and if I have only one defense which is to lodge a painful barb into the unsuspecting, if deserving, offender – you can bet I would do it too. Natives do not walk into the water to get a better look when someone says “there is something out there”, we know there are lots of ‘somethings’ out there and we don’t want to be out there with them. Natives do not bring complicated food to the beach. No sandwich fixings, no potato salad, and no make-your-own taco bars. We know food at the beach has to be simple, easy to handle and resistant to sand, or at least not ruined by sand. We’ve all eaten at least a pound of sand in our lives but we can take it. Natives do not pack up to leave the beach and pick up the big blanket or towels and shake them out so a large cloud of flying sand covers everyone and everything within a 5 foot radius. Unless we have been subjected to their incessant nasal twang complaining about the things we hold near and dear as Floridians, then maybe a bit of sand to grate on their nerves – or any other exposed surfaces – is justified. Natives do paint their houses in odd colors and maybe we drink a bit before 5, but hey they say it’s always 5 o’clock somewhere. We do have a tendency to become more laid back the further south you travel in Florida. The people living in Key West are so damned laid back they’re almost horizontal. One visit there has me hooked, can’t wait to go back and soak up more of the “we’ll get to it later, have a drink now” way of life. We heard a sage bit of advice while visiting there: “when you leave a bar in Key West, always take your drink with you, it could be 30 – 35 steps to the next bar” and I think that was a stretch. More like twenty, unless they actually meant from the bar itself to the next physical bar, not door-to-door. I cannot vouch for the legality of this advice, but it made sense to us at the time. I did play tourist there, after all I was on vacation and arrived by cruise ship. It was great fun but the next time, I will go native and sit and laugh at people who are not. Natives get a raw deal on the driving ratings. Many of us are perfectly good to great drivers, but we have to deal with people who ‘ain’t from these parts’ and despite coming here for half of every year for the last 20 years, they apparently forget where everything is resulting in surprise lane changes, stops and turns. I say “surprise” lane changes and turns because they rarely signal for their actual intent. I have driven behind a battleship sized sedan from the 70s where the only evidence of a driver was 8 ghostly white knuckles gripping the steering wheel who had on a left turn signal for more than 15 miles. The only reason I was behind them this long was that I didn’t know if they wanted to change lanes or perhaps that left turn was about to happen any minute now. Didn’t matter, they suddenly slam on brakes coming to a full stop and them make a right turn from the center lane. Apparently the road used to be only 2 lanes and the feed and tack store that sells flour by the 50 pound bag which you can use to sew a fine dress used to be on this corner. Mind you it is now a Wal-Mart strip mall off a 4 lane super highway, but that’s not how they recall it.

Going Native

It’s Not the Heat, but the Humidity I don’t know who coined this phrase but I would like to smack them. Not once have I ever asked, or been asked, “How humid is it there?” by friends or family or sometimes a customer service rep (another chapter for another time) when we’re on terminal hold for resolution of a perfectly stupid issue. I get the question “How HOT is it there?” quite a bit which is a direct link to the measure of heat, not moisture in the air. These folks apparently don’t have access to cable TV or the Weather Channel because at almost any given time there will be someone on some channel carrying on about how great or bad the weather is in Florida, depending on the circumstances. Given that we live near the west coast, we frequently have a nice coastal breeze so it is less warm and sticky than it might be just a short distance away so we are fortunate. The short answer is that we live in Florida and it is almost always warm here. Sometimes it is a pleasant thing; sometimes it is pure out hell. Hey, it’s Florida! If you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes and it will change! Another phrase I am sick of hearing and it isn’t true. Some days it takes a full 30 minutes for the change to happen. This prediction gets used in many places, not just for Florida weather. It isn’t any more correct in any of the other places either. I used to think it was just the very old and boring who followed and discussed the weather in minute-by-minute updated details but then there was the launch of several weather-only channels available on TV and quite frankly with the recent decline in good programming, those channels are moving up on the favorites list. Those people on the Weather Channel who go to face the bad stuff head on and report back to us who are smart enough to be sitting inside, nice and dry with no chance of being blown away by an errant gust – they are getting rock star status now. One person has the dubious rumor following him that wherever he goes during the early development of a hurricane, that’s where the storm heads. Nothing personal mister weather guy but please don’t come here between June 1 and November 30. That’s “the season”, half of the year we have a pretty decent chance of being hit with a big nasty storm. Yeah, this place is paradise. I suppose the price we have to pay for living in such a nice state is that we have to suffer the ‘season’ and hope that odds are in our favor. By no means are we the only state hard hit but we do have the most exposure for such things. Many people ask us if we’re crazy to live so close to the coast and in an area with high predisposition to getting big huge nasty tempered storms that wipe out major areas with walls of water and winds in excess of 100mph (sometimes). Many of these people live in the Midwest or “tornado alley” as it has been affectionately dubbed. Seems to me they are the ones with questionable judgment. We get a week’s notice – sometimes more – before these storms hit. We know in advance how strong they are and we have a list of preparations and supplies that beaten into our heads, chanted like a ritual prayer and mailed, broadcast and stuffed into shopping bags for days before June 1. We even have a huge “Hurricane Season Kickoff” party and many seminars where you can get more info on how to prepare and survive a storm. Massive events with hundreds of vendors hawking stuff you never knew you needed but by George there it is and there is no way you will be okay without it. Tornadoes give you a 15 minute warning if you’re lucky enough to live near a siren. You do the math. A few things you can count on when a Hurricane is due to hit your area: grocery stores will sell out of water, many canned goods, batteries and ice. Home supply stores will run out of plywood, tarps (we like blue here), gas cans, generators, lanterns, coolers and batteries. If you don’t have approximately 20 gallons of water, a pantry full of canned goods, coolers filled with ice, at least 4 tarps per person, full gas cans and tanks and enough batteries to fill your bathtub – you will be made to feel inadequate. Well, for the first year…maybe two. If you move here, buy a generator and extra gas cans to fuel it. Live in the middle of the state? It does not matter. We had little to no problems with a storm here only to have it rip up the central cities with their theme parks and water slides who felt like they were safe. My family called us from the north-central part of Florida to offer shelter from a seriously nasty storm named Charley that was headed almost directly at our backyard. Mind you the storm was several miles across so that was a fairly approximate target area. We had a lot of rain and wind, a scary time to be sure. We never lost power, water, needed a single battery and opened only the 12 ounce cans from the icy depths of the cooler. Those same family members who were so sure we were going to be wiped out, they lost power for days, had trees down all over and could not travel certain roads, damage to homes and forced to eat canned foods that would not heat up no matter how many batteries they used. Go figure. This isn’t to say we don’t get our share of nasty weather. We got thru many storms with nary an issue. This didn’t stop me from buying supplies lest we get a surprise visit from the local authorities (meteorologists, not police) to be sure we had followed their instructions and had our copy of the hurricane handbook in plain sight on top of the family bible. We had one stretch of 6 weeks that brought severe thunderstorms that caused trees to fall and damage homes, power to go out for a couple of hours and the driveway to fill with rain water runoff. There was one storm with severe lightning that actually popped a utility line for power that burned through the cable and phone lines as it fell. That left us cut off from everything for 8 hours!!! We were prepared, had water and batteries and canned goods so we were fine. The Red Cross was not called this time. Truthfully I did use a battery powered box fan to keep the air moving as it was very warm and with the massive rainfall it was indeed humid with no AC running. I was home with our daughter, who was about 1 ½ at the time, and that little fan kept us cool, we played games (including a few battery powered ones) and we didn’t open the fridge more than we had to so it was fine. I did have my cell phone and food was delivered, but I never said my definition of ‘roughing it’ was primitive. Summertime is indeed filled with surprises in the outdoor conditions area. We have days where you can actually open your doors and windows and enjoy a nice breeze filled with the scents of summer without fear of heat stroke happening right in front of your TV. Mind you, we live near the coast so some days those breezes even bring a hint of the sea to our door. This is great most of the time, like having your own private air freshener scent without the spray cans. In the event of red tide, which kills off sea life and lets it wash ashore in piles that block the coveted views people pay quite a lot of money for, then the breeze is not so welcome as it will cause even the heartiest of souls to wrinkle their noses and begin a coughing spell that will cause you to gulp more air, which leads to more coughing and so on. Nasty circle of events it is. Many summer days begin with brilliant clear skies and soft breezes that make you walk outdoors and spin in circles while taking it all in like you see in those TV commercials for fabric softener sheets. Then you think, “What a great day to make lunch, grab a magazine or just sit out on the patio and enjoy the lovely day” but what you don’t know is by the time you change into shorts, make a sandwich, grab your magazine and a drink it has begun to rain hard enough that you can’t even see the lounge chair in which you planned to flop back and enjoy the no longer great weather. This will result in you sulking about and possibly deciding to call someone to tell them about the weather, and by the time you find the phone and call them, the rain has stopped and it is beautiful outside again. There is a problem with this second round of sunny, beautiful weather. Think about how most moist heat saunas work and it will come to you. Open your door now and the very breath will be sucked from your lungs and you will instantly be covered in sweat just from the labor of trying to breathe this wet, hot air. One other thing about the mood swings of weather here. Storms tend to pop up and move on quickly and I tend to be watching for this more than anyone in history according to my husband. Upon seeing the approach of a storm, I will usually say “looks like there’s some weather headed for us” which causes my husband’s face to contort and the same statement to be made – “weather is all over, it does not ‘head for us’ and it doesn’t refer to only the bad stuff; there is a STORM headed for us, not WEATHER”. However, he knew exactly what I meant so apparently my choice of terminology isn’t that far off the mark. The fact is, yes, Florida has a lot of heat and heat related events. It is rainy here sometimes. Sometimes we suffer droughts and wildfires. This state is not for the faint of heart, you have to be ready to get prepared and then change gears and prepare for the next thing before the first thing even gets to you. Maybe this is our form of gambling since casinos are not big here. It is indeed a crap shoot.